Why a Law? Part III

One of the advantages a society gains from passing laws I haven't touched on before: The problem of thresholds.

There's a variety of ways to describe this problem, but it basically falls along the line of Kant's categorical imperative, 'act in such a manner that it could become a universal law.' Kant found that this was necessary for a moral society and that it was, in essence, the meta-moral that supported all the others.

What happens if a society doesn't pass a law, versus when it does? Let's look at some situations:

Case A) Prostitution is illegal. In this case, no one can sell their bodies for money. Even though people would like to buy sex, the law stops any such transaction from occurring.

Case B) Prostitution is legal, but thoroughly frowned upon. Prostitution rapidly increases until it no longer pays well due to desperate girls who don't care what people say about them. Girls who wanted to wait for marriage face competition sexually from boys simply visiting prostitutes, and economically as they try to find a job that's far less pay. They have to lower their standards in turn, perhaps by having sex sooner with guys they only like a little, or by becoming lap dancers, who in turn create an even wider degeneration of people's sex lives, as the next group of girls find they must lower their sexual standards to get a guy's attention from all the options available to him, and so on.

The fact is, unless prostitution is banned entirely, it will distort like a gravity well the entire sexual marketplace for everyone in that society. We have a situation where it might be good for a girl individually to be a prostitute, but the overall cost to girls is a negative. An individual girl with a choice to be a prostitute, cannot simply say, "well I won't be a prostitute so this won't affect me." The truth is it will affect her, even if she isn't a prostitute, because OTHER girls will be prostitutes. In fact, for every girl who chooses not to become a prostitute, it will simply leave room for some other girl to Choose to become a prostitute, until the market is saturated. It is the same for poaching. Suppose you think killing rare elephants for their ivory tusks is wrong, and say, "I'll never kill elephants for their ivory." This actually is a meaningless statement, because if you don't, someone else will. So long as poaching makes money, there will be people willing to poach. Personally refraining from an activity does not stop an activity, or stop the evil said activity causes. Only the statement: "No one shall kill any elephants for their ivory," has any moral force. It's the only statement that actually creates an alternate future.

A libertarian who says, "If you don't like prostitution, or poaching, or drinking, etc, all you have to do is refrain from it," is ludicrously wrong. A person who refrains from all these activities will still have to live in a society full of all its bad side effects from other people doing it around them.

Suppose you would like a country that bans alcohol. All around you, you see the bad effects of alcohol. It causes domestic abuse, car accidents, crime rates, fetal alcohol syndrome, a drop in worker productivity, brain damage, liver damage, increased casual sex, and in general is simply a menace to a well-functioning society. Even while advocating for this law, you sit drinking a bottle of brandy. The libertarian will say, "You hypocrite!" But of course, it isn't hypocritical. If other people aren't stopped from drinking alcohol, what is the use in giving up alcohol yourself? Even if you give up alcohol, all the bad effects will continue all around you, the only difference is you won't be able to at least gain some satisfaction from drinking, since it's legal despite your best efforts.

This is the problem of thresholds. Many moral activities are impractical, even useless, unless practiced by everyone. Suppose you're a soldier and your mission is to kill everyone in some enemy village. You as a soldier can play 'hero' and say "I won't do it, that's wrong!" But it doesn't matter whether you do it or not, it only matters if EVERYONE doesn't do it or not. If the regime can find enough loyal people to do the job, your disloyalty will not save the village, and it will simply single you out for disobedience -- most likely you'd just be shot along with them. I suppose some people will argue that it somehow matters that even though the evil is done either way, and even though you will die if you don't do it yourself, you still shouldn't participate in a massacre. That's all well and good, but I'm far more interested in moral stances that produce results, than empty moral poses that do nothing but make people feel good right before they die.

Consider a game theory scenario: Case A) everyone gets 1 point doing the 'moral thing.' Case B) You gain 5 points and everyone else loses 1 point because you did the immoral thing and all the saps continued doing the moral thing. Case C) Everyone loses 1 point because they all do the same immmoral thing together.

If you were playing this game, there is only one thing you could do -- Choose the immoral option every time. Best case scenario you get 5 points, worst case scenario you lose 1 point. Whereas a sap who chooses the moral thing would have to rely on three hundred million people all spontaneously deciding to be moral along with you -- if even one person is immoral, you lose.

However, as a society, the formula reverses. The best case scenario for society is if everyone chooses to be moral. This way 300 million people get 1 point, instead of losing 1 point, over and over and over, forever. Even for people who want to be moral, there is no point in them being moral if they lose points every time they do it, that's just a recipe for extinction. But if a law is passed requiring everyone choose option A, suddenly they can with confidence be the moral people they always wanted to be -- and get rewarded for it.

So here we have a situation, and I can describe endless situations that match this game theory, where the individual, given his freedom, will always be immoral, creating an endless cycle of worse and worse lives; but that same society, if it would just pass a law, could make said individual always be moral, and thus create an endless cycle of better and better lives instead.

I'm not interested in any dumb arguments about how the law won't be enforceable and law-breakers will render any possible laws meaningless. That's what the police and the army are for. If a country seriously believed in the goodness of its laws, it wouldn't allow people to break them and get away with it. We can set the penalties however high we like, and fund the budget as high as we like until we can catch every single criminal. So long as we have the will to pass the law, we can summon the will to enforce it too. Any law that can be passed can be enforced. No one can withstand the might of a principled and determined state supported by a principled and determined people.

Every time we allow a hole in the law, it will be exploited. For instance, if we don't expressly ban businesses from using tax evasion, SOME company SOMEWHERE will start doing it. It will gain more money than its competitors, and therefore the rest of the business world will have to emulate them or go bankrupt. Eventually the whole country would contain only tax evaders. Or if you prefer, we could make slavery legal again, so long as the person bought consents to being a slave. Soon enough people would be selling themselves into slavery to pay off their debts, or just to find a job ((after all, in a libertarian paradise no safety net will protect anyone from starvation.)). Those not enslaved would soon find themselves competing with slaves, until businesses would simply put up 'sorry, we only hire slaves' in front of all their stores. People would then be forced to enter slavery themselves, just to get a job, or to compete with the low wages paid out to slaves with no rights. Eventually you would end up with the majority of your country enslaved to a few well off owners. And all because you gave people the freedom to choose.

No matter how you set up the scenario, giving people the 'freedom' to choose always ends up with an inevitable choice, IE, not having any freedom to choose at all. Either you can participate in the behavior or go extinct uselessly putting on a moral pose that changes nothing as the rest of the world sloshes by you. Only by passing a law that PREVENTS any choice in the matter, can you allow the truly moral choice to prevail. In fact, most people shouldn't be slaves. In fact, people shouldn't have to sell their bodies for money. In fact, people shouldn't be killed by drunk drivers. In fact, people should have to pay their taxes. In fact, the elephants should be protected from hunters. And so on. All the way down the line.

There is not a single moral activity worth anything if everyone doesn't have to do it. If anyone is excluded, they will simply take advantage of the rest of us with the immunity they wield -- even if that immunity is psychopathy, those psychopaths would soon rule the country. We cannot rely on people being good just 'for its own sake.' If there is no imperative, someone, somewhere, will start participating in the activity -- and then his fortunes will wax and yours will wane, until you join him or join the dodo.

Libertarians pretend they are for choice, but in fact the moment you allow choice, the choice is inevitable due to whatever plusses and minuses are inherent in said game. Most people can work out rather quickly where the bread is buttered and will simply join the winning side. The 'choice' becomes a laughable 'necessity' everyone must participate in just to keep up.

If people can 'choose' not to overfish or overfish as they please -- all fishermen must overfish. This is because refraining from overfishing doesn't change anything. Others will simply take the fish you didn't catch and make the money instead of you, and the fish will still go extinct.

All real choices occur before then, precisely at the moment where a society chooses for something to be legal or illegal. If something is legal, the results are extremely predictable that x number of people, depending on how rewarding the activity is, will do it -- regardless of whether it's moral or not, and regardless of whether the totality of its impact is negative on society or not. If something is illegal, it won't be done, end of story. ((Again, I'm not interested in pussies who want to pass laws but aren't willing to do WHATEVER it takes to enforce them, thus resulting in meaningless gestures instead of real laws. I hate cowardice in all forms.))

Which gets us back to the idea of libertarian totalitarianism. The best form of libertarianism is people who agree, through an explicit social contract, with EVERY SINGLE LAW in a country and agree not to disrupt or disobey these laws in any way. After that, they HAVE no rights, no freedom, nothing. They will do exactly as the laws say they will do, and nothing else. This way everyone gains the benefits of choosing, and the benefits of no choice being allowed. Everyone loves choosing their own way of life, their own values, their own laws. But once you are within a society, allowing anyone to have a choice on whether to be moral or not, simply unilaterally surrenders rulership to our most evil and psychopathic members.

Only a universal law can protect people from the results of game theory. Only a social contract can give a universal law moral authority. Only freedom of association allows differing social contracts to be made and enforced. Through this process we can enjoy both the blessings of liberty and tyranny. There is no conflict.

The story of the little red hen comes to mind. In the little red hen, a couple animals do all the work of making the bread, all the other animals refuse to help every step of the way. But when the bread is done, the other animals want to help eat it. They are told this is wrong, because they weren't willing to take any of the steps that led to the good result, and therefore don't deserve the good result which has occurred. The same principle can be extended to everything: A society of mostly moral people shouldn't have to share the benefits of their morality with a psychopath who himself isn't moral, and doesn't create a peaceful, prosperous society. If you want to live in a rich, peaceful, non-corrupt, pure, clean, happy country, you should have to abide by the same morals as everyone else who is making your country rich, peaceful, non-corrupt, pure, clean, and happy. Otherwise you are eating the bread without baking it. It is moral scrounging.

No one should mind taxing the rich and giving to the poor, so that they can have a decent standard of living. The rich are so rich they'll never even notice -- after all, what can you possibly buy in this world past your first couple million dollars? And for the poor, it is the difference between a happy, fulfilling life and a torturous death. That kind of marginal return on tax dollar charity SHOULD be a no-brainer for any utilitarian. But moral scrounging is different. It's unfair for an innocent girl who never drinks to be hit by a drunk driver, raped by a drunk rapist, or abused by a drunk father. If she lived in a society that reflected her values, none of these bad things could happen to her. It's unfair for someone who doesn't cheat on others, to be cheated on. It's unfair for someone who doesn't cheat on tests, to have to compete with those who do cheat on tests for high grades. It's unfair for people who throw away their trash, to live in a dump heap surrounded by the trash of all her neighbors. It goes on and on, moral scrounging is 99% of what makes life so miserable for good people. They do everything right, and they get nothing for it. Whereas monetary scrounging doesn't hurt anyone -- in fact it helps alleviate moral scrounging, it makes people feel good to help others, it doesn't in the least impact their material needs, and so on. Living in a world whose values permanently undermine and undercut everything you say, think, feel, and do in this world is much worse than only making one million dollars a year instead of ten million dollars a year. And yet libertarians have declared holy war on financial scrounging and turn a completely blind eye to moral scrounging.

The problem of thresholds is also true when pointed the other way around. Suppose someone wants to do something noble or great. For instance, "we can feed all the poor if only every rich person donated $1,000." There is no real point in a single rich person donating $1,000 on his own -- he won't change the larger problem and the money will just disappear into a black hole. He will be poorer, but no one else will be better off. Only if everyone together cooperates can they reach a THRESHOLD of enough money being raised. Libertarians love to call people hypocrites when advocates of tax redistribution don't 'walk the walk' and donate lots of money to charity. They even suggest that anyone who wants to raise taxes should just donate to charity instead. But there's no point in donating to charity unless the charity actually succeeds in its mission. Whether the goal is to raise money for a new school or a new space program or a new soup kitchen, a threshold has to be reached before the project is viable. Why should only a few people have to shoulder the cost of creating some social good, when everyone benefits from the generated returns? A more peaceful society. A more productive society. A more beautiful society. Whatever the project was.

The problem of thresholds is the same for the military. Suppose you want to protect your country from invaders -- however, no one else seems to really care. You advocate for a law to be passed that the borders must be protected, that we can even draft people into forced service into the war and send them into a hail of bullets and certain death, just so our country can stand. Libertarians will complain and mutter something like, "If You care so much about protecting the borders, why don't You go do it yourself." But of course, if one person tried to protect America's borders alone, he'd achieve nothing and just waste his own life trying. Only through the concerted action of millions could the invaders be repelled. Yet again we are faced with a situation where only by compelling people to act, can we achieve any good results. And yet the cost of inaction is terribly high to everyone.

In game theory it could be set up like this: A) Everyone acts together, the goal is achieved, making your life +1 happier. B) You act alone, and thus become a pauper or die, achieving nothing, -5 happiness. C) No one acts, the problem continues to worsen, -1 happiness.

Unless you can get everyone to agree simultaneously to act, you are better off with choice C. At least this way you can avoid dying meaningless or becoming a pauper trying to singlehandedly provide for the poor. But of course, everyone will look at the various choices and they will all choose C just like you. If no law compels everyone to choose A, they'll all go through the game theory and decide to do C, even though C is a worse result than A!

Yet again we have a case where a law can make everyone happier, and the freedom to act or not act, only results in everyone being less happy. Of course, the optimum result for an evil person is to desert the army and avoid all taxes, even while others go to fight and protect our borders, and others give the poor all the money they need. But it is exactly these shirkers who must be stopped for us to get from option C to option A. Why should they have the freedom to shirk? If everyone pays and helps out, the burden is light on everyone. If only a few try and help, the burden is crushingly heavy. When it comes to taxes, the formula is of course different because poor people don't have any money to provide, and rich people have so much it's no burden at all to make them pay 100 times their weight. But comparing some rich people to other rich people, for instance, the issue becomes clear again. Why should some rich people pay twice as much to alleviate poverty while others pay nothing at all? How is that fair?

Once something has been determined to be 'good,' as a member of society, you should contribute what you can to its accomplishment. A libertarian way of thinking, letting people help out or not merely on whim, would never cross any thresholds. Without a threshold of space funding, we'd never have gotten into space. Without a threshold of funding, we'd never be able to feed the poor (you know, those tens of millions of people on food stamps?). Without a threshold of recruits, we'd never be able to win a war. Only the law gives a country the chance to accomplish great things or overcome great obstacles.

The international highway system was funded with tax dollars, not charity. We reached the moon with tax dollars, not charity. We treat the sick with tax dollars, not charity. Because charity never has enough money to accomplish anything. There are too many shirkers, too many stingy psychopaths, who will simply take advantage of others' effort and reap the benefits of said programs, without ever contributing to them.

Whether a law requires people not do something, or do something, it is usually because only the law can solve the problem of thresholds -- the fact that only if something is done by everyone, can it be done at all.

It is also important in another sense. If someone feels singled out, he instantly rebels because it isn't fair that he's discriminated against. If only johnny can't drink, but rachel can drink because she's 'responsible,' Johnny will simply stew in hatred of rachel and demand he not be discriminated against. The resulting law is unstable and will eventually collapse. Our most basic instincts demand fairness and to be treated equally under the law. "If I have to do it, everyone else should have to do it as well." And "If I can't do it, no one else should be allowed to do it either." By making the law mandatory, it sits less heavily on people's shoulders. No one feels singled out or oppressed. It's just 'the way things are.' If no one is allowed to smoke, ever seen smoking, or ever known anyone who smokes, it's unlikely they will spend every day railing against the government for not letting them smoke. They'll probably never worry about it a day in their lives. They won't know what they're missing, and they won't care. No one they know smokes, and no one can introduce them to smoking. A law uniquely has the ability to completely stomp out an activity, whereas any other policy -- peer pressure, culture, scripture -- can only at best lower the activity. But a lowered activity still creates a two-tier system, which people feel is unfair: "Mommy, why should *I* have to marry before having sex when all my friends can have sex whenever they want?" And it still creates recruiters and role models: Jenny says to Joan: "You should come to the mall with me, there's lots of other guys and girls there and we all enjoy having sex together, don't you want to try it? No one there will think poorly of you, after all, you know how popular I am."

The fact is laws are the only way to crush a serpent, everything else just leaves the cancer in place, ready to sprout up and grow again.

Laws give us the numbers necessary to stop evil and produce good. Without laws, game theory dictates a situation where cooperation is impossible and instead of the best result for society, we are always left with the worst result. This is why morality must be an imperative, not a wishy-washy libertarian 'freedom' to choose or not choose depending on one's mood. If morality isn't legislated, reality will always legislate immorality. Those are the only two choices a society will ever have.