Blue and Green morality

I believe it's evil, but I think it would be a greater evil to absolutely ban it one day and cause the poor to go hungry for lack of cheap food. That's why we should transition toward making free range and fair trade meat accessible and affordable, and when it gets to the point where a poor person could reasonably afford free range meat, then we ought to ban factory farms, becasue then it would not be necessary to violate animal rights in order to ensure human rights (in this case, the right to food, i.e., life).

edited 16th Apr '11 2:56:50 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

Personally I think Rationing might be a good idea, bring in a set amount of everything you can have for a week and then divide it up across the population, saves both food, time and money

ignores Bugman until he learns not to insult dissenters

@OTOH: Now you'd ban if it the poor could afford meat from farms you approve of? Now you're speaking in Red terms, not the Blue discourse of unlimited individual choice so long as it doesn't harm another person.

Are you all three? And are all three consistent?

@Joseph: Hmm, that seems a bit extreme for me, but considering how quickly resources are depleting, and how nations of the Third World suffer from widespread starvation while people in America suffer from widespread obesity, it may end up being a necessary measure in the future.

Edit: @Rott: My political and social beliefs are my own, and I don't really rally to a flag color. If you define that as being red, then fine, maybe I'm purple. My views on animal rights are pretty much like this: non-persons have rights, and people have rights. When the rights of a non-person directly conflict with the rights of a person, the person gets priority. But when there is no conflict, it is wrong to violate the rights of a non-person.

edited 16th Apr '11 3:03:13 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

Joseph, I think it would probably be best if you took a break from this discussion. I get that you're frustrated, but you're likely to get thumped for personal attacks.

@OTOH: I went over this. Blue is classical liberalism, the ethic of individuals possessed with equal rights to do whatever they want so long as it doesn't harm another person. Red is socialism, the ethic of equal control of society's wealth. Green is ecological ethics. White is traditional religious values. Black is fascism.

What first principle led you to build your deck with the three colors you did in the proportions you do?

Cruelty is bad. That's the general premise. Cows aren't people, and the reason why we're trying to reduce the cruelty towards calfs isn't due to human rights; it's to negate some of the needless suffering in the world. "Animal Rights" is an abstraction of the principle that just because animals are "weighted" less than humans, doesn't mean that we should ignore them when coming to conclusions as to what the best course of action is.

Like in economics, there's a tendency to try for optimization/maximization models, because they're easy. But reality isn't that simple-a decent system of laws isn't going to be as easy as taking a few axioms and following them to their logical extreme.

The one that said to maximize happiness and minimize suffering, as I said before. This means the happiness and suffering of all sentient beings, but due to my biases, I placed greater priority on increasing the happiness and minimizing the suffering of sapient beings.

Most sapient beings are happiest when they have absolute freedom, but some would abuse the freedom and use it to take away the freedoms of other beings, so that must be curtailed through law. (Those who aren't happy when they have a lot of freedom nonetheless have the freedom to seek out institutions that curtail their freedom, such as the church.)

Additionally, sapient beings would not even have the chance to enjoy freedom without first having their basic needs met. This leads to the concept of welfare, where very small amounts of freedom (the freedom to spend a particular amount of disposable income) are taken away from some people to provide very large amounts of freedom (the freedom to eat/wear clothes/live in a home) to others.

When the happiness of sapient beings is maximized, we can turn to limiting the suffering and maximizing the happiness of non-sapient beings, without reducing the happiness or increasing the suffering of sapient beings.

edited 16th Apr '11 3:30:19 PM by OnTheOtherHandle

The thought of explaining the acts of history as a Magic game is hilarious and makes me happy, Rott. But Wizards Of The Coast let some real game breakers into this edition.

I like Tomu's explanation. We want to practice non-cruelty, so we can't just ignore the suffering of animals even if we don't give it the same weight as human suffering. Of course, I take a slightly Buddhist view on suffering (it's a consequence, not an evil) and I happen to really like the taste of free range meat.

Rott, please stop changing your definition of "liberal" from thread to thread. It's way too confusing. And please stop assuming that everyone who disagrees with you disagrees with you in exactly the same way.

Black and Red managed to be strong out of the gate for a time. Starting a strong assault against Blue. Eventually they attack Green whose land advantage simply cannot be ignored. White, similarly, has been getting its control deck underway until red’s first strikers attack and take out a huge chunk of creatures.

Blue, white, and green decide to take out the other two and assault Black until it uses up all its loyalty counters on its Plansewalker. Eventually, black‘s life total is reduced to zero.

White has been fighting a grueling war of attrition against red. White eventually uses all loyalty counters on its Planswalker. But manages to cast Wrath of God twice. Red concedes having no way to get all its creatures back on the board before it’s stomped.

Meanwhile, Green has continued to build its forces and the three remaining players engage in long, drawn out control war until Green finally concedes.

Blue concedes against white, white simply has too much damn life at this point.

edited 16th Apr '11 7:43:00 PM by Justice4243

Iron-clad rule of Economics: The models are an oversimplification in order to be able to describe phenomenon. If you rely too heavily on the simplifications... well, there's a joke that goes like this:

An engineer, a lawyer, and an economist are on a desert island, with only a can of beans. The lawyer wants to smack the can on a rock, to get it open. The engineer wants to create a complicated series of levers in order to precisely open the can, and get the maximum amount of beans out of it without waste. So, they turn to the Economist, to see what he thinks. And he responds "Alright, well, first, let's assume we have a opener-"

When you start describing the world on such a level using only five colors, you're bound to run into contradictions somewhere down the road. And when, by following that model, you run into those contradictions, you really have no one to blame but yourself, for assuming you had a can opener.

-Single-Issue Wonk

Right now? Blue and White go together like PB and Jelly. Blue provides the intellectual basis for the solidarity and the arms dealers that allow them to thrive :p (Also. MTG is kinda weird as to avoid the White==Good and Black==Evil thing they've basically assigned fascism to mostly white. Really.) Yes, I've spent the last two days playing Caw Blade, why do you ask?

In any case, talking about morality in such simple terms is basically pointless. It's all a big shade, which should be looked at on a rational basis, trying to balance all sides in order to struggle and find the best answer. It's not easy, nobody ever said it was. But to be honest, it really is through that struggle of WHAT to do that we start to figure out the best/a good way to do it.

@feo: The way I've described it here is pure liberalism as best I understand it. I can't help it if so many who identify as such are actually running Red-Blue.

I read this as Blue-and-Orange Morality.

FFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

"Blue, White, Red, Black (Fascism)"

Fascism is White, capitalism is Black in Magic The Gathering.

Yes, but in politics, White was traditional/royalist (based on the ancien regime flag), hence the White Army in the Russian Civil War.

Fascism is commonly called "Brown", but I think Black makes more sense, being the color of both Italian Fascism and the SS. Anarchists claim Black, but that really represents the extreme of individual liberty.

Anarchists were there frist!

Black's ours, although it can be considered the consistent form of Blue.

Sign me up on the Blue team, BTW.

edited 17th Apr '11 9:04:49 AM by SavageHeathen

I have to wonder what our world would look like if attempts at color coding were actually accurate.

I too thought this was about Blue-and-Orange Morality, though judging from the OP I think it still technically is.

Anyway, I'm in support of animal rights as well as expanded human rights, so I hold both blue and green morality. Don't see a problem with that.

Do you believe those are the only two legitimate ethics? If so, why?

@Rott: I don't think that was ever the point, really. He's just saying that it's very possible to have both, and they are not actually fundamentally opposed to each other.