CDR: Re: Re: Shunning, lesbians and liberty

[Ray Dillinger]

On Thu, 28 Sep 2000, Sampo A Syreeni wrote:

>On Wed, 27 Sep 2000, Ray Dillinger wrote:
>
>>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.
>
>Oh but it is quite possible to put people in similar trouble if we grant
>that the right to property is absolute - if somebody owns on a sufficiently
>wide scale the basic commodities one needs to survive in the modern world
>(like fresh water, farming land, employment opportunities), others are born
>right in the middle of the proverbial desert.

Hmm.  I see your point.  Freedom among equals means that neither has 
the right to place a burden upon the other.  A can't command B to do 
anything, and B can't command A to do anything.  If A wants to wander 
out into the middle of the desert, A knows damn well he'd better provide 
for himself, because, while he can *ask* B for help, and if B isn't a 
jerk he'll probably provide it, A has no right to *command* B to help. 

Classic case; A didn't plant anything on his fields, didn't work the 
land, didn't do any food gathering or hunting -- does A now have the 
right to *command* B to feed him, just because he'll starve if B 
doesn't?  

If so then what motive does anyone have to get their own food, as long 
as their neighbor has enough to feed them? At what point does A stop 
looking like a victim to you and start looking like a leech?
---
Freedom among unequal people is a very different matter.  Or is it? 
It *looks* like a different matter, when, as you point out, one person 
can be born in the middle of another's desert.  But people can only 
be born to parents who are somehow surviving in that environment. 
The implication is that the environment is survivable after all, and 
your life does *NOT* in fact depend on the power to make a burdensome 
demand.  

And if you can survive there, then you have some kind of power that 
you can probably use to work your way out of it with sufficient skill, 
planning, and hard work.

I come from a family of mostly disenfranchised people.  Persecuted 
religious minorities living in poverty and isolation on my mom's side, 
hillbillies living in poverty and isolation on my dad's side. I had 
a pretty serious "desert" to work my way out of, so I know what you're 
talking about in a way that most americans won't.  And I still say that 
private ownership and freedom, in most things, is a better path.

I believe in enough government to provide elementary education for 
all who want it, to break up monopolies occasionally when there is 
really egregious abuse of monopoly power, and to stop people from 
stealing from one another or killing one another.  To the extent 
that governments do other things, they are exceeding the authority 
I'd have assigned them.

I don't believe in protecting idiots from themselves.  If you 
protect idiots from themselves, it's very *VERY* expensive unless 
you also take away their freedom to get into trouble.  And that 
means taking away the freedoms of reasonable men to do something 
of their own choosing as well. 

				Ray