Quarantines may be justified

[Sunder]

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!       
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