On Mon, 21 Apr 2003, Bill Stewart wrote:
At 09:41 PM 04/20/2003 -0500, Jim wrote:
The connection between 'private freedom' and 'property' is really a strawman. What matters is life, liberty, and the -pursuit of hapiness- and not collecting more 'stuff' than your neighbor. If anything it demonstrates an exception lack of maturity and excessive insecurity.
It's a difficult problem
Not at all.
- claiming that land is your private property implies a willingness to initiate force to enforce your rights,
It does no such thing (unless of course you have a psychological disposition to the use of force).
which is different for something like land that you didn't create than for objects that you did create.
Created from what? To create something implies you had something to start with. Specious point.
But if you can't collect "stuff", you can't insure yourself against starving to death in the short term or the more distant future,
It does no such thing. In fact the more stuff you collect the bigger target you become and a larger percentage of your stuff is needed to protect your stuff. Not to mention that at some point the amount of stuff you collect deprives others of stuff they need to survive (or do you believe you're the only one who as that 'right'? - probably). The reality is that this viewpoint is a self-defeating view. It may work in the very short term but in the long run there is no way this will solve anything.
If you live in a society that guarantees liberty and the pursuit of happiness,
What society does that? Not even ours guarantees this. It does recognise that our creator gave us rights and that we create governments to -secure- (not guarantee) them. The only relevant question is secure them from whom?
you still need to plan for your old age, and you do that by collecting stuff, or by collecting friends and kids who will care for you.
Really, those are the only two options? Somehow I suspect that says more about you than the world out 'there'.
Societies that don't let you collect stuff are forcing you to depend on them for your food and housing - not much liberty there.
Really? Why? There are more than one definitions of liberty. The concept you're completely missing in this line of argument is 'consent'.
People who are especially good at acquiring and managing stuff can retire at 35 (:-),
Can they? Or do they spend the rest of their life trying to keep it? The reality is that a lot of the stuff that you think is 'yours' is only becuase it isn't worth anybody elses trouble to take it from you. And then one has to ask if that person who is especially good at collecting stuff didn't do it at the expense of others.
And farmers can never retire, except by having their kids do the work, unless they're in high-value crops like dope that let them acquire lots of stuff...
What is this 'retire' you keep talking about, you retiring from life or employment by others? Not the same thing. Stuff might help you in the latter case, it's worthless in the former. And the value and utility of all that stuff rests on one thing, the stability of the system you used to collect it. If that changes all that stuff may in fact become worthless. So, at least to some degree to protect your stuff you deprive others of their opportunity to change the society they are in to the way they feel most comfortable with. So, to 'guarantee' your 'stuff' you -must- deprive others of an opportunity to collect their stuff. -- ____________________________________________________________________ We are all interested in the future for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. Criswell, "Plan 9 from Outer Space" ravage@ssz.com jchoate@open-forge.org www.ssz.com www.open-forge.org --------------------------------------------------------------------