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Because, and you may not know this, some people have standards they live by. They like "nice things". And there's large groups of them that feel this way and want to ensure they don't attract an antisocial person that has different values.

I feel like people have this really funny idea that everyone should accept them and respect them for exactly who they are and that people should respect whatever it is they want to do. This isn't true at all. Your mom and dad may, but no one else does even if we say we do.

We specifically construct social systems like private clubs, HOAs, etc to keep people out because we don't want to associate with people like them. A great thing about liberty is it allows us to freely associate which means groups of people can construct social gates which keep other people out that can't or won't meet a standard.



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I mean, I guess what I was trying to ask is do people not know or feel that it is wrong to not just leave other people alone if they aren't, themselves, bothering anybody?

Why do people reject that? It's literally what freedom and liberty is, and it is the exact opposite of authority and oppression.


Because we, as a society, allow people to do things that we don't like. We aren't usually very good at it, but when you consider that it affords people the luxuries of doing things that others might not approve of, like having a relationship or marriage with a member of the same sex, or creating video games with unpopular themes, or creating rap music, or burning the American flag, etc.

If we only allowed people to do the things that everyone approved of, we wouldn't actually allow people to do very much at all. Freedom, art, society, and speech would all suffer.


I guess it is just hard for some people to not force their particular values on other people

I don't really understand this mindset. Are we supposed to treat people like there's absolutely no right or wrong way to live? How are we supposed to have a stable society when there are no standards by which to live by or strive for? Why shouldn't we discriminate against bad behavior and provide positive feedback for good behavior?

These people exclude themselves by not participating in a healthy and well structured society. If your main problem in life is you can't conform to social norms, perhaps you shouldn't be telling others to conform.

It should be stated. Not everyone shares in the same values as everyone else. There are also those who are unable to understand the social norms of others.

Plus unwritten rules can be subverted and misused at least as much as written ones.

Humans are always gonna do human things.


Another case of “why we can’t have nice things”. In moderation things work. People start abusing liberties and they have to be taken away cuz people forget how to behave.

because we should, by default, let consenting adults do what they want together

Why? This strikes me as a very shallow moral principle. As 'presscast notes it completely misses the point of the nature of a life well-lived.

Ironically, in practice it goes against human nature. Atomized society of people passing each other indifferently is certainly freer in some sense but it's also lonely and depressing for many of its members. It goes directly against our most basic needs for social belonging.


I agree and its disheartening to see the amount of responses in opposition. There is a massive number of comments on this post compared to most social topics, or ANY topic for that matter, and a lot of them are arguing it's wrong or bad to have limits on such behavior. I would suspect many of those arguments are defensive in origin and disingenuous. But for those who aren't personally involved in those behaviors, who opposed limits and rules, I don't know how they imagine a total free for all could work. We need government, structure, rules for society to exist. Otherwise as has been shown when limits are removed, the worst people and of people will ruin it for everyone else. If you could count on people NOT to be terrible it would make all of this a lot easier. You cannot.

Because most people equate conformity with morality. If you're Not Like Us you are the hated them.

Just because some people like to do it doesn't make it ok. Git good at being in the society.

Many social norms are arbitrary. People don't do things because you're not supposed to do things and nobody else does (or at least admits doing).

The essential point is that it's a grey area. We won't accept people behaving just any way at all but also we want to maximize people's freedom.

As much as people want to apply a hard rule, there is no simple answer to how to draw that line.


Because unfortunately too many people think that if they're not formally told to be a decent human being, they don't have to be a decent human being.

Sure. There are people like the author, who respect the autonomy of other people and believe that if there are two people who come to a mutually agreeable arrangement on the exchange of goods and services that’s ok. Then there are some other people who have an aesthetic revulsion for people who violate social scripts. So if you hire a maid, secretary, therapist or other kind of service staff that’s ok, but if you do something that doesn’t follow a standard script these people feel a sense of revulsion.

Because you're treatment people differently based on something outside of their control. Just because you can justify why you'd want to act that way, in no way makes it any less wrong.

No, it's actually not, because people have different moral foundations, and many people value loyalty/authority/sanctity over care/fairness. It doesn't mean they don't care about care/fairness, it just means they don't make it their moral priority.

If you refuse to engage with these people and view them all as sub-human there's no path forward for society.


Something that's always confused me about the world and people as a whole. Why are so many people hell bent on implementing some "moral standard" that everyone needs to follow? Honestly?

There's this bizarre projection of the individual and his/her motivations onto every living being that fails to make any logical sense.

Is there any psychological premise for why we feel the need to dictate the behavior of others such that they perfectly mirror how we behave (or in many cases, wish to)?

There appears to be a tipping point where someone agrees with a certain set of values and as opposed to stopping at enforcing those values on themselves (reasonable), they go absolutely nuts trying to push it onto everyone else.

A sort of: how dare you.


Because you're using your biases against people who think differently than you to justify immoral behavior.

Edit: You don't need to tolerate bad behavior, but it goes both ways: You can't justify bad behavior in the name of policing other peoples' dumb actions.

Or: Two wrongs don't make a right.

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