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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>So basically, only thing wrong with Jim Crow is that it is now unpopular? And if it becomes popular again, we should bring it back?

Why, has there been another measure of good in human history? (If one doesn't believe in any divine being handing down laws that is).

And I don't get the "moral high ground in hindsight" thing. If you lived in 1890, statistics say you'd most probably be all for Jim Crow too.

>Democracy is a pretty scary moral philosophy.

Better than the capitalism, which has no morals at all outside what society enforces upon it. If it could sell crack to small children or use people as slaves it would (and it does).

Where the main justification is the BS fabrication that "egotism works for the good of all in the end".

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A possible measure of good is "does it harm people" but that ends up excluding everything, so add details like "does it harm people who are powerless to avoid that harm". You can decide right and wrong by yourself instead of just following the mob if you can work out some rules that aren't just a copy of current popular opinion. Popular opinion is actually a fairly poor go at it. It's mired in racism, patriotism, and similar tribal instincts which almost entirely encourage abuse of various classes of people.

Regarding capitalism, of course it needs controls, but on this subject, it's hard to see the harm in giving intelligent people opportunities that will benefit them. Sadly, popular opinion tells us that Indians deserve to be poor because they have the wrong parents (aka, citizens of a poor country).

I'm asking whether the popularity of a policy morally justifies it. I guess you think Jim Crow was morally justified.

Or to take a contemporary example, for reasons I don't understand Indians really seem to dislike Africans. I guess if we get Jim Krishna laws with popular support, you'll favor them also?

Better than the capitalism, which has no morals at all outside what society enforces upon it.

Yet capitalists view Indians and Africans as having "equal rights and are people too", unlike the protectionists.

>I'm asking whether the popularity of a policy morally justifies it. I guess you think Jim Crow was morally justified.

No, I think "morally justifies it" in the absolute sense (which you use it) is BS, since it assumes some pre-existing morality framework.

"Morally justified" only has sense in the "is it acceptable by the moral standards of a society/era". Of course, most people naively only take it to mean "is it acceptable by the standards of OUR society/era", which they consider as some absolute definition of morals.

Fact: for the people of time it WAS morally justified. Heck, slave owners themselves were respectable and celebrated members of society.

Owning slaves was just what one did if he could, just like for business owners today setting shop in impoverished areas not to offer the same wages as elsewhere but to take advantage of poverty to offer lower wages (as if those people are worth less) is "just what you do".

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