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Comment by A_D_E_P_T | Hacker News Reader

Natural Law is fair by definition. It is merely a reflection of ancient ethical norms.

Positive Law -- the laws set down by kings and legislatures -- is much less fair, but sometimes, however rarely, it tries to embody a codification of the Natural Law.

The way the Positive Law is enforced and prosecuted is an utter disaster. In civil courts, justice is bought and sold as a rule; fairness (and even adjudication itself!) is an exception. It's so bad, so transparently twisted, that I think it's fair to say that humans in general have shown that they cannot be trusted with the administration of things such as civil laws. Too corruptible.

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>Natural Law is fair by definition. It is merely a reflection of ancient ethical norms.

There is no such thing.

Serious questions, then:

Why is slavery wrong? Does human life have no innate (non-relative, not bestowed) dignity, in your view?

When judges refer (as they frequently do) to uncodified notions of "fair play" or "good faith and fair dealing," what are they basing those notions on? Is it not a continuation of the ancient Natural Law inclination towards promise-keeping, reflected in many human societies as the oath-breaking taboo?

Natural Law isn't real, and won't hurt you - it's just one particular sect's form of copium.

You obviously are against that 'one sect', but natural law IS the thing. This is what most people consider to be the norm that governs how we behave. It's not written down, it's what you know is right or wrong. Let me give you some examples:

- Raping woman on the street - wrong

- Giving starving person some food - good

- Stealing from your employer - wrong (unless you are not paid or cheated)

- Killing random person - wrong

- Caring for your spause and children - good

and the list goes on

And the general rule, written down by 'that sect' in their book is 'love your neighbor as you love yourself', you should prefer to live among people who really apply this in their life, whenever you share their beliefs or not, because it's so much easier to live among such people than to live among selfish people who will not hesitate to harm you if only their actions go unpunished.

> love your neighbor as you love yourself

This is just communism. If everyone did this, you would have a community-based economy and society. Communism.

The sheer idea of competition is antithetical to this world view. Because you would never compete against yourself - but you MUST compete against your neighbors. You would never advocate against yourself, either.

Look, it's a nice idea, everyone hold hands and sing Kumbaya. But it's not a Christian thing, Marx figured this out much more concretely. Like, he thought about the actual economic and political consequences of it.

And, I don't know, maybe it could work. But I think it's important we're all on the same page about what we're asking for.

Treat others the way you want to be treated. Even when competing you should not cheat, lie, steal or otherwise commit wrong-doing.

Doesn't sound like YCombinator's recipe for success

Competing against someone means advocating for yourself instead of them.

Nobody would ever advocate against themselves - that's self-destructive. So, following the golden rule, competition is immoral. You shouldn't advocate against others, because you wouldn't do it to yourself.

More concretely, when you compete you are trying to take money away from other people and give it to yourself. Right? Because a customer could go to them - but you want the customer to go to you. So you get 5 bucks your competitor wouldn't have.

What we're noticing here is one of two things: either the golden rule is not at all a rule, and we have to make exceptions, or capitalism at a conceptual level is immoral.

One of these two has to be true, no way around it. Personally, I suspect Jesus would never allow capitalism. He would say everyone should share, so everyone can be prosperous.

Again... sounds like communism to me.

If your competitor is lazy and grows to accept more money for less quality that is immoral. The moral thing to do is to compete against that company so that you provide better products and services for lower cost. That is the moral thing. Communism is neither here nor there, it's a completely different thing. Happy now?

Of course I'm not happy, because you're wrong.

The Bible explicitly states that judgment is immoral, and is the sole duty of God. If someone is committing a sin, it is not your job to fix them of that sin - and actually by doing so, you yourself are sinning.

If your competitor is lazy, the moral choice is to do nothing, and let God handle it. You do not know what is or is not a sin, because you are not the arbiter of morality - God is. Casting judgement on your competitor is sinful.

Really, no matter how you cut it, I think it's obvious Jesus Christ was a communist. He would absolutely not be happy with capitalism. Are we helping other's out of the goodness of our heart? No. Are we giving to the community? No.

In an ideal world where everyone follows the golden rule, the only outcome could possibly be communism. And, there would never be any problems, ever. Because nobody would be greedy - there would be no grounds for capitalism to even form. A revolution could not occur.

That has nothing to do with communism, go educate yourself, and actually try

In empirical reality, we observe that most people, especially successful people, talk about following these principles but do not follow them.

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