Saturday, September 23, 2017

The morality of rule-breaking

Rule-Breaking is Necessary and Moral - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world - David Kelley, Atlas Society:

September 3, 2017 - "By 'rules' I mean self-contained prescriptions about concrete actions or situations, telling you what to do or how to do it. Fasten your seat belt. Don't smoke in elevators. Don't have sex on the first date. Don't drive over the speed limit. Don't hit below the belt. For many rules, there is a rationale provided by some broader principle. But when rules take the place of principles, as is happening more and more often today,... don't let them get in your way....

"Large regions of social life that ought to be governed – and to a large extent used to be governed – by principles of courtesy, justice, and mutual respect have now been bureaucratized by rules. Movie theaters find it necessary to inform their patrons that talking during the movie is forbidden. Interactions between men and women in the workplace are now regulated by sexual harassment rules that attempt to replace the principle of respect and the exercise of judgment....

"Because they are so concrete, no set of rules could possibly cover every situation and action to which the corresponding principle applies. This defect is particularly serious in ethics, the field that provides the broadest and most fundamental level of guidance for human action.

"The advantage of principles is the advantage of concepts: They unite an open-ended number of particular cases under a single abstraction. Of course we pay a price for this ... one has to apply a principle to a particular case by the exercise of judgment, taking account of the specific facts about the context.... But this points to a second defect of rules....

"Rules are formulated for specific contexts, but they never fully specify the nature or limitations of that context. As a result, rules invariably have exceptions and they often conflict with each other. Someone trying to follow the rules without the benefit of broader principles will have no way to determine when he is faced with an exception, or how to resolve a conflict.... The exercise of judgment cannot be eliminated from human life, and the attempt to do so by erecting a network of rules has destructive consequences in public as well as private affairs.

"There is a final defect that rules have in virtue of their concreteness. It is the most serious defect of all, and ... most pronounced in the realm of ethics: Unless rules are anchored in principles, they cannot be rationally justified.... They can be accepted only on faith or authority – i.e., as arbitrary edicts....

"In social contexts, rules laid down by an authority are sometimes necessary to prevent conflicts among people.... But even in this context, rules have all the defects we discussed: they cannot cover every situation, they have exceptions, and if they are detached from rational principles they are an arbitrary expression of will.... Rules that are arbitrary or issued chiefly as a means of asserting authority invite rule-breaking by those independent enough to bridle at subjection to another's will....

"We do need objective standards. But objectivity requires principles, not rules. The choice is to be principled, acting on one's own understanding of reality, or to be ruled – by an explicit authority or by the cramped and encrusted dictates of tradition. For anyone who values his own life and his own autonomy, that's an easy choice."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/rule-breaking-is-necessary-and-moral/?utm_medium=push&utm_source=push_notification
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