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Comment by pear01 | Hacker News Reader

Ah yes, human history is full of societies that never legislated morality. They always trusted in the individual. After all we all remember the nature of God's law and the ten commandments - Thou shalt follow your conscience.

Humanity is a largely defined by our exercise of legislating morality. For a lack of insight into history you should consult a mirror.

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I didn’t say don’t legislate, I said it is not enough. The responsibility ultimately lies with the individual.

If I’m an academic and I want to pursue being a professor over helping a student, that’s my choice and no system will stop me. That’s why so many PhD students are endlessly screwed over by their supervisors so they can fuel their career.

Individual morality is what maintains institutions and the west has replaced that culture with selfish neoliberalism and now it is screwed.

This doesn't make any sense. Is it individual or up to the culture? You have a culture but it ultimately lies with the individual? So what was this culture before? How can the ultimate responsibility ever be displaced by any culture if it's up to the individual ultimately? Is your claim neoliberalism single handedly altered the nature of morality? You don't think something like students getting screwed can see improvements if legislated? Selfishness was invented within the last 100 years?

Sorry, but imo your argument is just bad. It's just griping about neoliberalism dressed up as some argument whose terms wouldn't even pass a type checker level of logical validation. And it's also boring. Neoliberalism is so easy to dunk on these days and yet you couldn't even manage to do it convincingly.

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