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When is it okay to disobey the law?
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I was referring to those "Doesn't Quebec pay less! They shouldn't complain!" argument that gets thrown around as if it was actually a valid argument.
To answer your comment about the gov not being able to subsidize the tuition:
- The QC government justified this hike by claiming that Quebec universities are underfunded, while in reality they are very well financed (around 3000$/student more than Ontario universities http://www.mels.gouv.qc.ca/sections/publications/publications/Ens_Sup/rencontres_partenaies_avenir_universites.pdf)
- Quebec universities spend more money than the Canadian average, and around 25% more in research and investments. They throw money away with terrible projects/investments, like the Ilot Voyageur (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2008/06/05/qc-uqamreport0605.html)
or the 1420 mont-royal
(http://www.ledevoir.com/societe/education/342720/universites-hausse-des-droits-contre-derives-immobilieres
If you don't read french: http://translate.google.ca/translate?hl=en&sl=fr&u=http://www.ledevoir.com/societe/education/342720/universites-hausse-des-droits-contre-derives-immobilieres&ei=776-T6G-JKjW6gGd352iCg&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CGAQ7gEwBQ&prev=/search?q=1420+boulevard+Mont-Royal&hl=en&biw=1920&bih=993&prmd=imvns)
-Of the proposed tuition hike, only a minority amount will actually go to the students themselves (iirc I read on the Radio-Canada website that it was 30%ish but I could be wrong). A lot of that money goes to more research/investments, and to salaries/pensions, which universities also grossly mismanage: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2012/03/09/concordia-university-administrator-severance-packages.html
The hike comes from an administration who's raised the provincial tax, raised the income tax, and is currently under investigation for corruption.
So yeah, when the gov mismanages our money, universities prove incompetent to manage our money, and we're then asked to pay more "to do our part" while the government or universities have their crappy management practices unanswered, I say bullshit.
You don't pour more water in a cup that has a hole at the bottom. This has never been a subsidy problem. It's a bad management problem. Raising tuition fees won't fix it.
You guys talk mention the law and then the rest of the post is ethics. No-one here is actually talking about the law, about precedence and statute. They are talking about what's right or wrong.
The law is irrelevant. What's important is a complex sense of consequences and morality.
You do what you think is right. Always.
This sounds largely analogous to tuition problems in the US.
In the US, it's not simple corruption to blame for rising education costs, it's perverse incentives on the part of universities. There is very little pressure on universities to control costs.
On top of that, customers don't have good metrics on the quality of education (since that's a hard thing to measure) so they use proxy criteria like prestige or the quality of nonacademic facilities.
So when universities do get more money from increased tuition, they have incentive to spend it on salaries for big-name professors (who then have to teach classes of 500 or more) to increase prestige, or nonacademic facilities like dorms and gyms. Even when the teachers are competent, actual teaching quality suffers.
Unfortunately, this means that throwing extra money at the universities in the form of direct subsidies or student loans/grants/scholarships is like, as you say, pouring more water in a cup that has a hole at the bottom.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Please tell me, without regards to the law, what your proper tax burden is to the state, city, and nation. Also explain how you come by this exact figure.
Pretty obviously not every law that is moral to follow would still be moral absent the legal invention. Driving on the left hand side of the road comes to mind; the whole concept of malum prohibitum exists for this reason. Poshniallo's post states the case too broadly, but I agree with the general sentiment. Laws are usually a consequence of morality, not the other way around.
If Teaparticus Strawmania seized power in a coup and set taxes at 99% for the lower 99% of earners, and 1% for the top 1% of earners (because that's what he thinks a flat tax is) I might try to evade taxes in order to buy as many cans of beans as possible before fleeing into the hills. What is presently legal should not inform our morality except inasmuch as it affects the expected behavior of other people (please don't drive on the left side of the road). Instead, we should be subjecting our laws to constant scrutiny by comparing them against our morals.
Fake edit: Sometimes, as with taxes or the use of imperial units on traffic signs, civil disobedience is an idiotic way to try to change bad laws. Tax evasion just looks selfish, and is therefore unlikely to inspire anyone to join your cause. Putting KPH speed limits up in the middle of the night has the unfortunate tendency to raise the speed of traffic by a factor of 1.6, and when a busload of toddlers die in a fire because of your civil disobedience you might need to consider another option.
This brings an interesting question to mind regarding the duality of both a citizen's duty to follow the law and the law's duty to reflect the morality of the governed. One thing we as a people have trouble with is allowing the law to adapt to fit changing cultural norms. For instance in the business world the *AAs are fighting to toughen up copyright law because their economic hegemony is being challenged by new technology and a culture not afraid to flout the law to use it. We have historical examples that show when this happens, people keep finding new ways to break the law with impunity until the law itself is changed to respect the culture. Similarly we have social conservatives who are now fighting to make laws to ensure their communities respect their older, traditional behavioral norms.
Given that, is it perhaps fair to say that humans as a species should not be allowed to form these massive societies until we can correctly sort out a consensus among the governed as to these larger questions of what our common morality even is? I just ask because I wonder how ethical it really is for us to keep challenging what to us may seem like backwards beliefs. Obviously challenging them is not going to change them, we have research that shows when presented with evidence people will double down on what they believe rather than changing what they believe to respect the facts at hand. So if we can't realistically expect to change these people's beliefs, and if we know they will fight tooth and nail for them, then perhaps we as a species need to admit we're not collectively mature enough to form these large inclusive societies if we really cannot successfully include everyone?
You can call them outliers, but they're still miserable outliers who work their hardest to throw everything into chaos. Why do we insist such people participate against their will in this system of government? Or as Thanatos might say "Why don't we just let the South Secede already?" It feels like a system of enforced misery. People who might want to try something different and just live amongst themselves are effectively given the choice to join the Amish or participate in mainstream capitalist government/society. Why can't we work to enable other options? Because at least currently, it just seems like the smartest thing to do really is going to be to give these people an actual "out" rather than risk them trying to start their own revolution and burn down America (Becuz gays/abortion/religion abloo bloo bloo! Boogah! ;p) Otherwise how can we even begin to claim ourselves as being the ethical ones in this situation?
Sure we can say that we aren't homophobic, xenophobic, or generally racist, but by claiming we must force them to respect our morality we're still falling into the trap of holding a double standard. That's exactly what we accuse them of doing, so if we're going to claim to be above it, the first step has got to be to find a way to allow "us" and "them" to live side-by-side in a way that we won't be at each other's throats over who's "right." Then perhaps we can demonstrate the superior results our method achieves, and if the South still wants to be racist? No federal-soup-block-grant-for-you! ;p
TL;DR: Is it really ethical to create a vast, inclusive society that uses resource-based coercion in the form of economics if there is not a clearly unanimous consent among the governed as to the common morality that its laws are based upon?
I think a better question is why did you edit my post before quoting and ignore the other posts I've made which create the argument which my entire post is continuing?