Transcript The State & You: Social Policy Debates

Workshop 7
The State & You: Social Policy
Debates
Social Policy Debates
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State enacting policy against people
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State-Individual Interaction
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Rights vs. Freedoms
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Social Contract
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Balance of Harms
Caveats
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Debater World vs. Real World
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Static Interpretations
– Semester 2: “Destroying Debating Myths”
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“Western Liberal Democracies” Only
The Individual
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The individual before the State
– The caveman analogy
– Do you have a right not to be eaten by a lion in
the jungle?
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WHY?
Recourse
Collective security & onwards
– Maslow’s hierarchy of needs
– Evolution of human desire
What do humans need to
prosper?
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Life
Bodily Integrity
Ability to obtain & maintain food,
shelter etc. (ownership of property)
Self-Determination
Freedom of thought
Ability to better oneself (education &
aspiration)
Why collectivise?
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Strength in numbers
Establishment of rules
– Protection from reciprocal respect
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Diversification
Progress through co-operation
Social progress
– “Society” = wider gene pool = healthier species
– Protection of beliefs and practices
The State
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Structure of collective will
Exists to prolong & improve the
human race
The State represents us
– Our beliefs & values
– Our autonomy
Basic Theory of StateIndividual Interaction
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Individuals cede part of their
autonomy & freedom to the State
In exchange, the State protects them
and their way of life and supplies them
with structures needed to create best
possible for them
SOCIAL CONTRACT
Social Contract
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State’s legitimacy derives from individuals “buying
into it”
The State endows you with “rights” (or more
exactly, recognises those rights to exist) that it has
a duty to protect
In exchange, you allow yourself to be subservient
to the rules and values of the State (pay taxes,
don’t kill people etc.)
“But I Never Signed the Social Contract!”
– Tacit Acceptance
– Operating within the organs & structures (strikes in Nepal)
– The State needs you as much as you need it
Types of States
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Autocracies & Dictatorships
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Theocracies
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Western Liberal Democracies
The “Western Liberal
Democracy” as a State
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Nature of the Social Contract
– Rights are fundamental & hierarchical
– Freedom outside of those rights
– Self-determination
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Why is freedom so highly valued?
– Subjectivity of morality
– Democratic nature
– Social evolution
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Democratic control
– The State is the people
– Mandates
Examples of
Rights/Freedoms
Interaction
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Smoking
– Individual autonomy
– Informed choice
– Where the line is drawn: Smoking ban
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Religious freedoms
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Thought vs. action
Inciting hatred
Sikhs on planes
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Abortion
– Hierarchical rights
– Self-determination & self-control
Rights Hierarchy
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Some more important than others
– Function of rights
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Why the right to life is the most important
one
– Facilitative right
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Fundamental Rights vs. Contextual Rights
– From where do our rights derive?
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Waiving rights
The idea of societal harm
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Drugs
– Crime
– Addiction & free choice
– Selling oneself into slavery (State’s duty
to protect future rights)
– The Dutch model (regulation)
Balance of Harms
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Utilitarianism
Policy for the greater good
– Deriving freedom from a balance of
harms perspective
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“Doing the moral calculus”
Social Policy Debates
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What is the policy?
Who does it effect? (Stakeholders)
What are their rights in this situation?
Does this interfere with a right or simply a
freedom?
Is there a harm to wider society?
EXAMPLE: “Legalising Ecstasy” point in
“UCD Notes” handout