Re: OT to the extreme
- From: Ulrich Hobelmann <u.hobelmann@xxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 10:21:50 +0100
Ron Garret wrote:
You answered your own question. When you limit freedom by not allowing me to hurt, enslave or steal from you then you no longer have an extreme position, and you have all the complications that come with trying to navigate the middle of the road. If I crank up my stereo am I hurting
But it *is* the anarchist position. It completely free, except that you have to repect life and property rights of others.
you? What if you can't sleep? If I live upstream from you and I dump
Well, at least you might be hurting the person renting the house to somebody, because if somebody can't sleep he doesn't want to pay high rent for the house. You also arguably hurt the one living there. Homesteading applies, too.
If you built a house long ago and play loud music every night, the person who builds next to you should have to live with it (because that's what constitutes local culture around your house), but if you just moved it, you'd have to adapt to the old situation, that is: don't play loud music after 10pm maybe. Perhaps the owner of the house explicitly puts this into the rent contract, so rents are higher (because his renters don't have to suffer noise). There's many solutions.
my sewage into the creek, am I stealing from you? If you are forced by
No, but you're poisoning his property (his part of the stream, say). The problem in real life right now is that people that live at rivers can't sue the factories upstream, because it's "public" land (such as in the case of some Native Americans) and the US don't care.
circumstance to choose between working twelve hours a day seven days a week to pay for the basic necessities of life or starving, are you enslaved?
If you move to China with nothing, is it right to steal for you? or would it be right to work to earn your share? What if it's not about China, but about being born? or about moving to another city? Do you have a right to demand certain wages if nobody is willing to pay them to you (as you say)?
If what you say is common, those people should band up and grow their own food instead of being wage slaves to evil rich people.
Yes, but what if your unsightly lawn is hurting me? This is not as
How could it? It's next to your property, it's not polluting the air. Well, maybe if it's so high that it blocks all the sun from your garden ;)
implausible as it sounds. There are studies that show that failing to perform basic maintenance leads eventually to higher crime rates.
Yes, but then they should prosecute the criminals, right? The gardener isn't always the murderer.
In my view, allowing people to do what they want with their own lives and property is the most moderate view you can take. Asserting that any one person has the right to restrict the freedom of another person is extreme to me.
I make no such assertion. I say that sometimes we have to collectively limit individual freedom for the common good. Government is the mechanism by which we do that.
So 60%, or maybe a small elite, decide what the common good is? Ok, let's plunder all them Asians, Jews, and other rich people! I think it's very very dangerous to allow a majority to take away a minority's freedoms (and vice versa).
That isn't saying that we don't want welfare to help poor people. The question is: do you want to plunder, using force, a family of three that really can't afford their high income tax at the moment (maybe they're in debt, too?), or do you want the same welfare without force, i.e. charity?
People do care. Germany donated more than €600M to Tsunami victims in a year. The government added another €500M without asking the people (and of course government chose what organisation should receive the money)...
I think if the USA didn't have welfare (rather than the piecemeal welfare they have now) more people would actually help the poor. Either abolish welfare, or make it a complete protection system, as in parts of Europe. The US way only hurts.
The absolute question is - are you willing to kill anyone who resists their loss of freedom? Of course, with most people you won't have to. But, the tool for restricting freedom is always violent force.
Do you have a better suggestion for how to deal with psychopaths who think that what they want to do trumps everyone else?
What do you do when a psychopath with a chainsaw enters your house? Call the police and wait? Warn, and then shoot him (leg, then arm, then trunk), while you can, if he starts going for you? If you don't have a gun, run away, ask the neighbors...?
How did people do it without in small villages without government around (neighboring village off by 50 miles maybe)? They surely must have all died...
Nobody says you don't have the right to defend yourself!
-- The road to hell is paved with good intentions. .
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