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[–] xTreme_Hotel 0 points 1 point (+1|-0) ago 

Not really. I mean it's not going to do much more than delay you in finishing your errands if I decide to shoot you dead in a walmart parking lot. And your family will have to take a couple days off work for your funeral.

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[–] jeegte12 ago 

This discussion is under the assumption that people don't give a shit about other people.

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[–] xTreme_Hotel ago 

That premise is like saying you're having a discussion about math but the number 2 doesn't exist. That there can only ever be a distinct thing and the number 2 is simply a pair of those 1 distinct things. True, but it is also something more than that. If one were to follow that argument to it's end then there wouldn't be any numbers besides 1. This would give a vastly limited picture of mathematics and arithmetic, discounting all of the subtleties, nuances, and description it provides.

If you don't like that argument, say there are no limits on killing and nobody gives a shit about anyone. I shoot someone dead in a parking lot because why not? Would the victims family, in not giving a shit about anyone, simply not care, be entirely indifferent to my action? While I may be on the internet and you all are aspergers as fuck most people would feel something. That's hardwired into the brains of mammals. That's why they are mammals, because at the very least mothers care for their offspring.

If I kill enough people one of those mothers is going to think me a mother fucker and want me dead. With no limits, what's to stop her? I'm either shot dead myself or spend the rest of my life holed up or constantly looking over my should. Hardly the life I want to live. More than an inconvenience, my experience of pleasure would be diminished and my experience of pain increased. Not to mention the victims' mothers and my own once I'm eventually shot dead myself.

Do we set up external controls to encourage and force certain behaviors? Of course we do. Just like having more numbers than 1 gives us the ability to do multiplication in arithmetic (and all the results of that ability), seeing society as something more than a collection of individuals leads us to a system where more individuals can have a greater experience of pleasure than they could if everyone was simply left to the whims of their own devices.

Is society perfect? No. But would you rather be living as an ancient hunter gatherer, chasing zebras in Africa and always on the lookout for someone else to come by and steal your prey? And by learning and refining our morals over time we have steadily increased the amount of happiness and reduced pain for larger and larger swaths of people in society. Would you rather have your current life or be some broke ass farmer, barely alive enslaved in ancient Greece or in serfdom in 19th century Russia? I'll take things the way they are, with the limits they impose on myself over any of that. Unless you want me to come shoot you, just so that you'll have the opportunity to shoot back.