Problem description:
If you sign
What is the concept of "social existence"?
Analysis:
On the Three Basic Principles of Social Existence
Choice is implemented within the framework of certain agreements and rights. In some cases, it is used to alleviate conflicts between different options, while in other cases, it is used to adjudicate these conflicts. The establishment of this framework depends on finding out the basic principles of social existence through moral intuition. The three basic principles of social existence seem to be conducive to the voluntariness and spontaneity of this framework. These three principles help to make this framework conform to the principle of choice, especially to the principle of "non-domination".
(4) The promise must be fulfilled.
This principle is the moral basis of unilateral obligation and contract system and the cornerstone of the whole society. In the following discussion, this principle will be called the "contract" principle.
Some contracts, that is, contracts that are traded at the same time, are automatically executed. Or tend to be self-executing. However, other contracts contain * * * non-performance in their time execution structure. Such a contract needs to be enforced. Only in this way can one party's obligations make the other party feel credible. This is not to say that if the agreement must be fulfilled as an undisputed moral standard, there will be no mutual obligations. Although we are not sure, it is entirely conceivable that promises and contracts may only exist through some coercive mechanisms maintained in a collective way, rather than being supported by a belief that breaking promises is wrong. Under this condition, the existence of the contract (and the implementation mechanism itself) is still inconclusive. In addition, when compliance with the law is achieved through coercion rather than recognition and respect for the law, the existence of the law is also a more common problem. None of the possible answers sounds particularly reasonable, and this question may still be controversial. However, one thing is clear: without respect for the law, the law is possible and feasible; Without the belief of moral binding on commitment and shameful belief in breach of contract, contract is possible and feasible, so the survival of law and contract is conditional on mandatory arrangement, which is ultimately incompatible with a liberal order.
On the other hand, if the vast majority of people in society think that fulfilling promises is a moral obligation, then failing to fulfill this obligation and thus the contract will cause disapproval and hostile reactions, which will not only come from the victims and their natural allies, but also from a wider range. Social sanctions are the source of impartial third-party enforcement. This kind of coercion may not be perfect, and there is not even any formal institution in power, but it is mandatory after all. The promisee who suffered from breach of contract got sympathy from neutral bystanders and may seek their help. Contractors who break the contract have reason to fear the hostility of onlookers. He is worried that they will not want to deal with him in the future and will ask him to compensate the victims. The social reaction of these standards is familiar to people, and their glorious history can be traced back to ancient times or even further.
In modern society, due to obvious reasons, the potential power of this social response has not been paid attention to. Mature countries have provided the public with a formal judicial superstructure, so it is unnecessary and there is no room for spontaneous execution. However, a fact related to liberalism theory is that making enforcement a public undertaking rather than a private undertaking is certainly not the only way to ensure the credibility and reliability of contracts. There is a view that the contract cannot be executed without the political power to undertake the executive function, so "the state takes precedence over the market", and the market is dominated by an institutional framework, which is established and supported by the * * * who holds the highest power. Although this view has been repeatedly reiterated, it seems to be an accepted truth, but it is a downright subjective assumption. It has no theoretical support and has been proved by history to be unfounded. The commercial law in the Middle Ages was completely "stateless" and was basically implemented under the pressure of people of the same status. This case shows that national enforcement has neither inherent necessity nor inherent efficiency. The nature of some contracts (some are futures or "coming into effect in the future") leads to * * * does not mean that the contract system is based on the state. The role of the state does not come from the nature of the contract, but from the enforcement of the monopoly contract, which may bring rich benefits. It is the possible interests that drive the royal court to hold the monopoly right to execute the contract in its own hands.
However, it is important not to confuse two independent claims about commitment. One conclusion is that the possibility of making credible promises is an improvement in economic relations, which helps to solve conflicts between people that might otherwise be insoluble, because although cooperation is beneficial to all individuals, they need to be sure that the other side will do the same. This progress is so important and its role is so great that all potential parties are actively committed to maintaining the credibility of their commitments.
They will ensure that the contract is carried out in one way or another, and they are ready to face troubles and quarrels and pay the price for them. From this "functional" point of view, another subordinate question arises: whether they do this only for their own contracts or for others' contracts on the basis of mutual assistance, whether this mutual assistance is individual or organized, individual or universal. Therefore, this argument infers that any individual, based on a sober estimation of the benefits he (as well as his family and descendants) can expect from the contract system, will be willing to help implement the contract and pay the price for it.
Some laws and economic theories really attribute the social recognition of abiding by contractual obligations and the resulting social sanctions to the economic value of trust to society. These theories are very problematic, because only defaulters and non-compulsors who have not contributed to the maintenance of the contract system can benefit from trust as those who have contributed, and trust is a public interest. Therefore, the individual's estimation of costs and benefits is not a vague promoting factor to pay the price for protecting the contract, as these theories assume. The balance of income may encourage individuals to make contributions, but this is not because there is a concentrated social interest that all individuals can enjoy, no matter how big it is.
Another moral proposition about our obligations does not directly come from any benefits we can expect (although there is an indirect connection). On the contrary, it comes from Kant's point of view about the meaning within a kind of ability, which has been mentioned when discussing the principle of "no domination". The meaning of speaking is to convey information to another person. Lying may meet the special needs of liars, but if everyone lies, the meaning of speaking will be eliminated, because no one still believes what is conveyed. Similarly, the meaning of commitment is to make one person's obligation to an action make another person feel trustworthy. Breaking a promise may be beneficial to the defaulter, but if everyone breaks a promise, it is meaningless. (Kant's test of reasonable moral performance is not whether an individual can reasonably hope to lie, but whether he can reasonably hope others to lie, that is, whether he can reasonably hope that his performance is "universal". However, if a person's ability to meet a certain demand loses its meaning, it is wrong. Therefore, whether individuals expect to benefit from the promised practice or not, everyone has the responsibility to fulfill their promises.
In addition, if it is wrong to break a promise no matter what damage it causes to the promisee, it is also wrong to break a promise whether it depends on the reward or not. A promise without remuneration is as morally worthy of execution as a promise based on "earned value". How to determine the compensation for violating the promise without causing any damage to the promisee may be a controversial issue. However, the fact remains that if a powerful reason why we have to fulfill the contract is that we have to fulfill our promise-a reason that a "loose liberal" law does not consider, then whether the contract is "unilateral" or not, it must be observed and enforced. Even if one party's compensation for its own execution of the contract is not so sufficient, that is not the reason for not executing the contract as promised. In this regard, the traditional Roman law and customary law have firmly adopted a "* * *" approach, that is, refusing to judge whether a contract is valid according to whether the compensation is fair or not. They adopt this method because they are clever; Strict liberalism adopts this method because it is inherent in its basic principle system.
Regarding the respect that promises should be or are being respected, whether it is the interpretation of interest orientation or responsibility orientation, it is in line with the principle of "contract". Both of these explanations help to strengthen this principle, and to some extent, they show why the responsibility to perform the contract is equally obvious and self-evident to most of us (as long as we are not polluted by the distortion of philosophy or law). These two explanations support each other, and provide the reasons why people usually try to keep their promises and fulfill their responsibilities even when they are against their own interests, and the reasons why people are prepared to face troubles and pay the price for sanctions (punishment) for breach of contract from a long time ago.
(5) First come, first served.
This principle is called "priority" principle, and its function is to help regulate the exercise of "freedom" in a crowded social environment. As we found in the previous logical analysis of rights, there is no restriction on free rights in principle, unless the exercise of free rights will infringe on another person's rights, thus proving the existence of restrictions. However, there are also cases where, although there is no right to restrict a freedom and there is no evidence of restriction, one person's exercise of freedom conflicts with that of others. Two people in the same room want to sing different songs, which is an example of the same conflict of freedom rights; One person sings and the other wants to sleep, which is an example of the conflict between different freedom rights.
If "first come, then come" seems to be self-evident, or at least reasonable for most people, then the freedom right of "crowding" will be exercised in turn, so that it will not "collide" with each other. It is in order to propose this step-by-step solution that I named this principle "priority".
When you see a man with a certificate of Federation of Literary and Art Circles in Moscow passing through a long line of hundreds of people and heading straight for the ticket window of the railway station, when you see a car wearing a black leather coat, riding a motorcycle and whistling to escort an official on the streets of Paris, you will understand the moral basis of priority. In the former case, "culture" takes precedence, while in the latter case, "official business" takes precedence.
"First come, first served" has no such moral basis. In a fashionable phrase, it is "moral independence", because there is no obvious moral reason to take precedence over the first. It is its distance from any moral reason, rather than its dependence on moral reason, that provides the arrogant power of this principle.
The scope of this principle is wider than people feel. Obviously, many practices that regulate the enjoyment of limited space and time are based on this principle. It has many manifestations, such as appointment, manufacturer's order book, doctor's appointment record, parking place, waiting list for applying for housing or hospital beds, etc. , easy to use and operate, to solve the problem of short supply. The problem of short supply here refers to the problem of short supply of resources with low price or no price at all. "First come, first served" comes into play when the price mechanism is uncoordinated, or for some reason it is impossible to be required to coordinate incompatible demands. It is the established basis of queuing, and it is also the reason why most people think queuing is boring but fair (as long as those who can't wait are not asked, etc.). Finally, it is the fundamental principle to adjust the bonus distribution in various free competitions such as business, sports and art. In these activities, bonuses are distributed in the order of reaching a certain end.
In all these practices, the right to freedom has been exercised. In an uncrowded environment, there is no need to restrict these freedoms, but when the environment is crowded, it is in line with the requirements of civilized survival to avoid these freedoms "colliding" with each other. Preventing "collision" is largely achieved by accepting "first come first served".
Like any basic principle, this principle has far-reaching influence. We can't find much at present. An obvious meaning is related to a popular proposition that "social justice" is applied to the distribution of interests, privileges and interests, and the distribution of these things is considered to be "morally independent". The principle of "priority" provides a concrete order for two problems: how to arrange the position of one person's freedom relative to another person's freedom, and who will get the limited things that no one is more qualified than others but only some people can get. This order is the order of arriving at the designated place or making corresponding requirements. If we say "morality" means "taking morality as the standard", then this order is "morally going its own way".
There is no legal significance to come first, come first or ask first, and there is no other reason to provide a moral basis for unequal distribution, such as unequal pay, unequal contribution, unequal hardship, unfair sacrifice and so on. However, this principle has not left us an unfair impression. On the contrary, it is generally considered fair. Almost certainly, this is because people think that being an unequal distributor is the same for everyone. This tells us that "morally going its own way" is far from being the basis of belief as theorists who advocate distributive justice try to prove.
If we can't get the right of "not going our own way" distribution, we can't effectively oppose "going our own way morally" distribution. On the other hand, if we want to create the right to transition from morally independent distribution to distribution with moral basis, what is the basis for designating this right? If "culture" is a sufficient foundation in Moscow and "official business" is a sufficient foundation in Paris, then many other comparable foundations can be found without much effort. We must try to determine their strengths and priorities, and this work cannot be completed without a political process. The final result will not be moral independence, on the contrary, it will be moral inclination. It is likely that for all those who can't let their favorite moral principles or important interests prevail, their moral intuition will find it more difficult to accept such a result.
In order to better understand the difference between the arbitrariness of lottery and the tendency to arrange one moral basis on another, let's give an example of moral independence. Two passers-by found a 10 note on the ground at the same time. None of them has the right to get this bill, and no one has the obligation to hold back and let the other party get it. No matter who picked up the money first (maybe he condescended to rush forward and bent down to pick it up, or maybe he just found it early and acted quickly), it is considered beyond reproach not to share it with the other party. This is undoubtedly a moral insistence. However, unless you accept and adopt a moral principle to regulate this kind of thing, sharing this banknote is also morally separate. It is arbitrary to use the method of "first come, then come" to adjust, but the readjustment will inevitably have a relatively arbitrary tendency, favoring this or that moral distribution principle, while a mechanical distribution device is impartial and does not attempt to determine moral rewards and punishments.
If "first come, first served" is agreed, then the principle of "whoever picks it up gets it" is confirmed. If there is no pre-existing relative right, and this right cannot be created due to seemingly possible reasons, then possession produces the basis for judging ownership. What comes first is the inevitable result of finding first and taking first. The original acquisition of law has puzzled several generations of sociologists. In fact, there is no need for more complicated rules to solve this problem. For many people (though by no means owners), the transfer of property rights from one holder to another is valid as long as it is voluntary and agreed (or from the most formal point of view, it is valid if it is transferred at a "fair price"). However, since the first obligee of this property right has not obtained this property right from another obligee with effective rights, how can the rights of the first obligee be dealt with first?
People before Locke thought that questioning the right of the first occupier (land) would lead to endless arguments about who really should have this right, and people gradually accepted that the right of the first occupier was a reasonable natural right, just like the property right effectively transferred by the previous obligee. Locke thinks that he needs and can destroy the first possession through two famous restrictions to provide a stronger moral defense for the origin of property rights. The first possessor must "mix" his labor with the land he wants to own, and he must also leave enough equally good land for the latecomers to prove that the first possessor's claim is good.
The latter condition can be ignored, because this condition can only be achieved if the material is extremely rich, the property right is insignificant, and whether the property right is effective or not is irrelevant. Even if there is temporary abundant land at the beginning of the entrepreneurial craze, the first possessor will certainly imagine that he will not leave enough and equally good land for others before the end of the entrepreneurial craze, so his first possession cannot be a reason to enjoy the rights. In the case of permanent abundance, this problem does not exist at all.
The restrictive condition of "mixing one's own labor", like all labor theories about reasonable acquisition, has its inherent weaknesses. Although it is interesting to analyze this weakness carefully, we only need to pay attention to the obvious fact at present, that is, to make the rational production of ownership depend on "whoever picks it up and pushes it", on leaving enough things to others and on our own labor, which not only does not strengthen, but weakens the moral status of any particular property distribution, because any distribution may violate one or two of them. This has created a gap that needs to be filled with another "more correct" distribution theory.
After the emergence of this theory, it has produced many political consequences and is well known. Not surprisingly, social reformers may think that such theories are "on the whole" good, and they are certainly not strict liberalism, because they demand continuous and arbitrary redistribution of property rights. According to the principle of "priority", strict liberalism does not question the initial distribution. Some people rightly point out that this gives a starting point for luck. They even assert that luck is not as fair as political inclination. For such people, we can only answer this way: this is not a question of applying the category of justice. The application of justice is related to the consequences of rights. There is no reason to say that in order to make the distribution fair, property rights must be implemented before the initial distribution of property rights.
(6) Ownership is private.
This principle is properly called the "exclusion" principle, because it allows individuals who have acquired property rights to exclude others from decisions related to this property right and its consequences. This property right is neither "ours" nor can it be shared according to "due rights", needs or voting. There is a view that the owner has some obligation to the non-owner, and he must let the non-owner participate in the decision-making about the owner's ownership and its benefits. The principle of "exclusion" denies this view. If the owner of the ownership has such an obligation, then the burden of proof should be borne by the person who made this request.
The principle of "exclusion" is not self-evident. It may be as simple and clear as a universally valid principle, because the word "* * * has ownership" does exist in our daily language. * * * An individual owner (natural person or legal person) who does not have exclusive quantitative rights with the same owner. Collective ownership means that some or all rights related to the use and disposal of property are jointly held by the collective and are not distributed among the members of the collective. Access to this group may or may not be restricted; Everyone in this collective enjoys the ownership of property, but there is no definite and quantitative share; People outside this group are excluded. No one is excluded from * * *, and ownership is naturally a contradictory concept. Some things are either ownership or available to everyone, and do not contain any rights that not all applicants can benefit from. )
So why leave the word "ownership" to individuals, not to the collective? Why do we insist that strictly speaking, there is no "our ownership" and ownership has no "social obligation"?
The fundamental reason is that after fully considering all the questions raised by the legal theorists about the exact meaning of ownership, there is only one element that cannot be reduced, that is, the right to decide the use and disposition of the rights related to the owned property, that is, the right to decide the right to use, the right to use and the right to transfer. However, for a theory that does not recognize collective thinking, the collective owner cannot make a decision. Only individuals (whether individually or in the form of a joint or majority) can make decisions for the whole group. Unless there is unexplained agreement, the collective choice made for any collective is a "political" choice. For the same reason, so is collective ownership. Or for the same reason, collective ownership prevents the real meaning of ownership from being realized. The meaning of ownership is to grant the highest power to use limited resources to individuals. The supreme power to make certain types of decisions can be temporarily entrusted or permanently transferred, but it cannot be shared. That's why there is no real ownership except mine, yours, his or her after removing the agent, principal and middleman.
So how to explain the public ownership of corporate bodies, partnership operators, village public lawns, workers' communes, municipal or state-owned property? -there is also an unclear "social ownership", and we only know what is not "social ownership". These are not ownership in the strict sense. Do not conform to the inherent meaning of ownership. In fact, they also cancel, overcome and contain the meaning of ownership. It avoids the limitation that the responsibility of deciding (or even authorizing) how to use and transfer property rights should be borne by those who bear the decision-making costs and get the decision-making benefits. Without this qualification, ownership can not play its moral function and tool function. Under collective ownership, it is not necessary at all, and it is impossible to meet the conditions of the trinity of decision makers, cost bearers and beneficiaries in practice.
This is not only a moral defect, but also a denial of the role that property rights should play in producing effective resource allocation. These two allegations are irrelevant and can be refuted separately. However, these two allegations are closely related to the "meaning" of ownership. The meaning of ownership presupposes that ownership is private, not public and political.
This is not to ask for the abolition of rural public lawns, undivided fishing grounds or nationalized industries. Public lawns and public fishing grounds often lead to overgrazing and overfishing, while nationalized industries are plagued by well-known management problems. Although they did not reward irresponsible use of resources, they did not punish such behavior. However, for some people, these shortcomings may be completely offset by their advantages. This offset advantage constitutes a part of values and political order that contradicts strict liberalism. Of course, knowing this is not a reason to question or deny these advantages.
In order to prevent misunderstanding, I want to make it clear that individual ownership does not mean that the right to a certain property must be granted to a certain person. Indispensable huge property, such as railways and ships, or divisible but indivisible huge property, such as facilities of large companies, can be owned by many individuals with limited financial resources, if the rights of these properties themselves can be divided. Of course, the joint-stock company is the original form of individual ownership. A property owned by an individual alone can be regarded as a special and extremely individual situation owned by an individual.
Before we go on, we might as well discuss another wrong point of view. Because the "historical stage theory" and "development law theory" are pleasing and not demanding, the view that partnership ownership belongs to one stage and private ownership belongs to another stage is very popular. For example, many people even think that if the development law of "social ownership" is completely followed, primitive * * * productism, owner-peasant ownership, feudal serfdom and capitalist ownership will form an inevitable order and should be followed. Whether this exact order is correct or not will continue into the future, its basic idea is that the form of ownership adapts to historical contingency. This view is almost certainly nonsense. The custom of private ownership is as old as separation, and separation is almost as old as human history. Private ownership of the means of production, including huge and inseparable items, such as long boats and hunting grounds, has long been widely used by many hunting and gathering peoples. In our time, both private ownership and collective ownership exist, and their proportions often fluctuate without any clear reason. It is likely that the smaller the obstacle of private ownership to development, the greater the help to development. But there is absolutely no reverse causality, and it is definitely not the stage of development that determines the property right system that suits you.
The reason and motivation of possession are rooted in different logical relationships among people, behaviors and things. These relationships are abstract. Although the interaction between them will produce resistance, it does not depend on time and place. We must carefully understand what this means. This is not to say that one property right system is as suitable as another and deserves respect and protection; It is not that "society" should choose the system it wants to protect. This is basically the earliest utilitarian position, and it is also a position with a liberal tendency. It advocates that collective choice has sufficient reasons to arbitrarily set restrictions on individual choice on the issue of ownership. The simplest reason is that individuals cannot protect their ownership from mutual infringement, and individuals can only enjoy the rights that "society" is willing to enforce in a collective way.
In any case, this view is wrong and cannot be overdone.
First of all, this view overemphasizes the need for an organized * * * as the protector of ownership, and thinks that this * * * is a "monopoly forced by law". History has provided enough evidence to prove that spontaneous and decentralized arrangements can provide basically the same protection for ownership as they do now. With the state, spontaneous and decentralized arrangements will not provide or provide protection, which is a tautology contained in state monopoly coercion. Like other tautology, this tautology proves nothing.
Secondly, this view overestimates the extent to which "society" can handle, shape, adjust, restrict and redistribute property rights without incurring high-cost consequences that it is unwilling to accept. The fact that many countries have recently clumsily withdrawn from "social ownership" illustrates this problem.
Third, this view is wrong, because it distorts the moral significance of private ownership as a strong and clear relationship between people, behavior and precious resources. This trinity relationship of those who are responsible for choosing, those who bear the cost and those who choose the beneficiaries will split when the collective owns the ownership. This violates the requirement that people must take full responsibility for the consequences of their choices. Although we often can't guarantee to meet this requirement, dissatisfaction is not a sufficient reason to violate it. Therefore, whether "society" chooses private ownership or collective ownership, or whether it chooses to find a compromise between the two, is not something that "society" has to decide on the basis of independent reasons, and "society" cannot but care about what kind of ownership it wants to achieve. In short, the "meaning" of ownership cannot be ignored.
The moral significance of ownership also happens to have a by-product (not accidental). When the moral requirements inherent in individual ownership are met, some necessary conditions for effective allocation of resources are met: if the allocation is good, the distributor will benefit; If the distribution is not good, the distributor will suffer. Under ideal competitive conditions, it may be an understandable goal that all expected future marginal benefits and marginal costs are equal. I hope this is because it only exists in people's minds by feeling. However, for private ownership, the pursuit of this equality is at least stronger than the pursuit of any other goal. Under the condition of collective ownership, for those who are responsible for choosing goals, other goals have more reason to be given priority.
This should be of great significance to those who demand that the political system can promote economic efficiency, but it is not so important in the theory of strict liberalism, because the theory of strict liberalism only indirectly involves the issue of economic performance, leaving this issue to personal choice. However, it is gratifying that meeting the moral requirements of strict liberalism is actually a necessary condition for economic efficiency.