the basis of morality

Yesterday I revised the main site to focus on land rent and forget the Utopian stuff about choosing your own government. Discussing it on a Georgist forum raised some interesting opinions regarding the basis of morality. In short, the other contributors believe that "equal rights" are self evident and they should form the foundation of our arguments. I disagree.

Morality is useful. Morality is a set of short-cuts and conclusions that help us make quick decisions in complex situations. For example, sharing and tolerance are moral concepts. But they are not foundation for serious thought, because they are not absolutes. They are conclusions resting on other foundations, and they only apply under familiar circumstances. There are plenty of times when any particular moral statement does not apply. If we want a deeper understanding, we need to find where these morals come from.

So morality is like the laws of physics. Statements like "heat rises" and "gravity pulls downwards" are useful short-cuts, ideal for everyday use. But if we want a deeper understanding we need to take a cold, critical look at why and how and when.

Georgists, like Christians or anyone else with a moral agenda, are trying to persuade people who hold a different moral system. They are trying to persuade powerful elites who control armies and deal in realpolitik. Simply stating that your morals are right will not work. As long as Georgists base their arguments on ideas that others reject as impractical, they will remain in an intellectual ghetto and never persuade the powerful.

We need to understand the deeper causes if we are to find common ground. In the case of property ownership, the common ground is that an ethical system can be derived from a consideration of cold hard power and survival. It does not rely on feel-good notions of duty and sharing, it relies on evolutionary survival of the fittest, because the fittest need to cooperate. That is something that everyone can understand.