Subject:
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Re: Rights to free goods? (was Re: What happened?
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 30 Jun 1999 00:36:47 GMT
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Reply-To:
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{lpieniazek@}nomorespam{novera.com}
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Viewed:
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1028 times
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Thomas Main wrote:
> <marxist rant>
> I stated this more or less to get your blood boiling.
It worked.
> I believe people
> in need ought to be helped.
Feel free to act on that belief. There are many worthy charities out
there. You mentioned one of my favorites, Habitat for Humanity. We've
been supporting them for an awfully long time.
> I believe there are many people in need of
> health insurance in this country and that they ought to be helped by our
> government.
That's where you go too far. Certain worldviews are fatallly flawed, and
fail a utilitarian argument, as well as a moral one. I can refute Marx
all day long but he's so discredited, why bother. I got better things to
do, so I just refuse to recognise any common ground.
As I said before, I am not my brother's keeper, and I reject the notion
that I must feel compassion for those who refuse to make an effort on
their behalf. I also reject the notion that I have an obligation to
anyone other than myself and those I have contracted with, and I do not
recognise an implied social contract that requires me to give up goods
to help those that I would not choose to help of my own free will.
> I do respect property rights. I also respect the rights of people. I
> believe it is a right of the people to receive medical help when
> necessary whether or not they can afford it at that moment in time.
We have a fundamental disagreement about rights. I reject the notion
that anyone has a RIGHT to a good that they have not earned. For to
assert that right is to violate the right of another to a good that they
HAVE earned. Goods do not appear out of thin air. To give a good to one
person who does not pay for it is to take it from another person who
did. I'm not sure how much more plainly I can say this. Wealth transfer
is stealing and stealing is morally wrong.
One can prattle all one wishes about how one respects property rights
but in the final analysis either you do or you don't. If you persist in
that assertion, you don't. Cut and dried. Game over.
> I am not going to steal from you - I don't want the government to steal
> from you either. I would rather you see the benefit of freely giving
> your tax money to support government health care.
If you're going to try a utilitarian (1) argument here instead of a
moral one like you were using (that is, the benefit of providing free
health care is positive even if it's morally wrong), you're toast.
Public health care is particularly perniciously non utilitarian. There
is no way that you can demonstrate a utilitarian benefit to me or to
anyone else in society that I cannot get in a more cost effective way in
a fully private system. Not a debatable point to me. I have satisfied
myself on that point, and you're welcome to dig up the references. I
shan't provide the free good of digging them up for you.
> If you feel the government
> has no moral right to take your money - don't give it to them (I really
> don't advise this, of course, but revolutions need marty...er, leaders)
Thanks for your attempted sanction of not paying, but I don't require
it.
An important note: The government has big guns.
Since I can't vote with my feet, I begrudgingly pay my taxes to the
extent I absolutely have to and to the extent that I think I can get
away with. I don't grant the government the sanction they crave. I view
what they do as stealing but I go along... see "the government has big
guns" above. I am a victim but I have not granted sanction to my
oppressor. As such, admonitions by those that disagree with me that I
should leave fall on deaf ears. I don't have to leave, it's as much my
country as the next schlub's.
1 - reminder for latecomers, I distinguish between rights based
arguments (shoplifting is wrong because it is stealing, which is
violating the property rights of others) and utilitarian arguments
(shoplifting is a bad idea because it raises the price of goods for
everyone, and this is bad for society, and it is a bad idea because
you're likely to get caught which is a bummer and bad for you
personally).
I strongly believe that Libertarianism is defensible both from first
principles (it is the best system for securing the individual rights of
all) and from a utilitarian basis (it is the system that will get us all
the most personal wealth and happiness and the least suffering) and try
to distinguish between which argument I am making whenever I can.
--
Larry Pieniazek larryp@novera.com http://my.voyager.net/lar
- - - Web Application Integration! http://www.novera.com
NOTE: I have left CTP, effective 18 June 99, and my CTP email
will not work after then. Please switch to my Novera ID.
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