In one of my recent posts, I commented on a similar example of the "irony" of inter-dependence. The "Harm Principle" can also be compared to Jesus' "Golden Rule", and the "Hypocratic Oath". The topic of my piece was the global energy conundrum. All nations depend on foreign oil to some extent, to the end that the U.S. and one of our main trade partners, and health care providers is India. Ironically, our friendship with India is threatened by their dependence, and consequent allignment with our enemy, Russia, due to their dependence on Russian oil.

I guess every political philosophy has it's flaws, but I'll stick with Liberalism until anything better comes along. "First, do no harm"

Most folks build their worldview by building up from their own experiences, what happens to them personally, how they were brought up by their parents, what education they received. Eventually they come to a static point where their views consolidate around this worldview that is a summation of mostly all of their personal experiences. They are never able to move beyond that.

THIS is where you find practically all Christians, and a good number of other folk too.

Practically every action that you take can have unknown consequences, I could fart on the Canary Islands and cause a hurricane that kills 100,000 people . . . . laws are often created to protect society, but end up hurting society. It's all a moving target, humans are imperfect in the extreme, change is inevitable, and things change over time in unexpected ways. When humans try to devise ANY type of ideological foundation, it ends up backfiring on them in some way or another. It is almost amusing (if it were not so destructive) when humans get in blood-feuds over ideology. When we were kids, we learned that you could take two chickens, place them in front of each other and lift one of them up and down in a vertical motion, and they both would get pissed off and start fighting, it was inevitable, they were prisoners of their own limited scope of seeing things, and humans are the same way. That which is a "solution" for humanity in one era can be the poison for humanity in another era.

Nietzsche was right about power being a fundamental drive that motivates human behavior. He also understood how the will to power could also lead to dangerous and destructive behaviors. The destructiveness arises when humans start taking themselves to seriously, thinking that they have the perfect solution to an unsolvable, timeless problem, failing to recognize that they are just a bunch of fucking chickens, limited in their scope of thinking, and going at each other, over each others stupid ideas.

None of it is "solvable", and the only wise solution is recognizing and accepting the idea that humans will always disagree on something, and be motivated by their will to power and hampered by their own limited views . . . . and recognizing this, the only thing humans can do that really makes sense is to try to build society in a positive way through mutual respect and cooperation, even though the unforeseen results will crop up in the future . . . . . and learn to laugh at it all.

From Friedrich Nietzsche's book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra:
.
"You should first of all learn the art of earthly comfort,
you should learn to laugh, my young friends, if you are at
all determined to remain pessimists: if so, you perhaps,
as laughing ones, eventually send all metaphysical
comfortism to the devil and metaphysics first of all!
Or, to say it in the language of that Dionysian ogre,
called Zarathustra :

"Lift up your hearts, my brethren, high, higher!
And do not forget your legs! Lift up also your legs, you
good dancers and better so if you stand on your
heads!

"This crown of the laughter, this rose-wreath crown
I myself have put on this crown; I myself have
pronounced holy my laughter. No one else have I found
today strong enough for this.

"Zarathustra the dancer, Zarathustra the light one,
who beckons with his wings, one ready for flight,
beckoning unto all birds, ready and heady, a bliss
fully light-spirited one:

"Zarathustra the soothsayer, Zarathustra the sooth-
laughter, not impatient, not absolute, one who
loves leaps and side-leaps : I myself have put on this
crown!

"This crown of the laughter, this rose-wreath crown
to you my brethren do I cast this crown! Laughter
have I pronounced holy: you higher men, learn,
to laugh!"

mill was an idiot.

#;s 1 & 2 say the same thing. The job of figuring out what hurts others is that of politicians (City, County, State, or Fed Councils) who weigh effects that come to light but are not widely understood.

Well as in most arguments, if the initial premise is wrong then the rest of the argument falls apart. Your initial premise that we can't know who we harm based on our actions in an infinite World is faulty. Based on that premise we should do nothing. Of course then you would argue that possibly doing nothing would also harm something or someone. That's the problem with the initial premise. Best example? Your marriage situation. Based on your example no one should get married because there might be someone out there who is jealous. So you have now just taken marriage off the table completely. Despite the fact that it might help a poor and drowning family by having someone who can support it join the family through marriage. Of course, given the theme of this site, under your initial premise we must all believe there is a God because we can't know that there isn't one somewhere else in the infinite World. So I'll stand with Mr Mill, thank you and for morality's sake, will adopt a previous commenter's addition of adding knowingly which should go without saying. Of course there are exceptions to every rule and if I have the chance to marry Heidi Klum I don't care what man in the world is jealous because they should all be.

You mean like The Golden Rule? from practically EONS ago, in every culture?

That which is the common good for one may not be the common good for another. We see this change in situations and even ourselves as time passes by. Many of us are not aware of the changes.

Let us not be governed by interpretations of terms which were espoused well over 250 years ago.

Your opinion is noted ... flimsy though it may be.

Magic? Invisible hand?

That's the religious not the Atheist.

I say, do anything you want to do, as long as you don't harm anyone esle, that simply. Once a person joins a large centroism group , it's always us against them conflicts and some harm. I belong to bio organisms first, individualism and the optimist club, and only broken a couple of ♥. . Anything that works, if liberalism mixes science with kindness rather than pyramids financial empire with those other two other puppet parties. I'm for it.

No I do not accept the basic premise, that liberalism has abandoned the idea of the common good. Indeed I would say that the common good is central to it. What you are talking about is libertarianism, which is quite different from liberalism although related perhaps, if generally (wrongly ) regarded as always being on opposite political wings.

"I can do whatever I like as long as I do not harm somebody. " Should perhaps be qualified with the word, "knowingly" because "not knowingly harm somebody", is the best, in a world controlled by chaos and the phenomena of unforeseen consequences that we can ever hope for. Though I would perhaps take knowingly as a given, since you would hardly need a degree in philosophy to appreciate that it should be included. And in part that shows a logical fault in the argument, since you could equally also add "not knowingly harm somebody." to the statement, "work for the common good". Since the same criticism, that I may unknowingly cause more harm than good, can equally be leveled at attempts to work for the common good.

While it is also true. That if I do not attend to my own good to some degree, and try to ensure my own health and happiness. Then I may become a unhappy or broken person, who is less able to work effectively for the common good, and may even become a net burden on everyone else, due not to unavoidable misfortune which is forgivable, but to my neglect of the self, the first person I have a duty to care for.

Indeed I would say that the core value of liberalism would be. "I should be free to do the best for my own self interest, as long as I try my best ( even though I may fail, ) to add net worth to the common good at the same time."

I can well understand, that the idea that liberalism has abandoned the idea of the common good, and that it is just a synonym for libertarianism, may well be a commonality among anti-liberal propagandists. To the point even of becoming banal and unquestioned dogma. But wisdom is alway in the nuance, and the closed world of propagandists, is not a good place to go seeking it.