Yes, because being nice to people is something which is generally seen as good, especially by lefties. But there are lots of other things which some or more people see as being good, and it's possible to have a strong moral code in which being nice to people, per se, doesn't really feature very strongly.
Selfishness is really a question of how strongly you rate your own wellbeing compared with that of other people - but that's not all there is to morality. Lefty liberals happen to rate observable individual welfare very highly as a moral good, which makes selfishness bad. A committed free marketeer believes that everyone will benefit if we all stop doing selfless things just because they are of local benefit to some particular group we feel sorry for.
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timeasmymeasure
Re:
Date: 2004-02-12 06:50 am (UTC)Yes, because being nice to people is something which is generally seen as good, especially by lefties. But there are lots of other things which some or more people see as being good, and it's possible to have a strong moral code in which being nice to people, per se, doesn't really feature very strongly.
Selfishness is really a question of how strongly you rate your own wellbeing compared with that of other people - but that's not all there is to morality. Lefty liberals happen to rate observable individual welfare very highly as a moral good, which makes selfishness bad. A committed free marketeer believes that everyone will benefit if we all stop doing selfless things just because they are of local benefit to some particular group we feel sorry for.