system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
I feel laws should have no moral footing. That the purpose of laws is purely to make society function efficiently. CMV

To elaborate, I believe terms like freedom, liberty, justice, right/wrong, good/evil, etc… don’t inherently work as an argument to enact or abolish any particular law.  Sometimes these thoughts line up with making society function, but not always, and alone should not be a reason for enacting a law.  You can, however, use them as a basis of why a law can work. 


For example: “Freedom of speech is required to have a productive society because without this we cannot have debate on issues that are unpopular.  Without this debate and the considering of things that are not popular, we cannot change public opinion, and in turn, change policy to one that would better benefit the populous as a whole”.  See, the argument for freedom of speech is not made because freedom is right, it is made based on it’s benefits to society as a whole.


Argument, from the past couple of days here on CMV:


On abortion legality, the question continues to be “where does human life begin?”  This question is great when debating the morality of abortion.  However, when the legality of abortion is brought up, the question should not be this, but “how does the legality of abortion benefit/hurt society as a whole”.  When it comes to legality, this is the proper question. 


Another example of a current law on the books that is there, IMO, for the right reasons, and shows that this point does not lead to anarchy:  Murder is not, or should not, be illegal because it is morally wrong. It is illegal because allowing murderers to walk free creates vendettas/vigilantism which hurts many innocents in the process and removes otherwise productive members of society to seek justice (I didn’t use justice as the reason, I used it as an action people will seek without the state assisting in obtaining, which will harm society as a whole). 
 

Basically, murder, rape, theft of property, rights of property, etc…all have their basis in making a society run and optimizing as many members of said society.  The also have a basis in morality, but I don’t feel that is the reason for their existence.  Other laws that I believe are right to be on the books, such as seat belt laws, sin taxes, progressive taxes in general, are all things that are not really dealing with morality, but they do help society function better/efficiently (at least that is the argument). 


My point being that if we believe that law=morality, or use morality to justify laws, we wind up with many laws that will actually be detrimental to society, i.e. marriage laws, laws on adultery, premarital sex, lying, decency laws, etc… things a significant portion of the country believe to be morally wrong.  You may hear this and think “I don’t believe those things are wrong”, well maybe that is why we shouldn’t base laws on morals, everyone’s are different.  Shouldn’t the one and only goal of laws be to make the country run better?  That if you leave this premise in any way, then you have left the debate of law.
gpt
How do you define running better? If we were to enslave half of the population and force them to be incredibly industrious and work for basically nothing, the other half would live in absolute splendor. This would be a very efficient system, and think of the wonders we could create...  
  
It may be more efficient (depending on how you define efficiency with regard to society) but does that justify it? Is that how the laws should be written?  
  
If you have a problem with any brutal but supremely efficient system, it is because of morality. If you think that laws should be stifled from becoming too terrible on people for ultimate "gain", it is because of morality. Many people would find many problems with these laws because of general morality. While each individual person's morality is differing, there is a general sense of what is right and wrong. The laws tend to stick close to this.