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You can have clearly established standards without a centralized system. Case in point, common law. I'm talking about using social pressure to discourage individuals from blatantly abusing the downvote function.

you don't consider common law to be centralized?
amazing.
one person's abuse is another person's mission from god
who you gonna call?
I'm against flaggin. If you don't like something..ignore it...if you don't like what someone is posting...mute them.
flaggin violates ZAP.

So the only way something like murder is understood to be wrong is by having a centralized committee to declare it such? You can establish community standards based entirely on opinions. That's what markets do. You vote with your wallet. In this case, you vote on the behavior you disdain by being vocal about it. That creates precedent. Precedent leads people's decisions in the future.

the DEFINITION of murder is "unlawful killing"..guess who makes the laws?
and once again...what I believe should be and what IS are two different things.

If you've read many of my posts you might have come across where I speak of Dunbar's number, Rat Utopia, The Iron Law, Behavioral Sinks...or to put it another way..there are only two classes of people in the world..there are US..and there are THEM. Our laws for THEM are different for our laws for US.

sorry...facts suck don't they?
but observation supports the hypothesis..

You're completely ignoring the tradition of natural law that has existed since Sophocles, that is based in the idea of natural rights and reason. You're arguing from a utilitarian perspective, which cannot be supported by reason.

Again, societies have had law since time immemorial. They've had law well before centralized committees have decided them. Law can be reasoned from self-evident first principles without invoking any additional authority.

So, once again, we can establish standards of conduct via social pressure. Which is what I'm trying to do here and now.

I certainly am.
It's wrong..the observations do not support that hypothesis.
Reason is fiction.
facts (observations) are real.

the facts support the hypotheis that any group larger than a clan (tribe, family,..whatever) act irrationally the larger that it gets.

most if not all societies are insane..some are just more violent than others.

Reason is fiction? You realize you reasoned that out just now, right? Performative contradiction comes in and saves the day again.

I don't understand why you are so fixated on having a form of punishment when it is not needed. I cannot come into your home and steal your computer, or whatever.

You also mention

You can establish community standards based entirely on opinions.

First of all, community opinions change quite drastically, sometimes year by year. Why should anyone have to be forced to abide to what a bunch of us think is correct behaviour.

I was always taught that you do not improve a situation through punishment, but through reward. We have a reward system and people have other natural needs, such as company, friends, admiration etc. Why impose flagging or downvoting, if it opens us to the possibility of someone abusing (abusing means someone was harmed) and we being forced to get together to express our disapproval - which will still leave the harmed person feeling traumatised.

Over the last two days I've seen how that works - some people just don't care if eveyone does not approve of them, they believe they have an inalienable right to do as they wish.

I think @anarcho-andrei is talking about things like Life, Liberty, The Pursuit of Happiness which are self-evident truths.

My personal take on law is that it should be the system that endure the preservation of NAP. The person/s who face agression should have the right to use whatever force that is necessary to neutralize the First use of force as force can only be stopped by equal or greater force.

Those who violate the NAP can be punished in 3 ways.
#1: Compensating for the damage+inconveniences caused.(some PoS models use this to punish bad actors)

#2: Removal from the society.(Exile of a massive fraudster or jailing a violent psychopathic serial killer)

#3: Removal of several or all right/interactions. In Buddhist tradition, the full extent of this punishment is considered the gravest punishment. What monks do is that they cease to acknowledge the very existence of a bad actor. Everybody acts as if the punished one doesn't exist.

Less severe version would be travel restrictions like you can't get closer than ***meters to a certain place or person.

The 3 types of punishments were taken from an article I read regarding Tibetan Buddhism which explained the above 3 types of punishments as the only forms of punishment that doesn't give you bad karma.

I've talked about this a week ago at:https://steemit.com/steemit/@skeptic/the-steemit-issues-arguments-from-the-other-side-part-1-censorship

You are welcome to check it out. It was a good discussion.

I call it ZAP...(zero aggression Principle) to which I fully subscribe.

I assume you regard using force against force as a negation instead of an aggression. Else there won't be any good guys left as the only thing capable of stopping an aggression is an equal force.