Atlas Shrugged is Trash
twl...@prodigy.com
Random House's website:
http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/
Actually, there are two lists. One was selected by the "experts," and the
other is compiled from votes by visitors to the site. According to the
experts, #1 is Joyce's "Ulysses," and #2 is Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."
The visitors to the site, on the other hand, chose by a wide margin as #1 Ayn
Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." (#2 for the visitors is "Dune.")
I am not much of a fiction reader, though I consider myself an intelligent
person. I just stick mainly to non-fiction. I had never read "The Great
Gatsby," and I had tried to read "Atlas Shrugged," but became bored and
disgusted after 300 or so pages (plus what I was told were the major
speeches). With such a popular vote of support as it received, however, I
felt moved to try again to read Atlas Shrugged. Again, I laid it down after
about 20 pages because of its inanity. Instead, I turned to The Great
Gatsby, and I just completed the first chapter, which was 22 pages. I don't
care what the experts or the majority of readers say; the difference is
obvious and overwhelming.
Based on the first few pages, The Great Gatsby is a brilliant, sparkling gem.
The characters are real: they come alive and are distinct. There are flashes
of brilliance in their exchanges -- the brilliance of insight into the way
real human beings act and respond to one another.
Atlas Shrugged is soap opera garbage. It has as much insight into real human
beings and their motivation as the TV soap opera, "Dallas" -- which was also
quite popular, by the way. "Who is John Galt?" is stupid. The conversation
between Eddie Willers and James Taggart is dumb. No executive of even a
failing corporation would ever think or speak like that. This is not the way
real people in such a situation would speak or respond. It is pure contrived
junk. Anyone who reads and accepts this stuff is having their mind
manipulated, and that at the lowest level. They are not exploring human
nature, because their is no insight available. They are not thinking, their
mind isn't expanding, because there is nothing enlightening there. It is as
informative as mindless propaganda.
I don't care if 250 million people in this country were to vote for Atlas
Shrugged as #1. It is trash, and they are fools. Interestingly enough,
Rand's followers always point to the number of people who read and who have
been influenced by Atlas Shrugged, as if all those millions can't be wrong.
These are the same people who have only contempt for Majority Rule, who would
never agree that the largest number voting have the right to make decisions
on a national issue. But even those who believe in Majority Rule would never
assert that the majority ever determines what is right and what is wrong.
Yet the Randoids will imply that the majority can not only decide what is
true to life, but also what is literary quality.
Rand wasn't a genius. She was a mediocre talent, with a flair for plotting
contrived situations that illustrate her own warped sense of values. Anyone
who believes that Atlas Shrugged is great literature, great philosophy, great
economics, or even a mediocre example of any of those, needs to be told they
are being had: The Empress has no clothes!
Robert Troll
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
S.M.
>Actually, there are two lists. One was selected by the "experts," and the
>other is compiled from votes by visitors to the site. According to the
>experts, #1 is Joyce's "Ulysses," and #2 is Fitzgerald's "The Great
Gatsby."
>The visitors to the site, on the other hand, chose by a wide margin as #1
Ayn
>Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." (#2 for the visitors is "Dune.")
>
>I am not much of a fiction reader, though I consider myself an intelligent
>person. I just stick mainly to non-fiction. I had never read "The Great
>Gatsby," and I had tried to read "Atlas Shrugged," but became bored and
>disgusted after 300 or so pages (plus what I was told were the major
>speeches).
[snip more]
>.............. It is pure contrived
>junk. Anyone who reads and accepts this stuff is having their mind
>manipulated, and that at the lowest level. They are not exploring human
>nature, because their is no insight available. They are not thinking, their
>mind isn't expanding, because there is nothing enlightening there. It is
as
>informative as mindless propaganda.
[snip again]
>
>Rand wasn't a genius. She was a mediocre talent, with a flair for plotting
>contrived situations that illustrate her own warped sense of values.
Anyone
>who believes that Atlas Shrugged is great literature, great philosophy,
great
>economics, or even a mediocre example of any of those, needs to be told
they
>are being had: The Empress has no clothes!
>
>Robert Troll
The problem with your argument is that you just plain don't like freedom.
Any type of fiction or story that is anti-communist makes you mad. Ayn Rand
came from Russia, she saw the results of Bolshevic and Menshevic
totalitarianism. Her stories reflect their philosophy...your philosophy.
For some strange reason which I shall never understand, there are folks like
you who believe life can be sustained without reason. Reason provides
direction and without reason our directions are dictated according to idea
de jour. All non-reasoned direction leads to chaos and destruction. You
are pretty typical of someone who can not function independently, without
guidance. Rationality and reason is difficult, following your emotion is
easy. On your own you will die. I have always thought that leaving folks
like you alone is an exceptionally grand idea.
Scott -- Former teacher of propaganda for the statists ... until I grew up.
Chuck Bridgeland
twl...@prodigy.comSun, 26 Jul 1998 23:13:55 GMT writes:
>
>There is a list of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th Century on
>Random House's website:
>
> http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/
>
>other is compiled from votes by visitors to the site. According to the
>experts, #1 is Joyce's "Ulysses," and #2 is Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."
>The visitors to the site, on the other hand, chose by a wide margin as #1 Ayn
>Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." (#2 for the visitors is "Dune.")
The visitors list includes a William Shatner "Tek" novel.
That should tell you something.
"Of course it's loaded."
chuck bridgeland,
chuckbri-AT-mwci-dot-net-dot-dead-dot-chicken
twl...@prodigy.com
"S.M." <sam...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> {snip}
>
> The problem with your argument is that you just plain don't like freedom.
That is nonsense. I believe in freedom, not only for myself, but for every
other human being in equal measure. That, to me, is the first principle of
morality: respecting the equal rights of others. How could you possibly
derive the idea that I do not like freedom from my argument about Atlas
Shrugged being trash? You later speak of reason, yet your conclusion that I
don't like freedom could only come from your preformed ideas and imagination,
not from reason based on evidence. You equate the products of your
imagination to evidence, which is neither intelligent nor reasonable.
> Any type of fiction or story that is anti-communist makes you mad. Ayn Rand
> came from Russia, she saw the results of Bolshevic and Menshevic
> totalitarianism. Her stories reflect their philosophy...your philosophy.
Now you make me out to be a communist. Based on what? That I think Rand's
philosophy is sophomoric garbage? Is that the measure of whether a person is
a communist or not? You just throw out accusations without even bothering to
look for evidence that they are true, and then you call that the operation of
reason.
> For some strange reason which I shall never understand, there are folks like
> you who believe life can be sustained without reason. Reason provides
> direction and without reason our directions are dictated according to idea
> de jour. All non-reasoned direction leads to chaos and destruction. You
> are pretty typical of someone who can not function independently, without
> guidance. Rationality and reason is difficult, following your emotion is
> easy.
What you have done is swallowed Rand's doctrines hook, line and sinker. Your
mind is so immersed in that belief system that you accept without examination
the conclusion that anyone who does not agree with Rand doesn't like freedom,
is a communist, and cannot function independently with reason. But you are
not using reason yourself; you are merely reciting like a puppet the formulas
that you have been fed without even bothering to discover whether there is
any evidence to support your conclusions. And apparently you are so taken in
by it, you don't even have a clue as to how unthinking you are.
On the other hand, my short critique is based entirely on reason, whether you
agree with the conclusions or not. It examines and compares evidence, it
makes conclusions based on that evidence. That is the function of reason.
You don't even bother looking for evidence, but supply the lack thereof with
your imagination or with what you have been told. And then you have the
audacity to imply that you are thinking rationally and independently. You
say I cannot function without guidance. Where would you be without Miss Rand
to tell you what to think?
> On your own you will die. I have always thought that leaving folks
> like you alone is an exceptionally grand idea.
A rather hateful, uncharitable assertion -- but then, Randoids only act
decently towards another human being if there is some advantage to themselves,
which is their version of morality.
> Scott -- Former teacher of propaganda for the statists ... until I grew up.
Sorry Scott. You have regressed into a self-assuring egotism with self-esteem
based on delusion. When you really grow up, you will see yourself as one with
your fellow man, as being in the same boat, so to speak.
ME
flamed could write this!!!!
twl...@prodigy.com wrote:
> There is a list of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th Century on
> Random House's website:
>
> http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/
>
> Actually, there are two lists. One was selected by the "experts," and the
> other is compiled from votes by visitors to the site. According to the
> experts, #1 is Joyce's "Ulysses," and #2 is Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."
> The visitors to the site, on the other hand, chose by a wide margin as #1 Ayn
> Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." (#2 for the visitors is "Dune.")
>
> I am not much of a fiction reader, though I consider myself an intelligent
> person. I just stick mainly to non-fiction. I had never read "The Great
> Gatsby," and I had tried to read "Atlas Shrugged," but became bored and
> disgusted after 300 or so pages (plus what I was told were the major
> speeches). With such a popular vote of support as it received, however, I
> felt moved to try again to read Atlas Shrugged. Again, I laid it down after
> about 20 pages because of its inanity. Instead, I turned to The Great
> Gatsby, and I just completed the first chapter, which was 22 pages. I don't
> care what the experts or the majority of readers say; the difference is
> obvious and overwhelming.
>
> Based on the first few pages, The Great Gatsby is a brilliant, sparkling gem.
> The characters are real: they come alive and are distinct. There are flashes
> of brilliance in their exchanges -- the brilliance of insight into the way
> real human beings act and respond to one another.
>
> Atlas Shrugged is soap opera garbage. It has as much insight into real human
> beings and their motivation as the TV soap opera, "Dallas" -- which was also
> quite popular, by the way. "Who is John Galt?" is stupid. The conversation
> between Eddie Willers and James Taggart is dumb. No executive of even a
> failing corporation would ever think or speak like that. This is not the way
> real people in such a situation would speak or respond. It is pure contrived
> junk. Anyone who reads and accepts this stuff is having their mind
> manipulated, and that at the lowest level. They are not exploring human
> nature, because their is no insight available. They are not thinking, their
> mind isn't expanding, because there is nothing enlightening there. It is as
> informative as mindless propaganda.
>
> I don't care if 250 million people in this country were to vote for Atlas
> Shrugged as #1. It is trash, and they are fools. Interestingly enough,
> Rand's followers always point to the number of people who read and who have
> been influenced by Atlas Shrugged, as if all those millions can't be wrong.
> These are the same people who have only contempt for Majority Rule, who would
> never agree that the largest number voting have the right to make decisions
> on a national issue. But even those who believe in Majority Rule would never
> assert that the majority ever determines what is right and what is wrong.
> Yet the Randoids will imply that the majority can not only decide what is
> true to life, but also what is literary quality.
>
> Rand wasn't a genius. She was a mediocre talent, with a flair for plotting
> contrived situations that illustrate her own warped sense of values. Anyone
> who believes that Atlas Shrugged is great literature, great philosophy, great
> economics, or even a mediocre example of any of those, needs to be told they
> are being had: The Empress has no clothes!
>
> Robert Troll
>
zeb
I had the same experience with "atlas shrugged".. read part of it and
got very bored. I think I agree with most of the message.. but it's so
simplistic, preachy, and corny. I think people have a tendency to
pretend they like something because it supports their values, whether
it's crap or not.. I see the same thing with people saying Brave New
World is a good book because they hate totalitarianism or that
Neuromancer is, because they like the technological picture it presents.
Caesar
chuc...@mwci.net "Chuck Bridgeland" writes:
> In message <6pgd7i$87n$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com> -
> twl...@prodigy.comSun, 26 Jul 1998 23:13:55 GMT writes:
> >
> >There is a list of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th Century on
> >Random House's website:
> >
> > http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/
> >
> >Actually, there are two lists. One was selected by the "experts," and the
> >other is compiled from votes by visitors to the site. According to the
> >experts, #1 is Joyce's "Ulysses," and #2 is Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."
> >The visitors to the site, on the other hand, chose by a wide margin as #1 Ayn
> >Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." (#2 for the visitors is "Dune.")
>
> The visitors list includes a William Shatner "Tek" novel.
> That should tell you something.
>
>
> "Of course it's loaded."
> chuck bridgeland,
> chuckbri-AT-mwci-dot-net-dot-dead-dot-chicken
>
>
Any voluntary poll is likely to be far more inaccurate than a poll
based on a random sample of individuals from the population at large
AFAICS. That's the problem with phone polls, Internet polls etc.
--
--------------------------------------------------------------
Actual email address: Caesar(at)augur.demon.co.uk
-
"Classical liberal theory deemed political authority necessary
because individuals are partial to themselves and, left to their
own devices, the strong and the deceitful have an irresistible
proclivity to exempt themselves from generally valid laws. That
old insight is amply confirmed in Russia today. When the state
that once owned everything is so easy to despoil, why play by
the rules that apply equally to all? Libertarians sometimes
argue that the cocercive authority of the state extends only
to the prevention of harm and the protection of property rights.
In the Russian context, the word "only" here strikes a very
false note. Limited government, capable of repressing force
and fraud, turns out to be mind-bogglingly difficult to erect
in a chaotic setting" - Stephen Holmes, _What Russia Teaches Us
Now_
-
Source of these quotes: http://world.std.com/~mhuben/quotes.htm
(part of Mike Huben's "Critiques of Libertarianism" web site)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Mike//,Schneider
> In article <6pgom2$j0$1...@oak.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
> "S.M." <sam...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > The problem with your argument is that you just plain don't like freedom.
>
> That is nonsense. I believe in freedom, not only for myself, but for every
> other human being in equal measure. That, to me, is the first principle of
> morality: respecting the equal rights of others. How could you possibly
> derive the idea that I do not like freedom from my argument about Atlas
> Shrugged being trash? You later speak of reason, yet your conclusion that I
> don't like freedom could only come from your preformed ideas and imagination,
> not from reason based on evidence. You equate the products of your
> imagination to evidence, which is neither intelligent nor reasonable.
>
> > Any type of fiction or story that is anti-communist makes you mad. Ayn Rand
> > came from Russia, she saw the results of Bolshevic and Menshevic
> > totalitarianism. Her stories reflect their philosophy...your philosophy.
>
> Now you make me out to be a communist. Based on what? That I think Rand's
> philosophy is sophomoric garbage?
Alright then. Rand's philosophy is sophmoric garbage, in your words,
despite the fact that you are an unswerving advocate of liberty (or so you
would claim).
Fine.
Detail the particulars of your philosophy, starting with axioms and
working your way up through epistemology and so forth.
--
Email: Replace everything before the @ with "mike1" and delete any CAPS.
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
The tree, as tall as a fifteen story building, held at least a hundred
nests, with 60,000 or so bees in each one. Bahadur was amused by my
climbing gear, without which I could not scale such a tree. By contrast,
his bare hands and feet moved like a whisper over the limbs, every move
meticulous and full of certainty. I asked Bahadur if anyone ever falls
from the trees. "Yes," he said. "You fall when your life is over."
-- Raji Honey Harvesters, National Geographic, June 1998.
Mike//,Schneider
> I had the same experience with "atlas shrugged".. read part of it and
> got very bored. I think I agree with most of the message.. but it's so
> simplistic, preachy, and corny. I think people have a tendency to
> pretend they like something because it supports their values, whether
> it's crap or not.. I see the same thing with people saying Brave New
> World is a good book because they hate totalitarianism or that
> Neuromancer is, because they like the technological picture it presents.
Try Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
Billy Beck
HyperReal-Anon <nob...@sind.hyperreal.art.pl> wrote:
>I have to agree that Ayn Rand is simplistic and sophomoric.
Wellllll, *that* marks you as ignorant.
Billy
VRWC fronteer - sigdiv
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/free/essays.html
Bill Kasper
said something like:
<snip>
=
=I have to agree that Ayn Rand is simplistic and sophomoric.
1) What a surprise
2) Nobody cares
3) Elitism is the refuge of the uninformed
=I enjoyed "Atlas Shrugged" in high school, but quickly outgrew it.
Yeah, *right*.
Did you "outgrow" it when tri-syllable words started appearing?
=
=The same is true of Heinlein.
=His early novels were great reading for a kid, but not for an adult.
Yeah.
"It Takes a Village"
Now *that* is top-shelf...
=
=And although I've never seen it mentioned, it seems obvious to me that
="Stranger in a Strange Land" was the inspiration for the Manson cult.
<absolutely stunned silence>
---------------------------------------------
Bill Kasper
SIGINT, VR-WC->
"In our country the worst of all crimes occurs when the government
murders truth. If it can murder truth, it can murder freedom. If it can murder
freedom, it can murder your own sons--if they should dare to fight for freedom--
and then it can announce that they were killed in an industrial accident, or
shot by the "enemy" or God knows what." - James Garrison
Bdaws1
>The same is true of Heinlein.
>=His early novels were great reading for a kid, but not for an adult.
Hmmm...and what exactly is approved adult literature..."The Unauthorized
Biography of Jerry Springer"?
granted,I found quite a few passages to be very dry andboring,but i also found
some of the most riveting writing I have ever experienced.I read it as a high
school student,and didn't "get it"-later,as an adult,I undertood better the
nuances
.>=And although I've never seen it mentioned, it seems obvious to me that
>="Stranger in a Strange Land" was the inspiration for the Manson cult.
Well,considering Manson only had about a 6th grade education,I find that hard t
o believe.He spent more time in prison than out.this seems more the stuff for
"Weekly World News"
>
>
"It gives me great pleasure indeed to see the stubborness of an incorrigible
non-conformist so warmly greeted"-Albert Einstein
>
Bdaws1
Theerie
twl...@prodigy.com wrote in message <6pgd7i$87n$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>There is a list of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th Century
on
>Random House's website:
>
> http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/
>
please have it tattoed on your forehead to collectively indentify
yourselves.... it would make my life much more pleasureable being able to
identify the people who i would rather avoid on site ...... that way id
never have to waste my time finding out who you were by disscussing it with
you
to those of you who think this is an unrealistic response i agree
i just wrote it show how ridiculous it is to waste ones time arguing opinion
in a philisophical context after doesnt A=A??
Eyler Coates, Sr.
>
> In article <6pkrmi$en$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, twl...@prodigy.com wrote:
>
> > In article <6pgom2$j0$1...@oak.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,
> > "S.M." <sam...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> > > The problem with your argument is that you just plain don't like freedom.
> >
> > That is nonsense. I believe in freedom, not only for myself, but for every
> > other human being in equal measure. That, to me, is the first principle of
> > morality: respecting the equal rights of others. How could you possibly
> > derive the idea that I do not like freedom from my argument about Atlas
> > Shrugged being trash? You later speak of reason, yet your conclusion that I
> > don't like freedom could only come from your preformed ideas and imagination,
> > not from reason based on evidence. You equate the products of your
> > imagination to evidence, which is neither intelligent nor reasonable.
> >
> > > Any type of fiction or story that is anti-communist makes you mad. Ayn Rand
> > > came from Russia, she saw the results of Bolshevic and Menshevic
> > > totalitarianism. Her stories reflect their philosophy...your philosophy.
> >
> > Now you make me out to be a communist. Based on what? That I think Rand's
> > philosophy is sophomoric garbage?
>
> Alright then. Rand's philosophy is sophmoric garbage, in your words,
> despite the fact that you are an unswerving advocate of liberty (or so you
> would claim).
>
> Fine.
>
> Detail the particulars of your philosophy, starting with axioms and
> working your way up through epistemology and so forth.
You're being cute, of course. This is hardly the venue for detailing a
complete philosophy. Not even a Troll could do that. But surely you're
not so naive as to equate volume of writing and complexity with validity,
are you? Scores of philosophers down through the centuries have produced
complete, complex works in multiple volumes that we both would agree are
garbage. And just because a person who critiques them cannot duplicate
their effort, doesn't mean those philosophers were correct. As Isaac
Asimov says, You don't need to be able to lay an egg to know when one of
them is rotten.
But the real question is, If Ayn Rand, or any other philosopher, laid
some philosophical eggs, what specifically makes them rotten? And the
answer almost always is, the basic assumptions -- the premises -- which
are often slipped in sneakily, and upon which their whole complex
structure is built.
Philosophers generally are high IQ types, and are quite capable of
turning out intelligent SOUNDING garbage based on invalid premises. They
don't usually make dumb mistakes moving from one dogma to its
implications; rather its their starting point that invariably invalidates
everything that follows. If you just look at the end products -- the
conclusions -- you might be deceived into thinking that a particular
egg-layer is onto something. But it is the premises that are the
Achilles heel. Simple little starting-out points, often breezed over,
that accommodate the desired conclusions, but are pure crap.
Let's stick with political philosophy. This, after all, is a political
newsgroup, not an epistemological one. If you want a complete political
philosophy with valid premises and brilliant development, see Thomas
Jefferson's at:
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/
Miss Rand selectively borrowed from Jefferson, but only a part which she
could then convert into a system that would effectively prevent the
formation of an organized free society: the only kind of society that
comes anywhere near securing inalienable rights. In doing this, she
skips over the real Jefferson and instead reveals that she never really
understood American self-government as described in the Declaration of
Independence. This document was not a manifesto of Individualism, but a
justification for a nation of people who COLLECTIVELY estalished an
independent state guaranteeing their safety and happiness. The preamble
described the basis of government as a coordinated whole, and consisted
of these self-evident truths (i.e., premises):
1. All men (persons) have political equality.
2. All have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness.
3. Governments are instituted to secure those rights.
4. Those governments derive their just powers from consent of the
governed.
Those four premises are the basis of POPULAR GOVERNMENT, not
Individualism. Consent of the governed means consent by the majority. A
necessary corollary of these premises is, Whenever a government is
destructive of the ends established by these premises, it is the right of
the people (collectively; not as individuals) to alter or abolish it, and
to institute new government founded on principles and with powers so
organized "as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
happiness." In other words, government is a PEOPLE function in which
individuals participate because of their natural rights, one of which is
the right to popular sovereignty (which can only be exercised along with
other members of society). The Declaration does not mention the word
"individual" once.
Miss Rand isolated the inalienable rights part (which apply to all in
their capacity as individuals), and suggested something absurd to the
effect that only individuals exist. Presumably she recognizes the
existence of corporations. But in establishing this brand of
individualism, she undercuts all the foundations of a free society that
are necessary in order to secure individual rights.
We've all heard the twists of logic that dictate that there is no such
collective entity as "the people," although there apparently is a
collective entity as "the mob" when it is decided that "democracy = mob
rule." Couldn't we just as well say, There is no such thing as a mob?
These are all individuals?
The end result of Miss Rand's mutilation is that no one has duties or
responsibilities to the government they supposedly established, only to
themself; the government they established must only protect individual
rights, and cannot require anything of its members; a whole people cannot
establish their government on such principles and organized in such form
as they collectively please -- in direct contradiction to the
Declaration; and other such dogma that ultimately mean there is no such
thing as government OF, BY and FOR THE PEOPLE. All of this is in
contradiction to the Founding Fathers, the principles of American
self-government, and to common sense itself.
Eyler Coates
--
======================================================================
Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/
Thought for Today: Ideas that Expand Your Mind http://come.to/thought
Eyler Robert Coates, Sr. eyler....@worldnet.att.net
======================================================================
Billy Beck
"Eyler Coates, Sr." <eyler....@Xworldnet.att.net> wrote:
>But the real question is, If Ayn Rand, or any other philosopher, laid
>some philosophical eggs, what specifically makes them rotten? And the
>answer almost always is, the basic assumptions -- the premises -- which
>are often slipped in sneakily, and upon which their whole complex
>structure is built.
Fine.
This is the part where you get to post your case against Rand
right here:
->
*And*...
>Miss Rand selectively borrowed from Jefferson, but only a part which she
>could then convert into a system that would effectively prevent the
>formation of an organized free society: the only kind of society that
>comes anywhere near securing inalienable rights.
...you get to post your *cites* in support of this allegation
right here:
->
Thanx ever so much.
Eyler Coates, Sr.
> >some philosophical eggs, what specifically makes them rotten? And the
> >answer almost always is, the basic assumptions -- the premises -- which
> >are often slipped in sneakily, and upon which their whole complex
> >structure is built.
>
>
> This is the part where you get to post your case against Rand
> right here:
A clever evasion: make me do all the work. I have already outlined my
case. You now have an opportunity to prove me wrong.
Many thanks,
Eyler Coates
--
======================================================================
Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government
http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/
Thought for Today: Ideas that Expand Your Mind http://come.to/thought
======================================================================
Mike>|Sçhnedier
<eyler....@Xworldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Billy Beck wrote:
>>
>> "Eyler Coates, Sr." <eyler....@Xworldnet.att.net> wrote:
>>
>> >But the real question is, If Ayn Rand, or any other philosopher, laid
>> >some philosophical eggs, what specifically makes them rotten? And the
>> >answer almost always is, the basic assumptions -- the premises -- which
>> >are often slipped in sneakily, and upon which their whole complex
>> >structure is built.
>>
>> Fine.
>>
>> This is the part where you get to post your case against Rand
>> right here:
>
>A clever evasion: make me do all the work.
Well, *yeah*.
If yer gonna claim the mantle of critic, you have to produce a *critique*.
>I have already outlined my case.
That *thing* was a "case"?
>You now have an opportunity to prove me wrong.
Easily done:
>Subject: Re: Atlas Shrugged is Trash
>From: "Eyler Coates, Sr." <eyler....@Xworldnet.att.net>
>Date: 1998/07/31
>Message-ID: <35C265...@Xworldnet.att.net>
>Newsgroups:
>talk.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.libertarian,alt.philosophy.objectivism,alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater
>
>[More Headers]
>[Subscribe to talk.politics.libertarian]
>
>Mike//,Schneider wrote:
>>
snip
>> > Now you make me out to be a communist. Based on what? That I think Rand's
>> > philosophy is sophomoric garbage?
>>
>> Alright then. Rand's philosophy is sophmoric garbage, in your words,
>> despite the fact that you are an unswerving advocate of liberty (or so you
>> would claim).
>>
>> Fine.
>>
>> Detail the particulars of your philosophy, starting with axioms and
>> working your way up through epistemology and so forth.
Audience note: The next four paragraphs, if you observe closely, are
nothing but rant against philosophers in general and nothing *specific* in
the way of a "case" against Rand.
Finally the man gets sloppily down to business:
> http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/
>
>Miss Rand selectively borrowed from Jefferson, but only a part which she
>could then convert into a system that would effectively prevent the
>formation of an organized free society: the only kind of society that
>comes anywhere near securing inalienable rights. In doing this, she
>skips over the real Jefferson and instead reveals that she never really
>understood American self-government as described in the Declaration of
>Independence. This document was not a manifesto of Individualism, but a
>justification for a nation of people who COLLECTIVELY estalished an
>independent state guaranteeing their safety and happiness. The preamble
>described the basis of government as a coordinated whole, and consisted
>of these self-evident truths (i.e., premises):
So Rand wasn't a Jeffersonian. Er, *duh*.
> 1. All men (persons) have political equality.
> 2. All have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit
>of happiness.
> 3. Governments are instituted to secure those rights.
> 4. Those governments derive their just powers from consent of the
>governed.
>
>Those four premises are the basis of POPULAR GOVERNMENT, not
>Individualism.
And the third and fourth premises are demonstrably *false*, but you're
not really interested in picking your way through it, are you?
>Consent of the governed means consent by the majority.
What consent? Neither I nor Beck "consent".
>necessary corollary of these premises is, Whenever a government is
>destructive of the ends established by these premises, it is the right of
>the people (collectively; not as individuals) to alter or abolish it, and
Blow it up right *now*.
>to institute new government founded on principles
Or, if that cannot be done, as is demonstrably the case, *refrain* from
"institut(ing)", i.e., *enforcing*, a new government.
>and with powers so
>organized "as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and
>happiness." In other words, government is a PEOPLE function in which
A fantastic delusion which does mirror reality.
>individuals participate because of their natural rights, one of which is
>the right to popular sovereignty (which can only be exercised along with
>other members of society). The Declaration does not mention the word
>"individual" once.
So what?
>Miss Rand isolated the inalienable rights part (which apply to all in
>their capacity as individuals), and suggested something absurd to the
>effect that only individuals exist.
That's right: You can reach out and poke individuals in the ribs.
"Nations" and "societies", OTOH, are non-corporeal abstractions - they
exist only as concepts, not physical manifestations.
>Presumably she recognizes the
>existence of corporations. But in establishing this brand of
>individualism, she undercuts all the foundations of a free society that
>are necessary in order to secure individual rights.
Audience note: Coates is using "free society" as a euphemism for what
he considers "necessary" government coercion.
>We've all heard
Quit toadying to the crowd. The peanunt gallary's approval, if any, of
your arguments is irrelevent to matter of whether or not they are correct.
>the twists of logic that dictate that there is no such
>collective entity as "the people," although there apparently is a
>collective entity as "the mob" when it is decided that "democracy = mob
>rule." Couldn't we just as well say, There is no such thing as a mob?
>These are all individuals?
Nice strawman, but *I* didn't build it.
Yes, they *are* all individuals, and they have no right to boss me around.
>The end result of Miss Rand's mutilation...
The end result is that you haven't offered a *single* CITATION of Rand
in this entire screed.
>Is that no one has duties or
>responsibilities to the government they supposedly established, only to
>themself;
*I* did not establish the government (supposedly or otherwise), and
have *no* duty or responsibility to it.
the government they established must only protect individual
Why do you persist in the FICTION? *I* did not establish it, and I
refuse to be lumped into your amorphous "they".
>rights, and cannot require anything of its members; a whole people cannot
>establish their government on such principles and organized in such form
>as they collectively please -- in direct contradiction to the
>Declaration; and other such dogma that ultimately mean there is no such
>thing as government OF, BY and FOR THE PEOPLE. All of this is in
>contradiction to the Founding Fathers, the principles of American
>self-government, and to common sense itself.
You didn't really read Atlas Shrugged, did you?
=======================================================================
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Mike>|Sçhnedier
Coates lovingly directs folks to a web URL regarding his big hero:
Thomas Jefferson on politics and government:
>39. Educating the People
>
>To Jefferson, an enlightened citizenry was indispensable for the proper
>functioning of a republic. Self-government is not possible unless the
>citizens are well-educated. It is therefore imperative that the nation see
>that this is provided to all citizens. It should be borne in mind, that
>when Jefferson speaks of "science," he is often refering to knowledge or
>learning in general.
In short, To Jeffersonians, individuals cannot mind their own business
(and therefore must be controlled by Jeffersonians in government) until
such individuals are properly "well-educated" by Jeffersonians.
>"I know no safe depositary of the ultimate powers of the society but the
Perhaps if Jefferson weren't so desireous of a "society" with "ultimate
powers" (i.e., a federal government), he wouldn't have to worry about it
getting out of control.
See, if you *don't* clone the fuckin' velociraptors....
>people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise
>their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it
>from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true
>corrective of abuses of constitutional power." --Thomas Jefferson to
>William C. Jarvis, 1820. ME 15:278
Ditto on "constitutional powers" (another euphemism for government).
>"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the peopl
>alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories.
>And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain
>degree." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia, 1782.
See my first remark.
>"The information of the people at large can alone make them the safe as
>they are the sole depositary of our political and religious freedom."
>--Thomas Jefferson to William Duane, 1810. ME 12:417
Contradictory to the statement above. Either the "people at large can
alone" make decisions, *or* they have to be properly "improved" first.
>"The diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar
>of public reason, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our
>government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its
>administration." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801. ME 3:322
>
>"Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own
>liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain
>degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived
>possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain
>degree." --Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.
Well, Jefferson, ya stupid dip - if you haven't tossed a freakin'
machinegun into the crib, maybe you wouldn't have to worry about what the
little tyke does with the thing.
Snip rest of essentially similar stuff.
Billy Beck
>Billy Beck wrote:
>> >But the real question is, If Ayn Rand, or any other philosopher, laid
>> >some philosophical eggs, what specifically makes them rotten? And the
>> >answer almost always is, the basic assumptions -- the premises -- which
>> >are often slipped in sneakily, and upon which their whole complex
>> >structure is built.
>>
>> Fine.
>>
>> This is the part where you get to post your case against Rand
>> right here:
>
>A clever evasion: make me do all the work.
You're the one who shot your mouth off. Cite us just one
"premise" that she "slipped in sneakily...upon which [her] whole
structure is built".
>I have already outlined my case. You now have an opportunity to
>prove me wrong.
No problem. And, I'll do it at least as comprehensively as you
did:
Inlookers: go read what the woman has to say.
This guy doesn't know the territory.
Pistol
>There is a list of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th Century on
>Random House's website:
>
> http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/
>
>Actually, there are two lists. One was selected by the "experts," and the
>other is compiled from votes by visitors to the site. According to the
>experts, #1 is Joyce's "Ulysses," and #2 is Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby."
>The visitors to the site, on the other hand, chose by a wide margin as #1 Ayn
>Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." (#2 for the visitors is "Dune.")
One quick note on the "experts" in art. They often follow a herd
mentality that can be as bad as that followed by the masses. For
example, anything notably different gets high ratings, even if it is
clearly senseless trash (eg, Blue Velvet, or even 2001). Also, there
is a definite political bias involved in such acclaim, explaining very
neatly why, say, Hollywood falls all over itself to decorate Robin
Williams, champion of every smarmy left-wing issue that comes down the
pike, and almost completely ignores Steve Martin, who has no time for
such things. So let's not delude ourselves into thinking the
"experts" are pure. A person who wrote fro Rand's perspective would
never top the list of the experts even if it were the greatest writing
ever done.
And of course, any voluntary poll like this is going to reflect
INTENSITY of belief every bit as much as popularity. You may argue
that such is valid, but it cannot be ignored. AS topped the list, not
because most people were impressed by it, but because those that were
were SO impressed by it.
As for the rest of my response, I'm interesting in pointing out how
substanceless and unsupported it is.
>I am not much of a fiction reader, though I consider myself an intelligent
>person. I just stick mainly to non-fiction. I had never read "The Great
>Gatsby," and I had tried to read "Atlas Shrugged," but became bored and
>disgusted after 300 or so pages (plus what I was told were the major
>speeches).
So what? Who died and made you king of perception? I am bored by
baseball and disgusted by prunes, but that doesn't make them bad.
>With such a popular vote of support as it received, however, I
>felt moved to try again to read Atlas Shrugged. Again, I laid it down after
>about 20 pages because of its inanity.
Hmm. And what, EXACTLY, is inane about it? I found the ideas and
viewpoints it presented to be as unique and challenging as anything
I'd ever read.
>Instead, I turned to The Great
>Gatsby, and I just completed the first chapter, which was 22 pages. I don't
>care what the experts or the majority of readers say; the difference is
>obvious and overwhelming.
Yes, it is.
>Based on the first few pages, The Great Gatsby is a brilliant, sparkling gem.
I thought it was a complete bore.
>The characters are real: they come alive and are distinct.
Really? I thought they were cardboard and fake.
>There are flashes
>of brilliance in their exchanges -- the brilliance of insight into the way
>real human beings act and respond to one another.
I thought it was completely unrealistic.
See how fun this is when you don't have to present any evidence for
what you say?
>Atlas Shrugged is soap opera garbage.
Oh really? And what are the similarities?
>It has as much insight into real human
>beings and their motivation as the TV soap opera, "Dallas" -- which was also
>quite popular, by the way.
How so?
>"Who is John Galt?" is stupid.
Track back into your life experience, and examine the people you've
heard describe something in art as "stupid". Mine has been that 99%
of such people did not understand what the art was telling them. I
suspect the same is the case here.
>The conversation
>between Eddie Willers and James Taggart is dumb. No executive of even a
>failing corporation would ever think or speak like that. This is not the way
>real people in such a situation would speak or respond. It is pure contrived
>junk.
All unsubstantiated bullshit. I worked in corporate America for 10
years and saw many executives who spoke EXACTLY like that. The
similarities were scary.
>Anyone who reads and accepts this stuff is having their mind
>manipulated, and that at the lowest level.
(heh) Yeah, THIS stuff that you've presented, true.
>They are not exploring human
>nature, because their is no insight available. They are not thinking, their
>mind isn't expanding, because there is nothing enlightening there. It is as
>informative as mindless propaganda.
THIS is mindles propoganda - lot's of statements, little or nothing to
back them up.
>I don't care if 250 million people in this country were to vote for Atlas
>Shrugged as #1.
Neither do I.
>It is trash, and they are fools.
It is as brilliant a depiction of the political and philosophical
conflicts going on right now in the world as was ever written. It is
so eerily accurate that when one reads it, one feels like one is IN
the book as you observe the ahppenings and conversations around you.
>Interestingly enough,
>Rand's followers always point to the number of people who read and who have
>been influenced by Atlas Shrugged, as if all those millions can't be wrong.
Funny, I've never seen ANY of Rand's followers do so except in
amusement.
>These are the same people who have only contempt for Majority Rule, who would
>never agree that the largest number voting have the right to make decisions
>on a national issue.
And for good reason.
>But even those who believe in Majority Rule would never
>assert that the majority ever determines what is right and what is wrong.
You are dead wrong there. They do it here all the time.
>Yet the Randoids will imply that the majority can not only decide what is
>true to life, but also what is literary quality.
Fiction.
>Rand wasn't a genius.
Yes she was, by any objective measure.
>She was a mediocre talent, with a flair for plotting
>contrived situations that illustrate her own warped sense of values.
Baseless assertions all.
>Anyone
>who believes that Atlas Shrugged is great literature, great philosophy, great
>economics, or even a mediocre example of any of those, needs to be told they
>are being had: The Empress has no clothes!
When you supply the slightest shred of evidence for your many
assertions, THEN, and ONLY then, wil they be taken seriously. Until
then, you will just be viewed as an ignoramus with an ax to grind.
guesswho
nev...@*anti-klik*freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
>There is a list of the 100 best English language novels of the 20th Century on
>Random House's website:
>
> http://www.randomhouse.com/modernlibrary/100best/
>
>Actually, there are two lists.
snip
The readers' list was obviously stacked by votes by Ayn Rand fans.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
migu...@winQQQternetWWW.com (Mike>|Sçhnedier) wrote:
> > 1. All men (persons) have political equality.
> > 2. All have inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit
> >of happiness.
> > 3. Governments are instituted to secure those rights.
> > 4. Those governments derive their just powers from consent of the
> >governed.
> >
> >Those four premises are the basis of POPULAR GOVERNMENT, not
> >Individualism.
>
> And the third and fourth premises are demonstrably *false*, but you're
> not really interested in picking your way through it, are you?
Not a justified assumption based upon what he said. In fact the third and
fourth premises are true, but you don't seem to be picking your way through
that either. In fact you blatantly *asserted* that they were wrong and made
no attempt to *argue* in favor of this conclusion. So who is not picking
through things now?
Governments *are* instituted to secure these rights. They are also, at
times, instituted for other things, but *obviously* Jefferson is asserting
that this is their most proper function.
The fourth is less an empirical observation than a premise, a definition of
justice: those government powers which do not derive from the consent of the
governed are, by definition, not just. This is Jefferson's proposal. Now if
you don't like the consequences of this assumption, then please demonstrate
(in as picky a way as you like) that the consequences of this assumption are
worse than ultimate consequences of some other set of assumptions and
resulting social structures and behaviors that would result from them.
> >Consent of the governed means consent by the majority.
>
> What consent? Neither I nor Beck "consent".
Then get the fuck out of our country. Move to Antarctica or some south-sea
atoll and do it your way. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing
you to live here and obey the rules the rest of us have chosen to accept.
> >Miss Rand isolated the inalienable rights part (which apply to all in
> >their capacity as individuals), and suggested something absurd to the
> >effect that only individuals exist.
>
> That's right: You can reach out and poke individuals in the ribs.
> "Nations" and "societies", OTOH, are non-corporeal abstractions - they
> exist only as concepts, not physical manifestations.
The same is true for "corporations," "the equator," and "rights." Yet these
are extremely useful concepts. Why do you object to some abstractions and
not others?
> *I* did not establish the government (supposedly or otherwise), and
> have *no* duty or responsibility to it.
I didn't establish the university I work for, and I presume you didn't
establish the corporation you work for, if you work for one. Does that mean
you have no responsibility to it? Face it: by continuing to live here you
implicitly accept certain responsibilities. If you don't like them, you can
leave the country with only slightly more difficulty than you can leave your
job. If you walked into your office and started stealing computers, or
playing video games on corporate time but still expected to be paid your full
salary, you would get a rude awakening. And if you benefit from our national
security, sound money supply, road system, and so forth but refuse to pay
taxes for it or respect other people's rights as defined under the system
you've agreed to live under, then you deserve the same.
If you don't like it, leave. But I suspect you won't: it is a prominent
characteristic of Objectivists that they like to whine about how everything
is so unfair to them and how everybody else is so evil, but they have neither
a practical blueprint for how to make it better, nor do they put their money
where their mouth is by pulling up the stakes and moving on. I really wish
you losers who have nothing positive to contribute to our society except
lunatic complaints would stuff it or ship out, though.
Scott Forschler
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
Cae...@augur.demon.co.uk wrote:
> In article <6pimbf$n4j$1...@hihat.mwci.net>
> chuc...@mwci.net "Chuck Bridgeland" writes:
>
> > >Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged." (#2 for the visitors is "Dune.")
> >
> > That should tell you something.
Actually, by now Ayn Rand's 4 novels top the list. Even more telling is the
fact that her two minor novels, We the Living and Anthem, which even
dedicated Objectivists would be hard-pressed to defend on the basis of either
literary quality or popularity within their own ranks, let alone with the
world at large, are 3 and 4 with almost exactly the same number of votes
between them. Obviously some more or less organized group of her followers
have decided to "vote-bomb" the site and put her novels at the top. They are
not the only group to try this out of an attempt to make their founder's
works appear more popular and important than they actually are: two of L.
Ron Hubbard's books are in the top ten. (Hubbard's followers have also made
a practice at times of buying up copies of his books from stores, then
returning these to the publisher for redistribution, to artificially increase
sales figures, albeit at some cost to themselves).
It is most curious, yet most revealing, to see this being done by a group
which claims that majority rule and popular opinion are of no ultimate
consequence. Yet a significant number of them obviously feel compelled to 1)
falsify reality by artificially inflating Ayn Rand's apparent popularity and
2) do this in an apparent attempt to influence popular opinion, instead of
simply trying to make straightforward rational arguments in favor of their
ideas.
Of course they can't do that, either. The typical Objectivist insists that
all a government needs is national defense and law enforcement, yet that any
form of taxation is unjust and therefore we shouldn't pay for these things
except on a voluntary basis. So they insist that they should not be
compelled to pay for those institutions which are essential to protecting the
rights which they absolutely insist the rest of us owe it to them to respect
and protect. Then they turn around and denounce what they call "parasitism."
Jeez. Then on top of that they have the effrontery to claim that their
philosophy is radically new and original. Give us a break, people. It's
called hypocrisy, and it's really, really old. Not only are Objectivists
wrong, they are ultimately just boring.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
mike1...@wintYYYYernet.com (Mike//,Schneider) wrote:
> In article <35BECD...@servtech.com>, uo...@servtech.com wrote:
>
> > I had the same experience with "atlas shrugged".. read part of it and
> > got very bored. I think I agree with most of the message.. but it's so
> > simplistic, preachy, and corny. I think people have a tendency to
> > pretend they like something because it supports their values, whether
> > it's crap or not.. I see the same thing with people saying Brave New
> > World is a good book because they hate totalitarianism or that
> > Neuromancer is, because they like the technological picture it presents.
YES! Both Brave New World and Neuromancer are awful books, lacking
realisitic characters, situations, or responses to them. 1984 and Snowcrash
are much better representations of their genres (the latter is not quite
realistic either of course, but this is entirely intension since it is in
part a parody of its own genre; in terms of its critique of contemporary
social trends, however, it makes some very realistic points). I think the
popularity of these books, can only be attributed to the way in which they
helped found their genres, as you say, not in their intrinsic quality.
> Try Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress".
This is a much more realistic and well-written book than any of Rand's works.
Heinlein's sympathy for a libertarian-style ideology is apparent here, but it
is not only better written and executed, but it is also more nuanced and less
strident about insisting that his way is the only way to do things. The main
characters commit to a course of action, but they consider alternative ways
of thinking and forthrightly admit that practical constraints limit the
viability of their most idealistic political theories (and they do in fact
end up winning their struggle by deceiving not only the enemy, but the people
who will live in under the new regime they are creating). Also, Heinlein
didn't go around with a chip on his shoulder denouncing people who didn't
adopt his political philosophy after his book was published. So yes, this is
a book well worth reading.
Billy Beck
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu wrote:
>In article <miguelUUU-010...@ppp-67-40.dialup.winternet.com>,
> migu...@winQQQternetWWW.com (Mike>|Sçhnedier) wrote:
>> What consent? Neither I nor Beck "consent".
>
>Then get the fuck out of our country.
Make me. Bring it on, son.
I didn't stand for that bullshit from Spiro Agnew, and I'll be
goddamned if I'll take it from *you*.
Billy
VRWC fronteer
http://www.mindspring.com/~wjb3/promise.html
Miké^%Schnęîder
>sfor...@thomas.butler.edu wrote:
>
>>In article <miguelUUU-010...@ppp-67-40.dialup.winternet.com>,
>> migu...@winQQQternetWWW.com (Mike>|Sçhnedier) wrote:
>
>>> What consent? Neither I nor Beck "consent".
>>
>>Then get the fuck out of our country.
>
> Make me. Bring it on, son.
>
> I didn't stand for that bullshit from Spiro Agnew, and I'll be
>goddamned if I'll take it from *you*.
Man, they're all alike, aren't they?
Liberals, conservatives, socialists.....
Lizards calling each other different on the colors of their scales.
RonG
wrote:
> Face it: by continuing to live here you
>implicitly accept certain responsibilities.
I am _so_ sick of this utterly _bullshit_ argument that I feel like punching
every cretin who trots it out.
Listen up.
If what you say is true--then the citizens of Hitler's Germany were morally
_required_ to support the laws that Hitler put in place, including the
warmaking, including the assasinations, including the mass imprisonments and
so on. Why? Because these people _lived_ there...they used the roads, the
schools, the hospitals and the rest of the infrastructure.
If what you say is true--every German who did not _leave_ would have been
actring _immorally_ had they worked for the overthrow of the Fascist regime or
had they resisted its actions.
Now--consistent with what _you_ posted above, Scott--explain to me how I'm
wrong.
I repeat: use of the State's infrastructure does _not_ imply a moral
obligation to support the actions of the State.
Ron
Pistol
[snip irrelevencies about book list]
>The typical Objectivist insists that
>all a government needs is national defense and law enforcement, yet that any
>form of taxation is unjust and therefore we shouldn't pay for these things
>except on a voluntary basis.
True.
>So they insist that they should not be
>compelled to pay for those institutions which are essential to protecting the
>rights which they absolutely insist the rest of us owe it to them to respect
>and protect.
True, although it should be noted that they insist that THEY owe those
very same rights to everyone else as well. Leaving that part off sort
of biases the description.
>Then they turn around and denounce what they call "parasitism."
>
>Jeez.
Jeez indeed. Please explain what is wrong with what you just said.
Particularly, how is insisting on the availablity of a VOLUNTARY, and
UNFREE service, a form of parasitism?
>Then on top of that they have the effrontery to claim that their
>philosophy is radically new and original. Give us a break, people. It's
>called hypocrisy, and it's really, really old. Not only are Objectivists
>wrong, they are ultimately just boring.
>
>Scott Forschler
No, what is incredibly old AND boring are these criticisms of
Objectivism, perfectly exemplified by your post, which merely make
snide assertions and no arguments. At least you avoided the
all-too-common practice of totally misrepresenting the objectivist
position as well, so I give you credit there.
But really, "jeez" and "give us a break" are hardly profound
arguments.
Pistol
>In article <miguelUUU-010...@ppp-67-40.dialup.winternet.com>,
> migu...@winQQQternetWWW.com (Mike>|Sçhnedier) wrote:
[snips]
>> >Consent of the governed means consent by the majority.
>>
>> What consent? Neither I nor Beck "consent".
>
>Then get the fuck out of our country. Move to Antarctica or some south-sea
>atoll and do it your way. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing
>you to live here and obey the rules the rest of us have chosen to accept.
You know, you strike me as an intelligent guy, so it shocks the hell
out of me to see you present this easily and oft-refuted argument.
Basically, a gang collecting "protection money" could make an
identical offer - if you don't like it leave. What is sorely missing
from this argument re the state is any contract, implicit or
otherwise, that the Beck's of the world signed with the government
giving it sanction for such control over them. Without such an
agreement, the government has no more right to make such an offer than
the gang member.
>> >Miss Rand isolated the inalienable rights part (which apply to all in
>> >their capacity as individuals), and suggested something absurd to the
>> >effect that only individuals exist.
>>
>> That's right: You can reach out and poke individuals in the ribs.
>> "Nations" and "societies", OTOH, are non-corporeal abstractions - they
>> exist only as concepts, not physical manifestations.
>
>The same is true for "corporations," "the equator," and "rights." Yet these
>are extremely useful concepts. Why do you object to some abstractions and
>not others?
A very interesting question. I think my fellow objectivists tend to be
a bit too hasty here. "Society" is as legitimate a concept as those
others. The importance of the distinction between individuals and
society, IMO, is that there are no rights possessed by the latter that
are denied the former.
>> *I* did not establish the government (supposedly or otherwise), and
>> have *no* duty or responsibility to it.
>
>I didn't establish the university I work for, and I presume you didn't
>establish the corporation you work for, if you work for one. Does that mean
>you have no responsibility to it?
YES, it does. You have ZERO responsibility to the U. until you make
an agreement with it designating you as having such. This is the
critical piece missing from the love-it-or-leave-it argument.
>Face it: by continuing to live here you
>implicitly accept certain responsibilities.
But there is never any agreement to that effect. I no more implicitly
accept to pay taxes merely by occupying space on this continent, than
the kids on my block who sit under my shade tree implicitly accept to
pay my watering bills. It makes no sense to say one person or entity
owes another only because the latter makes such a claim. And a claim
is all the gov't has.
>If you don't like them, you can
>leave the country with only slightly more difficulty than you can leave your
>job.
Oh, please, now you are getting ridiculous. For much of America,
changing jobs requires little more than changing one's morning route.
You want to claim that is only SLIGHTLY easier than packing everything
you own, selling your house, getting a new currency, learning a new
language, etc? Really, you have some good points to present - don't
pollute them with crap like this.
>If you walked into your office and started stealing computers, or
>playing video games on corporate time but still expected to be paid your full
>salary, you would get a rude awakening.
Well, you mixed two very different items. I see no reason to speak
much of the first except to say we all have a pretty good idea that
stealing is wrong. As to the second, as a worker, I used to do THIS
on a regular basis at work, with no "rude awakening"s, because the
quality and quantity of my work remained above par. As a boss, I
couldn't care less if my workers played videos games if they were able
to do the same.
And of course, more to the point, when you get a job you freely sign a
CONTRACT spelling out each person's duties. Thereis no such thing
with regard to the government.
>And if you benefit from our national
>security, sound money supply, road system, and so forth but refuse to pay
>taxes for it or respect other people's rights as defined under the system
>you've agreed to live under, then you deserve the same.
Nonsense. These people have NOT agreed to live "under the system".
And the fact that I benefit from something someone else does is
TOTALLY irrelevant to whether or not I owe them for it. Surely the
numerous available counterexamples are obvious enough - do you owe me
if I wash your car without checking if you even wanted it done? All
that matters is that I ASKED you to do something and you STATED what
your price was. THEN I owe you - not before.
>If you don't like it, leave.
>But I suspect you won't:
Of course - there is no reason to, and you have no right to force me
to leave.
See? That doesn't get us anywhere.
>it is a prominent
>characteristic of Objectivists that they like to whine about how everything
>is so unfair to them and how everybody else is so evil,
I suppose you could have said the same thing about blacks in 1960, or
slaves in 1850, or homosexuals now. Such a personal attack say
exactly SQUAT about the quality of their arguments or the justness of
their cause.
>but they have neither a practical blueprint for how to make it better,
SURELY you are not going to engage that horrific fallacy that says if
you can't fix the problem you shouldn't identify it.
As to the practical blueprint for how to make it better, every
libertarian presidential candidate I've ever heard speak spelled it
out very nicely - perhaps you shold check it out.
I suspect the problem here, however, is that "practical", as you use
it above, is merely a euphamism for "acceptable to me", as opposed to
its more ordinary meaning.
>nor do they put their money
>where their mouth is by pulling up the stakes and moving on.
That's just garbage. I suppose MLK and his bunch should have moved
out of the country rather than fight against the injustices they saw?
>I really wish
>you losers who have nothing positive to contribute to our society except
>lunatic complaints would stuff it or ship out, though.
Gee whiz, how very informative. I won't call you a loser, since I
know nothing of you other than these few posts, but I wish people like
you would spend more time making substative comments/critiques and
less time making the pointless personal attacks the appear al too
frequently here. Some might see only the attacks and fail to
recognize that you occasionally made some very interestng points.
Chris Wuestefeld
> > >Consent of the governed means consent by the majority.
> >
> > What consent? Neither I nor Beck "consent".
>
> atoll and do it your way. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing
> you to live here and obey the rules the rest of us have chosen to accept.
What a stupid thing to say. Your homework assignment is to read the
Declaration of Independence and Common Sense. Then come back with a book
report on why *we* are the ones responsible for determining how our
nation (notice I didn't say gov't) operates, and how it is proper to take
whatever steps necessary to ensure that it works properly.
> > That's right: You can reach out and poke individuals in the ribs.
> > "Nations" and "societies", OTOH, are non-corporeal abstractions - they
> > exist only as concepts, not physical manifestations.
>
> The same is true for "corporations," "the equator," and "rights." Yet these
> are extremely useful concepts. Why do you object to some abstractions and
> not others?
Those are all useful abstractions. However, today's political environment
allows two paths of influence: voting and political contributions. This
leaves you and I underrepresented, not because Bill Gates has more money,
but because he has two voices to my one: he votes through his own vote
and money, but also through the coffers of Microsoft.
>
> > *I* did not establish the government (supposedly or otherwise), and
> > have *no* duty or responsibility to it.
>
> I didn't establish the university I work for
But you do have an explicit employment agreement, entered into
consensually by both parties.
> If you don't like it, leave.
Suppose that our taxes double, or that state-issued photo ID is checked
at every political boundary, or other unreasonable action. Doesn't there
come some point at which even you will say, "enough"? Why can't we draw
our own personal lines? And if we do that, the only practical line for
the gov't to observe is the lowest common denominator.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
> >> What consent? Neither I nor Beck "consent".
> >
> >Then get the fuck out of our country.
>
> Make me. Bring it on, son.
I don't need to make parasites leave when they refuse to pay for services
they consent to benefit from by staying here. That's what the IRS and other
government agencies are for. I'm just saying if that if you can't stand
living in a place that requires you to pay for public services--which is
precisely what you are complaining about--then you had better face the fact
that this isn't going to change anytime soon. If you were complaining about
irrational, unnecessary spending or actions, like the activities that Agnew
was presumably defending, then you would have a point, and I would encourage
you to act within the system to make things better. But since Objectivists
resent the very concept of having to pay specified overhead costs for any
necessary public goods, and since a mass refusal to do so would lead to
anarchy and lead to total destruction of our society and that which 99% of
the population holds dear, including the value of all of property, I can
guarantee you that you will _not_ find a strong following for your ideas here
or in most other civilized and crowded nations. So I suggest you find some
uninhabitation region where you can live without social overhead costs,
because that is the only place in reality where you can get what you seem to
want.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
> >So they insist that they should not be
> >compelled to pay for those institutions which are essential to protecting the
> >rights which they absolutely insist the rest of us owe it to them to respect
> >and protect.
>
> True, although it should be noted that they insist that THEY owe those
> very same rights to everyone else as well. Leaving that part off sort
> of biases the description.
Pistol, you just made what should be a glaringly obvious shift of terms which
are crucial to the argument. I'm not sure if you did this consciously, in a
deliberate attempt to make your position look like it has a foundation which
it does not possess, or if this is an unconscious move which your
philosophical mindset has trained you to perform. Of course it could also
have just been a simple mistake, but you'll have an opportunity to explain
that, then. :-)
What you did, of course, is to grant that my statement that certain
institutions are necessary for the preservation of certain rights, and that
these institutions _must_ exist in order for Objectivists to enjoy the kinds
of rights they insist upon having, but that at the same time they
(Objectivists) insist that they should not have to pay for these
institutions. So they are demanding a benefit yet deny that they should be
required to pay for its upkeep.
But then you reworded this, and said that Objectivists only demand that others
respect their rights, period.
Now, if it were only a matter of saying "please respect my rights"--"OK, I
will"--then we wouldn't need any institutions like police to keep rights
enforced, and there would be no costs. But right now you have to explain the
discrepancy between your two statements--your implication that you agreed
with my statements, which insist that certain costs are essential to keep
these institutions running--and your statement that the Objectivist position
is not inconsistent or parasitical, and that a demand for respecting rights
as opposed to a demand for the existence of certain institutions necessary
for these rights, is all that is required.
> Please explain what is wrong with what you just said.
> Particularly, how is insisting on the availablity of a VOLUNTARY, and
> UNFREE service, a form of parasitism?
You are insisting that a certain service exist. Yet you are insisting that
you don't have to pay for it. This is a perfect case of what Ayn Rand called
a "smuggled premise," although she hypocritically neglected to ever apply
this concept to many of her own ideas which deserved it, such as this one.
Who exactly are you insisting to that this service be provided? And who do
you insist pays for it? If the answer is "no one" then you can hardly insist
that the service exist--it doesn't just pop out of thin air. You are
assuming that it will just "somehow" be provided, without establishing a
foundation for this. That's a very severe "blank out" in your argument, and
one that has bedeviled Objectivism since Ayn Rand first proposed her social
visions, and one that has prevented any major social theorist since from
taking Objectivism seriously because this flaw is so blindingly obvious and
prevents the proposal in question from even being coherent, let alone
actually having a chance of working in practice.
Meanwhile Objectivists have complained since then that the reason they aren't
taken seriously in most philosophy or political science departments is that
such organizations are gripped by ideological bromides like Kantianism or
Communism, and whine about how they can't make the headway into the
intellectual mainstream they deserve because the latter is so corrupted.
When everybody but them can tell at a glance that the basic contradictions in
their philosophy, like this one, are the real problem. It's a good thing
that Objectivists ask for no sympathy or pity from anyone, because they don't
deserve any--their blindness is apparently self-induced.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
rdgood...@nospammbigfoot.com (RonG) wrote:
> If what you say is true--then the citizens of Hitler's Germany were morally
> _required_ to support the laws that Hitler put in place, including the
> warmaking, including the assasinations, including the mass imprisonments and
> so on. Why? Because these people _lived_ there...they used the roads, the
> schools, the hospitals and the rest of the infrastructure.
Well, they were morally required to support necessary public goods, even if
many unnecessary actions and costs were also being incurred, both financial
and otherwise. Of course Nazi Germany is a peculiar situation because the
situation was so extreme--in fact, given the inevitable collapse of the
entire nation under the Nazi regime, the single most valuable and most
necessary "public good" that could have been provided at the time would have
been the destruction and repression of the Nazi Party. And if what it took
to get there was the sacrifice of and refusal to pay for other public goods,
then that is the morally responsible action.
There are some less extreme cases where some kind of "stike" against public
goods which are normally required for proper regulation of our social
behavior with one another is justified in the name of some higher public
good, but this is generally due to gross abuse of the system. Occasionally
this happens, of course, and we must be prepared to consider our options at
that point. But usually it doesn't. If you're going to throw the baby out
with the bathwater, you have to demonstrate that that is some very seriously
bad bathwater which is killing the baby all of itself. Short of that, the
denial that there are necessary public goods on the grounds that there are
also occasional or even frequent unnecessary public projects, actions, or
expenditures, is simply a non-sequitor.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
chr...@blast.net (Chris Wuestefeld) wrote:
> Your homework assignment is to read the
> Declaration of Independence and Common Sense. Then come back with a book
> report on why *we* are the ones responsible for determining how our
> nation (notice I didn't say gov't) operates, and how it is proper to take
> whatever steps necessary to ensure that it works properly.
Well, I've read both, and the reason we are the ones responsible for
determining out nation operates is because we live here and choose to
continue living under it of our own free will. Are you challenging this
assumption? I don't quite understand the point of your question, since I
agree that it is proper to take whatever steps necessary to ensure that
government and society work properly. However abandoning the whole thing,
which is what the Objectivist proposal means in practice, would not do this.
Next question.
> today's political environment
> allows two paths of influence: voting and political contributions. This
> leaves you and I underrepresented, not because Bill Gates has more money,
> but because he has two voices to my one: he votes through his own vote
> and money, but also through the coffers of Microsoft.
Excellent point. And since having government functions supported exclusively
by voluntary contributions would make the system even worse, because then
Bill Gates would have oodles of ways to vote and I would have close to none,
severely reducing the rights I and most other people have now and which are
necessary to make the positive-sum game of society work properly, that would
be even worse. So if you have a third proposal which works better than either
of these two, I would love to hear it.
> Suppose that our taxes double, or that state-issued photo ID is checked
> at every political boundary, or other unreasonable action. Doesn't there
> come some point at which even you will say, "enough"? Why can't we draw
> our own personal lines? And if we do that, the only practical line for
> the gov't to observe is the lowest common denominator.
That is NOT a practical line. That is the whole point. The lowest common
demoninator turns out to be zero, since there are a few nuts out there who
don't think public goods should exist at all, and would rather we live at a
stone-age level of civilization and population than to have any kind of
social infrastructure which would support the institutions necessary for a
higher standard of living and justice than this. So it is not practical for
everyone to draw their own personal lines. We have to make compromises
somewhere, and the question then is what compromises are necessary and in our
interest to make and which ones aren't. And we have to make these
determinations to some extent on the basis of objective, rational study of
what human beings and their needs are, and what is best for us, otherwise you
leave it up to each individual's subjective determination and your
civilization collapses into anarchy. That's the choice reality gives us.
Sorry if your belief in some kind of perfect utopia where no compromises are
necessary yet enormous wealth and satisfaction can be achieved doesn't fit
into this. Take up this issue with the creator-deity of your choice, not
with those of us who are advocating practical ways to deal with this
imperfect situation which we are all stuck with.
Of course there are times when we should say "enough." We should do so
precisely at the point when the irrational, unnecessary elements which are
incorrectly ascribed to and accounted as the overhead costs of social
infrastructure get way out of proportion with, and interfere heavily and
persistently with, those costs and needs which are actually necessary. And
look, all of you people implicitly know this, which is exactly why you try to
challenge me with situations like Nazi Germany or the hypothetical
"unreasonable" actions you list above. Because we all know that these things
are in fact just that--unreasonable--and you know that everyone else with an
ounce of sense knows it as well. And you must implicitly recognize that this
means that many governments less extreme than the examples you mention are
more "reasonable" than these. That's why you try to challenge me with cases
like these, instead of Canada or Ohio. Your pattern of attack is essentially
"what if things were worse than they are, what if they made no sense at all."
Well duh--obviously my principles don't extend to the defense of such
situations, in fact they explicitly exclude them. It's obvious that
something has gone radically wrong in such situations and they need to be
corrected. But that doesn't mean that *anytime* you feel that you don't have
to pay for something that you are justified in acting accordingly. That's
pure subjectivism, yet ironically it is what so-called "Objectivists"
advocate. Such decisions should be made on the basis of objective,
reality-based criteria if we are to have kind of society above the anarchic
level.
Obviously at some point individuals do have to make such decisions; in Nazi
Germany, or Canada for that matter, it is neither practical nor a good idea
to have some kind of central committee of social scientists making these
decisions for everybody about when to revolt or not--in fact, it is pretty
obvious that no matter how carefully we tried to arrange such a thing it
would be likely to fail and become corrupted at the precise moment when we
needed its decisions. So of course individuals have to be able to decide
this at some point; all I am saying here is that this doesn't necessarily
make their decision right in every case. There is justified revolt, and
unjustified revolt, and there is an objective, reality-based difference
between them.
Pistol
>In article <35e63178...@newshost.cyberramp.net>,
> pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
>
>> >Then get the fuck out of our country. Move to Antarctica or some south-sea
>> >atoll and do it your way. No one is holding a gun to your head and forcing
>> >you to live here and obey the rules the rest of us have chosen to accept.
>>
>> You know, you strike me as an intelligent guy, so it shocks the hell
>> out of me to see you present this easily and oft-refuted argument.
>> Basically, a gang collecting "protection money" could make an
>> identical offer - if you don't like it leave.
>
>They sure could. And if they didn't force anyone to stay, people _would_
>leave, unless they stayed by their own consent because they actually saw some
>benefits to living near what you call a "gang," and contributing to the
>"gang's" funds.
>So either 1) everyone who stays and pays money to what you consider "gang"
>government is really, really stupid, or weak and powerless, or 2) we are
>smarter than you think, and you are not.
No, there is a third option you ignore - that the people stay because
they see no justification for the demands of the gang/government, and
they fight beause of that. The fact that they stay does NOT imply
that they grant the validity of the demands, just like the fact that
you'll respond to this post in no way implies that you grant the
validity of the claim I make right now that you'll owe me $100 if you
do.
>> What is sorely missing
>> from this argument re the state is any contract, implicit or
>> otherwise, that the Beck's of the world signed with the government
>> giving it sanction for such control over them.
>
>By sticking around when you don't have to you do _precisely_ that--give
>sanction to an implicit contract.
Fine. Pay me my $100. No? Then you see the flaw in your argment.
[snips]
>> >Face it: by continuing to live here you
>> >implicitly accept certain responsibilities.
>>
>> But there is never any agreement to that effect. I no more implicitly
>> accept to pay taxes merely by occupying space on this continent, than
>> the kids on my block who sit under my shade tree implicitly accept to
>> pay my watering bills. It makes no sense to say one person or entity
>> owes another only because the latter makes such a claim. And a claim
>> is all the gov't has.
>
>But you do, you do! No one forces you to live on this continent, anymore than
>anyone forces you to live in a one-company town.
Completely irrelevant. No one forces those kids to sit under my shade
tree either. but that doesn't mean they owe me any money now does it?
[snips]
>Your last statement is absurd, of course: I could say "all Ayn Rand has is a
>claim that her philosophy is correct."
You could. You'd be wrong.
>By conveniently ignoring the
>extremely strong reasons for organizing our complex society by the laws and
>regulations we have chosen through our government it's easy to reduce this to
>"merely a claim."
But I do NOT ignore those reasons. I am not an anarchist. I support
the exisence of government and laws, and I support coercive funding
for any item which can be show to be 1) necessary and 2) dependent on
such funding (no one's done this yet, but I hold out hope). But what I
do NOT accept is the contention that government has a right to demand
my goods or wealth under threat of deportation, and if all you have on
your side is the easily refuted love-it-or-leave-it argument, then
your side seems devoid of any justification.
>> >And if you benefit from our national
>> >security, sound money supply, road system, and so forth but refuse to pay
>> >taxes for it or respect other people's rights as defined under the system
>> >you've agreed to live under, then you deserve the same.
>>
>> Nonsense. These people have NOT agreed to live "under the system".
>
>They've made as much agreement as they possibly could by continuing to live
>where they do.
No, they haven't. The government could offer every citizen a choice
to be a member of the government system or not. You may give up all
your rights as a citizen - to vote, get government aid, etc., and in
return, you will not have to pay any coercive taxes. Now THAT would
start to get close to having a voluntary agreement.
[snip Montana-choice discussion]
You are presuming the very issue of contentin between us. The issue
is NOT whether we have a choice to stay or leave, but rather whether
or not government has a right to MAKE us decide.
>Objectivists seem to think that taxes are totally unnecessary, that we can
>live together in harmony without any overhead costs at all.
That's completely inaccurate. Objectivists object to the MANNER OF
COLLECTION of taxes, not taxes per se. They simply insist that
government collect its income through voluntary exchange the same way
every OTHER entity in the country does (or at least should). Now I
grant there are problems to be overcome in such a system (namely
governments inability to compete with private enterprise). But let's
get the issue right - it is not government income, but government
CONFISCATION of income, that is the issue.
[snip remainder of straw man]
>What I find totally absurd is your claim that you just don't owe
>anybody diddley-squat because you didn't agree to these costs.
Well, then make an argument besides "you chose to be here", and
perhaps you'll convince me as to the error of my ways. I've already
provided a counterexample to that sort of argument, and could cite 100
more if necessary, so it just won't cut the mustard. I've also
offered a way TO make the argument - by showing that Item X of
government service is NECESSARY to a free state and which cannot exist
without coercive funding. Here are my top candidates - the military,
courts, police and roads. And I daresay that if those were the only
items the government funded coercively, there would be little or no
debate here. It is all this other crap - social security, welfare
(both corporate and individual), the congresional barber shop,
renovating Lauwrence Welk's house, etc., that defy justification.
>Look, nobody
>agreed to live in a world where overhead costs are necessary to keep people
>in society from behaving properly towards one another. But we do, and we're
>stuck with it.
On that we agree. We cannot ignore the logical implications of the
reality we occupy.
>So don't give me this shit about what you "agreed" to or
>didn't.
I will until you give me an argument against me that can't be
dissectedint two seconds.
>If you can show me that there is a better way to do things, fine.
No, no, no. That is a shift of topic. Whether or not I am able to
design a working perpetual motion machine is completely irrelevant to
the validity of my criticism of yours as a piece of junk. If your
argument that I implicitly agreed to have my income confiscated by
living here is flawed, then it is flawed, whether I can think of a
better way or not.
>But most of us think that many of these costs are necessary, that there is no
>way to do without them. Prove us wrong if you can.
That is backwards. He who asserts must prove. If you have a case to
make for a government service being necessary, by all means present
it. I would be very excited to see one. But those who doubt you have
no obligation to prove anything, any more than I have to prove that
there is no Loch Ness monster to disbelieve it.
>But don't just say "I
>had no choice about this" because neither did we as regards the original
>situation. We did, and continue to choose, what to do about it, however.
That doesn't follow. The fact that we are stuck with the laws of
physics in no way implies that I am stuck witha government mandate for
funds.
>> And the fact that I benefit from something someone else does is
>> TOTALLY irrelevant to whether or not I owe them for it. Surely the
>> numerous available counterexamples are obvious enough - do you owe me
>> if I wash your car without checking if you even wanted it done? All
>> that matters is that I ASKED you to do something and you STATED what
>> your price was. THEN I owe you - not before.
>
>Well, the government does that when you buy a house, or fill up your gas
>tank. The rates may change occasionally, but can count on owing a certain
>range of money to the government in exchange for having the roads that go by
>your house, or that you drive on, as well as the sewer hook up, the local
>zoo, etc.
I don't have NEARLY as bg a problem with a user tax as an income tax,
since we can control to a gret degree how much of the former we pay.
>Now you may not ever go to the zoo. That's fine. OTOH, I may not ever use
>the free coffee in the staff room, because I prefer water. But in both cases
>we implicitly agree to pay a small fraction of what our income would
>otherwise be to pay for these things.
No we don't. You can keep asserting this all you want, and I'll just
keep reminding you that it is an assertion, and little else.
>Presumably we have agreed to put up
>with this situation--or even enthusiastically agree to it in some
>cases--because either we make enough use of other benefits provided by the
>government or corporate employer to make it worthwhile, or because the
>indirect benefits through other people's use of these things is to our
>advantage (my colleages who drink coffee are more awake and work better with
>me, or there are more children at the zoo learning and entertaining
>themselves who might otherwise be less wise or getting into trouble).
The presumption is false. The fact that one uses sometihing does not
imply that they agee to a coercive tax to fund it. Again, think of
the kids sitting under my shade tree.
>If either of us don't like the trade-off, then we should go somewhere else.
Presumes the issue of contention - wheher the government has the right
to force us to make such a decision.
>> >it is a prominent
>> >characteristic of Objectivists that they like to whine about how everything
>> >is so unfair to them and how everybody else is so evil,
>>
>> I suppose you could have said the same thing about blacks in 1960, or
>> slaves in 1850, or homosexuals now. Such a personal attack say
>> exactly SQUAT about the quality of their arguments or the justness of
>> their cause.
>
>When a group complains about the lack of rights granted them in our society,
>their claims may rest on the claim that the unfair treatment they receive
>leads to inefficiencies in social mechanisms, and hence hurts everyone else
>in some way, but also is quite specifically irrational because costs and
>benefits are not distributed fairly, and the unfairness is so vast and
>disproportionate that it causes chronic problems.
It is also irrational because the weighting of the elements of these
inefficiencies boils down to personal subjective standards.
The better argument is that one is due these rights by virtue of being
a rational being, whether society likes it, or benefits from it, or
not.
[snips]
>I'm arguing that certain overhead costs are _necessary_ to making society
>run.
AH, now we are getting somewhere.
>For example, if a village is in a flood plain, and someone points out
>that this year's flood is going to drown us out unless we build a dam, then
>it is _necessary_ to build the dam in order to preserve our properties and
>lives. And if some government entity (or anyone, for that matter) does build
>a dam with this function, then that dam, even though it may not be on your
>property, in some fractional way contributes to the continuing existence of
>your house in the form it exists next year just as much as if the dam-builder
>had reshingled your roof or dug your basement. If you don't like the fact
>that the dam is essential to the continued existence of your house, you may
>want to take up that complaint with the universe, but to complain to the
>taxing authority which charges you a fair percentage of the cost of the dam
>is simply to bark up the wrong tree.
The problem with all such scenarios, and why I've not been able to
accomplish my own challenge despite my desire to, is that one never
has 100% perfect knowledge of what is going to occur. All we have is
varying probabilities of certainty based on whatever knowledge we
have. Well, once you open that Pandora's box, it destroys the
limitations of the argument, for you are then stuck with the
unanswerable question: What probability of a flood wipe-out is
required before such a coercive action is justified, and why? Without
an objective answer to such a question, the door is left wide open for
government to coercively tax for anything it wants, on the grounds
that it is to protect for some hazard that is "sufficiently likely", a
term left without definiton, and for good (or bad, dependinfg on POV)
reason.
[snip repetitions]
>But to conclude
>that you also shouldn't have to pay for necessary public goods is absolutely
>absurd and irrational.
I'm sorry bud, but given the fact that the only argument you've
presented (love-it-or-leave-it) could be dismantled by any logic 101
student, it appears that it is YOUR position that is absurd and
irrational, or to m=be kinder, unjustified.
[snips]
>But it makes
>no sense to say "there's a problem with the current system, therefore we
>should not have any system at all."
Well, speak to the anarchists about that. I do not argue such a
position.
>I don't mind you identifying things. I
>do mind your saying that the solution is not have any system that has any
>risk of corruption, because what that means is doing without public works
>altogether.
Tere is the rub. You INSIST on having public works. This presumption
cannot be plucked out of the air and presented as some sort of
self-evident fact when it is nothing of the kind. It needs the
justification which has been sorely mising from this misive.
[snip more criticisms of anarchy, which I do not promote]
>> As to the practical blueprint for how to make it better, every
>> libertarian presidential candidate I've ever heard speak spelled it
>> out very nicely - perhaps you shold check it out.
>
>Well, the Objectivist blueprint, as I understand it, is that we need to have
>certain minimal public goods like law enforcement and national defense, but
>that nobody should have to pay for this. Which means that they won't
>actually work or exist at all.
That is a presumption that I have never seen justified. Please do so.
And you would be well advised to not make presumptions of me based on
what you think the typical objectivist thinks - you'll be wrong a lot.
Want to see the proof? Ayn Rand made mistakes - a lot of them.
>Perhaps the libertarian blueprint is less irrational and full of "smuggled
>premises" than the Objectivist one. I am speaking of the Objectivist version
>as of this moment.
As am I, because frankly, I've never seen a whit of difference between
them in application. And I've never seen anyone show that Oist
premises are smuggled, but alas, this thread is long enough already.
Pistol
>In article <35e631a2...@newshost.cyberramp.net>,
> pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
>
>> >So they insist that they should not be
>> >compelled to pay for those institutions which are essential to protecting the
>> >rights which they absolutely insist the rest of us owe it to them to respect
>> >and protect.
>>
>> True, although it should be noted that they insist that THEY owe those
>> very same rights to everyone else as well. Leaving that part off sort
>> of biases the description.
>
>Pistol, you just made what should be a glaringly obvious shift of terms which
>are crucial to the argument. I'm not sure if you did this consciously, in a
>deliberate attempt to make your position look like it has a foundation which
>it does not possess, or if this is an unconscious move which your
>philosophical mindset has trained you to perform. Of course it could also
>have just been a simple mistake, but you'll have an opportunity to explain
>that, then. :-)
Do you realize that paragraph was completely unnecessary?
>What you did, of course, is to grant that my statement that certain
>institutions are necessary for the preservation of certain rights, and that
>these institutions _must_ exist in order for Objectivists to enjoy the kinds
>of rights they insist upon having,
I did no such thing. I was referring to the second part of your
comment, not the first. That is, i was merely clearing up the possble
misinterpretaton of your description of objectivists as people who
think they deserve special rights. I most certainly do NOT
acknowledge the necessity of ANY institutions, although I am most
eager to see your argument to that effect.
>but that at the same time they
>(Objectivists) insist that they should not have to pay for these
>institutions. So they are demanding a benefit yet deny that they should be
>required to pay for its upkeep.
But they DO believe those that use such services should pay for them.
They just don't believe those that DON'T want them should be made to
pay for them.
>But then you reworded this, and said that Objectivists only demand that others
>respect their rights, period.
Yes, because that IS what they demand.
>Now, if it were only a matter of saying "please respect my rights"--"OK, I
>will"--then we wouldn't need any institutions like police to keep rights
>enforced, and there would be no costs. But right now you have to explain the
>discrepancy between your two statements--your implication that you agreed
>with my statements, which insist that certain costs are essential to keep
>these institutions running--and your statement that the Objectivist position
>is not inconsistent or parasitical, and that a demand for respecting rights
>as opposed to a demand for the existence of certain institutions necessary
>for these rights, is all that is required.
Done above. Objectivists think that the institutions used to ensure
rights should exist via voluntary funding, just like any other
institution. there is no discrepency, no contradiction.
>> Please explain what is wrong with what you just said.
>> Particularly, how is insisting on the availablity of a VOLUNTARY, and
>> UNFREE service, a form of parasitism?
>
>You are insisting that a certain service exist. Yet you are insisting that
>you don't have to pay for it. This is a perfect case of what Ayn Rand called
>a "smuggled premise,"
No, it is what is commonly called a "straw man". No objectivist
insists on the existence of a service. The rest of the argument is
completely irrelevant once that fact is recognized.
[snip remainder]
Billy Beck
pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
>I support the exisence of government and laws, and I support coercive funding
>for any item which can be show to be 1) necessary...
(To whom? How would you "show" it?)
>...and 2) dependent on such funding...
(Utilitarian rationale for force.)
Carry on.
do...@stone-soup.com
Could this be an indicator that government is too big? Might not the
proper approach be that no country should be larger than everyone can
agree on what public goods is?
I can't see an objective difference? I can only see that as
subjective. We are oppressed more by our government now than we were
by our government in 1776 in objective terms. Example: Counting the
number of times you come into contact with someone who works for
government per day, year what ever. That would be one objective
measure, or how much of our income is required to support government
that would also be objective. But when an individual or group thinks
that these numbers are too great is subjective.
>Scott Forschler
>
>-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
>http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
S. Douglas Heard do...@stone-soup.com
It IS as bad as you think, and they ARE out to get you.
"liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others."
William Allen White
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
> >Pistol, you just made what should be a glaringly obvious shift of terms which
> >are crucial to the argument. I'm not sure if you did this consciously, in a
> >deliberate attempt to make your position look like it has a foundation which
> >it does not possess, or if this is an unconscious move which your
> >philosophical mindset has trained you to perform. Of course it could also
> >have just been a simple mistake, but you'll have an opportunity to explain
> >that, then. :-)
>
> Do you realize that paragraph was completely unnecessary?
Unnecessary to prove my substantive point concerning the argument yes.
Unnecessary in the context of demonstrating the sloppiness and slipperiness of
typical Objectivist arguments, no.
> >What you did, of course, is to grant that my statement that certain
> >institutions are necessary for the preservation of certain rights, and that
> >these institutions _must_ exist in order for Objectivists to enjoy the kinds
> >of rights they insist upon having,
>
> I did no such thing. I was referring to the second part of your
> comment, not the first. That is, i was merely clearing up the possble
> misinterpretaton of your description of objectivists as people who
> think they deserve special rights. I most certainly do NOT
> acknowledge the necessity of ANY institutions, although I am most
> eager to see your argument to that effect.
Oh, so you're actually claiming that you were being sloppy and unclear by not
indicating what part of my comment you were referring to, rather than shifting
terms. Thanks for clearing that up.
Well, if you don't insist upon the availability of institutions to defend the
rights you claim that you should have, then you really have no one to
complain to when you are mugged except the mugger himself. And your only
logical recourse to what you subjectively perceive as a violation of your
rights would be to hire some thugs to get revenge or repayment for you, since
you don't advocate the existence of a governmental institution to enforce
your rights. In other words, you're simply an anarchist, and an advocate of
thuggery based upon subjective perceptions of violations of rights, and don't
believe that it is possible let alone necessary for there to be a single
general institution for the protection of rights, since such an institution
obviously wouldn't exist under this proposed anarchy.
This also demonstrates that your earlier comment:
>how is insisting on the availablity of a VOLUNTARY, and
>UNFREE service, a form of parasitism?
was a bit of confused nonsense contradicting your actual position, since it
makes no sense to "insist on the availability" of something which do you not
believe is necessary. Unless you were making this statement in a
hypothetical way, and not actually holding that you made such an insistance,
but in this case you were again not being clear.
Please try harder to make it clear what you actually mean/believe in, or to
keep your statements from contradicting each other. Or both, if at all
possible.
> >but that at the same time they
> >(Objectivists) insist that they should not have to pay for these
> >institutions. So they are demanding a benefit yet deny that they should be
> >required to pay for its upkeep.
>
> But they DO believe those that use such services should pay for them.
> They just don't believe those that DON'T want them should be made to
> pay for them.
Well, if we combine the above two sentences logically aren't you conceding
that those who don't want to use such services shouldn't use them, and that
if not using them means moving to a place where they are not provided
automatically to everyone in a certain region under the jurisdiction of the
providing agency, that they should do so? Or are one or both of the two
statements above not really exactly what you mean after all?
> Objectivists think that the institutions used to ensure
> rights should exist via voluntary funding, just like any other
> institution. there is no discrepency, no contradiction.
Just like any other institution without a central government to oversee it,
you mean, since in the real world most institutions do operate under this
premise, which in many cases quite correctly limits their freedom of action
and at least partially limits them from invading some of my rights. You are
making a false analogy if you are trying to compare your hypothetical
institutions to those which most of us are familiar with in the real
world--another smuggled premise on your part. So what you really mean are
mafia-style institutions whose only limits are their own sense of subjective
morality, and the force which other gangs of thugs might apply against them.
Unless of course you mean to imply that each of your voluntarily-funded law
enforcement and military institutions would be guided by a superior
Objectivist form of morality all by themselves, without any other form of
authority to oversee them and regulate their behavior. But then you are
making a conclusion unsupported by your premises, since you have no way to
guarantee that such institutions would behave in this way unless some higher
authority was created to enforce this. This is merely a variation of the
smuggled premise noted above.
> >> how is insisting on the availablity of a VOLUNTARY, and UNFREE service
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^^^^^^
> No objectivist insists on the existence of a service.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Please distinguish between the "availability" of and the "existence" of a
service. Or explain that the first statement was a hypothetical one rather
than a commitment to the content of the statement. Or admit that you are not
quite being clear, honest, and unequivocal, if you cannot do either of the
above.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
> >Face it: by continuing to live here you
> >implicitly accept certain responsibilities.
>
> But there is never any agreement to that effect. I no more implicitly
> accept to pay taxes merely by occupying space on this continent
Let me try one more approach to help you understand this.
Suppose a group of people landed on a continent. Let's suppose for
convenience it is uninhabited. I know in the real world there were natives,
but unless you want to give most of North America back to the Indians--which,
incidentally, *would* be the logical conclusion of a system of absolute
property rights--we will have to simplify this a little bit. So these people
lay a claim and say "we own this continent." Now they could split it up
evenly--Joe gets the first 1 million acres, Sue gets the next 1 million, and
so on. But they realize they don't have the resources to make use of all
this stuff. In fact, they don't want the responsibility, and they are lonely
so they want to encourage other people to join them. Owning it directly
would be a trade off--each of them would be wealthy and powerful, but they
also risk that someone might try to bump them off because the land isn't well
protected and the rewards and hence temptation to do so are pretty large.
So instead they set up a corporation in which they are all members and all
get one vote, as do most other people who join them to live there and agree
to a certain set of by-laws. Now the corporation owns the land, not the
individuals, but there are rules whereby the individuals in the corporation,
and in some cases people who don't belong, can acquire some parts of that
land. The corporation has a complex governing system in which its member can
participate through voting and advocating policies to the board of directors
and its subagencies.
Now, every time the corporation sells land to an individual (or to other
corporations), it does so with a set of codes, covenants, and restrictions.
Some of these are spelled out in detail, others are somewhat open-ended, and
give the main corporation the opportunity to change some of its rules
retroactively in certain cases. This might disappoint some of the people who
bought land from the corporation, or from another person who did so
originally, but of course everyone pretty much has foreknowledge of this
possibility, so even if certain actions of the corporation, like taking back
land it sold earlier and compensating the owner, come unexpectedly, no one
can really say that the possibility of this wasn't allowed in the original
contract. After all, no one forced anyone else to buy land from the
corporation, or to which these CC&Rs applied [another oversimplification;
let's ignore slavery and indentured service for the time being].
Now, so far I don't think I've described anything that an Objectivist would
object to. In fact I have described the situation in terms that have been
strongly advocated to me by Objectivists who have tried to explain to me how
certain necessary social institutions and rules would be formed without a
government. My challenge to you, then, is to distinguish what I have
described above from the actual process by which the United States, at least,
was formed--barring, of course, the two oversimplifications which I have
raised [I suspect that reintroducing these complexities will either not
change the argument fundamentally, or will actually argue against your case,
but if you disagree feel free to explain how]. Obviously I have used
different _words_ to describe the process, but what I challenge you to do is
to explain how the _substance_ of what I described is different from the
founding of this nation, and if not why you still think there is something
inherently unjust in its fundamental premises [as opposed to certain
particular things it might do which are inessential to its main function].
In your response, please specifically explain whether or not you think that a
person who owns land bought under the founding corporation's CC&Rs, or who
rents property from a person who has done so, or works on the premises of a
company which has done either the above, has not in fact made an implicit
contract to abide by the CC&Rs described.
phil...@geocities.com
>
> In article <35e5c12c...@news.mindspring.com>,
> wj...@mindspring.com wrote:
>
> > >
> >
>
> I don't need to make parasites leave when they refuse to pay for
> services they consent to benefit from by staying here. That's what
> the IRS and other government agencies are for.
Ha! The obvious parasites are those miscreants whose living is
leeched by extorting and stealing the property of others on the
dubious premise that their extortion and thievery is somehow
justified because a small portion of the proceeds of the crime
will be used for the victim's benefit from time-to-time.
1. It is true that the theory of our Constitution is, that
all taxes are paid voluntarily; that our government is a
mutual insurance company, voluntarily entered into by the
people with each other; that that each man makes a free and
purely voluntary contract with all others who are parties
to the Constitution, to pay so much money for so much
protection, the same as he does with any other insurance
company; and that he is just as free not to be protected,
and not to pay tax, as he is to pay a tax, and be protected.
But this theory of our government is wholly different from
the practical fact. The fact is that the government, like a
highwayman, says to a man: "Your money, or your life." And
many, if not most, taxes are paid under the compulsion of
that threat.
The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely
place, spring upon him from the roadside, and, holding a
pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the
robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it
is far more dastardly and shameful.
The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility,
danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that
he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends
to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be
anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough
to profess to be merely a "protector," and that he takes
men's money against their will, merely to enable him to
"protect" those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly
able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar
system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such
professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money,
he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in
following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be
your rightful "sovereign," on account of the "protection"
he affords you. He does not keep "protecting" you, by
commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring
you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing
you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest
or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a
traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you
down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist
his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of
such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In
short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to
make you either his dupe or his slave.
The proceedings of those robbers and murderers, who call
themselves "the government," are directly the opposite of
these of the single highwayman.
In the first place, they do not, like him, make themselves
individually known; or, consequently, take upon themselves
personally the responsibility of their acts. On the contrary,
they secretly (by secret ballot) designate some one of their
number to commit the robbery in their behalf, while they keep
themselves practically concealed. They say to the person thus
designated:
Go to A_____ B_____, and say to him that "the government" has
need of money to meet the expenses of protecting him and his
property. If he presumes to say that he has never contracted
with us to protect him, and that he wants none of our
protection, say to him that that is our business, and not
his; that we choose to protect him, whether he desires us
to do so or not; and that we demand pay, too, for protecting
him. If he dares to inquire who the individuals are, who have
thus taken upon themselves the title of "the government," and
who assume to protect him, and demand payment of him, without
his having ever made any contract with them, say to him that
that, too, is our business, and not his; that we do not
choose to make ourselves individually known to him; that we
have secretly (by secret ballot) appointed you our agent to
give him notice of our demands, and, if he complies with
them, to give him, in our name, a receipt that will protect
him against any similar demand for the present year. If he
refuses to comply, seize and sell enough of his property to
pay not only our demands, but all your own expenses and
trouble beside. If he resists the seizure of his property,
call upon the bystanders to help you (doubtless some of them
will prove to be members of our band.) If, in defending his
property, he should kill any of our band who are assisting
you, capture him at all hazards; charge him (in one of our
courts) with murder; convict him, and hang him. If he should
call upon his neighbors, or any others who, like him, may be
disposed to resist our demands, and they should come in large
numbers to his assistance, cry out that they are all rebels
and traitors; that "our country" is in danger; call upon the
commander of our hired murderers; tell him to quell the
rebellion and "save the country," cost what it may. Tell
him to kill all who resist, though they should be hundreds
of thousands; and thus strike terror into all others similarly
disposed. See that the work of murder is thoroughly done;
that we may have no further trouble of this kind hereafter.
When these traitors shall have thus been taught our strength
and our determination, they will be good loyal citizens for
many years, and pay their taxes without a why or a wherefore.
It is under such compulsion as this that taxes, so called,
are paid. And how much proof the payment of taxes affords,
that the people consent to "support the government," it needs
no further argument to show.
2. Still another reason why the payment of taxes implies no
consent, or pledge, to support the government, is that the
taxpayer does not know, and has no means of knowing, who the
particular individuals are who compose "the government."
To him "the government" is a myth, an abstraction, an
incorporeality, with which he can make no contract, and
to which he can give no consent, and make no pledge. He
knows it only through its pretended agents. "The government"
itself he never sees. He knows indeed, by common report,
that certain persons, of a certain age, are permitted to
vote; and thus to make themselves parts of, or (if they
choose) opponents of, the government, for the time being.
But who of them do thus vote, and especially how each one
votes (whether so as to aid or oppose the government), he
does not know; the voting being all done secretly (by secret
ballot). Who, therefore, practically compose "the government,"
for the time being, he has no means of knowing. Of course
he can make no contract with them, give them no consent,
and make them no pledge. Of necessity, therefore, his paying
taxes to them implies, on his part, no contract, consent,
or pledge to support them---that is, to support "the
government," or the Constitution.
3. Not knowing who the particular individuals are, who call
themselves "the government," the taxpayer does not know whom
he pays his taxes to. All he knows is that a man comes to him,
representing himself to be the agent of "the government"---
that is, the agent of a secret band of robbers and murderers,
who have taken to themselves the title of "the government,"
and have determined to kill everybody who refuses to give
them whatever money they demand. To save his life, he gives
up his money to this agent. But as this agent does not make
his principals individually known to the taxpayer, the latter,
after he has given up his money, knows no more who are "the
government"---that is, who were the robbers---than he did
before. To say, therefore, that by giving up his money to
their agent, he entered into a voluntary contract with them,
that he pledges himself to obey them, to support them, and
to give them whatever money they should demand of him in the
future, is simply ridiculous.
4. All political power, so called, rests practically upon
this matter of money. Any number of scoundrels, having money
enough to start with, can establish themselves as a
"government"; because, with money, they can hire soldiers,
and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general
obedience to their will. It is with government, as Caesar
said it was in war, that money and soldiers mutually
supported each other; that with money he could hire
soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. So these villains,
who call themselves governments, well understand that their
power rests primarily upon money. With money they can hire
soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. And, when their
authority is denied, the first use they always make of money,
is to hire soldiers to kill or subdue all who refuse them
more money.
For this reason, whoever desires liberty, should understand
these vital facts, viz.: 1. That every man who puts money
into the hands of a "government" (so called), puts into its
hands a sword which will be used against him, to extort more
money from him, and also to keep him in subjection to its
arbitrary will. 2. That those who will take his money,
without his consent, in the first place, will use it for
his further robbery and enslavement, if he presumes to
resist their demands in the future. 3. That it is a perfect
absurdity to suppose that any body of men would ever take
a man's money without his consent, for any such object as
they profess to take it for, viz., that of protecting him;
for why should they wish to protect him, if he does not
wish them to do so? To suppose that they would do so, is
just as absurd as it would be to suppose that they would
take his moeny without his consent, for the purpose of
buying food or clothing for him, when he did not want it.
4. If a man wants "protection," he is competent to make
his own bargains for it; and nobody has any occasion to
rob him, in order to "protect" him against his will.
5. That the only security men can have for their political
liberty, consists in their keeping their money in their
own pockets, until they have assurances, perfectly
satisfactory to themselves, that it will be used as
they wish it to be used, for their benefit, and not
for their injury. 6. That no government, so called,
can reasonably be trusted for a moment, or reasonably
be supposed to have honest purposes in view, any longer
than it depends wholly upon voluntary support.
These facts are all so vital and so self-evident, that it
cannot reasonably be supposed that any one will voluntarily
pay money to a "government," for the purpose of securing
its protection, unless he first make an explicit and
purely voluntary contract with it for that purpose.
Lysander Spooner
No Treason No. VI: The Constitution of No Authority (Part III)
<http://www.math.ku.dk/~buhl/Library/Spooner.No_Treason.VI.html>
RonG
>In article <6s4t88$aln$1...@supernews.com>,
> rdgood...@nospammbigfoot.com (RonG) wrote:
>
>> If what you say is true--then the citizens of Hitler's Germany were morally
>> _required_ to support the laws that Hitler put in place, including the
>> warmaking, including the assasinations, including the mass imprisonments and
>> so on. Why? Because these people _lived_ there...they used the roads, the
>> schools, the hospitals and the rest of the infrastructure.
>
>Well, they were morally required to support necessary public goods, even if
>many unnecessary actions and costs were also being incurred, both financial
>and otherwise.
Why the distinction? Based on _what_ principles?
> Of course Nazi Germany is a peculiar situation because the
>situation was so extreme--in fact, given the inevitable collapse of the
>entire nation under the Nazi regime, the single most valuable and most
>necessary "public good" that could have been provided at the time would have
>been the destruction and repression of the Nazi Party. And if what it took
>to get there was the sacrifice of and refusal to pay for other public goods,
>then that is the morally responsible action.
>
Now you know why I evade taxes every time I can. I am _right_ to do that. The
State is _wrong_ to punish me.
>There are some less extreme cases where some kind of "stike" against public
>goods which are normally required for proper regulation of our social
>behavior with one another is justified in the name of some higher public
>good, but this is generally due to gross abuse of the system. Occasionally
>this happens, of course, and we must be prepared to consider our options at
>that point. But usually it doesn't. If you're going to throw the baby out
>with the bathwater, you have to demonstrate that that is some very seriously
>bad bathwater which is killing the baby all of itself. Short of that, the
>denial that there are necessary public goods on the grounds that there are
>also occasional or even frequent unnecessary public projects, actions, or
>expenditures, is simply a non-sequitor.
>
The denial that there are necessary public goods is not a non-sequitor. You
may disagree but there is an astonishing amount of philosophic and economic
argument in support of the position that there are _no_ necessary public
goods...indeed that there is _no_necessaity_ for public goods, at all.
Your support of the public goods argument--or for that matter, the
acquiescence of the majority to the argument--puts no supportable moral
obligation on me.
Ron
RonG
wrote:
> my principles don't extend to the defense of such
>situations, in fact they explicitly exclude them.
I have seen nothing in your argument that qualifies as a _principle_. All I
have seen are _opinions_.
Would you care to state it/them?
Ron
RonG
wrote:
>In article <35e63178...@newshost.cyberramp.net>,
> pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
>
>> >Face it: by continuing to live here you
>> >implicitly accept certain responsibilities.
>>
>> But there is never any agreement to that effect. I no more implicitly
>> accept to pay taxes merely by occupying space on this continent
>
>Let me try one more approach to help you understand this.
>
>Suppose a group of people landed on a continent. Let's suppose for
>convenience it is uninhabited. I know in the real world there were natives,
>but unless you want to give most of North America back to the Indians--which,
>incidentally, *would* be the logical conclusion of a system of absolute
>property rights--we will have to simplify this a little bit.
Seeeing as how I live on a reserve, I think you might as well drop the rest of
your construction, since, in the real world, what you describe following this
caveat is _not_ what happened.
There was no single authority or corporation...there were many...State and
mercantilist and private. There _were_ no codes, covenants, and restrictions
on most, if not, _any_ of the land (even considering land that is not
defensible as being legitimately claimed by the First Nations) when the land
was sold, traded or rented, for centuries. The State you referred to came
_later_ (narowing the argument to Canada/USA), was never explicitly accepted
by anywhere near a majority of the inhabitants--and certainly was not
unanimously accepted.
Your argument is based on a fiction.
Ron
johnz
> In article <35e5c12c...@news.mindspring.com>,
> wj...@mindspring.com wrote:
>
> > >> What consent? Neither I nor Beck "consent".
> > >
> > >Then get the fuck out of our country.
> >
> > Make me. Bring it on, son.
>
> I don't need to make parasites leave when they refuse to pay for services
> they consent to benefit from by staying here. That's what the IRS and other
> government agencies are for.
Don't like to get your hands dirty, huh? Or allergic to lead? Funny how
that's going around.
> I'm just saying if that if you can't stand
> living in a place that requires you to pay for public services--which is
> precisely what you are complaining about--then you had better face the fact
> that this isn't going to change anytime soon.
This is a backpeddalling lie. You meant exactly what you said - "pay up or
get out." Or even "Stop complaining about paying up or get out."
> If you were complaining about
> irrational, unnecessary spending or actions, like the activities that Agnew
> was presumably defending, then you would have a point, and I would encourage
> you to act within the system to make things better. But since Objectivists
> resent the very concept of having to pay specified overhead costs for any
> necessary public goods, and since a mass refusal to do so would lead to
> anarchy and lead to total destruction of our society and that which 99% of
> the population holds dear, including the value of all of property, I can
> guarantee you that you will _not_ find a strong following for your ideas here
> or in most other civilized and crowded nations. So I suggest you find some
> uninhabitation region where you can live without social overhead costs,
> because that is the only place in reality where you can get what you seem to
> want.
Backpedalling a mile a minute.
> Scott Forschler
Beck and I have some disagreements, as I am an indifferent minarchist and he is
an anarcho-capitalist. But, frankly, I don't care whether he pays taxes or
not. I don't think it's "immoral" of him not to pay taxes and I wouldn't
lift a finger to force him or Schneider or any of the rest of the
anarcho-capitalists to pay for any "public good". Why should they? If it's
so "good', then they'd pay voluntarily, just like most people pay their
legitimate bills without coercion or courts. If you get a Yugo when you
ordered a Maserati, you stop the charges on your credit card. That the
Federal Used Car Lot refuses to take back the Yugo makes no difference.
The destruction of the limited government, constitutional republic by
people like you means that any "benefits" they get from their "free ride"
are meagre indeed. In fact, it's a dead loss. The state gets it's pound of
flesh one way or another. I guarantee you that -paying- taxes is the easy
way out and that Beck pays and pays dearly for standing on principle.
Since this country was founded by people whose ideals far more closely
resembled Becks then they do yours, perhaps -you- should be the one to
pack your bags, you goddamned would-be thug.
As I said, I am an indifferent minarchist, but your miserable resort to
cyrpto-fascist rhetoric suggests strongly that there is no hope down that
road and that Beck and Schneider are right - although this portends
nothing good.
JS
(Idiots who point out that most people don't buy used cars with credits
cards will only get contempt from me for being literal-minded blockheads)
hjamie
says/alleges that Atlas Shrugged is Trash. I thought the 967 pages was
great. I could not put the book down for two weeks.
Cordially,
Herb Jamieson
do...@stone-soup.com wrote in message
<35e70308....@news.atlantic.net>...
Chris Wuestefeld
> By sticking around when you don't have to you do _precisely_ that--give
> sanction to an implicit contract.
Not if I say, "I reject this contract". And I've made it quite clear that
the other party -- the gov't -- has reneged on it's side of the deal.
> But you do, you do! No one forces you to live on this continent, anymore than
> anyone forces you to live in a one-company town. You don't like it, go
> somewhere else. It's your choice. Is this inconvenient? Maybe it is. But
> there's plenty of competition.
So you're saying that I must surrender my property (at a lower price than
it's actually worth, because of gov't economic meddling) rather than try
to fix the broken system?
> Now you may not ever go to the zoo. That's fine. OTOH, I may not ever use
> the free coffee in the staff room, because I prefer water. But in both cases
> we implicitly agree to pay a small fraction of what our income would
> otherwise be to pay for these things.
We've _explicitly_ agreed to the situation.
> I'm arguing that certain overhead costs are _necessary_ to making society
> run. For example, if a village is in a flood plain, and someone points out
> that this year's flood is going to drown us out unless we build a dam, then
> it is _necessary_ to build the dam in order to preserve our properties and
> lives.
Funny you should use this as an example, since it counters your "move
out" argument. If the residents of the flood plain don't like the water,
they should just move out. By what right can they take the money for the
dam from me, rather than living somewhere sane? (Note that this doesn't
contradict my argument; I'm seeking to limit gov't, not mother nature).
I have no citations, but it's my understanding that the New Jersey shore
was largely undeveloped decades ago. When the gov't decided to underwrite
flood insurance, most of the current resident's moved in.
> Certainly not. But there's a difference between identifying a problem, like
> "that dam manager skimmed $100K off the project fund and went to Peru, which
> means our tax rate will be .11% instead of .10%, and this is bad, although
> I'm not sure exactly how we can be certain this won't happen again"--and
> saying "because the manager stole funds, I shouldn't have to pay anything for
> the dam, it's all corrupt and unnecesary"--and as a result loosing 99% of
> your property in the next flood. This is throwing the baby out with the
> bathwater.
But suppose I observe, "It seems like everyone time we attempt a project
like this, someone takes advantage of it and makes their fortune at the
expense of the taxpayers -- and we destroy valuable farmland as well
[bear with me; I'm reaching to keep in the bounds of the hypothetical
situation]". Based on repeated observations of corruption, as well as
that the systems turn out to be more complex than was originally thought
(leading to a necessity to continually tweak the solution, resulting in
phenomena like our ridiculously complex tax code), trying to short-
circuit the free market (and mother nature) is generally too much
trouble.
> Blacks in 1960 had a valid claim that they were not allowed full freedom to
> vote. But if they said that we shouldn't have a democracy any more because
> this risks the chance that groups like theirs will be denied the vote, then I
> would say they were idiots.
They wouldn't have said this. Aside from any personal prejudices, a
"correct" government could do so little damage that it wouldn't matter.
> Homosexuals have a valid claim that police
> discriminate them in an irrational way by sometimes arresting them for sex
> acts that are not prosecuted when performed by heterosexuals. But if they
> turned this into a claim against the rational and necessary functions of
> police, on the grounds that the police power can be abused, this would also
> be idiotic.
Actually, many of our arguments would be against the irrational and
unnecessary functions of police (only because legislation puts them into
the difficult position), such as enforcing drug laws or acts between
consenting adults.
Chris Wuestefeld
> In article <MPG.10506f813...@165.254.2.53>,
> chr...@blast.net (Chris Wuestefeld) wrote:
>
> > Your homework assignment is to read the
> > Declaration of Independence and Common Sense. Then come back with a book
> > report on why *we* are the ones responsible for determining how our
> > nation (notice I didn't say gov't) operates, and how it is proper to take
> > whatever steps necessary to ensure that it works properly.
>
> Well, I've read both, and the reason we are the ones responsible for
> determining out nation operates is because we live here and choose to
> continue living under it of our own free will.
Wrong. I quote from the Declaration of Independence (you can read the
full text at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/const/declar.html):
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just
Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any
Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends [that
is, securing our inalienable rights], it is the Right of
the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute
new Government
...
[and by the way, some of the colonists' complaints, which I think are
topical today]
...
HE [the king] has erected a Multitude of new Offices, and
sent hither Swarms of Officers to harass our People, and
eat out their Substance.
...
FOR depriving us, in many Cases, of the Benefits of
Trial by Jury
...
FOR taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable
Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments
There is no mention of packing up and leaving anywhere through the
document. It speaks only of destroying a dysfunctional government in
order to create one that follows the "Laws of Nature".
> > today's political environment
> > allows two paths of influence: voting and political contributions. This
> > leaves you and I underrepresented, not because Bill Gates has more money,
> > but because he has two voices to my one: he votes through his own vote
> > and money, but also through the coffers of Microsoft.
>
> Excellent point. And since having government functions supported exclusively
> by voluntary contributions would make the system even worse, because then
> Bill Gates would have oodles of ways to vote and I would have close to none,
> severely reducing the rights I and most other people have now and which are
> necessary to make the positive-sum game of society work properly, that would
> be even worse. So if you have a third proposal which works better than either
> of these two, I would love to hear it.
I don't think you understand the alternative that you're arguing against.
In the proposed system, BG's money would not be a political advantage.
There would be no political advantage to be gained. If gov't is stripped
of the ability to curry favor (because it has no control over regulating
products of industry, for example). For the powers that remain to gov't,
the *only* any person could have is his vote. Corporations can't vote, so
there's no problem. If BG chooses to use his fortune to secure more
government services, let him. He can't buy his way out of anti-trust
actions, for example, because there would be no such thing.
>
> > Suppose that our taxes double, or that state-issued photo ID is checked
> > at every political boundary, or other unreasonable action. Doesn't there
> > come some point at which even you will say, "enough"? Why can't we draw
> > our own personal lines? And if we do that, the only practical line for
> > the gov't to observe is the lowest common denominator.
>
> That is NOT a practical line. That is the whole point. The lowest common
> demoninator turns out to be zero, since there are a few nuts out there who
> don't think public goods should exist at all, and would rather we live at a
> stone-age level of civilization and population than to have any kind of
> social infrastructure
That's not the lowest common denominator. The line that I propose
encompasses this. Communists would be free to join together into
communities as they choose, with other like-minded individuals. Thus I
satisfy them. Your position satisfies them but enslaves me.
> We have to make compromises somewhere,
Your only argument for this is your incorrectly-determined LCD above.
You'll have a hard time proving this statement in most of the cross-
posted newsgroups.
> you leave it up to each individual's subjective determination and your
> civilization collapses into anarchy.
It's funny you should say that in light of comments you make later. Stay
tuned...
> Of course there are times when we should say "enough." We should do so
> precisely at the point when the irrational, unnecessary elements which are
> incorrectly ascribed to and accounted as the overhead costs of social
> infrastructure get way out of proportion with, and interfere heavily and
> persistently with, those costs and needs which are actually necessary.
Funny this comes right after you accuse us of relying on subjective
measures. You start with the adverb "precisely" (presumably in an effort
to appease Objectivists), but then pepper the rest of your statement with
fuzziness, such as "way out of proportion", "heavily", "persistently".
> And
> look, all of you people implicitly know this, which is exactly why you try to
> challenge me with situations like Nazi Germany or the hypothetical
> "unreasonable" actions you list above. Because we all know that these things
> are in fact just that--unreasonable--and you know that everyone else with an
> ounce of sense knows it as well. And you must implicitly recognize that this
> means that many governments less extreme than the examples you mention are
> more "reasonable" than these. That's why you try to challenge me with cases
> like these, instead of Canada or Ohio. Your pattern of attack is essentially
> "what if things were worse than they are, what if they made no sense at all."
This is only because you're wearing rose-colored glasses, and missing
what's unreasonable in the status quo. It's almost understandable, since
it's been an evolutionary process, sneaking up on us over decades.
Here's just a _very_few_ examples of utterly unreasonable or ridiculous
elements of today's system in America (let's not debate each of these, I
just want a laundry list of examples):
1) Asset forfeiture without trial in cases of suspected drug dealing
2) Burden of proof on defendant when dealing with IRS
3) FDA will not allow patients (even terminal ones) access to
experimental treatments
4) Attempts to control healthcare costs by reimbursing hospitals with
greater expenses at a higher rate, thereby rewarding inefficiency
5) Guaranteeing the "right" of law enforcement to tap our phone lines
6) Limiting speech based on arguments of religious morality
7) Attempts (still in process) to prevent citizens from encrypting
their private information and communications
8) Affirmative action
9) Preferences for businesses owned by women and minorities
10) Erosion of the right to keep and bear arms
11) Witch hunt against Microsoft, the most successful business of our
times, for making products that everyone wants and turning
technology into a commodity
12) Auto operation conditional upon inspections justified by "Global
Warming", an unproven phenomenon
13) Condemnation of an Atlantic City neighborhood under Eminent
Domain, claiming that building a casino parking lot is in the
greater public good
14) And so on...
> Well duh--obviously my principles don't extend to the defense of such
> situations, in fact they explicitly exclude them. It's obvious that
> something has gone radically wrong in such situations and they need to be
> corrected. But that doesn't mean that *anytime* you feel that you don't have
> to pay for something that you are justified in acting accordingly. That's
> pure subjectivism, yet ironically it is what so-called "Objectivists"
> advocate. Such decisions should be made on the basis of objective,
> reality-based criteria if we are to have kind of society above the anarchic
> level.
So can you objectively phrase a set of rules that describe when it's
justifiable to act? You seem to rely on a subjective emotional feeling.
> Obviously at some point individuals do have to make such decisions; in Nazi
> Germany, or Canada for that matter, it is neither practical nor a good idea
> to have some kind of central committee of social scientists making these
> decisions for everybody about when to revolt or not--in fact, it is pretty
> obvious that no matter how carefully we tried to arrange such a thing it
> would be likely to fail and become corrupted at the precise moment when we
> needed its decisions.
For this same reason, no government can ever be trusted. Why would you
trust a government but not your hypothetical "central committee"?
Chris Wuestefeld
> Well, if you don't insist upon the availability of institutions to defend the
> rights you claim that you should have, then you really have no one to
> complain to when you are mugged except the mugger himself. And your only
> logical recourse to what you subjectively perceive as a violation of your
> rights would be to hire some thugs to get revenge or repayment for you, since
> you don't advocate the existence of a governmental institution to enforce
> your rights. In other words,
You need to be sneakier. Any statement beginning with "In other words" is
obviously creating straw man that you will then tear down.
You're making two logical errors here. First, you're assuming that
someone who failed to take appropriate precautions would have to take the
law into his own hands. Second, you're stuck in the common assumption
that if something's worth doing, then the government ought to do it
(other applications of this misconception have resulted in the FDA and
Welfare).
In fact I can hire my own bodyguards to protect me in the first case. If
I've done this, why should I pay the gov't for redundant protection?
If I don't want to do this, I still have ways to recover my losses. Don't
you have insurance on your home and car? When unforeseen circumstances
occur, my insurance company would reimburse me. Of course, if I've chosen
to forego and defense, either provided by the gov't or a third party, my
insurance rates would likely be sky high.
> >how is insisting on the availablity of a VOLUNTARY, and
> >UNFREE service, a form of parasitism?
>
> was a bit of confused nonsense contradicting your actual position, since it
> makes no sense to "insist on the availability" of something which do you not
> believe is necessary. Unless you were making this statement in a
> hypothetical way, and not actually holding that you made such an insistance,
> but in this case you were again not being clear.
See above.
> > But they DO believe those that use such services should pay for them.
> > They just don't believe those that DON'T want them should be made to
> > pay for them.
>
> Well, if we combine the above two sentences logically aren't you conceding
> that those who don't want to use such services shouldn't use them, and that
> if not using them means moving to a place where they are not provided
> automatically to everyone in a certain region under the jurisdiction of the
> providing agency, that they should do so? Or are one or both of the two
> statements above not really exactly what you mean after all?
We've been through the silly "love it or leave it thing", but you're
dredging it up again.
See above.
>
> > Objectivists think that the institutions used to ensure
> > rights should exist via voluntary funding, just like any other
> > institution. there is no discrepency, no contradiction.
>
> Just like any other institution without a central government to oversee it,
> you mean, since in the real world most institutions do operate under this
> premise, which in many cases quite correctly limits their freedom of action
> and at least partially limits them from invading some of my rights. You are
> making a false analogy if you are trying to compare your hypothetical
> institutions to those which most of us are familiar with in the real
> world--another smuggled premise on your part. So what you really mean are
> mafia-style institutions whose only limits are their own sense of subjective
> morality, and the force which other gangs of thugs might apply against them.
You're confusing Libertarianism with anarchy. No one said that there
would be no laws. Obviously, those subscribing to gov't police protection
would be protected from this, just like today. When the gov't police
don't have to worry about silly drugs laws and the like, they ought to
control these hypothetical mafiosos through free market pressures (ie, if
there's a good chance that the police will arrest the thugs, they'll
charge their employers more) and risk of prosecution for the mafioso's
bosses and employers.
Pistol
>On Sat, 29 Aug 1998 17:34:03 GMT, pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 28 Aug 1998 22:36:48 GMT, sfor...@thomas.butler.edu wrote:
>>
>>>In article <35e63178...@newshost.cyberramp.net>,
>>> pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
>>>
>>>> >Face it: by continuing to live here you
>>>> >implicitly accept certain responsibilities.
>>>>
>>>> But there is never any agreement to that effect. I no more implicitly
>>>> accept to pay taxes merely by occupying space on this continent
>>>
>>>Let me try one more approach to help you understand this.
>>
>>Perhaps you should stop being a condescending ass, honestly
>>considerthe possiblity that you are mistaken, and stop assuming that
>>anyone who disagrees with you just doesn't understand.
>>
>>>Suppose a group of people landed on a continent. Let's suppose for
>>>convenience it is uninhabited. I know in the real world there were natives,
>>>but unless you want to give most of North America back to the Indians--which,
>>>incidentally, *would* be the logical conclusion of a system of absolute
>>>property rights--we will have to simplify this a little bit.
>>
>>Well, I think the give-all-the-land-back-to-the-Indians is the worst
>>of red herrings, so by all means, continue with the uninhabited, newly
>>discovered continent.
>>
>>>So these people
>>>lay a claim and say "we own this continent."
>>
>>Geez, that's the problem right there. You cannot touch your tootsie
>>on Plymouth Rock, and claim to own California.
>>Further, the government does not own trhe land, i merly presides over
>>it. The individual owners own it.
>>
>>Your hypothetical crumbles without that presumption.
>>
>>[snip remainder]
>>
>>So like I've said, I never agreed to what the government dictates, so
>>my contiued existence here on land that the government DOESN'T own,
>>implies exactly squat.
>
>God you're a condescending mess.
Cute, but both baseless and pointless.
vmar...@magma.com
>
> On Sat, 29 Aug 1998 01:17:28 -0500 "hjamie" <hja...@gateway.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Sorry I missed it...What is the reason someone in this discussion
> >says/alleges that Atlas Shrugged is Trash. I thought the 967 pages was
> >great. I could not put the book down for two weeks.
> >Cordially,
> >Herb Jamieson
>
>
> When I was fifteen.
>
> Nowadays I think it's simplistic and unrelated to reality.
Hmmm, It is hard getting senile.
Gustav
vmar...@magma.com
>
> Well, if we combine the above two sentences logically aren't you conceding
> that those who don't want to use such services shouldn't use them, and that
> if not using them means moving to a place where they are not provided
> automatically to everyone in a certain region under the jurisdiction of the
> providing agency, that they should do so? Or are one or both of the two
> statements above not really exactly what you mean after all?
Very good that is exactly as it should be. If for example you stop to
pay
your gas company because you changed your heating system to electrical
one
gas company may evict you. I think you are right. It makes sense, good
suggestion.
Gustav
vmar...@magma.com
>
> In article <MPG.10506f813...@165.254.2.53>,
> chr...@blast.net (Chris Wuestefeld) wrote:
>
> > Suppose that our taxes double, or that state-issued photo ID is checked
> > at every political boundary, or other unreasonable action. Doesn't there
> > come some point at which even you will say, "enough"? Why can't we draw
> > our own personal lines? And if we do that, the only practical line for
> > the gov't to observe is the lowest common denominator.
>
> That is NOT a practical line. That is the whole point. The lowest common
> demoninator turns out to be zero, since there are a few nuts out there who
> don't think public goods should exist at all, and would rather we live at a
> stone-age level of civilization and population than to have any kind of
> social infrastructure which would support the institutions necessary for a
> higher standard of living and justice than this.
Not if those few nuts participate voluntarily because if they do not
want
anything they wouldn't participate. It means as long as there are people
ready to participate on something common it can not be zero.
<snip>
Gustav
John C. 'Buck' Field
Unsolicited commercial use of my e-mail address
constitutes agreement by the originator I will be
damaged in the amount of $1000.00 US Dollars
by each use.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu wrote in message
<6s6gio$gjj$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>In article <35e63178...@newshost.cyberramp.net>,
> pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
>
>But in both cases
>we implicitly agree to pay a small fraction of what our income would
>otherwise be to pay for these things.
I got news: Assume I'm in a 50% tax bracket and I go to a dentist who is in
a 50% tax bracket and he wants $100.00 for a tooth extraction. The dentist
charges me $200.00 to be able to get his $100.00, and to pay that I must
earn $400.00. Effectively 3/4 of my labor is siphoned off before any
calculation of my catering to the hundreds of laws, permits and licenses to
which I'm subject while driving to his office and back. I refer of course
to laws that involve only government regulation, not causing harm to anyone.
I would also point out that the bulk of these taxes go to pay interest on
loans, not on any services whatsoever.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
rdgood...@nospammbigfoot.com (RonG) wrote:
> >Well, they were morally required to support necessary public goods, even if
> >many unnecessary actions and costs were also being incurred, both financial
> >and otherwise.
>
> Why the distinction? Based on _what_ principles?
Based on the objective fact that certain institutions are necessary for the
protection of our rights, including our property values.
Of course, to the extent that regimes like Nazi Germany don't do this, and in
fact do the opposite, they release their citizens from this obligation.
> Now you know why I evade taxes every time I can. I am _right_ to do that. The
> State is _wrong_ to punish me.
What, just because you are under the delusion that the U.S. government is as
bad as Nazi Germany? I refuse to accept your subjective feeling that you are
being persecuted as equivalent to the objective fact that Nazi Germany was a
rogue state that undertook a massive destruction of rights and values, which
most states do not do.
> there is an astonishing amount of philosophic and economic
> argument in support of the position that there are _no_ necessary public
> goods...indeed that there is _no_necessaity_ for public goods, at all.
Go ahead and astonish me. The literature I've seen that attempts to make
this argument has so far been astonishingly vapid, convoluted, subjective,
and short on empirical substance. But I'm always happy to learn new things.
I would indeed be astonished if you could show me that having a single
authoritative point at which to register the ownership of property like land
is not either not necessary to prevent or drastically reduce the consequences
of most ownership disputes, or is not a public good. Just to take a most
elementary example.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
rdgood...@nospammbigfoot.com (RonG) wrote:
> Seeeing as how I live on a reserve, I think you might as well drop the rest of
> your construction, since, in the real world, what you describe following this
> caveat is _not_ what happened.
Certainly it isn't in exact detail, with the exceptions I think of Iceland
and Bermuda (possibly Hawaii c300 AD as well, but there is not enough of a
record to be certain of this). However parts of the argument are analogous.
However you wish to point out that the question of native populations is
crucial, and actually I quite agree--I only set that aside because
Objectivists usually do that as well. In fact they brush aside a great deal
more, and tend to make the naive assumption that just because Joe Smith, or
corporation XYZ "owns" some property under the current system, that therefore
they ought to own it in an Objectivist sense and owe nothing to the provision
of public goods which contribute to the value of the property, because the
state doesn't "own" it, and treat the history of the property's acquisition
as unimportant.
Since you are not willing to brush aside these complications, we can discuss
this at a level that most Objectivists do not seem willing to, and advance to
some more important issues.
> There was no single authority or corporation...there were many...State and
> mercantilist and private.
OK, but are you aguing that there should be a few pockets of "Objectivist
land" on the eastern seaboard because their ownership rights were established
before the formation of the British colonial governments which in turn
established the United States of America, from which authority other all
other title to land from the near-Atlantic interior to the Pacific Ocean was
granted? If so, I will consider this argument, which is far short of the
idea that all titles granted in the latter manner also should by right revert
to an Objectivist notion of property rights.
But even if all you're trying to do is defend the original pre-colonial
pockets of property, you have to consider this: how do you think title in
land is earned in the first place? What exactly does it take for Joe Smith
to do to "own" a piece of land, whether or not it may once have been occupied
by natives (for that matter, the natives can take the role of Joe Smith: if
they "own" property, what constitutes, justifies, or establishes this
ownership?)
Objectivists have gotten a lot of mileage out of ignoring this central point.
The answers I have read in the standard Objectivist literature don't work, so
I will not burden you with supposing that you share their perspective, and
look forward to reading your response or interpretation of this issue. Make
sure that your answer explicitly addresses the issue of how to solve any
potential ambiguities or disputes over ownership, and how to do so without
any public institution with central authority over the matter.
> There _were_ no codes, covenants, and restrictions
> on most, if not, _any_ of the land
If a corporation (or government, which is a kind of corporation) owns a piece
of land and grants you title to it, for example through your compliance with
the homestead act, and says that in the future you must pay taxes at a given
rate which may change in the future, and that if you don't do this the land
reverts to the original corporation, this _is_ a covenant, or contract. By
buying the land, or buying land from someone else who has accepted this
covenant, you have also agreed to it.
So you are wrong, obviously, and your argument is based on a fictional verbal
difference which has no substantive basis. Just because it's not listed in
the "CC&R" section of your deed doesn't mean that it doesn't functionally
serve the same purpose, and isn't justifiable under the same principles,
i.e., the rules of contracts.
> The state you refer to... was never explicitly accepted
> by anywhere near a majority of the inhabitants--and certainly was not
> unanimously accepted.
My argument suggests that the state in question, which was formed by the 13
colonies and hence took on authority which preexisted it, was the owner of
most of the land that was later given to most of the inhabitants who later
moved there. So the restrictions, and the contract to pay taxes for the use
of the land, was accepted by almost everyone else.
Again, this excludes the claim that much of this land was in fact taken
unjustly from native populations. Well, either we should enforce all the
claims of their descendants, some of them, or none of them. I am certainly
quite sympathetic to the middle course, although I am hesitant to get into a
detailed discussion of specific territories or name a specific percentage
because this raise many complex historical issues which do not necessarly
affect the theory we are after. But if we are not going to agree that the
colonial or federal governments owned much of this land before granting it to
specific inhabitants with the provision that certain taxes be paid and
sovereignty respected, along with all that entails, then this can ONLY be on
the basis that native rights take precedence, not because later immigrants to
the continent didn't agree to the way the government was founded.
Now, maybe native rights take precedence in many cases, including some where
this is not recognized. In that case the proper recourse is for native
territories to declare their independence. But that doesn't affect
territories which were legitimately bought from natives, or which was found
uninhabited for whatever reason and to which the government laid valid claim
through its agents. Again, if this is the claim you are making, I am
sympathetic, but it falls very far short of the Objectivist claim that all
property ought to be by right free of responsibilities for taxation and
sovereignty. The fact is that most people explicitly agreed to this when
they signed their title papers.
Billy Beck
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu wrote:
>I'm just saying if that if you can't stand living in a place that requires you
>to pay for public services--
*Fuck* you. "I'm just saying" that *you* don't get to stand
there and tell *me* what *I'm* going to value. Your government
"services" are not "services" to *me*, no matter how you insist. I
don't want 'em, I don't need 'em, and just because your great big gang
is successful at forcing them into my life doesn't change anything
about your essential argument, which is precisely similar to Vinnie's
protection racket on a street-corner in Brooklyn.
>...I would encourage you to act within the system to make things better.
I would encourage you to put down your fucking guns and start
talking to me with authentic respect.
Otherwise, you and I are at war, you cheap chiseling little punk,
and I don't care if you drop dead before you read to the end of this
sentence.
Billy Beck
jo...@nospam.aa.net (johnz) wrote:
>Beck and I have some disagreements, as I am an indifferent minarchist and he is
>an anarcho-capitalist. But, frankly, I don't care whether he pays taxes or
>not. I don't think it's "immoral" of him not to pay taxes and I wouldn't
>lift a finger to force him or Schneider or any of the rest of the
>anarcho-capitalists to pay for any "public good". Why should they? If it's
>so "good', then they'd pay voluntarily, just like most people pay their
>legitimate bills without coercion or courts.
Correct.
This is the sort of "respect" to which I allude in my reply to
yet another edu.twerp with a head full of crap.
Deal with me man-to-man. People who can overcome their essential
*fear* will be surprised to learn what they find. People who were
never afraid to begin with are years ahead of the game.
Billy Beck
"John C. 'Buck' Field" <oper...@applink.net> wrote:
>I have to say something on this!
You're damned right: you do.
>>But in both cases
>>we implicitly agree to pay a small fraction of what our income would
>>otherwise be to pay for these things.
>
>I got news: Assume I'm in a 50% tax bracket and I go to a dentist who is in
>a 50% tax bracket and he wants $100.00 for a tooth extraction. The dentist
>charges me $200.00 to be able to get his $100.00, and to pay that I must
>earn $400.00. Effectively 3/4 of my labor is siphoned off before any
>calculation of my catering to the hundreds of laws, permits and licenses to
>which I'm subject while driving to his office and back. I refer of course
>to laws that involve only government regulation, not causing harm to anyone.
>
>I would also point out that the bulk of these taxes go to pay interest on
>loans, not on any services whatsoever.
The *implication* of all this should *not* require a Ph.D. to
figure out. To begin with, we have here a fine nutshell expose' of
the "services" argument for the *bullshit* it really is: we're not
talking about "services" anymore. We're into rampant barbaric
*piracy* of the sort that *nobody* present would stand from any random
*thug* in their neighborhood if it were brought face-to-face, without
all the Mom & Apple Pie crap attached to it. Any rational person who
was being outright *robbed*, on the scale perpetrated by this
government and by anyone *except* this government, would start
*shooting* and dropping wise-guy bodies in the river until they (the
latter) finally understood the true profit/loss prospects of their
line of "work".
The *larger* and more important implication lies in what happens
when the *principle* of *private property* is relinquished to
compromise. Once that point is passed, any random dolt can come
toddling along to posit that what *you* earn - the physical
manifestations of the very days and hours of your life - is subject to
others' disposal. The only things left to sort out are "how much" and
"for what". The answers can run all the way up to "all of it" and all
the way out to everything this government now holds out as a "public
good", or more. ("War On Drugs"? "Care For The Children?" Why not?
Once you stipulate to their *premise*, their reasons in favor are as
good as yours against, and the only thing left is to assemble a larger
gang in November so that Scott Erb knows which way limp in the wind.)
Don't buy the con.
We don't need them. They need us.
Míké^%Schnęîder
>how do you think title in
>land is earned in the first place? What exactly does it take for Joe Smith
>to do to "own" a piece of land, whether or not it may once have been occupied
>by natives (for that matter, the natives can take the role of Joe Smith: if
>they "own" property, what constitutes, justifies, or establishes this
>ownership?)
What justifies your ownership of that *thing* you see staring back at
you in the mirror when you shave every morning? (And shouldn't you really
have a license to drive it?)
Email: Replace everything before the @ with "mike1" and delete any CAPS.
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
The tree, as tall as a fifteen story building, held at least a hundred
nests, with 60,000 or so bees in each one. Bahadur was amused by my
climbing gear, without which I could not scale such a tree. By contrast,
his bare hands and feet moved like a whisper over the limbs, every move
meticulous and full of certainty. I asked Bahadur if anyone ever falls
from the trees. "Yes," he said. "You fall when your life is over."
-- Raji Honey Harvesters, National Geographic, June 1998.
Chris Wuestefeld
sent to the cited author.]
On Sat, 29 Aug 1998 22:05:25 -0500, oper...@applink.net says...
> I got news: Assume I'm in a 50% tax bracket and I go to a dentist who is in
> a 50% tax bracket and he wants $100.00 for a tooth extraction. The dentist
> charges me $200.00 to be able to get his $100.00, and to pay that I must
> earn $400.00. Effectively 3/4 of my labor is siphoned off
Although I, too, object to our taxation, your reasoning is incorrect. You
can't claim that a particular dollar is taxed multiple times (at least
not while it's outside of your hands). The economy is a cycle.
For example, you might be employed by the pharmaceutical company that
makes the novocaine (sp?) the dentist used on you. Part of the dentist's
$100 expense was novocaine, paid to your employer. Your employer paid
some tax on that income, as well as using the bulk of it to pay for raw
materials, the plant, and your salary. Of course, your salary was taxed,
and you took the remainder of it to pay the dentist, who paid your
employer, who paid you, etc.
Simply be extending the cycle, you can claim virtually any amount of
money going to taxes that you like. Moreover, you can't just say that
you'll stop counting before the money gets back to you. The participants
in the economy are completely interdependent. There are too many paths
back to you to count, and too many paths that could contribute that
you'll miss (like, the dentist pays a receptionist who shops at the same
grocery store, [partly] enabling it to keep in business. She buys
Commodity X, helping to keep prices of that commodity down. Commodity X
is the big money maker for its manufacturer, and part of its proceeds
were used to amortize R&D on the new analgesic that you bought on your
way home from the dentist to ease the pain in your mouth. That money went
to the same grocery store, paying the salary of your teenage son...
You can't try to identify a root source of any particular dollar in the
economy.
The Republicans, in their recent arguments for the flat tax, overlooked
this when claiming that earnings from capital gains should be exempt.
They claimed that the money was taxed twice, once when the corporation in
which I own equity earned it, and once when I realized my profit from the
corporation's growth. Well, that's true, but it's also been taxed
eleventy-six thousand other times in its trip through the economy as
well.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
wj...@mindspring.com wrote:
>
> sfor...@thomas.butler.edu wrote:
>
> >I'm just saying if that if you can't stand living in a place that requires
you
> >to pay for public services--
>
> there and tell *me* what *I'm* going to value.
I certainly don't get to decide what you *will* value. However I am saying
that if you are going to live in close proximity with people who value things
like I do, such as most of this country, you *should* value those necessary
institutions which protect our rights, and pay your fair share for them. If
you don't value these rights, and therefore the institutions and public goods
which are absoulute vital to maintaining them--or if you are going to hold
fast to the utterly mistaken belief that rights can be protected and
maintained without specific institutions to defend them--then I have little
sympathy. You should get out of here, because thugs who don't respect basic
rights have no justifiable place in this society.
>your essential argument, which is precisely similar to Vinnie's
> protection racket on a street-corner in Brooklyn.
"Precisely similar"??
Go check out a dictionary.
Of course, if everyone had to hire bodyguards to protect themselves from
other people's bodyguards, and there was no government to regulate and limit
the legal powers of everyone's bodyguards (which there wouldn't be if
everything was paid for voluntarily) then that would be a lot more like
Vinnie's business than what we have now. Therefore I reject the Objectivist
"solution" to protecting our rights _precisely_ because I detest Vinnie's
style of doing business, which is what Objectivism would lead to.
> >...I would encourage you to act within the system to make things better.
>
> I would encourage you to put down your fucking guns and start
> talking to me with authentic respect.
When you stop threatening to hire personal bodyguards who would not be
limited by the rule of law, i.e., when you abandon Objectivism, then I will
put down my guns. Until then you are merely threatening thuggery, which I do
not find amusing at all.
> Otherwise, you and I are at war, you cheap chiseling little punk,
> and I don't care if you drop dead before you read to the end of this
> sentence.
Interesting perspective. Fortunately we have police and courts to take care
of assholes like you who don't respect other people's rights or value human
life. Get a grip on reality before you hurt yourself, kid.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
QW...@TREWQwinTREWQternet.com (Míké^%Schnęîder) wrote:
> In article <6sc398$qd4$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
wrote:
>
> >land is earned in the first place? What exactly does it take for Joe Smith
> >to do to "own" a piece of land, whether or not it may once have been occupied
> >by natives (for that matter, the natives can take the role of Joe Smith: if
> >they "own" property, what constitutes, justifies, or establishes this
> >ownership?)
>
> you in the mirror when you shave every morning? (And shouldn't you really
> have a license to drive it?)
I don't shave in front of a mirror. :-)
Are you implying you don't have an answer to my question? Or is your question
in response some kind of code that if properly deciphered will give me the
answer? Please give a clearer statement, if possible. Otherwise I will
conclude that you simply don't have any sense of how property rights can be
established, and your whole theory of property collapses for lack of a
foundation.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
jo...@nospam.aa.net (johnz) wrote:
> > I don't need to make parasites leave when they refuse to pay for services
> > they consent to benefit from by staying here. That's what the IRS and other
> > government agencies are for.
>
> Don't like to get your hands dirty, huh? Or allergic to lead? Funny how
> that's going around.
No, it's just the difference between the kind of thuggery that Objectivism
would have us all perform by contracting for private bodyguards to slug it
out, and the rule of law. The latter is not only more efficient but more
just, because the standards by which justice is enforced is much more out in
the open and available for scrutiny.
> > I'm just saying if that if you can't stand
> > living in a place that requires you to pay for public services--which is
> > precisely what you are complaining about--then you had better face the fact
> > that this isn't going to change anytime soon.
>
> This is a backpeddalling lie. You meant exactly what you said - "pay up or
> get out." Or even "Stop complaining about paying up or get out."
I meant both. Parasites should leave for their own convenience, as well as
for ours. Because they owe what they have contracted to pay, and if they
don't pay it there is no reason for the rest of us to tolerate them, nor is
it worth their time and energy to try to argue the rest of us out of it when
their argument is full of holes.
> Beck and I have some disagreements, as I am an indifferent minarchist and he
is
> an anarcho-capitalist. But, frankly, I don't care whether he pays taxes or
> not. I don't think it's "immoral" of him not to pay taxes and I wouldn't
> lift a finger to force him or Schneider or any of the rest of the
> anarcho-capitalists to pay for any "public good". Why should they? If it's
> so "good', then they'd pay voluntarily, just like most people pay their
> legitimate bills without coercion or courts.
Ha. Ha. Ha.
Most people pay their legitimate bills to a large extent *precisely* because
if they didn't, their creditors would take them to court and coerce them to
do so, and they'd pay a lot more in the end anyway.
If you don't believe me, and think that volunteerism is enough to get your
bills paid without coercive methods, try this. Open a movie theater, but
instead of wasting money paying ticket-sellers and ushers, just have a big
locked collection box at the front with "suggested donations," open the
doors, and play movies at announced times. See how long you stay in business
without any enforcement mechanism. If you are right, then enough people will
contribute to give you a tidy profit, and you'll do even better than other
theaters because your overhead costs are lower.
And if this takes off, then maybe can talk about cutting your tax bill and
declaring your property a zone in which crime will not be enforced (of course
any attempt on your part to hire private security will be a confession that
you don't really believe that you can do without it).
If your theory that everyone will recognize the "good" of doing something and
contribute voluntarily to it was right in all cases, somebody would have
thought of doing this a long time ago. So either 1) every capitalist in the
country is stupid for not thinking of this, or 2) there is something wrong
with your theory that everybody will do the right thing without coercion.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
do...@stone-soup.com(Doug) wrote:
> Could this be an indicator that government is too big? Might not the
> proper approach be that no country should be larger than everyone can
> agree on what public goods is?
Your first question makes some sense--maybe government is too big! I would
welcome a discussion of such issues, and think you might be quite right.
But your proposed solution is nonsensical. Suppose one person in Idaho
believes that having a common registry of titles to land, and a specific rule
of law which spells out how title to land is to be established and what it
consists of, is not a proper public good, and should therefore not be a
government function. Then there will be no way to enforce property rights
except by whatever private thugs everyone is able to hire, each protecting
whatever rights they happen to believe in, most of which won't be yours, and
killing each other to enforce their subjective impressions of what is
"right." That will set our civilization back several thousand years very
quickly. Of course people like Ron and Beck may be happy because we will
have abolished even the most basic functions of government and law. However
there will be a lot more thugs around than before, less opportunity to
influence the thugs, and a lot more fear and death.
I am astounded that you think it would be a good idea to leave our rights up
to the lowest common denominator of what everybody else thinks they should
be, as opposed to looking at objective reality and facts to determine what
rights we should have and how they should be enforced. Unless you really
believe that the rights that we owe to each other consists of the null set.
> We are oppressed more by our government now than we were
> by our government in 1776 in objective terms. Example: Counting the
> number of times you come into contact with someone who works for
> government per day, year what ever. That would be one objective
> measure, or how much of our income is required to support government
> that would also be objective. But when an individual or group thinks
> that these numbers are too great is subjective.
Good points. It is objectively true that the government costs more now both
in absolute and percentage terms than it did in 1776. However it is also
true that our society is more complicated and everyone in it richer now than
in 1776, and we all come into contact with more people of *all* kinds each
day than we would have then. I pass tens of thousands of people every day on
the way to work in just 20 minutes. I don't have time to establish personal,
contractual relations with them all. Fortunately I don't have to: the
government which built, maintains, and patrols the highway I drive on also
establishes and enforces the rules by which the highway may be used. In ways
like this, the daily benefits I received from government activity is also
much greater than it was in 1776.
Now, we can sit here and add up the plusses and minuses and debate them, I
suppose. My sense is that there are a heck of a lot of things the government
should not be doing right now, and not spending money on, and I really wish
it would stop, and will spend what time I can advocating that it stop. Your
list of objectionable activities may be different from mine, and may be so
long that you don't think the good outweighs the bad. And you may have good
reasons for your conclusions, or I may have good reasons for mine.
But before we get into that, I want to find out if you agree on my proposed
starting point. Yes, we should look at the relative harm and good government
does. But we also should not cut off our nose to spite our face. Government
subsidy of food production is a travesty; the slaughter of peasants in
Vietnam is certainly far worse. But that doesn't mean that I think we should
abolish not only the particular governments which do these things but the
entire concept of a government, and with it things like a common agreement
about how title to property is to be established. If you do, however, then
there is little point in our discussing other particular government actions,
since we will find ourselves completely opposed in our ways of dealing with a
problem, even if we both agree that there is a problem.
However if you do not want to throw out the good with the bad, which so many
Objectivist-types on this and other newsgroups do, then I would be happy to
discuss with you the specifics of what the government should not be doing, and
how we can get this changed.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
vmartin!!@magma.com wrote:
> > That is NOT a practical line. That is the whole point. The lowest common
> > demoninator turns out to be zero, since there are a few nuts out there who
> > don't think public goods should exist at all, and would rather we live at a
> > stone-age level of civilization and population than to have any kind of
> > social infrastructure which would support the institutions necessary for a
> > higher standard of living and justice than this.
>
> Not if those few nuts participate voluntarily because if they do not want
> anything they wouldn't participate. It means as long as there are people
> ready to participate on something common it can not be zero.
But if not *everyone* participates then the LCD will be zero.
Look, you and other Objectivists are suffering from the delusion that these
non-participants will leave you alone. If that were the case, there wouldn't
be so much of a problem. But let's say that we do abolish all forms of
coercive government, and everybody just joins voluntary organizations of
their choice to do *everything* that government used to do which they still
feel needs doing somehow or other, and not to do anything else. Fine, now
you think to yourself "great, now we won't have any wars, or other pointless
and destructive government actions that people in our voluntary organization
don't agree upon."
Guess again. Because you belong to an organization that thinks that title to
property is established and justified by a set of rules and procedures X.
But the guy next door thinks it is established by set Y. Or you have
different conceptions about the limits of title to property. Maybe he thinks
that the river between you is the boundary, but you think it is the place the
river was 200 years ago, which since has shifted. Maybe you think that
property extends into the earth and air a reasonable distance. Maybe he
thinks, as people prior to air travel generally did, that it extends into the
stratosphere, or at least as high up until you reach God's territory. Which
means, incidentally, that unless you can persuade him and everyone else
otherwise, you will have *no* air travel in your civilization. But that's a
relatively minor problem: the serious problem is that he may think that he
owns some property that you think you own or have a right to use. Or you
disagree about what uses of your neighboring properties interfere or don't
with the other's right to property. Maybe he thinks he has a right to build a
tall building that blocks your view, and you disagree, or vice versa. Maybe
he thinks one of his ancestors had a claim to your land which was never
quieted, and so you should move out. Maybe he thinks that title to land is
established by someone being the first to occupy the property and making use
of it in a specific way, but you think that a different sort of "use" is
required to justify it. He thought he was "using" your property when he
looked at it and admired the trees; you thought "use" was only established
after you fenced it or built a structure.
Now maybe these claims and conceptions of property are right, and maybe they
are wrong. Obviously they can't all be right. But before you all put your
Objectivist thinking caps on or start browsing through your Rand and Peikoff
for the "correct" answers about property rights, remember that the other guy
doesn't give a shit about what you think, and there is no government to sort
things out and force people to come to an agreement. Instead there is your
property-rights organization and its thugs, and the next guy's (and the next
guy, and the next guy, as long as some jerk can come along with a half-assed
claim, which is forever, there being an infinite supply of stupid and/or
self-righteous people and/or determined and greedy in the world). And he's
not going to read your book, or necessarily agree with your answers to what
property rights should be. He thinks they extend into the stratosphere, and
you don't--or vice versa. It doesn't matter what the Objectivist solution
is, the point is you will find sombody to disagree with you. And the only
way to make him see your way (or vice versa) is by brute force or the threat
of it.
Now you may point out that this is what we do in the present system--the
government's decree of what property rights are and how they are established
are ultimately backed up by brute force. Damn right they are. But there's a
lot less brute force going around now because the standards for property
rights are visible and out in the open, and everyone has a chance to find out
what they are in advance and act on that basis. There's less of a chance
that someone else will come around with a new theory and force you to fight
him. Disputes between claimants are adjudicated by the rule of law instead
of by thuggery, as Objectivism would have it done. The Ojectivist proposal,
instead of leading to a universal harmony in which everyone would agree to
_your_ ideas about what property rights are, and abolish government
"thuggery," would in fact lead to vastly more thuggery. And, to return to an
earlier point, wars of exactly the sort you once prided your system for its
ability to avoid. Well, maybe not exactly: you'd probably have smaller,
more frequent wars with less closure instead of the occasional big whammy
wars like we have today (of course you would also have those, since
eventually some nation which did not adopt your anarchistic voluntarism, like
Nazi Germany, would see your little thug-infested territory "formerly known
as the United States" as ripe for the picking. Until then you'd have more
middle-ages sort of stuff, before kingdoms had enough central authority and
power to stop petty squabbling of exactly this sort amongst the less nobles
(or until the Huns came through and discovered that nobdy was stopping them).
Is this better? Maybe you think so. I don't, and convincing me and everyone
else in this nation, and in the world, that this would be better is precisely
what you need to do if you expect the rest of us to take Objectivism
seriously. Furthermore, all of the cheap Objectivist claims I have read over
the past few days about how the rule of law is thuggery, and how I am
advocating force and violence because I support it, is childish, ignorant
hypocrisy because Objectivism has no better solution and would lead to much
more violence and irrational violation of rights than what we have now or
under any other admittedly imperfect European-style liberal state (please
understand I mean liberal in the traditional sense, not to reference the
specific version of liberalism espoused by the U.S. Democratic Party).
Unless you can prove to me that your system is better, instead of simply
asserting that it is, your threats and shouts deserve no further response or
respect.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
chr...@blast.net (Chris Wuestefeld) wrote:
> > > Your homework assignment is to read the
> > > Declaration of Independence and Common Sense. Then come back with a book
> > > report on why *we* are the ones responsible for determining how our
> > > nation (notice I didn't say gov't) operates, and how it is proper to take
> > > whatever steps necessary to ensure that it works properly.
> >
> > Well, I've read both, and the reason we are the ones responsible for
> > determining out nation operates is because we live here and choose to
> > continue living under it of our own free will.
>
> Wrong. I quote from the Declaration of Independence [snip]
>
> There is no mention of packing up and leaving anywhere through the
> document. It speaks only of destroying a dysfunctional government in
> order to create one that follows the "Laws of Nature".
Please decide which question you want to ask me. You didn't ask me to find
in the D of I a justification for forcing freeloaders to pay up or ship out,
and I didn't give you one (we'd have better luck looking for that in the
Constitution, I suspect).
Just because we owe money to a common fund for the provision of necessary
public goods does not mean that we are not also justified at some times in
revolting against a government which does not provide these goods or extorts
far more money from us than is necessary to spend on wasteful, unnecessary,
and destructive expenditures.
As far as whether the American revolution fits this description, that is a
historical question which I don't care to discuss in detail. However there
is plenty of reason to think the issue is not simple, and that the revolution
had a lot more to do with the colonist's wanting to exploit and take by force
land in the Ohio Valley that was occupied, and in some sense owned by
Indians, and which Great Britain was holding the colonists back from in an
attempt to work out the rights of the previous occupants. The property
rights of the Indians, whatever they were or should have been, suffered
significantly after 1776. There were many other issues of course, but the
question of what is the proper activity of government, and the proper time
for revolution, is a separate question from whether the one in 1776 fits
these theoretical concepts. You asked me two separate questions, had I read
certain documents, and what is the proper stance we should take towards
government. I answered both. If you have another question, ask away--and be
more specific if necessary.
> I don't think you understand the alternative that you're arguing against.
> In the proposed system, BG's money would not be a political advantage.
> There would be no political advantage to be gained. If gov't is stripped
> of the ability to curry favor (because it has no control over regulating
> products of industry, for example). For the powers that remain to gov't,
I don't think you understand the alternative that I am arguing against.
No powers would remain to government, since there would be government. If
you chose to voluntarily contribute money to some corporate body or
institution, that is your choice to fund this agency, club, or gang, and my
choice to fund a different one, and no reason for me to support the
activities of yours or vice versa. Calling your gang of thugs a "government"
doesn't give me any reason to obey its rules if I belong to a different gang.
But let me string you along here, since you still seem to think something
would be left of government. I have suggested that BG would get political
influence over things like placement of military bases. But you seem to be
implying, against the standard (and, of course, inconsistent and unsupported)
Objectivist claim that there would be a form of national defense, that this
would not be a legitimate government function. So I must ask you, what do
you imagine government *would* do?
> This is only because you're wearing rose-colored glasses, and missing
> what's unreasonable in the status quo. It's almost understandable, since
> it's been an evolutionary process, sneaking up on us over decades.
>
> Here's just a _very_few_ examples of utterly unreasonable or ridiculous
> elements of today's system in America (let's not debate each of these, I
> just want a laundry list of examples):
> 1) Asset forfeiture without trial in cases of suspected drug dealing
This is of course wrong and should be changed. That doesn't mean that there
are no essential government functions.
> 2) Burden of proof on defendant when dealing with IRS
Ditto. This is an interesting example because some new laws are intended to
change this, which shows that sometimes democracy can correct its own flaws
when its institutions are properly structured. If you fund your own private
"government" however, and I fund mine, and we have a dispute, there is no way
to correct each other's misperceptions except through brute force.
I'm not going to go through the rest of your list, because it doesn't address
the crucial point. You seem to be arguing that because some things in
government are bad, that all things in government are bad, and we're better
off without any of it, and when we have a dispute with each other we just
just hire Guido and Vinnie and see who wins. However you have not convinced
me that thuggery is better than the rule of law, especially when there is at
least some opportunity for people affected by it to change the law to make it
more rational and efficient.
> > Obviously at some point individuals do have to make such decisions; in Nazi
> > Germany, or Canada for that matter, it is neither practical nor a good idea
> > to have some kind of central committee of social scientists making these
> > decisions for everybody about when to revolt or not--in fact, it is pretty
> > obvious that no matter how carefully we tried to arrange such a thing it
> > would be likely to fail and become corrupted at the precise moment when we
> > needed its decisions.
>
> For this same reason, no government can ever be trusted. Why would you
> trust a government but not your hypothetical "central committee"?
My point is that it would be absurd to put our entire reliance upon either.
Remember that in fact the U.S. government itself is not unitary: there are
different branches, and there are also jury trials as one specific point
where the citizenry itself has an opportunity to have a direct say in what is
right or wrong. There's no one person or council that makes all the
decisions, and to which the rest of us surrender our moral judgments. At
best, a committee of this sort--which as I said, I don't particularly
advocate anyway, I just threw it in to make sure you understood that this
wasn't what I was aiming at or placing my hopes in--would at best be just
another check or watchdog on what other parts of the government were doing.
Ultimately we should look at the entire system of checks and balances,
including citizen input through juries, elections, and so on, and see if it's
aiming at the rationally necessary results and doing a good job of protecting
our rights. If it's not, then we should consider alternative proposals that
will do better. But if someone proposes that we do without any system at
all, without making any attempt to show that this would be better and when
there's plenty of evidence to see that it would in fact be far worse, then I
have trouble taking that proposal very seriously.
I don't have absolute trust in the government or any subset of it, which was
precisely the point of my final paragraphs in the message you responded to.
If a necessary and justified revolution is to occur, it must of course
originate from individuals who don't represent the major government policies
or decision-makers of the moment. But this doesn't mean that any revolt
coming from such a faction is automatically justified. To conclude from my
statements that some government action is just and rational that I therefore
must not believe that revolution is ever necessary, is therefore a logical
non sequitor and a simple mistake on the part of the people who claimed such
a thing. This is the only point I was trying to establish, and it is only a
distraction from the main argument about the necessity of public goods.
However some people seem to have trouble address the main argument and felt
the need to invent and ascribe imaginary beliefs to me. Hopefully we have
now cleared this up, and the people who accused me of being opposed to all
revolution can either drop this silly idea altogether or at least apologize
for exposing the logical fallacies in their thinking and dodging the
important questions.
do...@stone-soup.com
Why don't you tell us how you payed for your freedom.
If you can't I'll let you look at my bullet holes where I payed for
yours.
do...@stone-soup.com
No everyone is not richer than they were in 1776. In 1776 no one was
homeless if they wanted to build a house they just moved west until no
one was in the way and built it. If they wanted food they grew it or
killed something.
>Now, we can sit here and add up the plusses and minuses and debate them, I
>suppose. My sense is that there are a heck of a lot of things the government
>should not be doing right now, and not spending money on, and I really wish
>it would stop, and will spend what time I can advocating that it stop. Your
>list of objectionable activities may be different from mine, and may be so
>long that you don't think the good outweighs the bad. And you may have good
>reasons for your conclusions, or I may have good reasons for mine.
>
>But before we get into that, I want to find out if you agree on my proposed
>starting point. Yes, we should look at the relative harm and good government
>does. But we also should not cut off our nose to spite our face. Government
>subsidy of food production is a travesty; the slaughter of peasants in
>Vietnam is certainly far worse. But that doesn't mean that I think we should
>abolish not only the particular governments which do these things but the
>entire concept of a government, and with it things like a common agreement
>about how title to property is to be established. If you do, however, then
>there is little point in our discussing other particular government actions,
>since we will find ourselves completely opposed in our ways of dealing with a
>problem, even if we both agree that there is a problem.
>
Having been one of those who slaughered peasants in VN I think you
should learn something about it before you speak.
Government is always the enemy of freedom. It may be necessary, (I
don't think so but it may be ) but it will always be the enemy.
>However if you do not want to throw out the good with the bad, which so many
>Objectivist-types on this and other newsgroups do, then I would be happy to
>discuss with you the specifics of what the government should not be doing, and
>how we can get this changed.
>
There is no good to keep.
>Scott Forschler
>
>-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
>http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
S. Douglas Heard do...@stone-soup.com
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
> >By conveniently ignoring the
> >extremely strong reasons for organizing our complex society by the laws and
> >regulations we have chosen through our government it's easy to reduce this to
> >"merely a claim."
>
> But I do NOT ignore those reasons. I am not an anarchist. I support
> the exisence of government and laws, and I support coercive funding
> for any item which can be show to be 1) necessary and 2) dependent on
> such funding (no one's done this yet, but I hold out hope). But what I
You've just made more sense than most of the people who have responded to me
in this newsgroup over the past few days, by at least conceding the
possibility of such things.
Now, check out my post on how government provides a central authority for
establishing and protecting proper claims of title to property in land, and
tell me how you would do the same thing without either government or gangs of
thugs who fight for what each gang thinks is the right way to establish title
and the correct meaning and extension of it.
> The government could offer every citizen a choice
> to be a member of the government system or not. You may give up all
> your rights as a citizen - to vote, get government aid, etc., and in
Your "etc." includes having the right to own property recognized by the
government, and to work and live on property under its jurisdiction.
> You are presuming the very issue of contentin between us. The issue
> is NOT whether we have a choice to stay or leave, but rather whether
> or not government has a right to MAKE us decide.
Well, there are two issues here, really. The first is whether the government
had the authority to take land that, it acquired through purchase or
negotiation with native tribes and incorporate into its territory and hence
became the owner of, and sell or grant it to other people with certain
strings attached, one of them being that the owner must respect the
soverereignty of the selling government or any other government or agency the
original government assigns the land to. Now a lot of land of course was not
acquired fairly, and in this case the original inhabitants may have a valid
claim to ownership or soverereignty over the land, but that's not really
going to help you any because that's a separate issue. Much of the land in
the U.S. and Canada _was_ acquired through fair means, and I'm not going to
argue about how much because that isn't the point. When it was acquired in
this way, the selling corporation (the government) has the right, in the
absence of some overriding principle or authority, to set whatever conditions
it likes to the sale of the land, however open-ended these may be, and your
claims that you have "no contract" with the government hence reduce to
absurdity.
Now, I did say something in there about "in the absence of some overriding
princple or authority." This is significant, and leads us to the second
major issue. The government's claims to our allegiance under the contract we
agreed to is open-ended, but it is also proper to put some sensible limits on
it at some point. A discussion of what these should be would be much more
fruitful than the incorrect claim that you have no contract at all, because
you do. The question then becomes, when is it justifiable to break that
contract? Certainly it is in some cases: if the government decides that
tomorrow everyone has to give up all their land again without compensation,
or that everyone of a certain arbitrary category must, then this certainly
goes past the limit. But if it asks you for .1% of the land value per year
to pay for police and courts to protect your right to title in the land, this
is hardly good reason to break your contract.
> >Objectivists seem to think that taxes are totally unnecessary, that we can
> >live together in harmony without any overhead costs at all.
>
> That's completely inaccurate. Objectivists object to the MANNER OF
> COLLECTION of taxes, not taxes per se. They simply insist that
> government collect its income through voluntary exchange the same way
> every OTHER entity in the country does (or at least should). Now I
Then it's not a tax, but a donation, so you really do object to taxes. So
your statement is completely inaccurate.
> I've also
> offered a way TO make the argument - by showing that Item X of
> government service is NECESSARY to a free state and which cannot exist
> without coercive funding. Here are my top candidates - the military,
> courts, police and roads. And I daresay that if those were the only
Mine too, although I would expand on what these things do. Simply having a
court doesn't do much good if an hereditary king is both judge and jury. The
rule of law, and a standard procedure for establishing property rights and
adjudicating disputes in them, is a public good provided by these institutions
if they are doing their job right.
I've heard many Objectivists who would completly disagree over your inclusion
of roads, however, so you're not out of the woods here--and they insist that
we use the lowest common demoninator, so if they don't think roads should be
in the final list, they won't be, and neither will courts or military forces
because some smart-ass will object to them as well. So I daresay that the
debate will continue.
> items the government funded coercively, there would be little or no
> debate here. It is all this other crap - social security, welfare
> (both corporate and individual), the congresional barber shop,
> renovating Lauwrence Welk's house, etc., that defy justification.
I agree to a significant amount of this, but you don't seem to represent the
position I am primarily arguing against, which is the notion that we would
all be better off without any government services whatsoever (or that
government services could somebody be provided by magic even without paying
for them, or that having gangs of thugs roaming the countryside, available
for hire by anyone who wants to enforce their subjective ideas about what
their property rights are against someone else who has hired thugs to enforce
a different idea, will work better than having a central authority to
adjudicate such matters, or can in any way even remotely be said to be doing
the "same thing" that the rule of law is intended to do.)
If you agree with me here, then the debate between us may quiet down a bit,
and perhaps you can help me explain to the other idiots why thuggery is not
equivalent to the necessary functions of government in protecting our rights.
> >If you can show me that there is a better way to do things, fine.
>
> No, no, no. That is a shift of topic. Whether or not I am able to
> design a working perpetual motion machine is completely irrelevant to
> the validity of my criticism of yours as a piece of junk. If your
> argument that I implicitly agreed to have my income confiscated by
> living here is flawed, then it is flawed, whether I can think of a
> better way or not.
It's not all your income to begin with, strictly speaking. If you hadn't
earned it by working and living on land once sold by the government to a
private individual with given strings attached, you wouldn't have acquired
the particular money you speak of in the way in which you did.
You agreed to a contract when you occupied the land with the strings
attached. OTOH, if the government exercised some of its potential powers to
modify the contract as specified in the original grant, it would be putting
you in a situation where you would be justified in revolting. Until then, it
is not only right but better for you to live up to your end of the deal. In
fact the two are essential identical, if we understand "long term interest"
to be the deciding factor, and THAT, for those who have asked, is my ultimate
principle (or at least one way of expressing it). The government's claim
upon you to live up to the terms of the contract you made with it when you
occupied land it once granted extend only until it stops being in your
long-term rational interest to do so (not your momentary and arbitrary wish
to have more money or power when doing so would violate the contract and
amount to a refusal to pay for institutions and goods which are necessary to
maintain the value of your property and your right to it). But until then,
the claim is valid.
Which is essentially what Jefferson said, BTW.
> >Well, the government does that when you buy a house, or fill up your gas
> >tank. The rates may change occasionally, but can count on owing a certain
> >range of money to the government in exchange for having the roads that go by
> >your house, or that you drive on, as well as the sewer hook up, the local
> >zoo, etc.
>
> I don't have NEARLY as bg a problem with a user tax as an income tax,
> since we can control to a gret degree how much of the former we pay.
An income tax *is* a user tax, of a sort. It seems a little more abstract
because you're paying for the rule of law, safe streets, a sound money
supply, and things like that instead of something that can be measured in
gallons. But even with the gas tax you're not paying the tax for the _gas_,
but for the use of the road, it's just attached to the gas. The income tax
pays for the things which, altogether, enable you to live here in relative
peace and safety, and earn the money you speak of.
You can control both by controlling how much gas you buy, and how much you
choose to earn by taking advantage of the economic benefits that you get from
living and working on property where your rights and property values are
protected and enhanced in a variety of ways by policies and institutions that
the taxes pay for.
> The presumption is false. The fact that one uses sometihing does not
> imply that they agee to a coercive tax to fund it. Again, think of
> the kids sitting under my shade tree.
If the kids are sitting on a public sidewalk, right, you have no claim. But
this assumes normal reality, and under this situation the comparison isn't
analogous at all. Let's make some hypothetical changes: suppose that the
ozone layer didn't exist, and most trees died off from disease. It was
difficult and expensive to keep trees growing, and they were rare. Those few
people or institutions who managed to keep their trees growing at great
expense, and therefore provided a means for people to travel from building to
building without getting skin cancer, provide a necessary public good, and
should therefore be compensated to the extent that people find it necessary
to use them.
This is a bizarre hypothesis, but if you insist upon suggesting inaccurate
analogies, I will insist upon pointing out the changes they require to make
them fit the way you imagine that they do.
> The better argument is that one is due these rights by virtue of being
> a rational being, whether society likes it, or benefits from it, or
> not.
But if the thing you have a right to can only exist if a central authority
protects it, then asking for the right without admitting a need to pay for the
cost of the institution is like demanding a right to bread without conceeding
the need to buy it through a fair exchange.
Insisting on your rights without insisting upon the means necessary to secure
those rights is hypocritical, and an example of a "borrowed premise" where
you have "blanked out" on the essential elements to reach your conclusion or
desired state of being.
> >For example, if a village is in a flood plain, and someone points out
> >that this year's flood is going to drown us out unless we build a dam, then
> >it is _necessary_ to build the dam in order to preserve our properties and
> >lives. And if some government entity (or anyone, for that matter) does
build
> >a dam with this function, then that dam, even though it may not be on your
> >property, in some fractional way contributes to the continuing existence of
> >your house in the form it exists next year just as much as if the dam-builder
> >had reshingled your roof or dug your basement. If you don't like the
fact
> >that the dam is essential to the continued existence of your house, you may
> >want to take up that complaint with the universe, but to complain to the
> >taxing authority which charges you a fair percentage of the cost of the dam
> >is simply to bark up the wrong tree.
>
> The problem with all such scenarios, and why I've not been able to
> accomplish my own challenge despite my desire to, is that one never
> has 100% perfect knowledge of what is going to occur. All we have is
> varying probabilities of certainty based on whatever knowledge we
> have. Well, once you open that Pandora's box, it destroys the
> limitations of the argument, for you are then stuck with the
> unanswerable question: What probability of a flood wipe-out is
> required before such a coercive action is justified, and why? Without
> an objective answer to such a question, the door is left wide open for
> government to coercively tax for anything it wants, on the grounds
> that it is to protect for some hazard that is "sufficiently likely", a
> term left without definiton, and for good (or bad, dependinfg on POV)
> reason.
Now we are getting somewhere indeed. In fact, you're starting to make sense.
But let me ask you: do we absolutely need to know *exactly* what the
probability of a flood is? In fact, does that even really make sense without
further context? After all, we're not going to have a 30% flood, or any %
flood next year: there's either going to be a flood or there isn't, unless
certain interpretations of Quantum physics are true and the flood depends on
quantum events. But saying there's a given % chance of a flood is simply a
statement of our relative ignorance of the factors that will or will not
cause a flood. And so there's ultimately no "true" probability of the flood,
however there is a certain range of probability based upon our current state
of knowledge. In other words, it's always an educated guess to some extent.
However both words are crucial: *educated*, as well as *guess*. There may
be no single *objective* probability of the flood. But if our present level
of knowledge is stable and objective within certain bounds, then we can also
say within a certain limit what we think the chance is. That doesn't mean we
have number fixed in stone, like 14%--it might mean somewhere between 10 and
20 percent, depending upon which factors you think are more important, and we
don't know for sure which ones are, but we are pretty sure isn't not outside
that range given what we do know. So it is rational to simply exclude
predictions that fall outside this range, but not any that fall within it.
Now, if the cost of building the dam is 100 times the annual net income from
the valley, then it can be proven that no reasonable assumption about the
probability of a flood makes its construction a rational choice. But for
some lower cost, it is likely that the people who think the flood chance is
20% advocate building the dam, while those who think it is 10% will disagree,
and there is no objective way to say for sure which is closer to the truth.
Now in this case, we do have an honest public policy problem. And there's a
chance of making the wrong decision, and that's too bad, but that's due to
the way reality is--as you say, our knowledge is limited, and we can't help
that. But what does NOT follow from this is your statement that "the door is
left wide open for government to coercively tax for anything it wants." As
long as the government restricts its probability estimates to those that are
supported by objective fact, then it's not going to get too far out of whack.
It deserves criticism when it does not do so.
> >Well, the Objectivist blueprint, as I understand it, is that we need to have
> >certain minimal public goods like law enforcement and national defense, but
> >that nobody should have to pay for this. Which means that they won't
> >actually work or exist at all.
>
> That is a presumption that I have never seen justified. Please do so.
Check out an economics textbook with a chapter on the subject. Pay special
attention to the discussion of marginal utility for a rational actor of his
contribution to a public good. If you don't understand this, go back to
school and pay somebody to teach you. I don't have time to explain it in
detail to people too stubborn, ignorant, or fanatical to understand it.
> And you would be well advised to not make presumptions of me based on
> what you think the typical objectivist thinks - you'll be wrong a lot.
I am arguing against Objectivism in this thread. If you do not agree with
Objectivism, do not defend it. I am not interested in arguing against people
with whom I agree. If I attack an Objectivist idea, and you assume that I am
talking to you, that's your problem not mine.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
wj...@mindspring.com wrote:
> The *larger* and more important implication lies in what happens
> when the *principle* of *private property* is relinquished to
> compromise. Once that point is passed, any random dolt can come
> toddling along to posit that what *you* earn - the physical
> manifestations of the very days and hours of your life - is subject to
> others' disposal.
Yes, and this is exactly what would happen if the Objectivists had their way
and the only way to protect your property rights was to hire a thug who will
protect you from everyone else's privately-hired thugs who are doing the same
thing, but with no overarching authority, agreement, or limitation on what
thugs are allowed to do and not do. And this is exactly why I am utterly
opposed to Objectivism--in practice, it would abolish government and the rule
of law, and hence all of our rights to property and life.
> We don't need them. They need us.
It is just starting to dawn on me that one of the major reasons Objectivism
has acquired what limited popularity it possesses amongst a subset of the
population must be that it gives a supposed justification for *everyone* to
feel like a victim, and as we all know victimology is big intellectual
business in the U.S. today. No matter how much or how little property you
have, you can ascribe your inability to get more to "meddling government
interference." All your petty problems can be explained by the idea that you
and people like you are "Atlases," supporting the world on your shoulders.
It's those damned sluggards keeping you down, those parasites, those other
bad people. If only you were free of them you'd be huge, you'd stand up
straight, you could get your property protected *without* paying for police,
you could drive your car wherever you wanted *without* a surcharge at the gas
pump--and you could drive as fast as you like, no doubt, without interfering
with anyone's rights or harming yourself. Everything would be better in every
way. That's the message of Objectivism: THEY NEED YOU, you are strong, they
are weak, they are holding you down, those bad, bad people. What an ego
booster--what a philosophy for the "me" generation, the generation that feels
hurt, and feels a need to ascribe this hurt to somebody else, and to make the
bastards pay for it goddamn it. A philosophy that reality is on your side,
that you are good, and if it was only you and your friend reality everything
would be fine, so it must be some non-reality types, some evil, twisted
demonic scum who are distorting the facts and sucking away the godlike energy
that is yours by right because in REALITY(tm) everything is good and works
fine, there are no conflicts, there is nobody to hurt you, all transactions
are perfect and fair and just all by themselves.
What a wonderful dream. I can see how compelling it must be to some people
who don't have the patience for a more careful, precise, and accurate
identification of what ails them. So simple the world becomes then. "Living
is easy with eyes closed...."
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
> >>>Suppose a group of people landed on a continent. Let's suppose for
> >>>convenience it is uninhabited. I know in the real world there were
natives,
> >>>but unless you want to give most of North America back to the
Indians--which,
> >>>incidentally, *would* be the logical conclusion of a system of absolute
> >>>property rights--we will have to simplify this a little bit.
> >>
> >>Well, I think the give-all-the-land-back-to-the-Indians is the worst
> >>of red herrings, so by all means, continue with the uninhabited, newly
> >>discovered continent.
I see, so you would strongly disagree with Ron, then, who supports the rights
of First Nations people (I understand this is the preferred term in Canada,
and presume hence that this is where Ron lives) to reacquire land that was
taken unfairly.
Or perhaps you are simply arguing percentages, and insist that most of the
land was not taken unfairly. You may be right--that's a historical argument
requiring data to which I do not have access at the moment, and which is in
any case irrelevant to the principle we are discussing.
> >>>So these people
> >>>lay a claim and say "we own this continent."
> >>
> >>Geez, that's the problem right there. You cannot touch your tootsie
> >>on Plymouth Rock, and claim to own California.
OK, so now's your time to answer my question about how title to property is
established. Not by discovery, apparently, according to you. But according
to other people it is. So is it by occupation or use, and if so what kind of
occupation and use. Any kind, or only specific ways with specific durations?
> >>Further, the government does not own trhe land, i merly presides over
> >>it. The individual owners own it.
Why not? Corporations own land. If a person working for a corporation
invents or builds something on company time, the corporation generally owns
the product, so if a person working for Great Britain or Spain, or a
sub-agency working under the name of these governments discovers land, and
does whatever else is necessary to establish ownership, and does so while in
the employ of the government and under contract with it, isn't it possible
for the government/corporation to acquire title to the land? Your claim to
the contrary is absurd and arbitrary. Even if there was a reason for doing
it your way, however, without a central authority to adjudicate between
claims there's not much you can do about it. If all government functions
should be done by voluntary institutions, then I will send my contributions
to whatever private institution support my right to the land I want, even if
my only claim to it was that I was the first to land on the continent it is
on. If you use a different standard, you'll have to hire your own army to
enforce your standard of property rights unless we you can prove to me that
it is rationally necessary for us both to agree to a common institution that
adjudicates between such claims and keeps us from beating each other up.
I'll call such an institution an government.
Pistol
[snips]
>When you stop threatening to hire personal bodyguards who would not be
>limited by the rule of law, i.e., when you abandon Objectivism, then I will
>put down my guns. Until then you are merely threatening thuggery, which I do
>not find amusing at all.
This is such a grotesque distortion as to eliminate you from the ranks
of honest debators. You obviously are intent only on distorting your
opponents positions and making longwinded irrelevant speeches.
If I need a cure for insomnia, I may check out another of your posts.
gustav
>
> In article <35E89A...@magma.com>,
> vmartin!!@magma.com wrote:
>
> > > That is NOT a practical line. That is the whole point. The lowest common
> > > demoninator turns out to be zero, since there are a few nuts out there who
> > > don't think public goods should exist at all, and would rather we live at a
> > > stone-age level of civilization and population than to have any kind of
> > > social infrastructure which would support the institutions necessary for a
> > > higher standard of living and justice than this.
> >
> > Not if those few nuts participate voluntarily because if they do not want
> > anything they wouldn't participate. It means as long as there are people
> > ready to participate on something common it can not be zero.
>
> But if not *everyone* participates then the LCD will be zero.
Nonsense. In those groups of people who agree on something common it will not be
zero. Moreover in this way of accountability and feedbacks those systems will later
change to something which will quite similar for each of them in the same way
as companies are all working basicaly using very simmilar methods of managemant.
> Look, you and other Objectivists are suffering from the delusion that these
> non-participants will leave you alone. If that were the case, there wouldn't
> be so much of a problem. But let's say that we do abolish all forms of
> coercive government, and everybody just joins voluntary organizations of
> their choice to do *everything* that government used to do which they still
> feel needs doing somehow or other, and not to do anything else. Fine, now
> you think to yourself "great, now we won't have any wars, or other pointless
> and destructive government actions that people in our voluntary organization
> don't agree upon."
> Guess again. Because you belong to an organization that thinks that title to
> property is established and justified by a set of rules and procedures X.
> But the guy next door thinks it is established by set Y. Or you have
> different conceptions about the limits of title to property. Maybe he thinks
> that the river between you is the boundary, but you think it is the place the
> river was 200 years ago, which since has shifted. Maybe you think that
> property extends into the earth and air a reasonable distance. Maybe he
> thinks, as people prior to air travel generally did, that it extends into the
> stratosphere, or at least as high up until you reach God's territory. Which
> means, incidentally, that unless you can persuade him and everyone else
> otherwise, you will have *no* air travel in your civilization.
Why do you think so? There is exactly the same situation right now between
countries. Why do you think that if it were on voluntary bases there would
be more conflicts as opposed to corecive basis which inherently implies
conflict right by it mere existence. There is absolutly no basis for this
claim. If there is no iron-clad evidence why should it be inforced?
> But that's a
> relatively minor problem: the serious problem is that he may think that he
> owns some property that you think you own or have a right to use. Or you
> disagree about what uses of your neighboring properties interfere or don't
> with the other's right to property. Maybe he thinks he has a right to build a
> tall building that blocks your view, and you disagree, or vice versa. Maybe
> he thinks one of his ancestors had a claim to your land which was never
> quieted, and so you should move out. Maybe he thinks that title to land is
> established by someone being the first to occupy the property and making use
> of it in a specific way, but you think that a different sort of "use" is
> required to justify it. He thought he was "using" your property when he
> looked at it and admired the trees; you thought "use" was only established
> after you fenced it or built a structure.
>
> Now maybe these claims and conceptions of property are right, and maybe they
> are wrong. Obviously they can't all be right. But before you all put your
> Objectivist thinking caps on or start browsing through your Rand and Peikoff
> for the "correct" answers about property rights, remember that the other guy
> doesn't give a shit about what you think, and there is no government to sort
> things out and force people to come to an agreement.
Why do you think that there would be no government at all? Those who would wish
one would have one. What is the essence of government if not to supply one of
the very important services - protection of individuals? I am quite positive
that most people would voluntarily want that service and they would pay for
it. There could be all other kind of services that libertarian/objectivist
govrnment could provide in the same way as today. You just would be alowed to
choose them and pay for them. There is no evidence that this couldn't work.
Why couldn't government work like a company? Huge companies can exist together
and peacefully compete for customers why not governments?
> Instead there is your
> property-rights organization and its thugs, and the next guy's (and the next
> guy, and the next guy, as long as some jerk can come along with a half-assed
> claim, which is forever, there being an infinite supply of stupid and/or
> self-righteous people and/or determined and greedy in the world). And he's
> not going to read your book, or necessarily agree with your answers to what
> property rights should be. He thinks they extend into the stratosphere, and
> you don't--or vice versa. It doesn't matter what the Objectivist solution
> is, the point is you will find sombody to disagree with you. And the only
> way to make him see your way (or vice versa) is by brute force or the threat
> of it.
Here we are at the basic assumtion of yours that most people are in essence
stupid and unethical. I challenge this claim. Why do you think so? What is
your proof. And if it were the truth how come that you thing that politicians
who will be given so much power to force us to do whatever they want will be
better? Isn't exactly that power they can have extremly atractive exactly to
those worst of us?
> Now you may point out that this is what we do in the present system--the
> government's decree of what property rights are and how they are established
> are ultimately backed up by brute force. Damn right they are. But there's a
> lot less brute force going around now because the standards for property
> rights are visible and out in the open, and everyone has a chance to find out
> what they are in advance and act on that basis. There's less of a chance
> that someone else will come around with a new theory and force you to fight
> him. Disputes between claimants are adjudicated by the rule of law instead
> of by thuggery, as Objectivism would have it done. The Ojectivist proposal,
> instead of leading to a universal harmony in which everyone would agree to
> _your_ ideas about what property rights are, and abolish government
> "thuggery," would in fact lead to vastly more thuggery.
This is unsoported assertion. You claim that the current system which allowes
"thuggery" legaly is more safe than the one which doesn't allowe it. Property
rights will be backed by force in any system. It just deppends how those rights
look like to conclude whether the system is right or not. Why are you so afraid
of freedom which is granted to all equally? There will be chaos without all
those thugs in governments everywhere around the world, right?
> And, to return to an
> earlier point, wars of exactly the sort you once prided your system for its
> ability to avoid. Well, maybe not exactly: you'd probably have smaller,
> more frequent wars with less closure instead of the occasional big whammy
> wars like we have today (of course you would also have those, since
> eventually some nation which did not adopt your anarchistic voluntarism, like
> Nazi Germany, would see your little thug-infested territory "formerly known
> as the United States" as ripe for the picking. Until then you'd have more
> middle-ages sort of stuff, before kingdoms had enough central authority and
> power to stop petty squabbling of exactly this sort amongst the less nobles
> (or until the Huns came through and discovered that nobdy was stopping them).
Where in heaven are you getting this paranoia? Nazi Germany lost the war exactly
for the reason that it was not free society. Nobody wanted to live in society
like that. People would rather die than live in system like that. Even their
own army got demoralized. You might object that Soviet Union was not free either
but we all know how they ended up. US is still here and strong. The reason for it
is that it is much closer to libertarian/objectivist society than most of other
countries in the world.
> Is this better?
There is nothing yet just your assertion.
> Maybe you think so. I don't, and convincing me and everyone
> else in this nation, and in the world, that this would be better is precisely
> what you need to do if you expect the rest of us to take Objectivism
> seriously. Furthermore, all of the cheap Objectivist claims I have read over
> the past few days about how the rule of law is thuggery, and how I am
> advocating force and violence because I support it, is childish, ignorant
> hypocrisy because Objectivism has no better solution and would lead to much
> more violence and irrational violation of rights than what we have now or
> under any other admittedly imperfect European-style liberal state (please
> understand I mean liberal in the traditional sense, not to reference the
> specific version of liberalism espoused by the U.S. Democratic Party).
> Unless you can prove to me that your system is better, instead of simply
> asserting that it is, your threats and shouts deserve no further response or
> respect.
So I have my assertion and you have yours. I claim that initialisation of
force is wrong. Is it not proven assertion? I see it as an axiom which we
found out from experience. You do not believe it. What would decent people
do if they can not agree on something? Ignore each other, right? Why doesn't
it happen in your system? Why do you advocate initiation of force against
me without a proof? Am I not innocent until proven guilty? Is it me who
should prove something?
Gustav
gustav
>
> -----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
> http://www.dejanews.com/rg_mkgrp.xp Create Your Own Free Member Forum
Why don't you then instead of this rethoric prove us that he as the only
one who earns his money has no right to decide how to spend it? What
else than your unsupported paranoid assumptions gives you right to such
comments?
Gustav
Pistol
>In article <35e98dc8...@news.mindspring.com>,
> wj...@mindspring.com wrote:
>
>
>> The *larger* and more important implication lies in what happens
>> when the *principle* of *private property* is relinquished to
>> compromise. Once that point is passed, any random dolt can come
>> toddling along to posit that what *you* earn - the physical
>> manifestations of the very days and hours of your life - is subject to
>> others' disposal.
>
>Yes, and this is exactly what would happen if the Objectivists had their way
>and the only way to protect your property rights was to hire a thug who will
>protect you from everyone else's privately-hired thugs who are doing the same
>thing, but with no overarching authority, agreement, or limitation on what
>thugs are allowed to do and not do. And this is exactly why I am utterly
>opposed to Objectivism--in practice, it would abolish government and the rule
>of law, and hence all of our rights to property and life.
This is just more inaccurate bullshit. The vast majority of
objectivists are not anarchists, and they most certainly DO insist on
an overarching authority on what government is allowed to do".
You really should study a subject before you rant on ignorantly about
it.
Míké Schneidër
>In article <35e98b14...@news.mindspring.com>,
> wj...@mindspring.com wrote:
>>
>> sfor...@thomas.butler.edu wrote:
>>
>> >I'm just saying if that if you can't stand living in a place that requires
>you
>> >to pay for public services--
>>
>>*you* don't get to stand
>> there and tell *me* what *I'm* going to value.
>
>I certainly don't get to decide what you *will* value. However I am saying
>that if you are going to live in close proximity with people who value things
>like I do, such as most of this country, you *should* value those necessary
>institutions which protect our rights, and pay your fair share for them.
"Should", or else *you* will do what?
Stick your big gun up his left nostril?
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
pis...@cyberramp.net (Pistol) wrote:
> >When you stop threatening to hire personal bodyguards who would not be
> >limited by the rule of law, i.e., when you abandon Objectivism, then I will
> >put down my guns. Until then you are merely threatening thuggery, which I do
> >not find amusing at all.
>
> This is such a grotesque distortion as to eliminate you from the ranks
> of honest debators. You obviously are intent only on distorting your
> opponents positions and making longwinded irrelevant speeches.
No, that is an _exact_ description of what Objectivism would lead to, and you
have merely asserted, not argued, that this is not the case. This eliminates
YOU from the ranks of honest debators. You may attempt to change your status
at any time by presenting an evidence-based ARGUMENT instead of merely making
subjective, emotionally-based, ad hominem claims and attacks.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
do...@stone-soup.com(Doug) wrote:
> >Good points. It is objectively true that the government costs more now both
> >in absolute and percentage terms than it did in 1776. However it is also
> >true that our society is more complicated and everyone in it richer now than
> >in 1776, and we all come into contact with more people of *all* kinds each
> >day than we would have then. I pass tens of thousands of people every day on
> >the way to work in just 20 minutes. I don't have time to establish personal,
> >contractual relations with them all. Fortunately I don't have to: the
> >government which built, maintains, and patrols the highway I drive on also
> >establishes and enforces the rules by which the highway may be used. In ways
> >like this, the daily benefits I received from government activity is also
> >much greater than it was in 1776.
> >
> No everyone is not richer than they were in 1776. In 1776 no one was
> homeless if they wanted to build a house they just moved west until no
> one was in the way and built it. If they wanted food they grew it or
> killed something.
Point taken. But obviously this is because there are a heck of a lot more
people around than there were 200 years ago, and a lot less land which is
unclaimed by Europeans and hence considered "available" (whether it was
properly claimed by anyone else is another question, of course). It is not a
problem that you can attribute to government, unless you argue that the
government was so successful in making life here tolerable enough and
protecting its citizen's rights that people felt safe in relocating and
having children here. This will obviously not help your argument very much.
e we get into that, I want to find out if you agree on my proposed
> >starting point. Yes, we should look at the relative harm and good government
> >does. But we also should not cut off our nose to spite our face. Government
> >subsidy of food production is a travesty; the slaughter of peasants in
> >Vietnam is certainly far worse. But that doesn't mean that I think we should
> >abolish not only the particular governments which do these things but the
> >entire concept of a government, and with it things like a common agreement
> >about how title to property is to be established. If you do, however, then
> >there is little point in our discussing other particular government actions,
> >since we will find ourselves completely opposed in our ways of dealing with a
> >problem, even if we both agree that there is a problem.
> >
> Having been one of those who slaughered peasants in VN I think you
> should learn something about it before you speak.
Sorry to hear that. I used this example only because someone else implied it
in an earlier post, referencing Spiro Agnew's attacks against those who
criticized this and related aspects of government policy, and (spuriously)
identifying my perspective with Agnew's. I am not taking a stand here for
against any particular policies here as of yet, but simply stating that if we
adopt the earlier speaker's assumption that if the government's actions are
morally objectionable, then it is proper to criticize the government for
this, and in the case of serious infractions to go to unusual lengths to
compel it to stop doing what it is doing, and therefore my position is not at
all comparable to that of the former Vice President.
If you have a more specific criticism of my statements, and a suggestion
about what more I should learn about this or any other topic, I would welcome
this. Your statement is very vague however, and hence doesn't help advance
the debate very much.
> Government is always the enemy of freedom. It may be necessary, (I
> don't think so but it may be ) but it will always be the enemy.
I totally disagree, and furthermore have an example to prove my case, which
will provide a specific focal point for you to refute it with your own
evidence and arguments, if you care to do so.
Currently there is a central authority in the U.S. for adjudicating property
disputes and determining how valid title to property is to be established and
how far it extends, and provdes means to protect the same. If there was no
government, you obviously would be free to become a member of some voluntary
institution which performed these duties, and set its own standards for these
things, and hired its own private thugs to protect property rights. But the
problem is, everyone else would be free to do the same, and some of those
people will be your near neighbors, and their institutions will use different
standards from what you use, which means that you will inevitably run into
conflict. The only way to resolve this conflict will be to have your hired
thugs duke it out. You may occasionally lose this fight. I would suggest
that this is a serious limitation on your freedom and right to own property,
which does not occur nearly as often when a central authority manages this.
Unless of course the central authority does not respect property rights at
all, as was the case in many communist countries (and may still be in a few).
This of course is wrong and intolerable. But this is the exception and not
the rule, and this is precisely why there was more freedom in the United
States than in the Soviet Union, or in Ethiopia during their period of
government collapse and anarchy a few years back, when everyone who wanted to
protect their rights had to join with the non-governmental roving "warlord"
gang of their choice. This obviously didn't work very well, and didn't
preserve freedom for most of its members as well as a democratic government
which protected property rights would have done.
Of course there's the silly argument some people make about how governments
are bad in principle because some of them are bad. This makes about as much
sense as saying that guns are in principle evil because some of them are used
in a bad way. Unless one can show that they inevitably become bad, this
"slippery slope" idea is pretty vapid.
> >However if you do not want to throw out the good with the bad
> There is no good to keep.
Yet another assertion without argument. You people can be real boring, you
know that?
Míké Schneidër
>In article <35e70308....@news.atlantic.net>,
> do...@stone-soup.com(Doug) wrote:
>
>> Could this be an indicator that government is too big? Might not the
>> proper approach be that no country should be larger than everyone can
>> agree on what public goods is?
>
>Your first question makes some sense--maybe government is too big! I would
>welcome a discussion of such issues, and think you might be quite right.
Just as soon as you can argue your way out of slavery, you'll then be
able to argue that you have the right to also own a nickel, and that the
government hasn't a right to take said nickel from you (i.e., get "too
big").
As my friend Beck is fond of saying, "This ain't rocket surgery".
Míké Schneidër
>In article <QWERT-30089...@ppp-66-135.dialup.winternet.com>,
> QW...@TREWQwinTREWQternet.com (Míké^%Schnęîder) wrote:
>> In article <6sc398$qd4$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>, sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
>wrote:
>>
>> >how do you think title in
>> >land is earned in the first place? What exactly does it take for Joe Smith
>> >to do to "own" a piece of land, whether or not it may once have been
occupied
>> >by natives (for that matter, the natives can take the role of Joe Smith: if
>> >they "own" property, what constitutes, justifies, or establishes this
>> >ownership?)
>>
>> What justifies your ownership of that *thing* you see staring back at
>> you in the mirror when you shave every morning? (And shouldn't you really
>> have a license to drive it?)
>
>I don't shave in front of a mirror. :-)
>
>Are you implyi--
I am asking you a question. If you can't see the analogous nature of
it, I doubt even the most blatant "implications" are going to register.
>ng you don't have an answer to my question? Or is your question
>in response some kind of code that if properly deciphered will give me the
>answer? Please give a clearer statement, if possible. Otherwise I will
>conclude that you simply don't have any sense of how property rights can be
>established, and your whole theory of property collapses for lack of a
>foundation.
Wassamatter wit you, boy?
Can't you even argue your own way out of *slavery*?
I am quite sure that you would not wish to be owned by anyone other
than yourself. In fact, I am quite sure that you are more adamant about
that than you are sure that I care to own real estate. Hence, I would
surmise a sudden great desire upon your part to reconsider your silly
stance against property rights. Well, go ahead. *Convince* me that no one
should put shackles around your ankles and ship you off to the land of
cotton.
Who knows? You might be the very first edu.boy I've ever seen on the
net actually pick his way through this and reach enlightenment.
Míké Schneidër
>In article <35e98dc8...@news.mindspring.com>,
> wj...@mindspring.com wrote:
>
>
>> The *larger* and more important implication lies in what happens
>> when the *principle* of *private property* is relinquished to
>> compromise. Once that point is passed, any random dolt can come
>> toddling along to posit that what *you* earn - the physical
>> manifestations of the very days and hours of your life - is subject to
>> others' disposal.
>
>Yes, and this is exactly what would happen if the Objectivists had thei--
snip
>
>> We don't need them. They need us.
>
>It is just starting to dawn on me that one of the major reasons Objectivism
>has acquired what limited popularity it posses--
(snip fat wad of rubbish following this mistaken premise)
What has led you to conclude that Billy is an [big-O] "Objectivist"?
Funny, I don't remember you from those wrasslin' days over in HPO.
Go burn your straw men somewhere else.
Míké Schneidër
>In article <johnz-29089...@cust9.max10.seattle-k56.aa.net>,
> jo...@nospam.aa.net (johnz) wrote:
>
>> > I don't need to make parasites leave when they refuse to pay for services
>> > they consent to benefit from by staying here. That's what the IRS and
>> > government agencies are for.
>>
>> Don't like to get your hands dirty, huh? Or allergic to lead? Funny how
>> that's going around.
>
>No, it's just the difference between the kind of thuggery that Objectivism
>would have us all perform by contracting for private bodyguards
Doubtless these bodyguards might actually be under the impression they
were expected to actually do their jobs (unlike, say, the *police*), since
the are not ramrodded down the throats of their clients by "rule of law".
>to slug it out, and the rule of law.
...which constitutes *what*?
=======================================================================
Email: Replace everything before the @ with "mike1" and delete any CAPS
Law is an internally flawed, hopelessly corrupted, artificially
contrived, and in many cases immoral repository of conflicting and
philosophically retarded bullshit meant for those poor weak individuals
who do not have the personal fortitude to forge a set of morals and live
by them. It is pale, and to many of us, ludicrous in its shallowness.
We are interested in right and wrong.
You are interested in legal and illegal.
We are interested in justice.
You are concerned about adherence to the will of the throne.
We desire freedom. You desire order.
-- Bill Kasper.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
gustav <vmartin!!@magma.com> wrote:
> > But if not *everyone* participates then the LCD will be zero.
>
> Nonsense. In those groups of people who agree on something common
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Duh. But we were talking about whether governments would exist if they were
stripped of all but their LCD functions. If you want to talk about private
groups, talk about private groups, and don't barge in without clarifying your
terms, because it confuses everybody, especially yourself.
The argument I am making is that governments would not exist if the LCD
argument is used, and therefore property rights would have no protection
except that which could be provided by gangs of thugs hired for the purpose,
and using standards which will vary widely from one gang to another. Gangs
and other voluntary organizations would of course exist in a very different
and much more chaotic form that what they do today, but that wasn't what we
were talking about. Is this clear yet?
> > [discussion of property rights in an anarchy snipped by SF]
>
> Why do you think so? There is exactly the same situation right now between
> countries. Why do you think that if it were on voluntary bases there would
Pretty much, except for the fact that there is a general agreement on most
international boundaries, and an agreement that the property notions of one
country do not extend beyond its borders. Which is precisely why,
incidentally, European countries were so averse to the U.S. attempt a couple
of years ago to enforce sanctions against companies which invested in Cuban
property.
Of course it would be easier if everyone had exactly the same concept of
property. But we don't, so this is the solution that has been arrived at.
It is highly imperfect, of course, but it is precisely when two nations don't
agree about where their boundaries should be, or when they try to enforce
their ideas of property rights beyond their boundaries, that wars or warlike
situations tend to occur. And my point is that if there was no general
agreement on international boundaries or their equivalent, which wouldn't be
the case if every one of the 5 billion people on this earth was free to join
their own private institution with their own ideas about what property rights
were, how far theirs extended, and with their own determination to defend
what they imagine is theirs--then we would be in a state of near-constant
warfare. I submit that this is a bad thing, to put it mildly. The
international situation with respect to property rights is quite problematic
actually, and would be far worse if you mutiplied it and smudged all the
boundaries.
Let me ask again: what do you think establishes property rights in the first
place? What makes it right that A owns land X and B does not? I'm really
curious about your answer to this, and how you think an answer can be agreed
upon without a central authority to adjudicate disputes.
> > But that's a
> > relatively minor problem: the serious problem is that he may think that he
> > owns some property that you think you own or have a right to use. Or you
> > disagree about what uses of your neighboring properties interfere or don't
> > with the other's right to property. Maybe he thinks he has a right to build
a
> > tall building that blocks your view, and you disagree, or vice versa. Maybe
> > he thinks one of his ancestors had a claim to your land which was never
> > quieted, and so you should move out. Maybe he thinks that title to land is
> > established by someone being the first to occupy the property and making use
> > of it in a specific way, but you think that a different sort of "use" is
> > required to justify it. He thought he was "using" your property when he
> > looked at it and admired the trees; you thought "use" was only established
> > after you fenced it or built a structure.
> >
> > Now maybe these claims and conceptions of property are right, and maybe they
> > are wrong. Obviously they can't all be right. But before you all put your
> > Objectivist thinking caps on or start browsing through your Rand and Peikoff
> > for the "correct" answers about property rights, remember that the other guy
> > doesn't give a shit about what you think, and there is no government to sort
> > things out and force people to come to an agreement.
>
> Why do you think that there would be no government at all? Those who would
> wish one would have one.
Again, please distinguish between government and private organizations.
Those who wish to have a private organization or gang will join one, but
calling it a "government" won't make it one if it has no authority except
over its voluntary members, and you refuse to accept that a person can become
a voluntary member of it by purchasing property under a contract which
incluedes a demand for the recognition of its authority.
There would be no government if anyone could leave its authority at will and
take their "property" with them, regardless of whatever benefits their
"property" previously acquired from their association with the institution.
All you have then are competing gangs of thugs, not government.
> What is the essence of government if not to supply one of
> the very important services - protection of individuals?
Please try to understand the distinction between the protection that a thug
can give you, and the protection that the rule of law can give you. If you
don't understand this, read some Von Hayek. You're simplifying the most
important things out of your model if you simply assume that because private
thugs have guns and government have guns that they perform the same "service"
or protect you in the same way. Since in the former case there are other
gangs of thugs roaming around using different standards than you, and there
is no authoritative way to reconcile any conflicts you may have with them,
the essential quality of the "protection" provided is fundamentally
different.
> Huge companies can exist together
> and peacefully compete for customers why not governments?
Huge companies currently work in an environment where governments regulate
certain aspects of their existence, and protect many of their rights while
restricting them from violating many rights. You are proposing a situation
in which no central authority would perform these functions, and wondering
why they couldn't work in the same way. This is a borrowed premise--if
you're going to take away the things that protect rights, you need to give
back your premise that peaceful competition would ensue as it does under the
rule of law where rights are protected. Otherwise you are guilty of
philosophical theft.
> > Instead there is your
> > property-rights organization and its thugs, and the next guy's (and the next
> > guy, and the next guy, as long as some jerk can come along with a half-assed
> > claim, which is forever, there being an infinite supply of stupid and/or
> > self-righteous people and/or determined and greedy in the world). And he's
> > not going to read your book, or necessarily agree with your answers to what
> > property rights should be. He thinks they extend into the stratosphere, and
> > you don't--or vice versa. It doesn't matter what the Objectivist solution
> > is, the point is you will find sombody to disagree with you. And the only
> > way to make him see your way (or vice versa) is by brute force or the threat
> > of it.
>
> Here we are at the basic assumtion of yours that most people are in essence
> stupid and unethical. I challenge this claim. Why do you think so? What is
Let's clarify this. My basic assumption is rather that people will be
generally be stupid and unethical when their environment offers them
incentives for behaving in this manner, and they will be rational and
sensible when their environment offers them other incentives. The rule of
law is a significant change in our environment which serves the latter
function. An anarchic situation where every person has the right to hire
whatever thugs he chooses to enforce whatever he might think are his rights
or desires of the moment fits the former bill.
I think people are actually quite smart, and will respond as best they can
according to their situation, but some situations encourage people to think
in the short term rather than the long term, or to value immediate desires
over rights (theirs or others). That's why I recommend establishing
environments in which people will respond in a way that preserves our rights
and maximizes our freedom. The problem is that people won't just do the
right thing because you ask them to--there needs to be an obvious way that it
is in their immediate benefit to do so. That's why we have police, for
example. Everyone knows stealing is wrong, and even the most decrepit street
thug can tell you that the more people steal, the more no one is safe, and
even he has to lock up his burglared goods more tightly when crime is
rampant. But that doesn't mean he's going to change his behavior just
because you preach Objectivism at him--a cop is much more effective.
Maybe still not enough. I also don't think it's really efficient to lock
everyone up and fill the prisons if there is some more effective way of
preventing crime. I'm open to suggestions. What I'm not open to is
suggesting that we ignore the environment, and let everyone do whatever they
want and just assume that things will work out for the best even though the
environment becomes one that encourages short-term thinking because one's
life and property are more at risk from all the private gangs roaming free
under arbitrary and subjective standards.
> This is unsoported assertion. You claim that the current system which allowes
> "thuggery" legaly is more safe than the one which doesn't allowe it.
Stop making incorrect assertions. Your system _does_ allow legal
thuggery--in fact there is no other kind, because there are no laws.
Everyone is free to support the protective institution of their choice, and
no one has to obey the rules of another person's gang unless they are
compelled to by force. That's what Objectivism advocates, and in that
situation there are no general laws, and lots of thugs.
Of course Objectivism also says that people should not impose their rules on
each other by force. But it provides no institutional way of keeping this
from happening except the power of your own personal thugs. Beyond that,
your only tools are moral suasion, and asking people to read Atlas Shrugged.
Which, to briefly return to the very original part of this thread, is so
boring and insipid that you're not likely to make many converts among the
gangs which aren't inclined to agree with you to begin with, which will be
most of them.
> Property rights will be backed by force in any system.
There's a good start--keep making sense like this and we'll make some
progress.
> It just deppends how those rights look like to conclude whether the system is
> right or not.
No, it doesn't just depend upon what the rights look like. It also depends
upon whether they are consistently enforced, and whether mechanisms exist to
enforce them.
Under your proposed system, there is no authority which compells everyone to
accept a certain standard of rights--which means that individuals and their
gangs are quite free to try to impose whatever standard they think they like.
Some standards ("Everything is mine") will be so obviously out of whack that
they will get little support and much hostility from others, and won't fare
well at all. But for others there will be serious, reasonable, and
persistent grounds for disagreement. So in fact there is no answer to "what
rights look like" under your system--they look different for each gang which
makes up its own standards. And if they conflict at particular points, so
that I think my right to the river lets me dump stuff into it that you don't
think should be there and is not covered by your concept of "property rights
to the river," the only way to enforce this is to send your thugs against my
thugs.
So your system both allows much greater inconsistency as to the nature of
rights, and a much weaker (and also highly inconsistent) enforcement
mechanism.
> > And, to return to an
> > earlier point, wars of exactly the sort you once prided your system for its
> > ability to avoid. Well, maybe not exactly: you'd probably have smaller,
> > more frequent wars with less closure instead of the occasional big whammy
> > wars like we have today (of course you would also have those, since
> > eventually some nation which did not adopt your anarchistic voluntarism,
like
> > Nazi Germany, would see your little thug-infested territory "formerly known
> > as the United States" as ripe for the picking. Until then you'd have more
> > middle-ages sort of stuff, before kingdoms had enough central authority and
> > power to stop petty squabbling of exactly this sort amongst the less nobles
> > (or until the Huns came through and discovered that nobdy was stopping
them).
>
> Where in heaven are you getting this paranoia? Nazi Germany lost the war
exactly
> for the reason that it was not free society.
Nazi Germany lost because the democracies of the world waged war against it
with all the powers available to them, including the draft, taxation, and all
kinds of other things that a true Objectivist would find quite repulsive.
Yes, it was individual people doing this ultimately, but people working
within an institutional structure which motivating them to act in specific
ways to achieve a specific end.
Nazi Germany probably would have collapsed eventually under its own internal
contradictions, but I wouldn't hold my breath--Stalinist Russia held out for
pretty long, and I'm not sure which system was the more utterly insane.
If we didn't have an organized defense against these two forces, they would
have each managed to do a hell of a lot of damage to your hypothetical
anarchic freedom in the last century before they collapsed, even if they did
eventually do so under anything like the schedule which they did. Would you
have been willing to wait from 1917 to 1989 to be released from the tyrrany?
Would it have been in your rational interest to do so?
> The reason for it is that it is much closer to libertarian/objectivist society
> than most of other countries in the world.
Only in the loosest sense. You might just as well argue that just because a
well 100 feet deep will provide more water than one 50 feet deep, that one
5000 miles deep will do better yet. Instead it comes up full of magma.
Worse yet, you can't even dig one that deep because you enter a liquid
medium. More of a good thing is not always better.
But I also disagree that whatever incoherent idea of absolute personal
freedom you believe would be perfected by Objectivism is what led to our
victories. In fact we have what freedom we do because we live under a very
refined rule of law, which you are proposing to abolish. Neither anarchy nor
dictatorship have a rule of law, and that is why we do better than either
one.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
QW...@TREWQwinQWERternet.com (Míké Schneidër) wrote:
> >I certainly don't get to decide what you *will* value. However I am saying
> >that if you are going to live in close proximity with people who value things
> >like I do, such as most of this country, you *should* value those necessary
> >institutions which protect our rights, and pay your fair share for them.
>
> "Should", or else *you* will do what?
I will do nothing as an individual. I will let the government do its job and
enforce my rights, including my property rights, including its corporate
rights to taxes in payment for those institutions necessary to protect the
rights that I and all other citizens deserve. Just like it is supposed to
do. If I and all other people had to enforce our rights ourselves, according
to our own subjective judgments, we would have anarchy, which is no fun at
all.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
gustav <vmartin!!@magma.com> wrote:
> Why don't you then instead of this rethoric prove us that he as the only
> one who earns his money has no right to decide how to spend it?
Why don't you drop your stupid and unsupported assumption that a man who
drives on public highways without having to stop and pay tolls constantly,
and who enjoys the protection of the rule of law in his home and workplace,
as well as national defense, police, and so on--is the "only one" who
contributes to the value of the production process in which he is engaged?
Check your premises for errors next time before you speak.
RonG
wrote:
>Scott,
>
>Why don't you tell us how you payed for your freedom.
>If you can't I'll let you look at my bullet holes where I payed for
>yours.
>
>
>
>S. Douglas Heard do...@stone-soup.com
>
Sir:
Please allow me to offer my heartfelt thanks for your service. It is greatly
appreciated.
With respect and gratitude
Ron
RonG
wrote:
>In article <35e98dc8...@news.mindspring.com>,
> wj...@mindspring.com wrote:
>
>
>> The *larger* and more important implication lies in what happens
>> when the *principle* of *private property* is relinquished to
>> compromise. Once that point is passed, any random dolt can come
>> toddling along to posit that what *you* earn - the physical
>> manifestations of the very days and hours of your life - is subject to
>> others' disposal.
>
>Yes, and this is exactly what would happen if the Objectivists had their way
>and the only way to protect your property rights was to hire a thug who will
>protect you from everyone else's privately-hired thugs who are doing the same
>thing, but with no overarching authority, agreement, or limitation on what
>thugs are allowed to do and not do. And this is exactly why I am utterly
>opposed to Objectivism--in practice, it would abolish government and the rule
>of law, and hence all of our rights to property and life.
>
>> We don't need them. They need us.
>
>It is just starting to dawn on me that one of the major reasons Objectivism
Fair enough, Scott.
No-one needs you. Bye.
Ron
Míké Schneidër
>In article <QWRET-31089...@ppp-66-26.dialup.winternet.com>,
> QW...@TREWQwinQWERternet.com (Míké Schneidër) wrote:
>
>> >I certainly don't get to decide what you *will* value. However I am saying
>> >that if you are going to live in close proximity with people who value
things
>> >like I do, such as most of this country, you *should* value those necessary
>> >institutions which protect our rights, and pay your fair share for them.
>>
>> "Should", or else *you* will do what?
>
>I will do nothing as an individual. I will let the government do its job...
Which *you*, as an individual, *hired* at the ballot.
Don't try to weasel out of your immoral INITIATION OF FORCE.
John C. 'Buck' Field
constitutes agreement by the originator I will be
damaged in the amount of $1000.00 US Dollars
by each use.
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu wrote in message
<6sf73s$fnb$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>Why don't you drop your stupid and unsupported assumption that a man who
>drives on public highways without having to stop and pay tolls constantly,
>and who enjoys the protection of the rule of law in his home and workplace,
>as well as national defense, police, and so on--is the "only one" who
>contributes to the value of the production process in which he is engaged?
While in one of my 2 video stores, I was arrested by the Irving Texas Police
Department being denied an opportunity to see the alledged warrant. The
store was upended and ransacked while I was in handcuffs and I was taken
away in front of the building owner who subsequently terminated my lease
agreement. After refusing to explain the charges or provide information on
who had instructed them to confiscate my property, nor show written
instructions of any kind on what was to be taken and why, the police locked
me up with detainees charged with aggravated rape, drugs(maybe cocaine
trafficking?) and my arraignment consisted of:
Judge: "You Mr. Field, are charged with ....Labelling?"
Me: "Your honor, I do not understand what that means."
Judge: (frowns, looks in file for a few) "It has something to do with video
tapes."
Me: "Your Honor, I still don't..."
Judge: "That will be all Mr. Field."
After paying to get out of the cage, I was later advised by the arresting
officer not to contact a lawyer. (I did anyway.) Then, a week later the
charges were dropped. I requested my stuff back and was told the FBI had
it. Apparently they were now examining the seized merchandise to determine
what I could be charged with. I never got any of it back, never got an
inventory, never saw the warrant, cannot sue since the police were not
acting maliciously, etc. Vinnie and his thugs I can deal with. Police?
...almost no recourse, IRS abuses? No court in the land allows you to bring
suit against them.
This is but an example of my typical interaction with the government. When
have you seen any government agency, policeman, etc. _prevent_ a crime?
Think about your own interactions with the government, are they adversarial
or cooperative?
National Defense? Perhaps justifiable after Pearl Harbor, but believing
that harming others is wrong, I am morally against war.
Where is this enjoyment of "the protection of the rule of law in his home
and workplace, as well as national defense, police, and so on"?
>Check your premises for errors next time before you speak.
Please, you too.
Míké Schneidër
bill....@deletetheobvioususa.net (Bill Kasper) wrote:
>On Mon, 31 Aug 1998 22:08:29 GMT, sfor...@thomas.butler.edu said something
>like:
>
(who cares)
>
>Dear Gawd.
>I don't know which is creepier:
>Being you, or just realizing that people like you really exist.
>
>The concept just chills me to the core.
>---------------------------------------------
Watch him come back and "blank out" those four other posts of mine.
He'll do it.
But I have 'em all lined up to fire a second volley.
gustav
>
> In article <35EAD8...@magma.com>,
> gustav <vmartin!!@magma.com> wrote:
>
> > > But if not *everyone* participates then the LCD will be zero.
> >
> > Nonsense. In those groups of people who agree on something common
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Duh. But we were talking about whether governments would exist if they were
> stripped of all but their LCD functions. If you want to talk about private
> groups, talk about private groups, and don't barge in without clarifying your
> terms, because it confuses everybody, especially yourself.
I do not see big difference between group of people and state.
> The argument I am making is that governments would not exist if the LCD
> argument is used, and therefore property rights would have no protection
> except that which could be provided by gangs of thugs hired for the purpose,
> and using standards which will vary widely from one gang to another. Gangs
> and other voluntary organizations would of course exist in a very different
> and much more chaotic form that what they do today, but that wasn't what we
> were talking about. Is this clear yet?
It is clear that you automaticaly assume that those groups would protected
be gangs of thughs. What I do not agree with. It is just your assertion without
proof. Basicaly there is no reason for me to think that those groups
couldn't exist on the same principles as states right now with the only
difference that it would be on voluntary bases. Do you think that if
something like that happens in US that people would stop paying for police
and courts? If they did they would have to accept the fact that they will
not be protected. Why do they pay for health insurance nowdays if not for the
similar reason?
> > > [discussion of property rights in an anarchy snipped by SF]
> >
> > Why do you think so? There is exactly the same situation right now between
> > countries. Why do you think that if it were on voluntary bases there would
>
> Pretty much, except for the fact that there is a general agreement on most
> international boundaries, and an agreement that the property notions of one
> country do not extend beyond its borders. Which is precisely why,
> incidentally, European countries were so averse to the U.S. attempt a couple
> of years ago to enforce sanctions against companies which invested in Cuban
> property.
>
> Of course it would be easier if everyone had exactly the same concept of
> property. But we don't, so this is the solution that has been arrived at.
> It is highly imperfect, of course, but it is precisely when two nations don't
> agree about where their boundaries should be, or when they try to enforce
> their ideas of property rights beyond their boundaries, that wars or warlike
> situations tend to occur.
I still do not understand why do you think that those groups would want to
change current state of land ownership? Why would they go to conflict with
somebody else just because they were allowed not to participate in the
given community? You again automatically assume that all current bondings
would be dissolved. There is no basis for it whatsoever. You are obsessed
with that chaos idea of yours.
> And my point is that if there was no general
> agreement on international boundaries or their equivalent, which wouldn't be
> the case if every one of the 5 billion people on this earth was free to join
> their own private institution with their own ideas about what property rights
> were, how far theirs extended, and with their own determination to defend
> what they imagine is theirs--then we would be in a state of near-constant
> warfare. I submit that this is a bad thing, to put it mildly. The
> international situation with respect to property rights is quite problematic
> actually, and would be far worse if you mutiplied it and smudged all the
> boundaries.
>
> Let me ask again: what do you think establishes property rights in the first
> place? What makes it right that A owns land X and B does not? I'm really
> curious about your answer to this, and how you think an answer can be agreed
> upon without a central authority to adjudicate disputes.
I guess that under property rights now you just mean the raw land. Because
evrything else is pretty much covered. It is yours if you created it, bought it,
exchanged it or somebody gave it to you without any initiation of force.
I think I responded once to your suggestion that we might percieve land ownership
in society as participation in company as stakeholders. It was not too difficult
to show you that we could indeed look at it in that way but for an average
citizen owning average (in value) piece of land it doesn't really change anything
at all to current situation. For those who own more the excess should be concidered
as rented and that indeed would lead to collecting the "rent" - property taxes
proportional to the excess of that land. That money should be distributed to
stakeholders evenly and partialy should be used for management of the community.
It means everybody could basicaly refuse participate on everything else. He/she
would be held accountable for not paying the rent (if any) to community. Which to
me makes perfectly sense because the land is here for all of us not just few. It
is here even for the generations after us. It means absolute ownership of the
excess of land to the average lot is not justifyable. This system would be much
more fair that current property taxes and it would not touch freedom of individual
to participate voluntarily on enything else. To your question whether it can be
agreed upon without central authority I say no it can not. What it implies is
that if somebody with excess of the land decides not to participate in community
completly (not paying property taxes) they have the right to take the excess of
the land from him, they have to repay it to him and let him stay on the lot which
is not more valuable than average lot. Everybody else doesn't have any reason
not to participate because he/she do not have to pay anything or even will get
something. All other services would not be mandatory. There would be even incentive
for the majority of people to pay from that money colected from income taxes
for protection of the whole community because they wouldn't want other
communities to take away land which represents source of money far most of them.
As I showed before purchasing the property would not make you automaticaly
vasal of any authority. If you do not own land you would be completly free
but it would be in your interest to stay in community because you would be
paid for it. If you own land of less than average value it would be the
same thing. If you own just average lot you wouldn't really care because
you would be completly free if you do not interfere with anybody else's
rights. Those with bigger (more valuable) than average lands would have to
comply with this one rule and would have to pay property tax. They would be
interested in keeping their land if it meant their livelihood and to by
protected by all others. That would be the only necessary recognition of
authority of particular community.
> There would be no government if anyone could leave its authority at will and
> take their "property" with them, regardless of whatever benefits their
> "property" previously acquired from their association with the institution.
> All you have then are competing gangs of thugs, not government.
You are stretching. As I said the only type of property which needs such
recognition of some authority is land ownership because of its very nature
that it is here for all of us and all generations of our descendants and
still even in that case anyone who doesn't owe anything those others
(dosn't own more that average valued lot) could be completly free but it
wouldn't be in his interest at all. There is no reason for paranoia.
> > What is the essence of government if not to supply one of
> > the very important services - protection of individuals?
>
> Please try to understand the distinction between the protection that a thug
> can give you, and the protection that the rule of law can give you. If you
> don't understand this, read some Von Hayek. You're simplifying the most
> important things out of your model if you simply assume that because private
> thugs have guns and government have guns that they perform the same "service"
> or protect you in the same way. Since in the former case there are other
> gangs of thugs roaming around using different standards than you, and there
> is no authoritative way to reconcile any conflicts you may have with them,
> the essential quality of the "protection" provided is fundamentally
> different.
You call them thugs not me. I did not read Von Hayek but it shouldn't be too
difficult for you explain us what you mean with that disctinction because I do
not see much difference between present police servises and the service which
could be bought and organized by those communities I mentioned.
> > Huge companies can exist together
> > and peacefully compete for customers why not governments?
>
> Huge companies currently work in an environment where governments regulate
> certain aspects of their existence, and protect many of their rights while
> restricting them from violating many rights. You are proposing a situation
> in which no central authority would perform these functions, and wondering
> why they couldn't work in the same way. This is a borrowed premise--if
> you're going to take away the things that protect rights, you need to give
> back your premise that peaceful competition would ensue as it does under the
> rule of law where rights are protected. Otherwise you are guilty of
> philosophical theft.
This is again your assumption that there wouldn't be authorities for protecting
rights of indiviaduals. I do not share that assumption. I just do not see any
proof that they would have to be paid for by coercion. You are not giving me
any just your assertions. If I do not see that proof natural thing for me is
not to use coercion. For you natural thing is to use coercion. I think you
are wrong. Just because of your and others like you paranoia everybody else has
to be forced to comply.
Geez, who is saying to let evrybody to do whatever he wants. You don't want it
I don't want it. I have not met one Objectivist or Libertarian who would want
it. Most people do not want it anyway because support for libertarians is very
low not to mention Objectivists. Where the hell do you get basis for such
ideas. Most people are afraid of it why do you think they wouldn't want to pay
for civilized protection not for thugs. If they are so stupid why do we have
right now such before unheard of freedom and prosperity? Just because we have
coercive system? It doesn't make any sense to me. With your assumption you
will not get anywhere. If you assume that they are prone to criminal behavoiur
while free than the best system for them would be dictatorship and yet the
evidence shows exactly the opposit. The more freedom the more prosperity.
I am stunned. I do not have rigorous proof to what I just said but what you
are saying can not be proven at all so why should it be reason for coercive
system?
> > This is unsoported assertion. You claim that the current system which allowes
> > "thuggery" legaly is more safe than the one which doesn't allowe it.
>
> Stop making incorrect assertions.
Well I think you are doing it.
> Your system _does_ allow legal
> thuggery--in fact there is no other kind, because there are no laws.
Nonsense. Where do you have it from? Why shouldn't be there any laws?
If you expect laws and order from coercive government then you are wrong.
> Everyone is free to support the protective institution of their choice, and
> no one has to obey the rules of another person's gang unless they are
> compelled to by force. That's what Objectivism advocates, and in that
> situation there are no general laws, and lots of thugs.
But the same thing you are afraid of is allready here for a long time.
There are different countries where thuggery is just common and they were far
from Objectivism. Quite to the contrary they always had very coercive
governments. What is the difference between those gangs of thughs and
those countries. Thugs want coercion they do not want freedom for everybody
just for themself.
> Of course Objectivism also says that people should not impose their rules on
> each other by force. But it provides no institutional way of keeping this
> from happening except the power of your own personal thugs. Beyond that,
> your only tools are moral suasion, and asking people to read Atlas Shrugged.
> Which, to briefly return to the very original part of this thread, is so
> boring and insipid that you're not likely to make many converts among the
> gangs which aren't inclined to agree with you to begin with, which will be
> most of them.
Actually Objectivism doesn't says anything like that. Ayn Rand stated
very clearly what should be the role of government but you would claim
that that government wouldn't have any means to implement any laws.
That is the root of our dispute. I claim otherwise.
> > Property rights will be backed by force in any system.
>
> There's a good start--keep making sense like this and we'll make some
> progress.
I never claimed anything else. Just how to implement that force if necessary
is obviously the difference between us.
> > It just deppends how those rights look like to conclude whether the system is
> > right or not.
>
> No, it doesn't just depend upon what the rights look like. It also depends
> upon whether they are consistently enforced, and whether mechanisms exist to
> enforce them.
That is true. Even though I don't think we agree how they would be enforced
based on what you were saying so far.
> Under your proposed system, there is no authority which compells everyone to
> accept a certain standard of rights--which means that individuals and their
> gangs are quite free to try to impose whatever standard they think they like.
Again the same thing. You just assert it. There is no reason to think so.
People just do not work like that. They tend to create standards they do
not have to be forced to do that. Otherwise it would be not possible to have
what we have right now. Who is responsible for it that it happened. Not people?
who else? If you worked for private company you wouldn't be so convinced that
people need to be forced to actually achieve something.
> Some standards ("Everything is mine") will be so obviously out of whack that
> they will get little support and much hostility from others, and won't fare
> well at all. But for others there will be serious, reasonable, and
> persistent grounds for disagreement. So in fact there is no answer to "what
> rights look like" under your system--they look different for each gang which
> makes up its own standards.
We do not agree on this one. Those standards if you look around the world
developped very similarly. In most societies killing, stealing, cheating
is forbiden (excluding ruling elite of course). Why do you think that in
free society those standards would be so different. It is just your
assertion as usually. Do you think that those basic standards I mentioned
were introduced and enforced just by ruling elite? I think that they were
discovered as any knowledge we have and that the whole government was
changed as a consequence of it. They were accepted by most of the society
then they were implemented. I do not mean something like democratic process.
It was done often using a force but it was consequence of discovery of
some new natural law. For example end of slavery. It was acknowledgment of
truth not acknowledgment of coercion.
> And if they conflict at particular points, so
> that I think my right to the river lets me dump stuff into it that you don't
> think should be there and is not covered by your concept of "property rights
> to the river," the only way to enforce this is to send your thugs against my
> thugs.
>
> So your system both allows much greater inconsistency as to the nature of
> rights, and a much weaker (and also highly inconsistent) enforcement
> mechanism.
I must say that I ma tired of your paranoia. I see it differently. Your system
you deffend is already full of thugs and inconsistencies and yet you claim about
something you do not know that it will be disaster. Inconsistencies in the
current system you cna not solve if you do not guarantee rights of individual
to life and property. If you want to do that you have to guarantee them freedom
equaly. If you do not do that you will still have contradictions in this system.
I agree on one thing that it is one thing to say something is wrong and the other
is how to find perfect solution. But what is definitely wrong is that current
system allowes one group of people to take forcefully property (not raw land)
away from people who earned it. This is valid both ways if for example somebody
uses services he did not pay for. That is wrong without any doubt. This needs to
be fixed. You can not possibly fix it by giving somebody more rights that
somebody else which happens right now almost everywhere and justify it with
necessity of rule of law.
> > > And, to return to an
> > > earlier point, wars of exactly the sort you once prided your system for its
> > > ability to avoid. Well, maybe not exactly: you'd probably have smaller,
> > > more frequent wars with less closure instead of the occasional big whammy
> > > wars like we have today (of course you would also have those, since
> > > eventually some nation which did not adopt your anarchistic voluntarism,
> like
> > > Nazi Germany, would see your little thug-infested territory "formerly known
> > > as the United States" as ripe for the picking. Until then you'd have more
> > > middle-ages sort of stuff, before kingdoms had enough central authority and
> > > power to stop petty squabbling of exactly this sort amongst the less nobles
> > > (or until the Huns came through and discovered that nobdy was stopping
> them).
> >
> > Where in heaven are you getting this paranoia? Nazi Germany lost the war
> exactly
> > for the reason that it was not free society.
>
> Nazi Germany lost because the democracies of the world waged war against it
> with all the powers available to them, including the draft, taxation, and all
> kinds of other things that a true Objectivist would find quite repulsive.
> Yes, it was individual people doing this ultimately, but people working
> within an institutional structure which motivating them to act in specific
> ways to achieve a specific end.
The US army of volunteers is much better prepared for war that any army in
those dictorships. There is no need for draft. In fact it doesn't make sense
to force fight those who do not want to fight. There is no proof whatsoever
that soldier who is fighting against his will is better than free one. I would
say the opposit is much more likely. The same think is valid for financial
supporters of war. What did Soviets manage in Afganistan against
gangs of partisans?
> Nazi Germany probably would have collapsed eventually under its own internal
> contradictions, but I wouldn't hold my breath--Stalinist Russia held out for
> pretty long, and I'm not sure which system was the more utterly insane.
That is what I think.
> If we didn't have an organized defense against these two forces, they would
> have each managed to do a hell of a lot of damage to your hypothetical
> anarchic freedom in the last century before they collapsed, even if they did
> eventually do so under anything like the schedule which they did. Would you
> have been willing to wait from 1917 to 1989 to be released from the tyrrany?
> Would it have been in your rational interest to do so?
Assertions and Assertions. What US organized forces managed to do in Vietnam?
That was just pathetic and useless. They did not fight for their interests and
the result showed it. Those young boys were drafted and sent to foreign country
to fight against somebody they did not care about. If there were my anarchic
freedom they would be alive today. I do not need make assumptions like you.
I claim that nobody had the right to force them to go there and to die. You
have to proof that it is necessary if you think so. Do you think that anybody
has right to sacrifice their lives?
> > The reason for it is that it is much closer to libertarian/objectivist society
> > than most of other countries in the world.
>
> Only in the loosest sense. You might just as well argue that just because a
> well 100 feet deep will provide more water than one 50 feet deep, that one
> 5000 miles deep will do better yet. Instead it comes up full of magma.
> Worse yet, you can't even dig one that deep because you enter a liquid
> medium. More of a good thing is not always better.
We know very well what to expect if we dig so deep as you suggest
but nobody has any proof whatsoever what would happen in
libertarian/objectivist society. Your analogy is quite feable minded
I have to say.
> But I also disagree that whatever incoherent idea of absolute personal
> freedom you believe would be perfected by Objectivism is what led to our
> victories. In fact we have what freedom we do because we live under a very
> refined rule of law, which you are proposing to abolish. Neither anarchy nor
> dictatorship have a rule of law, and that is why we do better than either
> one.
First of all nobody here believes in absolute personal freedom. If you read
anything close to objectivism or libertarianism you should already know it.
So there is no need for more of your assertions. You have said it already
many times and you were told that it is not true but you just keep repeating
it as if it could make it true. Basicaly what you claim in your next sentence
is that because you have coercion legaly allowed we have what freedom we
have. I makes sense and it is very coherent.
Dictatorship doesn't have a rule of law? Could you elaborate? I always have
had an impression that they have very strict rule of law. It just was not
applied equaly to evrybody. The only difference in democracy is that it
is determined byt majority what laws will be valid for them and not for
the ruling elite. Which is undoubtfully better than dictatorship but far
from being called good enough.
Gustav
John C. 'Buck' Field
constitutes agreement by the originator I will be
damaged in the amount of $1000.00 US Dollars
by each use.
>[This followup was posted to talk.politics.libertarian and a copy was
>sent to the cited author.]
>
>On Sat, 29 Aug 1998 22:05:25 -0500, oper...@applink.net says...
>> I got news: Assume I'm in a 50% tax bracket and I go to a dentist who is
in
>> a 50% tax bracket and he wants $100.00 for a tooth extraction. The
dentist
>> charges me $200.00 to be able to get his $100.00, and to pay that I must
>> earn $400.00. Effectively 3/4 of my labor is siphoned off
>
>Although I, too, object to our taxation, your reasoning is incorrect. You
>can't claim that a particular dollar is taxed multiple times (at least
>not while it's outside of your hands). The economy is a cycle.
I am earning $400.00 to acquire a $100.00 tooth extraction, this is hardly
an economic cycle.
>For example, you might be employed by the pharmaceutical company that
>makes the novocaine (sp?) the dentist used on you. Part of the dentist's
>$100 expense was novocaine, paid to your employer.
This would, however, be a different example. I am going in without
anesthetic because I'm a macho man. I stipulated the $100.00 was the
dentist's fee.
>Your employer paid
>some tax on that income, as well as using the bulk of it to pay for raw
>materials, the plant, and your salary. Of course, your salary was taxed,
>and you took the remainder of it to pay the dentist, who paid your
>employer, who paid you, etc.
You are introducing absurdities for arguments sake, and of course none of
what you propose here directly effects my working for the acquisition of my
desired service.
>Simply be extending the cycle, you can claim virtually any amount of
>money going to taxes that you like.
Absolutely!
>Moreover, you can't just say that
>you'll stop counting before the money gets back to you.
Yes I can, NYAAH! B^)
Seriously, I am examining only my work output in order to purchase a
service, and the net difference going to the government in income tax.
<snip argumentum ad absurdio>
>You can't try to identify a root source of any particular dollar in the
>economy.
Oh? This dollar's root source is the Fort Worth Treasury's Currency
Printing Office.
NYAAH again!
But I'm just examining my output versus my buying power relative to the idea
of "involuntary servitude" that keeps coming to mind.
Míké Schneidër
<oper...@applink.net> wrote:
>Unsolicited commercial use of my e-mail address
>constitutes agreement by the originator I will be
>damaged in the amount of $1000.00 US Dollars
>by each use.
Then you are morally against the defense of your liberty, and you will
continue to be preyed upon.
>Where is this enjoyment of "the protection of the rule of law in his home
>and workplace, as well as national defense, police, and so on"?
>
>>Check your premises for errors next time before you speak.
>
>
>Please, you too.
Bill Kasper
like:
<snip>
=I will do nothing as an individual. I will let the government do its job and
=enforce my rights, including my property rights, including its corporate
=rights to taxes in payment for those institutions necessary to protect the
=rights that I and all other citizens deserve.
Uh, right.
You'll just sit there and let the government deliver Domino's Freedom to your
doorstep.
=Just like it is supposed to
=do. If I and all other people had to enforce our rights ourselves, according
=to our own subjective judgments, we would have anarchy, which is no fun at
=all.
=
=Scott Forschler
=
Dear Gawd.
I don't know which is creepier:
Being you, or just realizing that people like you really exist.
The concept just chills me to the core.
---------------------------------------------
Bill Kasper
SIGINT, VR-WC->
All vital personnel must evacuate.
John Galt, call your offfice.
RonG
Just so you understand...
You are talking about legal permissions, as in: what legal permissions the
State alleges it will allow me--and legal obligations, as in: what the State
alleges as payment due for that for which I have contracted.
I am talking about _my_ rights: I _own_ me and I _own_ mine--and if you
attempt to get your thugs to take it from me, you will, at that point, be
dealing with _my_ private protective agency. It's small, but it's smart and
motivated.
You might win--but it won't be for free, and you will _never_ be able to
pretend you had my assent. My guess is the founding fathers would have
preferred me as a neighbour than you.
You would have been prattling to them about how they really oughtta move if
they didn't like things because Britain owned their stuff.
Ron
John C. 'Buck' Field
constitutes agreement by the originator I will be
damaged in the amount of $1000.00 US Dollars
by each use.
>>National Defense? Perhaps justifiable after Pearl Harbor, but believing
>>that harming others is wrong, I am morally against war.
>
>
>
> Then you are morally against the defense of your liberty,
Do you propose the idea that war is the _only_ defense of one's liberty?
>and you will
>continue to be preyed upon.
Do you propose that if one supports war as good moral behavior then they can
neutralize _all_ predatory practices that otherwise would be successfully
directed their way?
do...@stone-soup.com
You are welcome, Ron. I don't often get on my high horse about that
but with Scott telling people to leave etc. he got my goat..
S. Douglas Heard do...@stone-soup.com
It IS as bad as you think, and they ARE out to get you.
"liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others."
William Allen White
sfor...@thomas.butler.edu
QW...@TREWQwinQWERternet.com (Míké Schneidër) wrote:
> Doubtless these bodyguards might actually be under the impression they
> were expected to actually do their jobs (unlike, say, the *police*), since
> the are not ramrodded down the throats of their clients by "rule of law".
Well, yes, that would be their impression. Their impression would doubtless
be that they are supposed to do whatever their employer pays them to do, and
that they are limited by no law or principle, but only by the will of their
employer and their own personal sense of advantage and what they can get away
with.
In other words, they are unprincipled hired thugs operating on subjective
rather than objective rules.
> >to slug it out, and the rule of law.
>
> ...which constitutes *what*?
Read the works of Von Hayek, for starters.
> We are interested in right and wrong.
> You are interested in legal and illegal.
It is wrong to have no laws. Laws are a subset of morality.
> We are interested in justice.
> You are concerned about adherence to the will of the throne.
Liar.
Thugs running amok doing whatever the fuck they are paid to do by anyone with
money does not constitute justice. You aren't even interested in that--if
you really experienced a world without objective order where the only
protection you had was your hired guns, you and everyone else would run
screaming from it. You are interested instead in criticizing the world
around you without offering a viable alternative. Because if you did, and
there was a snowball's chance in hell that it could be implemented, you would
thereby risk losing your subjective sense that you have a right to whine
about how unfair everything is for you. Instead you take the easy way out:
since government is essential to the protection of even the most basic human
rights which no one wants to do without, and hence will never be permanently
abolished as long as most of humanity has an ounce of sense, you have chosen
to pick on precisely this institution to blame for all your problems and
sense of wrong. With this ammunition, you feel justified in an unending
complaint about how you're not being treated fairly.
Objectivism is not about justice. It's not even about a distant utopian
vision. It's victimology in a box.