On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Riad S. Wahby wrote:
Sampo A Syreeni <ssyreeni@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:
No, not at all. A shopkeeper who owns a private shop has the right to sell only to certain people and not to others, and the distinction the shop owner makes between those he will sell to and those he will not is his alone to make.
A hypothetical: I own everything around you for some 100 miles. Let's say that 100 miles happens to be desert. Your failure to comply with my wish of transportation the hell out of there or sustain me is equivalent to killing me. I call such incompliance oppression.
I call such incompliance evolutionary pressure. Let us hope that you are not really such a complete nincompoop as to get into the middle of a 200-mile diameter stretch of desert without having provided for your own sustenance or transport the hell out of there. Freedom entails not just the right, but the *RESPONSIBILITY*, to take care of yourself. As the sole posessor of the right to get yourself into such a situation, you are also the sole posessor of the responsibility to make sure you can get out of it. Of course, as a believer in the free market, I support the right of anyone to charge "whatever the traffic will bear" in such a situation for sustenance or transport - and it seems to me that unprepared traffic might be ready to bear some extreme prices. And worth every penny for the object lesson in preparedness.
You have a right to life. You do not have the right not to die. There is a difference. Neither I nor anyone else have to sustain your life; all that is required of our respecting your right not to die is that we don't kill you.
It can be a subtle concept to those not accustomed to sole responsibilities going with autonomous rights -- but this is exactly correct. When you have the right to do as you please, the only way to not die is to not please to do really stupid things. If nobody has the right to stop you, nobody should be expected to put themselves out to rescue you either. If I were expected to rescue all the idiots I've seen throwing their odds of survival or success away by doing idiotic things, I'd have gone mad long ago. Ray