| ... |
... |
@@ -1,0
+1,6 @@ |
|
1 |
+The standard is maximizing expected well-being. |
|
2 |
+Government legitimacy necessitate tradeoffs—that means util. Woller 97 |
|
3 |
+Gary Woller BYU Prof., “An Overview by Gary Woller”, A Forum on the Role of Environmental Ethics, June 1997, pg. 10 |
|
4 |
+“Moreover, virtually all public policies entail some redistribution of economic or political resources, such that one group's gains must come at another group's ex- pense. Consequently, public policies in a democracy must be justified to the public, and especially to those who pay the costs of those policies. Such but justification cannot simply be assumed a priori by invoking some higher-order moral principle. Appeals to a priori moral principles, such as environmental preservation, also often fail to acknowledge that public policies inevitably entail trade-offs among competing values. Thus since policymakers cannot justify inherent value conflicts to the public in any philosophical sense, and since public policies inherently imply winners and losers, the policymakers' duty is to the public interest requires them to demonstrate that the redistributive effects and value trade-offs implied by their polices are somehow to the overall advantage of society. At the same time, deontologically based ethical systems have severe practical limitations as a basis for public policy. At best, Also, a priori moral principles provide only general guidance to ethical dilemmas in public affairs and do not themselves suggest appropriate public policies, and at worst, they create a regimen of regulatory unreasonableness while failing to adequately address the problem or actually making it worse.” |
|
5 |
+No act/omission for governments—constraint based theories collapse to util. |
|
6 |
+Sunstein and Vermule 05 (Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermuele, “Is Capital Punishment Morally Required? The Relevance of Life-Life Tradeoffs,” Chicago Public Law and Legal Theory Working Paper No. 85 (March 2005), p. 17.) In our view, both the argument from causation and the argument from intention go wrong by overlooking the distinctive features of government as a moral agent. Whatever the general status of the act-omission distinction as a matter of moral philosophy,38 the distinction is least impressive when applied to government.39 The most fundamental point is that unlike individuals, governments always and necessarily face a choice between or among possible policies for regulating third parties. The distinction between acts and omissions may not be intelligible in this context, and even if it is, the distinction does not make a morally relevant difference. Most generally, government is in the business of creating permissions and prohibitions. When it explicitly or implicitly authorizes private action, it is not omitting to do anything, or refusing to act.40 Moreover, the distinction between authorized and unauthorized private action—for example, private killing—becomes obscure when the government formally forbids private action, but chooses a set of policy instruments that do not adequately or fully discourage it. |