Subject:
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Re: Goodness of Man? (was: Re: Merry Christmas from the Libertarian Party
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 2 Jan 2000 06:13:57 GMT
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Viewed:
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1804 times
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On Sun, 2 Jan 2000 02:35:18 GMT, Larry Pieniazek <lar@voyager.net>
wrote:
> Jasper Janssen wrote:
>
> > But I personally would tend to place strict libertarianism as quite
> > close to anarchy on that scale (strict libertarianism, after all, is
> > just anarchy with "something" (not the government, but apparently a
> > higher power) defining certain rights, but with no way to enforce
> > compliance...).
>
> Will you stop? Where do you get that idea? What "higher power"? That's
> not it at all. My goodness what a stew of misconceptions. Do you listen
> to anything I say or are you just so sure you know what it is that it
> all blows past you?
That, dear Larry, is what one would call "sarcasm".
To restate more clearly: Pure libertarians (or so I've been led to
believe)(which you obviously don't come under by this definition) want
to do without government altogether. I've talked with a few of them.
Since without a government, there is nothing enforcing laws but the
goodness of our fellow man, you get anarchy, except that there are
laws. With no way to implement them.
> Our unique ideas are our property. If we invent something new and clever
> that has economic value, it is ours, to dispose of as we see fit. The
> patent system is a legal mechanism to assist us in protecting the
> property rights we have for ideas, just as laws against burglary or
> fraud are legal mechanisms, also in place to protect our rights. Our
The patent system is a total washout. There needs to be something, but
it needs to resemble the current patent system only very loosely if at
all.
> idea may not be unique, and it may not be NEW, it may be an improvement
> on prior art. In that case, it may not be wholly our property, but it
> may be in part, property of those who went before. This may be
> admittedly thorny to determine.
Currently, registering and maintaining a patent costs upward of, IIRC,
$5k per annum.
Patents also expire. If our ideas are our legal property, to dispose
of as we see fit, why does our copyright expire?
If you feel it should not expire, how does that help society as a
whole?
Patents are an artificial invention to encourage new ideas. Fine. But
they also have the ability to stifle competition. We put up with that
for the gains. If patents would not expire, the overall picture
reverses itself.
Extending the (apparently) libertarian idea that one should be able to
protect oneself, or pay for ~, why have patents at all? Why not just
have the requirement to keep things a closely guarded secret if you
want them to remain secret?
> The right to do as we wish with our property gives us the right of free
> association, that is, the right to choose to be with, or not be with,
> who we choose. It further gives us the right, subject to the wishes of
> the property owner, or considerations of safety when speaking of public
> places, to assemble with whom we wish.
Given your stated view that ideally, there would be no such thing as
public space, where should a person who doesn't own land have the
right of free assembly?
> If we choose to be with someone
> (or several someones) in a life partnership, it is not the place of the
> state to say what sorts of associations are appropriate and what sort
> are not. Thus no form of marriage should be favored or given a special
> status by an agency with a monopoly on the granting of sanction, for to
> do so is to pass a moral judgement. Nor should any be discriminated
> against by a public agency.
How do you feel about giving life partners a special status over those
who don't? How about simply "everyone who lives with more than one
person in an household"?
> A legitimate government must acknowledge these rights. It must also
> govern with the consent of *all* who it governs, not merely the
> majority. That places strictures on it which limit scope to the proper
> function of government, external defense, internal defense, and dispute
> resolution.
Actually, it places strictures limiting it to absolutely nothing.
In your country exist, respectively, pacifists, criminals, and
con-men. Who all disagree with that government.
There is no such thing as a government by consent of _all_. Just like
there is no such thing is a society that is fair to all.
> But we almost certainly need a government, with a monopoly on the
> initiation of the use of force, in order to secure these rights.
Exactly my point. Which prohibits libertopia.
> nickel, unless I let you. Conversely, you can't stop me from putting up
> a sign on my property as long as it's not a hazard to aircraft and the
> deeded covenants in my deed don't prevent it.
So you agree that aerial flight needs to be regulated?
> To the charge that I don't "care about free speech".
I would go with "goad", rather than "charge", myself.
It may not be the most respectable of debating tactics, but it does
have the virtue of working, in the sense that it produces something to
debate _about_.
> I very passionately care about, and believe that a government must
> foster, all the rights delineated in the bill of rights of the US
> constitution, including free speech. I also very passionately believe
> that delineation of those rights is not intended to be exhaustive. All
> rights not explicitly granted to government are reserved to the people.
I still occasionally wonder why the US hasn't ratified the universal
declaration of Human Rights.
>
> A society with limited government is much more likely to have a hundred
> ideas flower than one run out of a little red book.
I agree. But, in my view, neither extreme is a good thing. Providing,
for example, government regulations on traffic, fire hazards, air
traffic, all of that, and providing a basic subsistence level of
income for those temporarily unwanted, slows down Progress.
I think the benefits are worth that cost.
> that this is so, the course of action that violates the least rights
> must be chosen. But this is rare, once things are straightened around
> where everyone knows what their rights are.
Oh? I'd say that course of action is nearly always the case.
Take the canonical example: You have a right to swing your fist, I
have the right not to be hit by it. Bingo, rights conflict.
You have the right to drive a car (while paying the appropriate sum
into a fund for cleaning up the consequences of your actions later, of
course), but I have a right to not be hit by your car. Rights
conflict.
In the end, it _always_ comes down to a choice of which rights are
more important. In US society, the right to drive is regarded as much
more important than the right to ride a bicycle or to be a pedestrian.
The right not to be hit by airplanes is overridden by the right to use
airplanes. And so on.
I can't see any way to reduce that to a clear right one way or the
other.
> Who does the choosing? The stakeholders, freely and voluntarily, if they
> can. If they cannot come to agreement, the courts must adjudicate.
> I would repeat the last paragraph but one to you... For a few of these
> posers you've posed, why don't you try applying the principles and
> working through to the answer yourself? Post your derivation. If you
> come out with a contradiction, I'll be happy to help. Heck, you may well
> discover a new class of rights, or an error in some platform plank
> somewhere. But taking potshots at the system without carrying out the
> analysis isn't conductive to positive discourse.
Fine, I'm quite willing to do that. (Later, though - 7:00 am isn't the
most conducive time to long bouts of logic). It's not, however, what I
was trying to do.
What I was trying to do was get your view on these issues, rather than
my view, which I know quite well, or even my interpretation of the LP
view.
> I won't claim that everything I have said has been backed by an explicit
> rigorous analysis, but then I've been thinking this way for so long that
> I can do it implicitly for most cases. And again, I invite you to call
> me on any question. State the question, state the stakeholders, state
> the rights involved, show your derivation leading to a different
> outcome, and challenge me. But don't merely assert that the moon is made
> of green cheese because it makes you feel better about yourself. That
> won't wash.
>
> Note that Ed "Boxer" Jones could not perform this test. When challenged
> to show from a property rights basis how there was a right to free
> medical care, he folded up and went back to asserting that everyone knew
> that people had rights not to suffer. Sorry, but that's not true.
Nope. My take is that it's costlier to society not to do so than to do
so. I can try and find data to back me up (later, though), but the
analyses I've heard show that costs to society as a whole from, say,
someone dying from something easily cured because s/he hasn't the
money to pay for the procedure/drugs, when you include every factor,
like, time lost due to people going to funerals, grief-induced sick
days, loss of future earning potential, those things, is much more
than the cost of mosty procedures.
Unfortunately, this breaks down for the aged.
Which brings me to another point - how would you orchestrate the
transition? If someone has been told for their entire life that there
is going to be Social Security and free health care when they're too
old to work, are they going to be cut off like everyone else? Any sort
of transition arrangement? My guess would be that since you'd feel
they should have known they didn't really have any right to the
programs in the first place, they should have realised it was going
away/could go away?
> 1 - take that as a given. Everything else in this derivation, and it is
> indeed a derivation, follows from it. Everything is supposed to be
> logically consistent. Where it isn't, the LP will change platform planks
> to remain consistent. It has before. OR, take it as an prinicple proven
> elsewhere. I have sketched out a proof, sufficient to satisfy myself,
> elsewhere, based on "life affirming", which you could review.
> went back to asserting that everyone knew
> that people had rights not to suffer. Sorry, but that's not true.
Only if the premise is true. I'll try and find and review the post you
mention tomorrow (ie, later today - much later), but for now, I'm just
going to bed.
I'm hoping it will touch upon salient points such as what life,
exactly, you're affirming, and if you have to choose between multiple
lives, which one to choose, etc.
Jasper
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