Complicity

You don't get it, @Hehehe. It isn't what you were talking about. It's what I and other people were, that you were responding to. I see now that you're calling things "stupid" for the sake of it, there's really no point in continuing this. You can't make others play the games you want to play, and then call any refusal to engage in your games as "dancing around the issue".

I probably shouldn't reply to every post as much as I do, but I want to lay out these bad faith (yes, I used the dreaded phrase) tactics for any other newcomers and partial readers.

You're taking things other people say, intentionally invoking Nazi Germany yourself, regardless of what other people are talking about, and then if anyone agrees or highlights Nazi Germany you shout "Trump Holocaust" to exaggerate the comparison to what's happening at the American borders to the point of ridiculousness.

Hence my refusal to answer your question, which you already know the answer to, which is a prime example of what bad faith means. You're asking me a question you already have the answer for, because you want me to give you that answer. So you can reply to that specific answer and not anything else I've typed in this thread.

None of which you've answered anyway, so you do you.

 

We both know perfectly well why you refuse to answer such a simple question. I know you know the answer to it. I know why you refuse to say it. It is because the most famous historical instance of concentration camps is the Holocaust. If you doubt this, Google the phrase and see what you get. But you cannot admit such a simple thing, because it would completely defeat your previous point. Point which was either very ignorant, or done in bad faith.

As for the rest of the stuff, unlike you, I've never deliberately politicianed my way out of a question. If you think that I have, feel free to ask again whatever you think I missed

Moderator Action: This thread was not started to talk about Nazi death camps. Persistent attempts to drag that thread onto the topic are not acceptable. What you will be missing is replying to this thread again. ~ Arakhor
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

enough to buy food (which also did not reach inflated prices because of mass export to the west). friendly reminder that Peruvian farmers literally cannot afford Quinoa anymore , what a world we live in.

 

Heres an example of the double-edged sword that Western investment can be

https://sustainablefoodtrust.org/articles/asparagus-draining-dry/

 

You do not become complicit unless you take action contributing to the bad thing. I left out nuance because I did not intend there to be any in my position. So the answer to "at what point" is "when you start doing X bad thing or taking action to help others do it".

OP suggests complicity is possible from doing nothing, which is wrong.

 

Isn't complicity also allowing something to happen in order to benefit?

I mean, in the colloquial sense

 

I hold that you don't have to benefit to have been in the wrong by doing nothing. Witnessing someone being attacked and failing to call the police I think is on the same moral footing as sitting by and not speaking up to representatives to voice opposition when the government begins rounding people up.

 

Absolutely. I'm just distinguishing between moral responsibility and complicity

 

I guess I'm not seeing a strong distinction between the two but that's probably on me.

 

It's just defining words. You'll note that the difference is important to some people. Knowing that they are using slightly different definitions means that you can just avoid long arguments over nothing. In many ways, I agree. If I think of complicity as doing nothing in order to benefit, that basically describes every situation. I don't save the drowning baby, because I don't want my clothes to get wet. By avoiding a negative, I benefit.

Conversely, if the cops falsely arrest my competitor when I know that there's exculpatory evidence, my silence means I have an advantage in the coming competition. My silence creates a future positive.

It Ain't Easy!

 

Yes exactly! That's sort of an underlying theme of the whole thread and why I take umbrage when someone collapses the whole idea as either being silly (without making a case that is so) or tries to derail the conversation by pointing out that we're not gassing Hispanics yet so there is no problem.

 

Consider that in reality "doing nothing" is actually impossible so perhaps try a different argumentum ad absurdum

 

was it really a double edged sword in post-war Japan, Germany or Korea though? seems like the sword is a lot sharper on one side than it is on another

 

Silence is complicity. Inaction is complicity.

 

Doing nothing is impossible?
It is not an absurd choice, especially for those who fear doing something.

You're either with us, or against us.
-George W. Bush

 

Doing nothing is obviously impossible, in any logical sense. It would be interesting to see the spectrum of where people put "the nothing" as being sufficiently removed from the atrocity such that they are not indirectly involved any longer.

I tend to be more cognizant of direct harms. Like, I can make a strong case that people should drastically reduce their meat consumption. With regards to complicity, I would say that people are much more complicit for future human suffering on that front, and so definitely have moral responsibility.

But if I had a spare $15, and was deciding whether to donate it to a human rights organization down south or to alzheimer's research, I just don't know. We often feel more responsibility to stop a moral harm than to prevent natural suffering. We will spend a hundred times more to stop a murder than we will to prevent a fatal car accident

 

Most dictionaries I look up require some form of action to be taken in order to be complicit.

Words have meaning.

In the English language, the quoted statement is objectively wrong.

"Doing nothing" is literally possible after someone is dead, and the dead are certainly not "complicit" regarding this topic.

There is implication in context. In this case "doing nothing that obviously supports/can be linked to supporting the action in question" should work. Or maybe we need to get more technical than even that, if you want to be a stickler about it.

Regardless, "silence is complicity" is the logical equivalent to claiming "chess pieces are fish".

The whole idea IS silly. You're asking a wrong question, which is why we're getting into arguments over definitions in the first place.

You don't need to make comparisons to Nazi camps or to fabricate blame in order to have a discussion about what policies should be set for handling US borders and how they should be enforced. It doesn't appear the broad strategy of "liken people to Nazis and attempt to shame them" has much of a track record of success in the USA, and there's no reason to anticipate differently regarding this particular piece of policy.

You want an example of complicity? Put something like "all immigrants are initially placed in detainment facilities" on a ballot, then you actually have an action that would meet the standards of the word "complicit". Unfortunately, ballots I've seen are trash and tend to obscure their meaning/implications rather than stating what will actually happen as a result of the vote. That's when they're not busy doing idiot crap like "let's package immigration reform with more civil asset forfeiture" or some similarly unrelated crap. My state actually had a different, more egregious example than that on its ballot in the last election.