Page 73 - Demo

“You hold yourself against the ills inflicted upon others, but use my own argument to justify your holding of me.” I stated.
“How else to get you to do something than an argument you already hold? And there is a difference. A large one. I have a feeling we’ll get to it.”
“If... the Cooperative is a perversion, an imposition on the relationships we share between each other, then... the laws are similarly perverted. But they are not making decisions, they are means that we translate the interactions between people into justice.” (Aristotle
323BCE, 1281a11)
“The laws are snakes. They writhe and bite with the force of a thousand rifles. (Kant 1795, 118) They have been cast onto us to do the job of creating justice and mediating our interactions. They have been used to shirk the duty their masters entrusted to themselves, and become all that justice is.”
“If the laws,” I began, “are impositions upon us to create justice, and their existence does harm, then what should we hold ourselves to, if not the good of the GalCop and its people?” I wondered if this man found any justice, any good in this universe.
“I intend to do good. To encourage people to learn and provide themselves with means to do good to others and in doing so to themselves. It is that oldest of rules, do unto others what you would wish upon yourself. Act in such a way that your actions would become universal.” (Kant 1795, 122)
“The GalCop accedes to this.”
“You, Saul, would assume as such. You are a class A citizen, after all. You do not know of your lessers, only when they infringe upon the order that has been imposed upon them, that you interpret, and I enforced. The Cooperative is built out of a fundamental lie, and by people who no longer perform their tasks but delegated it to machines. The Galactic Cooperative, as you know it, is a husk of oppression, deluding the good as happiness that is itself false. (Alfarabi 943,