Poll: Equality vs Freedom

[Drakane]

Other... both freedom and equality in our social construct are impossible. As others have said pure equality is communism, though in theory is great in practice is practically unsustainable. As for freedom, you are able to be more free then others... ie women are able to vote and not be treated as slaves in some countries but are at best indentured servants in others, but true freedom is a myth, outside of Natural Law which is also unsustainable. So the only real choice is Other, as both freedom and equality can't exists.

Edit: communism isn't great it is in interesting

 

[dj_8612]

what you are looking for is called the 'rule of equalizing well-being'. I have just completed a pihlosophy degree on the subject and as the name suggests its about finding the balance that encourages innovation, productivity and efficiency whilst simultaneously helping those who inevitably get left behind. Inequality is absolutely necessary in order to allow for those who can be ahead of the norm to help those who are less capable directly or indirectly

 

[Morning502]

They are not at all mutually exclusive. In fact I say one can not properly exist with out the other.

 

[Baneat]

what you are looking for is called the 'rule of equalizing well-being'. I have just completed a pihlosophy degree on the subject and as the name suggests its about finding the balance that encourages innovation, productivity and efficiency whilst simultaneously helping those who inevitably get left behind. Inequality is absolutely necessary in order to allow for those who can be ahead of the norm to help those who are less capable directly or indirectly

Ah philosphy-dude,

What of Nozick's solution? To me it follows a Greatest Reason Principle which somewhat matches what I think you mean

 

[Raistlinhawke]

A country or governmental body should not strive for singular word ideals in either direction. Freedom and Equality are not polar opposite structures that cancel each other out and exist on separate planes. To demand one over the other is just cause for starting pointless, cyclical arguments that never get resolved.

So...."other"...I guess.

 

[emeraldrafael]

Freedom, cause with freedom comes the chance to make eqaulity, while equality only leads to less freedom (case in point, affirmative action).

You cannot have both.

Equality means I am the same as you (I=you)
Freedom leads to Egality, which means I'm worth the same as you on principle, I get no special treatments for any reason(I=>you). Everyone keeps their worth in Kant's way (As rationality is a necessity to morality, it is natural that morality applies to rationality).

If I = you and you = everyone else, then, by all being the same, we are worthless, or at best worth no more than one person. If I force your hand into hiring people you do not want to meet quotas, we're getting closer to the brave new world.

So when people balk at the idea of someone saying "I don't believe there should be equality" - they might have a better, more important principle.

Oka.

I just see it as, with freedom, you choose to be as equal to say me, or, to you, or to anyone. You have hte oppurtunity to get the same things that someone else does. Like, say, education. And that that is better then someone just saying you're all equal, you dont need to pursue or show it, because I saw you are equal.

snip

and thats why we have affirmative action, because a certain majority group prevented the minority group from getting the qualifications by carefully weeding them out of higher education and denying them the same freedom of education based on something as retarded as skin color, ergo, its a freedom issue as much as it is an equality one

... I dont know what kinda place you live in, but there's no majority agenda to keep those of colour down (atleast not in America). And unless you want to say that every person who isnt the colour of the majority has their position because of affrimative action, then there is no need for it. if you're good enough, you'll be accepted. Its simple as that. Competition means there is difference, and difference is good, because it inspires growth.

 

[Worgen]

Freedom, cause with freedom comes the chance to make eqaulity, while equality only leads to less freedom (case in point, affirmative action).

snip

and thats why we have affirmative action, because a certain majority group prevented the minority group from getting the qualifications by carefully weeding them out of higher education and denying them the same freedom of education based on something as retarded as skin color, ergo, its a freedom issue as much as it is an equality one

... I dont know what kinda place you live in, but there's no majority agenda to keep those of colour down (atleast not in America). And unless you want to say that every person who isnt the colour of the majority has their position because of affrimative action, then there is no need for it. if you're good enough, you'll be accepted. Its simple as that. Competition means there is difference, and difference is good, because it inspires growth.

ok, you really need to learn more about american history, right now there isnt much of that at least on the surface but back before we had enforced busing and affirmative action etc etc this nation was very segregated, keep in mind Im talking about after the jim crow laws were tossed out, people still went to great lengths to keep black and white apart, look into the history of redistricting to see some of that, you would see either districts drawn to totaly separate racially or to make sure that a large racial group was kept so small as to make them a total non-issue when election season came up, you also had this with schools since black folks tended to be poor from being shut out of allot of areas they would be default end up in poor schools while white people could go to the rich ones and would therefor have less prospects for being able to attend higher education without something like affirmative action

 

[Baneat]

Freedom, cause with freedom comes the chance to make eqaulity, while equality only leads to less freedom (case in point, affirmative action).

You cannot have both.

Equality means I am the same as you (I=you)
Freedom leads to Egality, which means I'm worth the same as you on principle, I get no special treatments for any reason(I=>you). Everyone keeps their worth in Kant's way (As rationality is a necessity to morality, it is natural that morality applies to rationality).

If I = you and you = everyone else, then, by all being the same, we are worthless, or at best worth no more than one person. If I force your hand into hiring people you do not want to meet quotas, we're getting closer to the brave new world.

So when people balk at the idea of someone saying "I don't believe there should be equality" - they might have a better, more important principle.

You misunderstand the use of equality. It's not the idea that everyone is the same, but rather equality-of-rights. No-one argues for equality, they argue for equal rights, not because it sounds better but because it is different. The worth of one person is not a fixed value. You are worth only what you think you are. There is no arbitrary principle that measures your worth as a person. But you are equal to one person. Try to come to terms with the fact that you are only one person, and there is nothing to truly decide your worth other than yourself.

Equality of rights is egality

Communistic equality really is equality (They used hedonic principles to measure your worth, easiest way for them to do this is to give everyone the same shit as everyone else, to act only on "The greater good" < The good described here is happiness, but not quite utility since Marx fucking hated Bentham (I've never seen one philosopher rip down another so bad))

I have issues with parenthetics

 

[deleted_by_strongbad]

Freedom without equality is freedom for some tyranny for the rest.

 

[emeraldrafael]

snip

talking to an american citizen, so I dont need a history lesson,e specially from you. i didnt say there wasnt any back then, but there shouldnt be affirmative action now.

And no, they wouldnt go by race. there are many many MANY poor white people, so that argument doesnt stand. Unless youw ant to say the government hates them because they're some how "tainted" by a person of colour. They'd most likely go by income. if what you're saying is true, we wouldnt have had any poor white people at all, in the history or the country, and in fact we would have chased out black people.

So no, there's no need for an affirmative action. especially if it means you have to take an inferior person (which can be white, if the organization is mostly none white, so its not even for people of colour), as compared to someone who is more qualified. There is no excuse for it.

 

[Baneat]

Freedom, cause with freedom comes the chance to make eqaulity, while equality only leads to less freedom (case in point, affirmative action).

You cannot have both.

Equality means I am the same as you (I=you)
Freedom leads to Egality, which means I'm worth the same as you on principle, I get no special treatments for any reason(I=>you). Everyone keeps their worth in Kant's way (As rationality is a necessity to morality, it is natural that morality applies to rationality).

If I = you and you = everyone else, then, by all being the same, we are worthless, or at best worth no more than one person. If I force your hand into hiring people you do not want to meet quotas, we're getting closer to the brave new world.

So when people balk at the idea of someone saying "I don't believe there should be equality" - they might have a better, more important principle.

You misunderstand the use of equality. It's not the idea that everyone is the same, but rather equality-of-rights. No-one argues for equality, they argue for equal rights, not because it sounds better but because it is different. The worth of one person is not a fixed value. You are worth only what you think you are. There is no arbitrary principle that measures your worth as a person. But you are equal to one person. Try to come to terms with the fact that you are only one person, and there is nothing to truly decide your worth other than yourself.

Equality of rights is egality

Communistic equality really is equality (They used hedonic principles to measure your worth, easiest way for them to do this is to give everyone the same shit as everyone else, to act only on "The greater good" < The good described here is happiness, but not quite utility since Marx fucking hated Bentham (I've never seen one philosopher rip down another so bad))

I have issues with parenthetics

It's been a while since I read the Communist Manifesto, but I don't recall anything about absolute equality being mentioned by Marx, though he did believe in equality of rights. That and the 'greater good' seems to be more of the utopian socialists bag. Later communists extrapolated Marx's ideas, but he never was an idealist in that sense; he just thought that political inequality was a way for the rich to divide and conquer the poor.

It's not in the manifesto, I have the quote, I have the author, I do not know where he wrote it, but it was a reliable source (From a textbook)

- He basically calls Bentham (Maybe mill? I'm not sure of the timeline of that guy compared to marx) a ripoff of some shitty old french philosophy, called them hacks and not worth a second glance, then went onto show that utility is shite because it's too one-dimensional in its end (Which is your basic hedonic calculus criticism) - I see how this can fit into the Manifesto. Real commies who derived themselves from Marx, I think they may have misunderstood him and his works slightly, with deadly consequences, because, really, they were trying to equate everyone to achieve some form of average utilitarianism. Still - noone's yet to beat Hitler's misinterpretation of Nietzche.

P.S - Got it -

"Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolff, in no time and in no country has the most homespun commonplace ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvétius and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he who would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the driest naiveté he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man. Whatever is useful to this queer normal man, and to his world, is absolutely useful. This yard-measure, then, he applies to past, present, and future. The Christian religion, e.g., is "useful," "because it forbids in the name of religion the same faults that the penal code condemns in the name of the law." Artistic criticism is "harmful," because it disturbs worthy people in their enjoyment of Martin Tupper, etc. With such rubbish has the brave fellow, with his motto, "nulla dies sine line!," piled up mountains of books."

Karl Marx - Das Kapital - Chp. 24 Endnote 50

 

[qwertyz]

I would prefer we all start off equal in the beginning (like having a guaranteed breakfast, lunch, dinner daily, and a top-notch education), and then have the freedom to choose what we do later on (become a doctor), while having the safety net of equality under them, in case something goes wrong (doctors becoming obsolete or something).

 

[Baneat]

snip

talking to an american citizen, so I dont need a history lesson,e specially from you. i didnt say there wasnt any back then, but there shouldnt be affirmative action now.

And no, they wouldnt go by race. there are many many MANY poor white people, so that argument doesnt stand. Unless youw ant to say the government hates them because they're some how "tainted" by a person of colour. They'd most likely go by income. if what you're saying is true, we wouldnt have had any poor white people at all, in the history or the country, and in fact we would have chased out black people.

So no, there's no need for an affirmative action. especially if it means you have to take an inferior person (which can be white, if the organization is mostly none white, so its not even for people of colour), as compared to someone who is more qualified. There is no excuse for it.

I boil this down more easily

Is racism wrong because it causes bad things to happen, or is it intrinsically wrong in itself? If you said shit to blacks behind their backs and it causes them to get candy, does that make racism a good action or is racism just wrong, no matter what?

I go for the intrinsic side, so I don't give a fuck about the consequences. People for affirmative action will go extrinsic and look for the consequences of the racism. It is simply racism to not let a white person in, despite better grades, in order to let a black person in. But - overall it's more fair, and it may have good effects, but that pragmatic argument has been shot down, or at least clipped. Imagine you got in, and by the end everyone just looked down at you because you "probably got a race-ticket in over getting grades" - It's a little devaluing to your own success story. Plus, people say that they have a tough time because they're a little under what's needed, and that causes problems, and blah blah blah there's so much more complexity to the pragmatics than the intrinsics, one of the reasons I can't like it much.

The problem is, they're both incompatible theories, You can't value an action both on itself and on its consequences in a coherent structure, and have full reasoning for it all. They're super hard to combine, and yet they both feel important in different scenarios.

 

[roostuf]

FREEDOM!!!! with freedom you can have equality, but not vice-versa.

 

[Worgen]

snip

talking to an american citizen, so I dont need a history lesson,e specially from you. i didnt say there wasnt any back then, but there shouldnt be affirmative action now.

And no, they wouldnt go by race. there are many many MANY poor white people, so that argument doesnt stand. Unless youw ant to say the government hates them because they're some how "tainted" by a person of colour. They'd most likely go by income. if what you're saying is true, we wouldnt have had any poor white people at all, in the history or the country, and in fact we would have chased out black people.

So no, there's no need for an affirmative action. especially if it means you have to take an inferior person (which can be white, if the organization is mostly none white, so its not even for people of colour), as compared to someone who is more qualified. There is no excuse for it.

are you really so blind as to think there is no racism in america anymore? dude, you really need to look at history more, this shit still happens, its just lower in number now and if we let the programs vanish then it will creep up bit by bit until its just as bad as it was back pre civil rights

states hate minorities, there, I said it, and you know what? states say its there right to hate minorities and fuck them up, thats why there was such resistance to the civil rights bills, they thought it was the fed infringing on their rights to treat portions of their citizens like shit

you want to know something interesting, soon white people will be a minority also, if it hasnt already happened, and that means that affirmative action will support us also, hopefully our new racial majority will be kinder to us then we have been to them

 

[Baneat]

Increase equality and greater freedom will follow.

Freedom (economic at least) won't create equality.

They are not mutually exclusive.

"Men and women are equal, under a tyrant's boot."

See that? You choose equality and get tyranny.

Did you mean that they are mutually exclusive, since getting equality restricts freedom?
Not means that they can both be together, which directly contradicts the implications of your post

 

[Twad]

Vague, broad concepts that cant be discussed/decided by one word alone.

I want both, by the way. One without the other isnt nearly good enough.

 

[Gilhelmi]

Freedom. For without that, what good is equality.

I once read the Giver back in middle school. It was about a community that gave up choice and freedom for equality and "sameness". It might not be an accurate depiction (Its science fiction) But I choose freedom over equality ever since.

That was a really good book. and it sums up my thought exactly as well.

 

[Baneat]

snip

talking to an american citizen, so I dont need a history lesson,e specially from you. i didnt say there wasnt any back then, but there shouldnt be affirmative action now.

And no, they wouldnt go by race. there are many many MANY poor white people, so that argument doesnt stand. Unless youw ant to say the government hates them because they're some how "tainted" by a person of colour. They'd most likely go by income. if what you're saying is true, we wouldnt have had any poor white people at all, in the history or the country, and in fact we would have chased out black people.

So no, there's no need for an affirmative action. especially if it means you have to take an inferior person (which can be white, if the organization is mostly none white, so its not even for people of colour), as compared to someone who is more qualified. There is no excuse for it.

are you really so blind as to think there is no racism in america anymore? dude, you really need to look at history more, this shit still happens, its just lower in number now and if we let the programs vanish then it will creep up bit by bit until its just as bad as it was back pre civil rights

states hate minorities, there, I said it, and you know what? states say its there right to hate minorities and fuck them up, thats why there was such resistance to the civil rights bills, they thought it was the fed infringing on their rights to treat portions of their citizens like shit

you want to know something interesting, soon white people will be a minority also, if it hasnt already happened, and that means that affirmative action will support us also, hopefully our new racial majority will be kinder to us then we have been to them

What we're looking for is the piece of paper that shows what USA aims for, which is the constitution of the USA. I believe at this point that any semblance of racism is now unconstitutional. "States" hating minorities is incredibly loaded, you can't account for ignorant fucks not following the rules, and you can't the same rule yourself to mitigate the other guy breaking the rules. Two categorical wrongs.. are still wrong to me.

The state has a looong way to go on how they run things, I think they are going the wrong way and pushing for greater intrusions, when all they need to do is enforce personal liberties, make sure contracts are held, do their duty in protecting country and its people from harm and direct persecution which enfringes on their rights as a person (Note that forcing private companies to hire on quotas is an enfringement). Obama's direction is to increase the presence of Govt in people's personal lives, which feels so bad to me. They're fucking forcing privately owned TV stations to normalise the volume of adverts (CALM act) - Whereas all it takes is for people to say "If you turn up the volume when your ad is up on TV, we pledge to not buy any of your shit" -

Anarchy isn't viable, and that's absolute freedom, Communism isn't viable either, which is Equality, but a minimal approach seems to be, most certainly so.

How much minimalism is required is different altogether, most minimalists don't want a public healthcare system, but I think it's equally important as the police and judicial system, which is the majority of what a minimalist wants the State to be.

 

[signingupforgames]

Equality in its extreme is Communism - and its historicaly been proved communism cant hold in the long run so freedom probably.

Actually i've looked over the most famous "communistic" governments in history, and they have more in common with fascism. That being said i actuall would vote for freedom as well.