In reply to:
While you may not feel killing another person is wrong, how and the world are you going to compel another person who believes differently not to do it without the use of physical force? You can’t appeal to moral virtue, as this other individual simply has a different moral code from you. I merely brought up religion as the one construct I see that enables us to non-forcibly (in the physical sense) place our moral codes onto others. To be sure, I am very uncomfortable discussing religion is this light, as it seems to denigrate the whole faith thing into a means of non-physical control. However, pragmatically it seems to me that it is the only alternative to physical restraining those who have different morals than “society”.
The problem, as I see it, is simply that the moral code that binds society together and makes it a society rather than just a bunch of individuals is not taught well enough. Maybe enforcement is part of that problem, but
something has taken the large majority of us and made us decide internally that we don't want to steal, lie, torture and kill.
Society is altruism. Society is the principle that we work better as a team rather than as a diaspora of individuals. The reason society ultimately works is because each member decides to be a part of it and work together. Giving everyone the right to do whatever they want is Anarchy, and there is good reason why this always seems to be portrayed in the same light as lawlessness and mistrust.
In a perfect world everyone would simply move around to fit into the social group that best suited them. See Neal Stephenson's book
The Diamond Age for an excellent example of this. Each group ultimately has penalties and punishments for members who don't conform, and those penalties are naturally harsher when you move into groups that require a smaller degree of personal responsibility. Bud, for example, is allowed to get a skull gun and do what he likes with it, until he actually gets caught. Hackworth, on the other hand, internally rejects any desire for such power over his fellows; but Hackworth is an inventor and a Neo-Victorian and thus actually commands far greater power over people. It is Hackworth's choice to exercise restraint in this that defines his role in society.
My personal conviction is that we now have a society where morals and social requirements are barely taught at all formally. We've devolved from the old school system that taught three languages, a variety of humanities and sciences, and enforced a strict discipline - and thus produced people who could force themselves to do great things - to not forcing any student to do anything if they don't want to and therefore giving them no determination and drive at all. They just hang around hoping it will all be handed to them on a platter and complain when it isn't.
Sorry, boys and girls, but what no-one's taught you is that this society works on the idea that you actually have to work to have stuff. Stuff is the reward for doing work. We have this legal system to protect that because we recognise that it often appears easier to steal the stuff rather than work for it. We can't send you off to your own land where no-one has to do any work and everyone starves, because we don't have a place like that, so we have to do the next best thing and shut you away from the rest of society for a while.
Just on a side thought, just imagine if you fitted the prisons out with exercise bikes that put the power they generated back into the grid? Would you get any power put back into the grid? Maybe they could pay their way by generating electricity? I mean, in centuries gone by they used to have giant treadmills or endless staircases or pedals that would push paddles through pits of sand - all things that did nothing but made the prisoners work. These days about the hardest thing they do is to put earpads back on airline headsets. Make 'em work, I say! That way even if you're put in prison unfairly you can still do your work with a good conscience.
I tried to be good and expound my moral theories but I got distracted.
Have fun,
Paul
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