Your Relationship And "The State"
Mat of Not Little England has a post on our relationships and "The State", like him I do not like the state imposing responsibilities on co-habiting people even when they have decided that they do not want them.
Personally marriage should just be a contract like any other, and if it had been then so many things would have been easier. For example:
Gay marriage would have existed for decades, and wouldn't be the current second class not-quite-marriage.
Don't like the standard marriage contract, just draw up your own.
Want a pre-nuptual agreement, and want it worth the paper it is writen on? Then just include whatever clauses you want to cover it.
That the state gets involved and regulates is inevitable givern that it also sees fit to dish out other peoples money and give tax breaks based on them entering a marriage. So it sees the need to regulate it so that whatever social good it was trying to promote (normally claimed to be bringing up a family in a stable enviroment) is actually happening, rather than the couple simply being in it for the money. Not that there is much money either, since the amount of other peoples money that the government gives out for trying to bring up a family outside marriage can be larger than inside.
So once again it is the complex way that the state feels free to hand out other people money that lies at the root of the problem. Where it not for the conditions that it puts on it's largess with our money there would be no need to regulate marriages and you could get the one that fitted you and your lover perfectly rather than having to squeeze you love into the form dictated by the state.
posted by chris at 6/01/2006 08:55:00 am
5 Comments:
Interesting post. Your argument assumes a foundation of relativism, i.e. that morality simply doesn't exist. You yourself may not believe that, but if there is such a thing as morality, then there may equally be a moral duty on government to enforce it or encourage it.
Personally I don't believe that homoosexual partnerships are the same as heterosexual ones, and I don't believe the law should pretend that they are. But there are limits to extent to which the state could or should should try to enforce moral behaviour, for practical reasons as well as political ones.
Fundamentally your argument sounds like "what right does person A have to tell person B what they can and can't do?" The fact is that sometimes there can be very good reasons for this, even if person B doesn't agree.
Relitavism? Far from it, it is based on Utility. The maximum happiness for the maximum number of people.
Living together makes some people happy, therefore it is good. Some people they will want certain safe guards on property or will want to make sure that the person that they have decided to spend their life with has a say in any medical desisions should they get ill (or at the very least have visiting rights in hospital). This reassurance will make them happier, and so is good. Sometimes a more customised set of reassurances are needed to maximise happiness, so they should be available.
In this situation it is only the people that have decided to live their lives together that are being affected, so the calculation is easy. They should be able to set up whatever marriage of co-habitation arangement it is that they think will make them happiest.
Personally I don't believe that homoosexual partnerships are the same as heterosexual ones, and I don't believe the law should pretend that they are.
I don't think many heterosexual relationships are similar to a lot of other heterosexual relationships, and I don't think the law should make a distinction, nor encourage one type of relationship definition over another. Elements within society may choose topromote certain morals, that's not the state's job.
You are correct, however, in the summation of the argument. What right does anyone have to meddle in my private relationships? My life, my choice. The proposed reform by the law commision makes the states involvement a default. That's wrong.
Morality most certainly exists. Who defins it? What right do you have to decide your morality is better than mine? I believe it immoral to eat animals; should I ban you from doing so? Or should I simply try to persuade you of my case?
MatGB - "The proposed reform by the law commision makes the states involvement a default. That's wrong." Your "Wrong" here implies a moral judgement, and one which applies not only to you, but to other people. You're therefore assuming that there are absolute morals which can be applied to other people, not just relative ones about which it's impossible to argue that one person's are better than another's; and further, that you have the right, presumably based on your better understanding, to believe that your views hold more weight than someone else's, and ultimately, perhaps, in certain situations, to enforce your views on people who don't agree with them.
On all of that, I agree with you. On the details, I happen to believe that there are absolute morals which apply to marriage, just as you believe there are absolute morals which apply to government.
Chris - your argument is based on subjective utility, i.e., maximising a person's perception of utility. If there is any objective basis for utility - e.g., if there are things which make a person happy but are actually bad for them - then your argument doesn't work, as arguably Government could also have a goal of increasing objective utility.
I'm glad you mentioned utility, though. I'm sure we'd disagree about what it is, and how to measure it: my argument for redistribution is based on the fact that the marginal utility of money decreases the more you have. But at least we can agree that utility is A Good Thing, and perhaps even that it's something which ought to guide government policy.
Utility is seeking the greatest happiness, included into the calculation the consequences of the actions as far as it is possible to predict. This can only be done by the person in question as they are the only ones that know their current and past levels of happiness allowing for accurate predictions. Anyone else trying to do the calculations for them will be forced to rely on their own perception of what will make someone else happy, which can often be wrong. The more remote the desision (with central government being about as remote as it is possible to get) the less information there will be about the individual that the desision is being made for, and so the greater the chance of calculation error.
If there are cases that 'if there are things which make a person happy but are actually bad for them'. It might be moral to curtail people actions when such actions creates future unhappiness sufficient to outweigh the immidiate happiness of the action, that it was so detrimental to their health that it precluded the potential for future happiness (e.g. playing chicken with a train), or that the happiness of other people caught up in the action outweigh the immidiate happiness of the action. Basically, if after carrying the calculation through as far as it is possible the utility is actually negitive. However none of these situations apply to gay marriage or the various other marriage type contracts being discussed.
I do not argue that the marginal utility of money decreases as you get more of it. Hence you find that many people will choose to concentrate on other things to increase their happiness once they have a certain reached income level. I have a problem with government setting this level for me when they cannot know at what income level I will be happiest. I have a big problem with the Welfare State.
The Welfare State is supposed to remove consequences of peoples actions. This is not a design flaw, this is it's explicit purpose. You will be givern according to what it perceives as need and nothing else. No matter how you got into the situation, who else you got into the situtation, or the probablity that following it's largess you will be strait back into that situtation. It becomes no wonder then that people continue to maximise their immidiate pleasure even when the consequences of their actions lead to future unhappiness sufficient to outweigh the immidiate happiness of the action, or that the happiness of other people caught up in the action outweigh the immidiate happiness of the action. The Welfare State has trained them not to think of these things since it claims to be able to take care of any consequences, even when it cannot.
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