Therefore you can re-read the sentence as:
> Civil society only exists when there is a collective general trust that most people are trying to uphold those shared rules and principles, even when doing so is inconvenient or runs against their immediate self-interest.
This requires that we accept that there is such a thing as a neutral procedure, and even if we accept that such a neutral procedure exists in principle, it doesn’t follow that we agree on what that procedure looks like. Deferring physical conflicts is only possible if factionalism doesn’t win out. The last decade and a half of western political history has been defined by the recognition of certain factions that this deferral can’t go on forever.
Yes, it does. And we live in a society. So by extension we do already accept that neutral procedures are possible and that we have achieved them.
The English Common Law systems and their derivatives are an astonishing success in achieving general fairness. People arguing against it have, with remarkable consistency, failed to come up with anything that reaches it's level of neutrality. In fact, normally people struggled to come up with general criticism beyond accusations that specific individuals didn't follow the procedures properly or relatively minor tweaks to the administrative details.
Neutral procedures are a solved problem, the tricky part is convincing the law enforcement system to do things by the book.
As for el sisi. I remember an egyptian friend who fled the country after he did some protesting and journalism critical of the new regime. He said he was amazed by what good they had done for the country and was happy to see the change...despite his past opinion and current exile. Not that he would go back permanently. He married a german gal and later moved to the US.
"Treat others as you would like them to treat you."
It has a long history, both secular and religious. Pretty well everything flows from it, and if someone is doing "the wrong thing" whilst claiming to obey it then they are probably deluding themself.
The rule is suited to enforcement, since if someone does something "wrong", rather than immediately attacking them you can reasonably ask "Would you like it if I did this to you?". Limitation of power is built in.
Because even the "golden rule" leaves a lot of wiggle room - for example, should marital infidelity (or x) be a dealbreaker for electing someone? Maybe, but looking at hypocrisy (and thereby actions) might provide better insight as to what those groups actually believe is the "correct" standard?
> The closest we have to a "neutral rule" is "The Golden Rule"
Mostly agreed, but a surprisingly large percentage of the population seems truly unable to feel empathy for others (and can even show glee at others being negatively impacted by something) unless it personally affects them (a prerequisite for "Would you like it if I did this to you?" to work?). They can be gung-ho about laws that negatively affect others but upset if it affects them. For example, the countless examples of "Community members vote for politician promising illegal immigrant deportation, then upset/disagree that long-time beloved community member deported", or "Voter voted for politician promising criminal-record-immigrant deportation, then upset/disagrees that partner with past criminal record deported".
Just because something has a long history (secular or otherwise) doesn't give it any merit by itself.
If we need some standard to judge against what is morally acceptable in the case I presented (no this doesn't apply if you like to hurt yourself and others) then you are back to defining a standard which cannot inherently be neutral.
2. Regardless, if basing rules on whether someone would want those rules to apply to them does not have merit, is there some better basis you'd recommend?
You’re correct that rules are themselves to an high degree arbitrary. They can only be imposed by a source of authority that’s beyond question: God(s), elders, founding fathers, kings, etc. In the case of the U.S. it’s historical inertia going back to 1215.
Not only that, but you're also going to have people disguising their personal, selfish ambitions for power or money (or both, those two ambitions are usually found together) by pretending to other people that they want "the right thing". Most politicians operate this way. (I can't say "all" because there are some examples in history of politicians who truly wanted "the right thing" and actually gave up personal power when it was necessary, for the sake of having "the right thing" happen. Cincinnatus is the often-cited example, for very good reasons.)
Which is another reason why legal structures such as the American Constitution, which constrains (or would constrain if actually followed, which is a whole other rant) the power of government to certain specific channels, are important to have. They limit what the power-seekers can actually do with that power once they obtain it, and provide ways for turfing said power-seekers out of office if enough people agree to remove them. (Then you probably end up electing another power-seeker, because those end up being the vast majority of the candidate pool... but sometimes you get really, really lucky and get someone like George Washington).
Free markets are designed around a selfish ambition for making money. You can only make money by pleasing your customers. And hence free markets are the greatest mechanism for prosperity.
There's nothing wrong with making money that way.
Are you sure?
Like, say, the tragedy of the commons?
For example, we are running out of fish in the ocean from overfishing. But there's no shortage of cows and chickens, despite massive consumption of them. The former is the commons, the latter is private property.
Much like how there isn't any reason you have to pay for food in principle. It could become so cheap and easy to produce, say, bread or cheese that it is available everywhere at no nominal cost.
So yes, you should. You already do, realistically.
There'd be specialist companies that do bulk oxygen supplies too, a quick search found things like https://www.dswgascylinder.com/product/liquid-oxygen-trailer.... Not a market I'm familiar with.
I suppose I'll just add in postscript; your not going to get much out of the conversation if you don't take it seriously. There are people who make great money selling oxygen. It isn't automatically priced at $0. In some hypothetical world where quality oxygen wasn't just floating around in the atmosphere, people would pay for it in the same way they pay for other essentials like food or water. Paying for water is about as crazy as paying for oxygen, they both basically just turn up out of the atmosphere. And there is precedent for a commons essential good becoming more expensive, food used to be something people just picked up off the ground for free. Or hunted down on unclaimed land.
Slightly more formally, an assertion of exclusive property rights is a sufficient condition for something to be closed access, but it isn't necessary.
Though, admittedly, that does depend on what one's definition of a free market is. Is it unfettered commerce, consumer protections and suchlike be damned? Is it a system of commerce that ensures equitable access? I'm personally of the mind that, as long as I trade with certificates that bear Caesar's face (or trade with proxies for such certificates, like a MasterCard), he gets to make the rules in exchange for my being able to lean on his legal system to protect my interests, so I find that the equitable access angle is nice.
(Likewise, trading with Bitcoin or Ethereum or whatever the in-vogue cryptocurrency is today means that the code makes the rules, and I get to pay for the privilege of having my transactions indelibly entered into the distributed ledger and for the code governing those transactions to be buggy and exploitable. I'm still scratching my head at it.)
At the risk of building a strawman here, I'll caution that it's logically inconsistent to expect the state to enforce exclusive rights while also urging that strict regulation of a shared commons is an illegitimate market intervention.
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0: That is, unless the title holder grants license, but that's a whole other conversation.
It is a minor point I suppose, but this is the other way round. Because Caesar makes the rules you trade certificates that bear his face. It takes vigour and energy on the part of law enforcement to stop people from moving to private currencies.
Sigh. No need to make up one's own definition. Googling "free market":
"A free market is an economic system where prices, wages, and the flow of goods are determined by supply and demand. There is no government control or central planning telling people what to buy, sell, or make. Instead, private choices and voluntary trades drive the economy."
No all cultures are equal: torturing kids for as long as possible before they die, to extract as many tears as possible to please the gods, used to be a thing.
We do not all need to agree on "neutral" rules: we can agree it's an evil thing to do to torture kids for as long as possible, to extract as many tears as possible from them.
Don't be one, two or three of the "won't see" / "won't hear" / "won't talk" monkeys: don't be neutral. Fight evil.
At the moment for example there are 300 million women/teenagers/girls alive that have been genitally mutilated, including in the west: you're allowed to not be neutral and take a stance and fight against FGM.
At the Bataclan in Paris islamists with AK-47s (which are forbidden in France btw) lined up 300 people and slaughtered them: you're allowed to not be neutral and take a stance against islamism.
In January the islamist iranian regime killed 30 000 of its own unarmed civilians: same thing, you're allowed to not be neutral.
I don't care if islamists are convinced they do the right thing by spreading terror: they are evil.
And I'm not a religious person.
And btw western societies are based on rule that are mostly not neutral: we don't believe in harm to others, for a start. Even if in several cultures (past and present), that was normal.
At the moment for example there are lots of talks in french media about the status of women in Afghnistan since the talibans came to power.
For, as a western society, we do not care if others believe it's the right thing to mutilate girls, kill your enemies and enslave their women and daughters, etc.
The fallacy of gray is really a nasty thing and no good shall come to civilized societies for resorting to it.