Jackalpup said:
I am afraid I missed the distinction between ?ethics? and ?the ethics? in your post. I think I understand where you are at in this respect now and although I have no wish to take you out of context I think the point still remains ~ you either use ?ethics? as a moral value or you do not. I don?t think you can choose to use ethical values when it suits but disregard them when it does not.
Let me illustrate. If my son does his chores particularly well, I might give him 50p, or be more amenable to his plea for another 30 mins play before bedtime. Is this bribery or reward? I know it is more effective in encouraging good behaviour than the alternative of just telling him off when he doesn't work as hard as I'd like. So I'm not going to spend time agonising.
Similarly, if we as a country set up a system whereby people can have their waste collected at no cost to themselves, so they have no excuse to dispose of it on their own land where it may get into watercourses or otherwise affect the rest of us, then is that bribery? You think it is, I think not - but I'm less worried about thinking through the ethics of that particular situation.
Flytipping ~ I accept your point that catching flytippers mat well be expensive but the detection of the crime still remains ?above and beyond? bribing someone not to commit it. I accept (and would argue for) alternative ways to deal with the problem but I would suggest this would necessitate making it easier for the ?flytippers? to legitimate dispose of their waste rather then either convoluting the law or bribing them not to.
I think I haven't made myself clear. I'm advocating arranging ways of disposing of waste in a socially acceptable way at no cost to the waste producer - at least in the case of the smaller business where the practical response to being asked to pay to dispose of waste properly is that they simply don't do it. That means we have to pay for it out of public money. I don't see that as bribery, you have said that you do - but the solutions you are offering don't seem to me to be any different in essence. Making it easier for flytippers to legitimately dispose of their waste means taking the cost away from them and putting it on society as a whole.
(And I didn't mean any more than that by my reference to carrots - I wasn't saying 'fill up your dustbin like a good girl and we'll give you ?50 - though, as a matter of interest, what is your feeling about the old system where glass bottles had a deposit on them and you could get something like 1/2d back for every bottle you returned?)
With regard to your suggestion of offering carrots and my assertion that this was undemocratically imposing your view on everyone else and your defence thereto; you were actually suggesting it as a preference and I was pointing out that were that to necessary follow it would be undemocratic. You now appear to be offering it as a suggestion only in which case it is equally as ?valid? as any one else?s opinion.
It always was no more than a suggestion! That's why I couldn't ge my head round your criticism that I was being undemocratic! (In fact, I checked back at my post, and I actually posed it as a question, not even as definite as a suggestion)
Interestingly, you suggest our society is too big for a democracy and this is a point I entirely agree on (ooooooooh!). I have thought long and hard about an alternative solution to this and can?t think of one. I would be interested (well, actually more than interested) to know if you have a considered viable alternative? (The best I could contrive is a benign dictatorship but this too has it?s inherent problems)
In theory, benign dictatorship, as I long as I or someone who shared my opinions was the dictator :tease:
In practice, I prefer the right to make a mess of things myself to things being well organise for me by someone else.
Wasn't there a quote along the lines of 'democracy is the worst possible system of government, apart form all the other ones'?
?Commanding dominion? ~ it isn?t nonsense. If you were to ?get your way? then you would, in fact, be commanding dominion. I now accept that you were suggesting it as a proposal and not actually ?suggesting it?.
But there is no way under the sun that that could happen, so bringing that in to a discussion of ideas was nonsensical. (I love that phrase 'with respect' - it is a clear signal that one is about to say something totally disrespectful)
As to whether appointed bodies are doing their job properly and what to do if they don't - that's not a subject I know enough about (it's years since I've been to Snowdonia) so I don't want to get into that one.
