The Government has a moral right to almost everything we own
Well, that seems to be what Peter Singer thinks anyway:
The best justification of a right to private property is that we will all be better of if we recognise such a right. But if it is the common good that justifies the recognition of a right to private property, then the common good can also set limits to that right.
It’s worth following the link and reading the whole extract word for word to get a taste of how utterly convoluted Singer’s thinking really is. When I read Singer’s work on animal rights I got the impression that he is a highly overrated ‘philosopher’. This merely confirms my view. If this is how the Left thinks, then each and every one of us should be scared.
Not just for our property, but for our lives.
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Memo to Peter Singer: stick to the animals, mate.
i dont quite follow.
‘Common Good’ equates to government? Effectively he’s talking about the terms ofnegotiation in a socail contract,no?–>
I think Jesus was early in this sort of thinking when he said “to caesar what is caesars” and pointed to the picture of caesar on the coin. Although to be fair he was mostly just trying to avoid an annoying question.
What I want to know however is if caesar trades his coin for my labour then why does he have any further claim when I swap what is now my coin for barrow boys potatoes?
In essence Singer is saying that caesar can do whatever caesar wants, which is generally true but not necessarily moral. The idea that replacing caesar with the “popular will” changes the morality of the situation as opposed to the power equation is deeply flawed. To say that X is morally right because X is popular is in essence to abandon any real claim to morality as a benchmark for society.
I didn’t get too far into the thing, I must admit. Villages, customs, councils of elders (I may have made that one up): the guy is creating ethical conundrums where none exist.
He strikes me as a moral flim-flam man; isn’t this the fellow who denies any sort of human superiority over animals? If so, that is instructive. I suppose when one believes mankind is no greater in moral stature than a marsupial mouse or paramecium or something, it is easy to cast aside our moral reasoning, which is obviously what Singer sought from the outset to do.
Singer hardly invented that notion.
Its origins are ancient, and it is still part of the doctrine of the Catholic Church that the economic system as well as existing private property rights and relations are to be justified, if at all, by their relationship to the common good, though that last is not understood as Singer, or any utilitarian, understands it.
By the way.
The doctrine of natural right is descended from the doctrine of natural law, a Stoic notion inherited by the Church.
The Stoics held that all material goods and all of nature itself belong by right equally to all men in common.
Some Protestant Christians express a similar notion by referring to God’s grant of dominion over the world to man in Genesis.
In this way, collective right precedes individual right.
On the other hand, the problem of first acquisition by individuals is within the domain, too, of natural justice.
But what is naturally just in this regard is whatever best serves the common good.
And if that isn’t enough to drive a libertarian wild consider that Marcus Aurelius, when he wrote that the gods made us for each other, expressed a conviction common among the ancients and taught by all the Abrahamic religions that our positive duties toward each other are founded in nature and not contract.
- Just a note from a progressive Democrat who is no fan of Peter Singer.
(It always surprises me how many people are.)