Thursday, February 26, 2004
cannibal coments at amptoons. i wrote:
I'm a hard-core libertarian. there's one in every crowd. since reading "stranger", the idea of being soup at my wake has been at least as appealing as other funeral customs i see in your culture. on the other hand, i'm pretty adamant about not being killed to be eaten, until i'm ready. apply the golden rule, and you can see why i'm vegetarian. as to the ick factor, for one like me, it comes into play like this: person A wants to be eaten. ok. person B wants to eat a wiling victim. ok. ykiokijnmk. your kink is ok, it's just not my kink.
person C wants to, by force,prevent A and B from doing their thing. ick! that's.. gross.
I usually use a rights approach or a utility approach to argue for choice-based morality. but in the end, it's a preference. denial of choice is icky. (somebody, instapundit? made a "yuck" point about canibalism, that i later saw applied to homosexuality in that discussion of ws101)
Cannibalism seems like an uncommon practice, with few real-world applications. (this relates to foie gras and the freespace v clerk discussion.) However, let's say B is willing to pay A to eat him. Did anybody's position change? Now let's say B does't want to eat A, just wants his liver for a transplant. This could come up more often.
The harm from a rule against cannibalism might be minor, if we set aside the way such a rule detracts from the sanctity of contract. But a rule against people selling organs is gonna kill thousands of people, serious real world consequences. Similarly, interfering in people's voluntary health care choices can kill thousands, millions, billions. So deciding whether we are for or against choice-based systems, in hard cases like cannibalism, has serious consequences, either way.
Posted by: aardvark,arbitrary, the on February 26, 2004 12:57 AM
I'm a hard-core libertarian. there's one in every crowd. since reading "stranger", the idea of being soup at my wake has been at least as appealing as other funeral customs i see in your culture. on the other hand, i'm pretty adamant about not being killed to be eaten, until i'm ready. apply the golden rule, and you can see why i'm vegetarian. as to the ick factor, for one like me, it comes into play like this: person A wants to be eaten. ok. person B wants to eat a wiling victim. ok. ykiokijnmk. your kink is ok, it's just not my kink.
person C wants to, by force,prevent A and B from doing their thing. ick! that's.. gross.
I usually use a rights approach or a utility approach to argue for choice-based morality. but in the end, it's a preference. denial of choice is icky. (somebody, instapundit? made a "yuck" point about canibalism, that i later saw applied to homosexuality in that discussion of ws101)
Cannibalism seems like an uncommon practice, with few real-world applications. (this relates to foie gras and the freespace v clerk discussion.) However, let's say B is willing to pay A to eat him. Did anybody's position change? Now let's say B does't want to eat A, just wants his liver for a transplant. This could come up more often.
The harm from a rule against cannibalism might be minor, if we set aside the way such a rule detracts from the sanctity of contract. But a rule against people selling organs is gonna kill thousands of people, serious real world consequences. Similarly, interfering in people's voluntary health care choices can kill thousands, millions, billions. So deciding whether we are for or against choice-based systems, in hard cases like cannibalism, has serious consequences, either way.
Posted by: aardvark,arbitrary, the on February 26, 2004 12:57 AM
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