The reality is that whatever people have, they want more. So expectations keep rising, they then claim to be unhappy, if these are not met.

Yabby - good point.. they are relatively unhappy because they don't realise how bad things were for their parents..

Richard, certainly it's a good idea to keep checking our moral bearings and keep orienting our direction to our values and aims; although I think "surveys suggest" is a pretty uncompelling form of argument.

On the one hand your whole argument is that the State and its directors should define a "national purpose and meaning". But you do not seem to reflect whether the State, as an institution, is intrinsically unfit for the purpose of telling other people what their morality or values should be.

Hans Hermann-Hoppe, in Democracy: The God That Failed, showed how a democracy instrinsically does not select for the most moral or the most capable politicians. On the contrary, it selects for the habitual amoralists, the most unprincipled people in the whole population: the people who think nothing of deceptive behaviour to get what they want, the people who reason "I want something, therefore it's okay to use force to get it", the people who represent the most anti-social forces of party and faction and race and religion and grabbing, the people who think nothing of forcing everyone else to obey their arbitrary opinion. In a word, sociopaths. (That's why both the socialist and the conservative voters constantly despair of Labor and Liberal - because neither can get their respective politicians to recognise or stand on any principle – all they get is endless wishy-washy expedience and lies.)

There is simply no reason to think that unprincipled politicians are competent to enter, let alone to lead, a discussion about what our moral principles should be. On the contrary, these are the people least fit for the job in the whole of society.

Morality, by definition, can’t be just “might is right”, because the reason why we need rules of just conduct in the first place, is to stop the stronger merely grabbing from the weaker. But in the final analysis, the State is by definition the strongest party, and might-is-right is all the State has to offer, else the issue would be voluntary. For what is the State but the institutionalisation of the means of force?

(cont.)

This truth can be concluded from a different perspective. Why a “national” purpose and meaning? Why that particular collectivity? Why not some other collectivity, such as the whole world, or the nations of the South Pacific, or one’s home State, or home district, or family or volunteer group? Why the nation-state?

Aren’t people outside Australia moral beings? Why are they to be excluded from the definition of “our” purpose and meaning? What could the reason possibly be, other than that the nation-State has historically, by force staked out a legal monopoly of the use of aggressive force in the territory subject to its claim. And what could be any *less* reason for it to claim a *moral* ascendancy?

But if non-Australians are to be included, why would we charge the nation-State – an institution that explicitly and forcibly discriminates against non-nationals – to be the judge of what is moral?

No sir the project of defining group purpose and meaning cannot be done without first identifying the principle of morality which is to serve. To be moral it needs to apply to everyone equally, otherwise it’s not a rule of morality, it’s an enforced double standard. This rules out the State as the arbiter, because the State by definition always embodies the double standard “I’m allowed to aggress against you to get what I want, but you’re not allowed to aggress against me to get what you want”.

The only principle of morality that will answer, and that is necessary, is the non-aggression axiom, which is the same as the principle of liberty: you have a right to be free to do what you want, so long as you do not aggress against the person or property of another.

This, not religion or state, is the true and rational basis of morality. It would solve a multitude of evils both within and outside Australia.

Viewed in its true perspective, the State is perhaps the main impediment to the realization of this higher moral and social value. The principled politician is the one who stands for the principle of liberty.

Jardine I know we’ve been over this at length previously, but I would just like to reiterate that I think you are totally off the mark with your basic premise that the state is the main impediment to higher moral and social values.

A lack of state authority or a weak level of governance or however you would like to put it, would select for the habitual amoralists, the most unprincipled people in the whole population: the people who think nothing of deceptive behaviour to get what they want.

A well-developed level of state control, even where there are some very serious flaws associated with it, has GOT to be better than a no-state or no-governance or extremely-low-level-of-law society.

A poor level of governance would actually mean much greater freedom only for the ruthless and unscrupulous elements, and much less freedom for the rest of us… and a much lower level of moral and social values.

That's coming from someone who openly urges unlimited government power over everyone and everything and when asked how that power could be limited even in principle, answers "I don't know!".

The problem with that view is that the State power over and above that necessary to enforce the principle of liberty, is not limited by any principle other than might is right, and just degenerates into mere grabbing.

That's why you were unable to sustain your sustainability argument without immediately being unable to know whether it would kill more people than it would save.