Hi Platt,
You write:
"The notion of fairness is closely associated with the idea of equal value
which, if anything, is anathema to the MOQ whose central tenant is that
some things (patterns) are better than others.
So I raise a cautionary flag about 'fairness.' Historically many have
suffered unspeakable miseries in its name, such as, "From each
according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.'"
You seem to be talking about forced attempts at fairness that come to be known as
bad laws because they undermined the very notion of fairness itself. I'm speaking of the
kind of awareness that stops a person from ripping off another just because he can. This sense
of fairness is "better" then the lack of it. It fits perfectly with MOQ and is enlightened by it.
It's quite "fair" for a germ to wish to destroy a human being in order to maintain itself.
But it's even more fair for a human being to knock off a germ since there is a greater investment by the universes in a human being.
That example is the easy use of MOQ for sorting out "what is fair".
As most people here understand, it is the settling of desputes between entities on
the same level that gets difficult.
The laws of the roadway are pretty good attempts at "forcing" the individual to be aware of
this need for fairness in respect to their fellow drivers. They work OK although I just got a ticket
for an illegal U-turn that was done under completely safe conditions. I explained this to the cop
and he said; "yeah, it was safe, but I'm going to give you a ticket anyway for setting a bad example to the other drivers".
The idea that you can have a good government or a good society without a good general awareness
of fairness by people is false and nobody doubts this. The weighing of values in disputes
is an act of seeing what is most fair. I would say that the notion of fairness is much closer
to the notion of DQ then it is to "equal value".
Such an awareness produces "additional value" in some mysterious way.
At the center of that additional value is peace.
Bill Justin
mailto:elg14@earthlink.net
MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html
MD Queries - horse@wasted.demon.nl
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:59 BST