Evil Philosophy

Ever since the inception of human inquiry, there has been no short supply of radicals and lunatics attempting to pass off their whim-begotten absurdities as truth and profound insight. There are relatively few philosophers however, who could have been considered not just insane, but genuinely wicked. Among them, I would include both the political philosopher Karl Marx and Immanuel Kant. While Marx’s atrocious political philosophy has already been addressed in a previous post, his evil cannot be overstated. Any historical instance in which Marx’s political philosophy was put into practice resulted in catastrophe and woe. Because all individuals share a natural tendency towards self-interest, communism, as envisioned by Marx is a physical and epistemological impossibility.

However poisonous Marx’s philosophy, it pales in comparison to the heinous vomit spewed forth by the likes of Immanuel Kant. Arguably, Kant was the most despicable figure in all of human history; his philosophy was shot through with a twisted, spiteful hatred and his heart was an aggregate of rotten flesh upon which maggots gnawed and in which evil festered. A consideration of the way Kant lived would stand testament to his hatred of mankind and of life in general. He never left the town in which he was born (modern-day Kalingrad, Russia), and lived a dreadfully complacent lifestyle—following the same rigid schedule every day until he finally died in an advanced state of dementia at the age of 79. Having never truly experienced anything to warrant the slightest of interest, his writings betray the convoluted thoughts of a mind corroded by solitude and a bitter intensity of spite for his fellow man.

In his book Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant defined his quintessential  theory called The Categorical Imperative. The theory conjectures that an action is only considered moral if it could be set as a universal law for all humanity to follow. According to Kant, the consequences of an action are irrelevant; it is only the actor’s intention that determines an act’s ethical validity, not its outcome. Because all human beings act in respect to independent moral maxims (that which an individual holds as his own moral values), he believed that it is immoral to use another human being as a means to our own ends. To anyone with a modicum of intellect, the glaring lunacy of the categorical imperative should be self-evident.

Just in case it is not, consider the following thought-experiment. You are teleported back in time to 1970’s Illinois and the infamous serial killer John Wayne Gacy is standing right in front of you. You have a gun in your hand. Given a priori knowledge of the depraved crimes he will commit, it would seem like a justifiable act to kill Gacy and thus prevent his future murders from taking place. However, if you were to apply Kant’s Categorical Imperative, killing Gacy, Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot, Justin Bieber, or any other psychopathic monster would be wrong only because the act of murder could not be safely set as a universal law for all human beings to follow. Because killing John Wayne Gacy would be using him as a means to an end, Kant would have rather let him pursue his killing spree. The sheer lunacy of this logic should be obvious.

An adherence to the categorical imperative as a way of life would lead to the corrosion of individuality. Kant’s philosophy envisions a world in which all men are enslaved to one another—nobody would ever rise above a state of blind, castrated complacency in fear of using another human as a means rather than an end. Immanuel Kant’s philosophy epitomizes human stagnation in a moral sense, while Marx’s epitomized it in an economic sense. Both were vile and despicable and would best be disregarded altogether from the realm of legitimate philosophical discourse. 

Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)

What else can really be said?

On December 15, 2011, at the Age of 62, Hitchens lost his battle with oesophageal cancer. His contribution to academia and philosophy cannot be expressed enough. He was an inspiration to me as well as to many others; his writings will forever be immortalized as monuments to a great mind for as long as mankind is willing to think. The world has lost a truly valuable human being who will neither be equalled nor replaced. Thank you Mr. Hitchens, you will be missed.

Rest in Peace

The Ethics of Music Piracy

With the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), there has arisen much debate concerning the ethical implications of downloading music for free. Contrary to what record labels and some conceited artists would claim, filesharing sites like Mediafire and ThePirateBay are not in fact unethical. This is because there exists no finite amount of music files. It would be illogical for any company to expect customers to pay for an item of which there is an infinite supply.

Consider if I were to break into the Roadrunner distribution warehouse and steal a crate of a thousand Nickelback CDs (not that I would want to). This would indeed be stealing, and thus immoral. Because I am taking the CDs, I am in effect eliminating potential profit that would have been made by selling them. However, if I were to download a Nickelback album, (again, not that I would ever want to) I am not stealing any potential profit from Roadrunner because there are an indefinite number of digital Nickelback albums floating about in cyberspace and cannot be profited upon. The cost of producing an online file is zero dollars so downloading an album does not incur any financial loss to Roadrunner Records. Record labels are not satisfying any demand by selling overpriced plastic discs to those individuals who only seek to acquire the digital files therein. Likewise, websites like iTunes must believe their costumers to be imbeciles in order to pay money for something that is readily available for free. It is unfortunate that the US government is trying to shut down or castrate sites like Mediafire.com and ThePirateBay. These sites are not immoral because they are satisfying an economic demand more efficiently than iTunes or your record store do. 

It no longer makes sense to expect consumers to spend money on something of which there is an infinite supply. Just like a business would be unsuccessful in its attempt to get consumers to pay money in order to breathe oxygen, it would be just as unsuccessful in selling movie or music files. With the age of the internet, music has ceased to be considered a finite commodity like Televisions or Computers. Thus, The SOPA does nothing but attempt to enforce archaic and imbecilic ideologies. The fact that record labels are losing money is a result of their own flawed business model.

Unemployment and Minimum Wage

One contributor to large-scale unemployment in urban areas is the minimum wage law. Although it may seem like a benign protocol implemented for the sake of securing worker’s wages, it has a detrimental impact on employment rates. This law removes any incentive on the part of business to hire individuals who cannot justify the payment of a minimum wage. Sadly, in many areas throughout North America, this is the case. Assuming that someone’s physical labour is only worth a fraction of what the government demands that employers must pay them, a business would be employing this individual on a financial deficit.  Many unemployed persons cannot, despite their best efforts, find adequate employment because the skills they posses (or lack thereof) do not justify the payment of a minimum wage.

Consider the hypothetical case of some downtrodden denizen living in the inner city of Detroit. This person has never finished high school, is incapable of doing simple arithmetic, and possesses no employment experience at any legitimate establishment. Undoubtedly, this individual will have quite a challenging time finding employment because he possesses no skills for which to justify a minimum wage. Assuming that his service at a fast food restaurant or a gas station may only justify a wage of say, five dollars an hour, the minimum wage law prevents him from receiving this due payment, and subsequently from attaining a job. This is the case of many people across America who find themselves without a job; their labour is not worth the minimum wage, and businesses have no incentive to hire these people. A wage of five dollars an hour may seem dismal to some, but it is a more desirable alternative than living in a box beneath an overpass.

Some would argue that if the minimum wage were abolished tomorrow, then companies would start paying their employees at dirt-cheap rates. This however is an exaggerated fallacy. Because the work force is competitive, an employer who pays higher wages would have more potential employees seeking to work for them, and would thus be more successful. You, as a worker would have more incentive to provide your labour to a company that pays you better. Nobody with a considerable education would prefer to work for dirt-cheap if another business offered them higher wages.  This is just yet another instance in which the free market prevails over government intervention.