Most violence in the world is motivated by moral sentiments
One of the most perennially popular courses at my alma mater was entitled &quot;Murder&quot;.  It was an exploration of the moral justification behind state-sponsored violence, from capital punishment to war to genocide.<p>The realization that most violence is morally motivated comes with interesting quandaries when you consider what the response to such violence should be.  Say that society successfully develops the norm that violence is never acceptable.  What do you do with people who do not agree with this norm?  Are you justified in using force against them?  Does the state ever have a right to put people to death for what they believe, even if what they believe is that large classes of people deserve to die?  What if it&#x27;s just the <i>threat</i> that someone may wish to do another harm?  Are police officers justified in shooting a suspect if it <i>appears</i> that he <i>might</i> have a gun and is reaching for it?<p>There are also interesting questions about whether you should respect moral norms that are part of your moral code but not part of anothers&#x27;.  For example, many Native American tribes did not believe in property rights, instead believing that the land and everything grown from it was communal property for the benefit of all; European settlers took this to mean that it was all theirs for the taking.  Several of Ayn Rand&#x27;s books extoll the virtue of selfishness, holding that the only bounds to your conduct should be freely agreed-upon contracts with others: knowing that other people do <i>not</i> hold to this moral code, is it moral to behave selfishly to them until they explicitly defend their rights, or do you have an obligation to consider what&#x27;s commonly held to be moral amongst people unlike yourself when dealing with them?<p>There are plenty of implications for startups too, many of whom would not exist without a different conception of social norms than mainstream society.