And when can we prosecute them if they obey the law?
IF the laws are morally just, then people will feel morally obligated and to wish to obey it.
IF someone brings the law they shall be punish, if someone obeys the law, should they not be awarded? And should they not take an oath that they will obey or sort?
How do you know when the law is obeyed and when is it not? In order to award someone?
From a Confucian perspective, the idea of Law becomes a careful balancing act. While the demands of society as expressed through law and ritualistic morals (for now, let’s equate rite with law – if we get into this we can work on seperating them). However, that is only one leg of the stool.
So, let’s suppose someone breaks a law. It becomes important to examine why they broke the law. If it is OK, in our eyes, for Valjean to steal bread for his family why is it wrong, as Fat Tony argues, to steal cigarettes and re-sell them at a reasonable price to feed his family?
Enter humanity and righteousness. Now, our humanity tells us that a starving man stealing is OK. Why? Because we see the poor conditions that such a man lives in and generally go on to blame the system that he stole from for placing him in such a plight. He seems a good man who is doing what he has to do.
But are his actions righteous? Is he truly fighting against an unfair system or is he merely trying to work the system to his advantage? Is he able to work, but chooses not to because he is so adept at stealing bread? Has he turned his business from merely temporarily providing for his family into an enterprise whereby he can permenantly provide for his family through illegal actions? And what about the lawgivers? Are they culpable in his situation – what have they done to prevent him from entering such a lowly position?
Within the framework of law the idea of ‘one size fits all’ is a terrible one. That is why we have judges and other arbitrators, because while a law might seem like a good idea some, or even most, of the time no system exists that is a good idea all of the time. We must therefore carefully examine each individual aspect from as many angles as possible to fully elucidate the situation and how best to rectify it.
laws are expectations. the bare minimal expectations. such as:
do not steal
do not murder
do not drink and drive
do not kick babies
do not drug, maim, kill, remove the face from a person and wear it like a mask
you know, the basics.
rewarding someone for not killing in a society of 200,000 million people becomes quite expensive. “congratulations, my dear fellow, we didn’t notice you pushing any old nannies into the street this year. have a graham cracker. but you did kick that baby. tsk tsk tsk. no donut for you.”
rewards should come from action that is above and beyond the norm. the norm being that you are not a thief or murderer. therefore if you SAVE a few lives. or recover thousands of stolen merchandise, i say have a hershey’s kiss on me.
another problem with the idea of a “reward” system instead of just a punishment system. you would have to set two limits to each law. a lower limit in which you get punished. say for instance, when you drop kick a small infant across the street. and then an upper limit. here you would get a reward for maybe placing a certain amount of abused orphans with good families (or better yet, when you make it through the goal posts?).
interesting concept though. economics 101 says that people respond to incentives. provide more POSITIVE incentives for people to follow the law. currently we only really offer negative ones (i.e. jail time, death penalty, kick in the nuts, etc).
economics 1 confucious perspective 0 