CDR: Re: Shunning, lesbians and liberty

[Ray Dillinger]

On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Riad S. Wahby wrote:

>Sampo A Syreeni <ssyreeni at 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