link to original reddit post by /u/ihaphleas
TL;DR Disregarding the physical, we owe each other only authenticity.
These are some ramblings in the area of ethics. I come from a very Rothbardian "Ethics of Liberty" point of view (in fact, I think there is a major flaw in Argumentation Ethics), but I want to consider the area of life that Rothbard basically doesn't consider in his work (for good reason).
I have generally felt that Rothbard makes a good case for his ethics regarding the physical --- and that "morals" (the non-physical) can be of various forms for different societies or people and still work.
However, I was watching The Good Place and there is an off-hand comment about an immortal being not being able to conceive of human ethics because they face no consequences. This struck me as very wrong. On the contrary, the suffering of a mortal being is, in some sense, limited, while the suffering of an immortal one may be infinite.
This got me to thinking about "non-human comparative ethics" --- that is, what the ethics of beings similar to humans in some ways, but dissimilar in other ways might be and how these ethics would relate to ours. I haven't made a thorough search yet, but it seems that science fiction is the only place I've seen this hinted at ... beyond texts examining the "goodness" of God and whether his "goodness" is the same as ours.
Eventually, I arrived at a very simple model and perhaps a few conclusions.
The first conclusion is that ethics seems to have no meaning outside of scarcity. That is, we only apply ethics to scarce goods. We don't talk about the ethics of air, for example (unless clean air has become scarce via pollution).
Since I wanted to think about the ethics of interpersonal relations and the sentiments of beings, I stripped my model beings of any physical needs or existence. Imagine beings which can perhaps experience the physical world in some sense: they can see a sunset, perhaps. But they don't need to eat. They can perhaps even occupy the same point in time and space --- so space isn't scarce to them either.
What *is* scarce to them is themselves (they can only be in one place) and, at least to some extent, time. These beings cannot be caged or made to suffer physically in any way ... but they do have sentiments. You can think of this as a model for people who have all of their physical needs met.
What do these beings owe each other? All they really have is themselves, their time, their thoughts and their sentiments.
First, we should note that I don't think they owe each other any interaction at all ... but there is little else they can actually do.
Let's examine an interaction between two of them. An interaction can be positive for both, negative for both, or positive for one and negative for the other. So, they can have negative or positive sentiments, but we will avoid comparing them between beings (though each being could make it's own subjective comparison ... and we certainly won't be applying arithmetic to these).
We will ignore those beings who *wish* to cause negative sentiments in another as simply evil. (Of course, this assumes free will .... without which we couldn't discuss ethics anyway.)
Then, it seems that these beings should seek interactions in which both parties have positive sentiments.
Since we are ignoring the case of deliberately causing negative sentiment, let's look at the other case. Where one helps to produce a positive sentiment in the other, but the first has a negative sentiment.
What should this being do? We cannot objectively compare the positive sentiment of the one with the negative sentiment of the other, and if this being sticks to this rule, they can only say that it was a negative interaction for them. This negative sentiment isn't counterbalanced by the positive sentiment of the other. This indicates that they should stop this kind of interaction with this other being.
Suppose they don't stop, out of "niceness." These beings exist in time, but they are undying. So this interaction may occur over and over again --- always producing a negative sentiment for the being.
Eventually, their "niceness" may break. This may produce a "huge" negative sentiment in the other --- who has been lied to all along.
It seems then, that what these beings owe each other, and themselves, is authenticity. Having those interactions which are positive for them.
This needs to be made sharper and I need to look at "externalities" or third parties ... but maybe you guys have some comments that could help with that.