RE: Quarantines may be justified
Odd. What you said is pretty close to what I was saying (or maybe thinking), apart from the fact that I see property as a tool to reach a goal (of a better life), and you seem to see it as an end in itself. All the examples you cited are "trying to live a better life", and there's nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn't make another person's life worse. My point is just that property rights aren't the only possible way to improve one's life. It's just an easy way to approximate it well enough, but it only approximates, as shown by the smoke example: how to solve this problem with property rights without it being too intrusive ?
It's after all, not just about trying to live a better life. It's true that trying to live a better life is a huge goal.
It is. Some people have different goals, but everyone of them will strive for a better life, which is a different measure for everyone, a mixture of everything, possessions (and by this, the knowledge that use (etc, you see what I mean) of it is secured for the present and (hopefully) future), but also entertainment, as you mentionned, contentment of senses (whether it is food, sex, or whatever), spiritual beliefs, or even the warm fuzzy feeling of having altruistically helped another person. In having property rights and defending them, you are trying to secure a better life for you, and possibly others. But there are other ways that can be used to make one's life better, be it in addition or (partial) replacement of property rights. But just because there could be other ways to make your life better doesn't mean you should think property rights are in danger :) Hey, I own stuff, and I'd be pretty pissed off if someone stole them :) -- Vincent Penquerc'h
On Thursday, May 1, 2003, at 09:20 AM, Vincent Penquerc'h wrote:
Odd. What you said is pretty close to what I was saying (or maybe thinking), apart from the fact that I see property as a tool to reach a goal (of a better life), and you seem to see it as an end in itself. All the examples you cited are "trying to live a better life", and there's nothing wrong with that as long as it doesn't make another person's life worse.
Two people start businesses in the same town. Alice works hard, works long hours, concentrates on her business. Bob fails to do this. Alice drives Bob out of business. One can play word games about whether it was Alice's actions, or Bob's actions, or what the meaning of "drive out of business" and "make another person's life worse" is. I would not say Alice made Bob's life worse: Bob may be financially back at zero, but Bob has maybe been taught a good lesson. And if not, capitalism is the process of creative destructionism, as Schumpeter said. Fact is, life is a series of economic and territorial struggles. Some succeed, many fail. What strong crypto will do is create a system where more and more of the wealth is in the hands of the most competent and hard-working. Evading confiscation of income, creation of perpetual trusts, bypassing national borders...all of this works against the unwashed masses and their schemes for income redistribution. For those of you on this on this list who have not figured this out already, well, there's a place for fellow travelers and useful idiots.
--Tim May "He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." -- Nietzsche
No, not at all. Trying to live a better life is a larger goal. What I said is that property and the idea of it is much larger and older than humans and that even dogs and cats have it, and that it's not just utilitarian in value. I never claimed that by using property one is just aiming to live a better life, but that the concept of property existed before humans and is something we have in common with other creatures on this land. This isn't the same thing as wanting to live better, though it certainly is one means to do so. There is a distinction between the two. Sure, you would willing trade one property that was unnecessary for one that was desired, and this is where trade and economics comes in, etc. But do we want property for the purpose of improving our lives or just owning it? Hard to tell. Do dogs have goals to live better lives, or do they live day to day? How can we tell one way or another? Back to smoker's rights: in terms of the commons, I'm not a lawyer, and don't play one on TV, nor do I strive to be a poly-tick-ian. What I do know is that the community gets to set the standards of living and what is acceptable, neither the 10-pack-per-day smoker, nor the hypersensitive loon get to do that. This is why we vote, etc. Even those ascetics who give up their property aren't really doing so. They still have to eat - the food becomes property. They have to pray, their temple/church/mosque becomes their home and property, etc. I do not buy the theory that humans as a race can do without the concept of property. Even in pure Marxist communism (which to me is pure unworkable bullshit), the community owns property which is what distinguishes it from the non-community, and punishes those who steal from it. You can't have theft unless you had property to begin with, right? They share property, so they own it communally as partners. But the tendancy to own personal private property isn't necessarily extinguished, and as soon as you have leaders or respected elders, etc., they tend to own more of that shared property than the community by virtue of being able to influence the others. At which point, it falls apart in terms of an egalitarian state. We aren't saying exactly same things... similar perhaps. I agree that there are a lot of ways to secure a better life. I disagree that giving up some/all property is one of them for example, and see seeking and defending of property as something inherent to humans and other creatures as separate than (perhaps overlapping with) the hope of improving one's life. Perhaps it may work for some, but I don't see how it would. In the end, all existence is property. The food you eat becomes your property even if it hadn't been yours initially. The air you breathe is yours - you claim it as soon as you breathe. The clothes you wear are yours until you give them to another (voluntarily or by force), the thoughts you have are yours and so are your memories, your body is yours, etc. To negate any of the above means that you are some other entity's slave - not your own property but another's - either a slave to a community or a dictator of whatever sort. Even family is based on property - though we may not own people in the sense of slavery. But we say "My girlfriend, my wife, by husband, my boyfriend, my uncle, my neice, my father, mother, etc." There is a sense of property there as well. Even in 'my country, my king, my elected official, my street, my neighborhood, my bus (i.e. I missed my bus because I was late by 3 minutes), my cold (as in "you caught my cold.")' So we're back to property as a state of existance whichever way you twist it. Without the atoms, the bits can't exist. Chosen atoms are property. So are the bits traveling from MY keyboard, to MY CPU, throught MY ethernet card, through the router on MY network, etc. And so we have yet another memme surface - one has existed for millenia. But this one expression of it IS MINE. :) And ok, partially yours because your words and thoughts led to it's creation, and partially the property of others here who participated in it... ----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- + ^ + :25Kliters anthrax, 38K liters botulinum toxin, 500 tons of /|\ \|/ :sarin, mustard and VX gas, mobile bio-weapons labs, nukular /\|/\ <--*-->:weapons.. Reasons for war on Iraq - GWB 2003-01-28 speech. \/|\/ /|\ :Found to date: 0. Cost of war: $800,000,000,000 USD. \|/ + v + : The look on Sadam's face - priceless! --------_sunder_@_sunder_._net_------- http://www.sunder.net ------------
participants (3)
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Sunder -
Tim May -
Vincent Penquerc'h