Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
And I'm pretty sure you couldn't provide documentation of how smoothly society would run without laws or law enforcement agencies.
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This is the kind of thing you've been doing throughout this entire discussion: putting utterly ridiculous words in someone's mouth, and then demolishing the straw man you've created.
Nobody has said anything about a society without laws or law enforcement agencies. Nobody. None.
Nor is the existence of either one the proof you say it is of your claim that the majority of people are dishonest.
Let's take this to a simpler, less dramatic level: A book club. A nice, friendly, cozy group of people ... six of them, let's say ... who get together once a week to talk about their chosen book. Five out of those six people -- Al, Betty, Carl, Diane, and Ed -- are careful to never take more than their allotted share of time when their turn comes to talk. The sixth one, Fran, just keeps talking and talking and talking and talking. To keep things fair, the group makes a rule that you get five minutes to talk, which Al will time, and then it's the next person's turn. So our cozy book club now has a law (five minute presentations) and a law enforcement agency (Al and his watch). The fact that the club made a rule to limit people's turns, and appointed one member to enforce it, doesn't mean that the
majority of members were talking too long; just that at least one person (exactly one person, in this case, namely Fran) was doing so.
Likewise, the existence of laws and agencies to enforce them gives no evidence as to whether 1%, 50%, or 99% of people are dishonest. If there is even one solitary crook in a town of a thousand people, you need someone to stop him. It just shows that more than 0% of people are dishonest. And we already knew that.
You're dodging the question. Nobody has said that
all people are honest. Nobody has said that laws are not necessary. Nobody, going back a few pages to one of your first responses to me, has advocated anarchy. The only point you need to prove is that the majority of people are dishonest, and so far, no proof has been forthcoming.