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OftenBen  ·  2810 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Comey: FBI is investigating Russian election interference, Trump ties

    if morality is to have any meaning, it can't have an exception for doing a bad thing to enough people.

I like the idea but in practice it breaks down rather quickly when you try and apply it comparatively. Also, nation-states are not known to be moral actors. Morality isn't what has determined our participation in any conflict in the past. Moral connotations are used as justification during and after the fact but they are never causative.

Until the UN or whatever comes after it gets some real teeth that overrides national sovereignty, it's just a fun thing to talk about. I don't even advocate for that, I'm not certain that a united world government would be a good thing.

An additional point, when I try and analyze this with game theory, I can't imagine a scenario where a nation state benefits from being a moral actor. All being a moral actor does is restrict the number of potential moves you can make, which gives your 'opponents' advantage, because they know that there are actions you will not take, so they are free to walk all over those known vulnerabilities. Example, Mutually Assured Destruction doesn't work as a deterrent if one side states 'Even in the event of a hostile launch, we will not fire nuclear missiles.' It doesn't matter one whit that not launching missiles is the moral action. In fact in this scenario, it's MORE moral to say 'We will nuke you if you nuke us' because it prevents missiles from flying in the first place.