Subject:
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Re: Capitalism (was: People are idiots...)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Mon, 10 Feb 2003 22:24:45 GMT
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Viewed:
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471 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz writes:
> Christopher Weeks wrote:
> > > All rights are property rights. What is right is to respect them.
> >
> > I still want to know if you think that all people have a right to exist and
> > whether that's a property right. And further, if you do think so (and I
> > think you must), _where_ do they have a right to exist?
>
> I agree that existence is a property right (and truly the most
> fundamental one). This does imply a right to a place to exist.
> However, assuming that the resources of the universe are limited, clearly one
> doesn't have an unlimited right to exist.
I think that one must agree to either: a) because people have a right to exist
somewhere, space/volume/area/land is not a good in the normal sense and we have
to figure out what it is and how we handle it, or b) because
space/volume/area/land is a good in the nromal sense, people do not have the
right to exist.
you're trying to squiggle in the middle by using "unlimited." I want to reject
that notion in the context of this topic. I'm not saying that people have a
truly unlimited right to exist -- more particularly that said right can't be
given up, but that unless and until they do something extraordinary they do
have the right to exist (somewhere).
> The right to exist must
> therefore be acquired from someone else. I would say that it's pretty
> clear that at some point, the parents are obligated to their children.
I guess I've become a liberal. I just don't agree. People have the right to
_be_ simply because they _are_ and we as a society should be protecting that
right. I will not endorse a system that embraces the idea that some people
should suffer through no fault of their own. We will always have the fact that
some people are in bad circumstances beyond their control, but the correct
answer is not to look at them, say "yup, that's how it works! Bye." The
correct answer is to build systems that help those people out of their
circumstances and minimize repitition of the same bad luck.
> given that there are not infinite resources, there has to be a
> balancing of rights.
The inhabitable area available to the human race or to a single political
entity could always be divided evenly among the members. Always.
> I think what Chris is really trying to get to is what is our property
> right to land. Land is one of the fundamental items if property.
> Unfortunately, land in our world has not been distributed fairly.
Land can never be distributed "fairly" when it is considered capital. Even if
we did agree on what fair distribution is today, what about three generations
from now? Say you have a kid who has a kid who has a kid while the rest of the
world has three who have three who have three. Your progeny ends up with 27
times the land of everyone else? As a libertarian, I expect that you think
that really _is_ fair -- and that makes a certain sense if you paid for your
land. But that's the whole mistake that we're making. You shouldn't have paid
for it because you have a _right_ to exist somewhere.
> There's also an issue of what are the rights of a wild animal. I don't
> think they have zero rights.
It's very hard to think of for me. I tend to side with the philosophy that
only intelligences that can comprehend rights can actually have rights, but I'm
not rooted to that notion. Instead, I press my _right_ (maybe privilege is a
better word) to live in a world where a certain standard of conduct regarding
animals (wild or not) is required (in addition to the enforcement of property
rights-based claims).
> If land was distributed fairly, then the issue of how the right of
> existence relates to the right of land would be much simpler. Parents
> would own a certain amount of land right, and would be obligated to
> grant a certain portion of that to their children.
Obligated how? What percentage? Can parents disown their kids? Can parents
give it all to their first son? Why (not)?
> Given that, it is
> easy to see that parents must not bring a child into the world that they
> will be unable to assure appropriate support for
Must? Assure?
> Clearly two rights are in conflict, so we need to involve a third party
> to mediate the competing claims.
Over the years, this notion of conflicting rights as been discussed here and
elsewhere. But I'm not sure I buy it. Still. It seems like something as
'grand' as rights should be definable in a simple enough way that conflicts
don't arise. But I'm still mulling it over. I know that most of you probably
take it for granted that rights to actually conflict.
> - Land owners can not simply claim the debris from an accident that
> lands on their land to be their property.
For how long? Do they have a right to charge a storage fee until the owner
collects it?
> - The government in investigating and accident must get permission from
> the property owner or a court (by way of a warrant) to search someone's
> land for debris.
It seems like if you're careless with your property and toss it onto my land
(with the understanding that land is property), you have neglected your rights
to some extent. Why should the court have the right to violate my property
rights?
> I think the real problem here is that we don't really have solid
> definitions of capitalism and socialism.
What makes a solid definition? In a pure capitalism, no property is owned by
The People and in a pure socialism, all of it is. that seems pretty easy to
me.
> Another problem is that we
> don't have any examples of a real life pure capitalist system (or
> socialism for that matter).
What about 'primitive' cultures? What did the plains indians think about
property?
Chris
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: Capitalism (was: People are idiots...)
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| (...) Hmm, if land is not a good, then what rules should govern trading it? If you always have a right to some land as part of your right to exist, then what stops you from "selling" your land, and then demanding a land grant because you're now (...) (22 years ago, 11-Feb-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Capitalism (was: People are idiots...)
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| (...) I agree that existence is a property right (and truly the most fundamental one). This does imply a right to a place to exist. However, assuming that the resources of the universe are limited, clearly one doesn't have an unlimited right to (...) (22 years ago, 10-Feb-03, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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