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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Mon, 3 Jan 2000 17:31:30 GMT
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Viewed:
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1661 times
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Jasper Janssen wrote:
> > 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?
I think we would still have some public space. There would also be
plenty of property owners willing to grant broad priviledge to their
tenants. I know my church would offer almost complete priviledge of
speech on its property. The only real limit of that speech would be
speech intended to incent harm.
> > 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"?
Nope. Actually in Liberatiopia, there would be no issue of special
favor, since the current special favors the government gives are income
tax favors (Liberatopia will not have an income tax, there may be some
form of (voluntary) property tax to fund the police, national defence,
courts, etc. Funding for things like highways and city services will be
fee based), and to some extent special recognition of the contract which
the couple enters into.
All the taxes and fees will be based on solid assignment of costs (I
would find it reasonable to base defence fees on property value, thus a
"property tax"). It is most likely that any group which choses to share
a property will pay less "tax" per individual, but this will be because
they are actually a more efficient user of the services they are paying
for because they are living on property which has a lower value per
individual than someone living alone might.
> > 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.
The criminals give up their right of consent because they have chosen to
violate others inherent property rights. There may be some people who
refuse to pay "taxes" to support the proper functions of the government.
The government is free to refuse to protect those people. In practice,
for the most part they will be protected (we won't wait to shoot down
the incomming ICBM until we can determine if it is going to hit
someone's property who is or is not paying their fair share of the
defence budget). On the other hand, they may be refused much of the
benefits of the court and police, though we will probably still
investigate when they are a target of a criminal, mostly because it is
to our benefit to get that criminal before he robs us. But that
individual will find the court singularly unwilling to resolve a
contract dispute until they pay up.
> 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.
When everything is reduced to its proper notion of property, it will be
possible to have a fair society, since everything has a determineable
value or cost. The only area which might be a little shady is the value
of your personhood, but anyone who has significantly violated that
(causing death, or permanent impairment), has so abused your property
rights, that they will most likely lose almost all of their property
rights. Harsh? Yes. Fair? Pretty much yes. What will keep people in line
in this society is the risk of losing everything. Companies will be much
more carefull with the safety of their products, and will be much
quicker to acknowlegde when their product has caused real harm, because
if they don't, they risk being put out of buisiness.
> So you agree that aerial flight needs to be regulated?
Not so much regulated, as required to accept responsibility for
accidents. In practice, we would probably still have an FAA, except it
would be industry funded, but invite non-industry representatives.
> 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 that Liberatopia will provide some sort of basic subsistence
level of income. It most likely won't be provided for through the
government, but might be. I see value in making sure that no one
starves, because someone who has NOTHING to lose, is dangerous to me. I
suspect the reality is that there will be plenty of charities to serve
all.
> I think the benefits are worth that cost.
Fine. You are free to CHOSE to pay that cost. I will also. Larry will
also, though he may be less charitable about a total loser than I would,
I'm not sure, we haven't had the opportunity to discuss that, but Larry
has convinced me that he will, and does, give to charity for the truly
needy.
> > 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.
No (unresolveable) conflict. Yes, you may swing your fists around
wildly. Should you connect with my face, you have violated my property
rights. You pay my hospital bill. If you manage to swing your fist
around and don't injure anyone, the worst which will happen to you is a
few people might have a good laugh. If you are on private property, the
property owner has the right to evict you. If you are on public
property, and you are demonstrating that you lack the control to avoid
injuring someone, the public has the right to evict you, or place you in
protective custody, however, assuming you haven't violated anyones
property rights (by injuring someone, or damaging property), you have
the right to leave that protective custody as soon as you can
demonstrate that you have your facilities back, or someone arirves to
take you into their custody, and takes the responsibility for your
actions (and there is no reason to believe that they will not take that
responsibility).
> 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.
See my above example. The conflicts are resolveable. Our current society
even does a pretty good job of resolving such conflicts. It has even
recognized the value of providing special bicycle and pedestrian paths
which motorvehicles (other than police and emergency) are not allowed
on. Under Liberatopia, it will probably provide more such, since people
will see how much it actually costs to drive their car one block to the
video store.
One mistake you are making is assuming the current US at all resembles
Liberatopia. It is probably the country which most closely resembles
Liberatopia, but there are some serious problems.
> > 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.
If that is really true, Liberatopia will make sure that the needed
medical care is provided. Of course none of the costs you have listed
are costs to SOCIETY. Costs to individuals and corporations yes. The
cost to corporations is why most corporations provide health insurance
to their employees. The ONLY cost to SOCIETY that I see is the
possibility that someone who is so poor they have NOTHING to loose will
do damage. Charity will make sure that the number of such people is
small. The few that slip through the cracks are probably fundamentally
defective, and will be dealt with.
> Unfortunately, this breaks down for the aged.
Yup. We are expecting too much of medicine for people at the end of
their life. A lot of the problem is the refusal to recognize the
inherent property rights, which grant the individual who is near death
the right to ask to have that life ended in a quick, painless, and cheap
fashion.
> 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?
Part of the transition will REQUIRE funding of Social Security and
Medicare benefits for those who are already retired, or are close to
retirement. Everyone else will be due the amount they have put in plus
interest. Some form of special tax will have to be created to pay this
off (since the current Social Security fund probably doesn't have enough
money to be closed out). My assumption for myself is that I am unlikely
to get much of anything when I retire.
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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