Marco, Platt and Lawrence.
Marco wrote:
>of course I agree that it is fair to be compensated for every violation of
any
>individual right, such as the right to freedom of speech, the right private
>property and so on.
But in my opinion it is a very difficult task to compensate for an
intellectual or biological loss in terms of social values (money), because
they realy do not have anything to say about each other. And this is IMO
Marco's main point. If your house burns down, the compansation can easily be
established in social quantities, money, because the house is a social
value. If I'm runned down by a doped driver and end up biological disabled
and / or mental damaged, there is no exact answer to the compansation
bacause the compansation is evaluated in social value and the damage is in
biological and intellectual values. The need for compansation is easy to
agree opon, but the size ....?
I was once told that the life of a Mexican is valued to a peso, and the life
of an European is valued to 10 000 000 euro's (more or less = dollars). The
life of an American is somewhere in between, depending on the color of his
skin. These values was supposed to be based in the asumed cost in saving
another person from the country. And now suddenly you have the problem of
estimating compansation on a social level ......, but I do disagree to the
whole idea.
>But there's a possible perverse mechanism in this compensation. Once they
decide
>that (for example) the compensation for my violated freedom is one million
>dollars... a government or a firm could decide to act immorally against me,
well
>knowing the eventual "cost of the operation".
I am sorry to tell you that your safety onboard an airplane, boat, buss, in
the traffic, at an industrial plant etc are based on such evaluations. The
cost of reduced risk and the cost of compansating the loss of you are part
of the calculations.
>And anyway it is not by shutting my mouth with money that the intellectual
level
>gains value. If I can't give my contribution to the intellectual level by
means
>of my freedom of speech, the loss of intellectual value is not compensated
by
>any social value.
"A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still"
Gerhard
PS
An idea for ethical norms at different levels:
Biological : Egoism
Social : Emotivism
Intellectual: Abstract norm created to over-rule the social and biological
norms. And I do prefer Kant and MoQ is some kind of co-operation at the
moment.
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