Legal life:Agreed moral basis
Legal system as an agreed moral basis The value-added process, the exchange of goods, the consumption are events that take place between people. The economic exchange at the moment of the transition of money and goods ideally takes place when this results in an advantage for all participants. However, the egoisms that are at work lead to the behaviour of wanting to achieve one's own advantages in each case. Thus it comes to the attempt in all areas to carry out the exchange of goods, money and possessions for the benefit of one side and disadvantage of the other. So there is a leeway between a mutual balance of advantages and disadvantages or a complete imbalance, up to deliberate theft, fraud and corruption. This behaviour, which corresponds to the human being, occurs naturally in the most different kinds. Whether deliberate fraud, forced deprivation of property, monopoly-like offer, taxation without consideration, waste of tax money, giving away social benefits to unauthorized strangers, all conceivable variations come into play. Thus, a legal system has been established by the respective community (state or community of states), according to the respective moral understanding, which strives to direct human economic life into generally accepted channels. "Anyone who sees through such a fact of life without bias will understand that it must find its expression in the institutions of a healthy social organism. As long as goods are exchanged for goods in economic life, the value of these goods remains independent of the legal relationship between persons and groups of persons. As soon as goods are exchanged for rights, the legal relationship itself is affected. ... but it is a matter of the fact that by exchanging the right with the goods the right itself is turned into a good when the right arises within economic life. This is prevented only by the fact that in the social organism there exist, on the one hand, institutions which aim only to bring about the circulation of goods in the most expedient manner; and on the other hand, those which regulate the rights of the producing, trading and consuming persons living in the exchange of goods", (B179, "II. The Realistic Attempts to Find Solutions to Social Questions and Necessities Required by Life"). An economic life without fraternity is not viable, but at present we have an economic life that is fraternal to very fraternal, depending on the region of the world, culture, type of person or state. Corruption, the law of the strongest or cultures of injustice make people experience monstrous fraternities in trade, goods and money exchange. Goods are transformed into right, but this right can be taken not only by means of goods, but also by power or force, this plays into it again and again, for example a state wants raw materials, to get them it uses its military power to invade another state, and to acquire the right to its raw materials (e.g. invasion of the USA on Iraq). Not the brotherly welfare of the fellow human being, but only the own advantage counts then. For every morally or morally sensitive person these are serious experiences of injustice. It is the task of economic life to recognize from its inner being the essential importance of brotherhood. And it is the task of legal life to work for its observance. "If I damage or promote my fellow man by selling a commodity, this belongs to the same area of social life as damage or promotion by an activity or omission which is not directly expressed in an exchange of goods. (B179, "II. The Realistic Attempts to Find Solutions to Social Questions and Necessities Required by Life"). And it is the beautiful task of spiritual life to carry the impulses of morality, morals and virtue into the social organism. A new system of justice must develop from the spiritual-moral impulses and practical experience, so that fraternity in economic life will increasingly supplant ruthlessness, deceit, overreaching or deception. Then it will be possible to see how an increasingly fraternal economic life will also be an increasingly healthy economic life. Without moral, virtuous people and without a legal system, an economic system based on the division of labour and money exchange is not possible.
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