- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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I care about property rights and I care about other rights. Sometimes I care about other rights more. Oh the bliss of not clinging to an ideological extreme.
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Oct 9, 2015 23:48
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May 1, 2024 20:47
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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You skirt the issue of taking a stand on which rules are best for society by stating that since all property rights are arbitrary, you know "whatever society democratically decides" should rule the day.
I doubt you would take the same stand if the majority decided that it was right and proper to enslave some minority and force them to work hard labor for no wages. So obviously majority rule is no standard by which principled ethics ought to be determined.
The first user principle is not arbitrary because it is derived logically from a previous moral principle, which is that of individual self-ownership. Let's term it "body-ownership" since "self" can be misleading to some people. What we are referring to here is that people should have the right to control over their own physical bodies.
Whether or not you quibble over the use of "property right" as applied to peoples right to control their bodies, the claims are the same. I (as should everyone) should have the right to control my body as I see fit unless my actions aggress against another persons body or property (leaving aside our differences about what constitutes just property titles external to our bodies). Therefore, what I choose to eat or ingest should be up to me and me alone. When I go to sleep and get up in the morning should be my determination. When or if I exercise, who I decide to date or have sex with, are all things that individuals should have the final say on.
Do you agree with this so far?
Do you accept the principle that people ought to have the final say in the use of their physical bodies so long as they don't harm others?
If you do NOT accept self-ownership, then your moral theory has some very serious problems that you have to account for. There would be no principled reason to oppose slavery or rape or murder. Sure you could try and make a utilitarian case for why it would be a net negative for society to permit these things, but it is easy to imagine situations where utilitarians could argue for such violations of human rights. Maybe slavery was found to be incredibly efficient in certain circumstances? What if an economist could demonstrate that a certain level of enslavement of physically gifted individuals would slightly raise the GDP if they were forced to work in certain jobs without pay?
Or imagine a eugenicist arguing that it was okay to murder all mentally handicapped persons because they don't contribute much to society from a productivity standpoint, they require a huge amount of care for their entire lives and they "contaminate" the gene pool if they reproduce by passing along so-called "inferior" genes to future generations.
These are obviously morally repugnant views but still there are a million ways to construct a utilitarian justification for their implementation.
If you give up on the right of self-ownership, then what are you left to fall back on if a consequentialist has a stronger case in a given situation? I am quite sure that you didn't decide that murder is wrong because you studied the utilitarian effects and long term consequences for society for killing different groups of people some might consider "undesirable". Like most decent people, I assume that your view is that people have certain rights as human beings that ought to be respected, which includes not being murdered, raped or enslaved.
This conception of "Natural Rights" had a great deal of influence on the founding of the United States and the drafting of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It animated most abolitionists who fought to end slavery and grant equal rights to blacks in the United States.
Whether or not these rights exist in nature, or are mere practical constructions of man is not as important as you think it is. We argue for certain ethical rules for civilized society based on our reason, the coherence of our arguments and the nature of man. Pretty much all religious and spiritual traditions teach that there is something inherently immoral about the taking of an innocent life. There has been a long-standing acknowledgment of the principle of self-ownership throughout the centuries.
I hope you do agree with me that people should have the right to control their own bodies and not have force used against their bodies.
So when determining how people are to acquire legitimate property outside of their physical bodies, the reason the libertarian principle of "original appropriation" makes the most sense is that there exists a tangible link between a person's ownership over his or her physical body and the external object that is brought into ownership. By plucking an untouched object out of nature and transforming it for your use, to further the attainment of your goals, you have thus imprinted your "self", which you own if you believe in self-ownership, onto a material object. Like a sculptor who carves a statue or a painter who paints a picture, the object that is transformed has an impression of you in it. So in what sense could any other person have a better claim over the use of such a scarce resource that the one who initially transformed it? Until he or she voluntarily gives it up in a contractual exchange of course.
Now, collective ownership is not impermissible in a libertarian society. Individuals can freely contract with a group of others to enter into a partnership over the ownership of a piece of land, or a factory. There is nothing wrong with this. But someone had to originally have a claim on whatever property they are considering making into a collective. And that person, or people, who originally homesteaded the property must voluntarily enter into a contractual partnership to have a collective ownership. A group of people cannot simply decide that they ought to own part of some land and force the original owner to vacate the land they homesteaded.
If you do accept people's right to universal control over their physical bodies so long as they don't hurt others, and you don't have to accept the phrase "ownership" to accept this general idea, then you ought to accept the notion that property rights in external objects should be in some way linked to this antecedent principle which hopefully has been agreed to.
So original appropriation is not just as defensible as any other system of property acquisition, it is much more defensible because it logically follows the acknowledgment of self-ownership which most people actually DO accept.
Buddy you can have multiple rights. Not just one right from which all others must be logically derived.
Thinking that you can or should use reason alone to derive human rights is literally insane and one of the more fundimental things separating you from others in this thread.
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Oct 12, 2015 14:46
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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Truly, the greatest testament for the failure of the Soviet Union was its lack of grain alcohol.
I mean, it's possible to have a political philosophy derived from one principle. It's just that he chose a really loving stupid one to start from. I harp on it a lot in the big thread, but the Veil of Ignorance is a single principle that doesn't end up with you debating the finer points of debt slavery or pontificating on whether or not the Native Americans were asking for it.
Well what I'm saying, is that the result of applying that and creating a well functioning human society is inevitably going to result in compromises between competing rights. Because the bottom line is that rights are always in conflict with each other.
For example freedom of speech is a right and a good one but doesn't prevent people from being prosecuted for crimes carried out through speech or writing. Imagine how absurd that would be. Libertarianism takes a reasonable right to have and control posessions to a perverted and ultimately self defeating extreme.
asdf32 fucked around with this message at 16:06 on Oct 12, 2015
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Oct 12, 2015 15:56
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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Although better than property, I don't think maximising happiness (or any other one common principle) can by itself act as a single guideline. I mean you could conceivably really gently caress over certain subsections of society on the basis of maximising happiness amongst the majority.
I think a focus on a host of different collective and individual rights and freedoms (E.g. having the right to freedom of speech even if what you're saying makes the majority of people who hear it annoyed and causes a net loss in happiness) is the way to go and I don't think there's any one tenet that we can say encompasses them all. When those rights come into conflict they'll have to be adjudicated on a consistent but dynamic and responsive basis (e.g. if someone commits a crime then they can lose their freedom by being imprisoned with what qualifies as a crime and the amount of time they lose their freedom being decided based on individual assessments of whether laws have been broken).
Right. This exactly.
Human morality isn't logical and therefore human society can't be entirely logically derived. IE the trolley problem and its variations.
This is in no way meant to diminish the power of reason which is essentially the main thing separating us from animals and the thing on which all our prosperity rests. But it's how things are and there is no excuse for reaching adulthood and not grasping this in some way.
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Oct 12, 2015 20:48
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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Let's talk about something else for a bit. There is a reason why I keep coming back here and posting. Most political internet forums are populated by people who don't know anything. They frankly aren't any fun to participate in. But on the other hand, this is not a way to have a debate. I'd be happy to debate just one of you or a small number of those who are serious, but taking on thirty at once is unwieldy at best.
I'd like to take a break from this for a moment and just ask an open ended question. What are you guys into besides politics and posting on the internet? Do any of you have degrees? What are your hobbies?
Speaking for myself, I'm a young guy who likes exercising, playing basketball, listening to music, watching movies, going to parties, and being creative. I run a couple part-time internet businesses, and my dream in the future is to grow them into being able to sustain a full income so I can quit my day job.
Contrary to what many of you have insinuated, I was not born of privilege. My parents were working class. I was raised in a 1200 square foot 1960s-era house in a not particularly great neighborhood. Luckily my parents valued my education, so I was fortunate enough to attend a private school for most of my formal education. My parents went into debt to send me there and I was on a scholarship that helped pay for my education.
What about y'all? What are your hobbies outside of ridiculing libertarians on internet forums? 
So the answer is that you really don't want to know what most of these poster's hobbies are.
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Oct 16, 2015 19:26
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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Clearly some institutional structures are more prone to corruption than others. This is one of the most important lessons of history.
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Oct 18, 2015 02:13
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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It seems more a completely obvious truism to me. Systems with less oversight are more prone to corruption.
Which is pretty similar to "groups can be corrupt".
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Oct 18, 2015 02:58
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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Well, no, because that suggests that some organizational structures are inherently corrupt. Irrespective of their component members. Which is not true, it's entirely possible for small organizations without oversight to work well, if not better, for their lack of oversight.
The thing to take away is that nothing is inherently corrupt and equally, nothing is entirely proof against corruption. The only thing that works is vigilance and having the means to act against corruption when it is found.
Absolute power? Monarchy?
While it seems that you're leaving yourself open to recognize that there are some good monarchs (which is true) it's also the case that we recognize absolute power to be inherently corrupting in the sense that eventually it will lead to corruption.
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Oct 18, 2015 03:34
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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It's still quite annoying that jrodefeld hasn't answered his own question in the thread title. It's been many days, and it's simply uncouth.
It doesn't really matter. If he actually cared he'd recognize the need for a state.
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Oct 19, 2015 16:31
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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Have to say that the drunk communist was an interesting twist in this thread.
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Oct 23, 2015 04:03
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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That's an argument that I got to hear a lot growing up. That "socialist thing only works in 'x' country because they're all white and in the US we're much more diverse." It's constantly painted that the reason socialized medicine in the UK is failing is because 1) it's state run, and 2) immigrants. I think the modern conservative right would probably make fast friends with UKIP, the way they keep going.
Oh, and Somalia and Afghanistan failed because, "in order to have a civil society, you must first be civilized." Basically, democracy in the USA after the American Revolution worked because we (read: rich, white, former Englishmen) were already civilized. These other countries (which just so happen to be mostly not-white people) keep failing because they're not civilized, and nobody ever 'civilized' them. Those poor backwards people are just mere children to us, the grownups.
Wait why don't you think these things are largely true?
Socialist policy tends to be more politically appealing in countries which are more racially uniform. Opposition to social programs in the U.S. for example is highly racialized.
And the history of civilization and the resulting cultural and institutional capital is probably one of the largest factors determining national stability and success. Contrast the fact that the U.S. was able to pummel and occupy non-white and deeply disliked Japan while helping them become an economic Juggernaut with with the U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Japan had human and institutional capital as a nation, Iraq and Afghanistan have little or none. And it turns out we have no clue how to create that, even with billions of dollars.
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Nov 1, 2015 15:30
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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To the Conservative mindset, NHS and the Canadian equivalent have been failing since day one. It could be doing absolutely peachy, and all we'll hear from the talkers is how horrible death panels and waiting lists are, and how overburdened the system is. If your conservative MPs are purposely sabotaging it, then it's just a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts.
Basically my point, that opposition to it is racially charged.
I know that stability of a nation relies on many factors, but I've heard from more than one conservative source who will argue that a constitutional republic akin to what we have in the US just won't work in some countries because they don't have a "civil society". Many of these countries tend to be African nations or nations that are majority Islamic. There's nothing to analyze in that statement as it's just an empty hand-wave of why brown people can't have democracy, while coming across as educated and not-racist to the average person. It's also a great springboard into arguing against letting people from those countries immigrate to the US.
First, some countries aren't civilized like Somalia and nobody understand how to create civil society there. So the statement is largely correct, in the short or medium term that these countries can't just manufacture constitutional republics.
Second, it's dumb to pretend that a good grasp of developmental politics/economics only lends itself to conservative arguments. Here is an anti-war forumation: "Don't invade Iraq and Afghanistan because you think you can construct civil democracy in like 5 years".
I'll admit that I got that one wrong. At the time I thought that invading Iraq would probably work out ok in the long run regardless of the transparently propagandized immediate pretense because I thought we could do better than Saddam Hussein. I was basically wrong. And Afghanistan has turned out even worse. The fact is we don't understand all the prerequisites for modern democratic states but some places don't have them and we haven't figured out how to manufacture them on demand.
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Nov 1, 2015 19:32
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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That's not the argument. The argument is that people from Somalia shouldn't be allowed into the United States because they're incapable of adapting to a nice form of government like ours; "if they could handle our system of government then they'd already have it". It allows the users of this argument to oppose immigration from country X without simply stating that they think their country already has enough black people.
Not the argument I was responding to which was about what would work "in" other countries.
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Nov 1, 2015 20:15
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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The argument that you were responding to is what's brought up in order to lead to the "don't let them in" argument. That's the point. Conservatives who use this line of reasoning aren't responding to liberals who are eager to bring democracy to a war-torn nation in Africa, they're using this to suggest that we shouldn't accept refugees from those nations.
A largely true statement that doesn't only lend itself to conservative arguments has been misused by conservatives....and?
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Nov 1, 2015 21:22
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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It's not largely true, though. "No one knows how to bring democracy to Somalia" is not the same as "the people of Somalia are too uncivil to ever participate in a democracy". The first one is largely a true statement. The second one is a bullshit racist opinion used by conservatives as a reason to oppose immigration
Stop being dumb. You slightly altered the argument I was replying too again.
quote:
that a constitutional republic akin to what we have in the US just won't work in some countries because they don't have a "civil society".
It's important for people to recognize that yes this is probably true in the short or medium term in a lot of places and to understand why. No it's not due to race. Nor is it necessarily due to capitalism or imperialism or colonialism. It's a bunch of complicated factors which on the whole result in the fact that you can't plop democracy anywhere you want on short notice and means that we need to still keep working on figure out what those factors are. Lots of bad ideology revolves around pretending it already knows the answers.
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Nov 2, 2015 02:33
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May 1, 2024 20:47
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- asdf32
- May 15, 2010
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I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
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No "society" doesn't "ask" me to pay my taxes to give medical care to others. I don't understand why clear language is so hard for some of you to grasp. If I don't have the option of saying "no" without being forcefully thrown in a cage, you are not "asking" me anything. You are threatening me and using violence to fund your idea of social welfare.
Even if ALL the taxes expropriated by the State went to social welfare for the poor it wouldn't justify the use of aggression in order to get the funding. The ends don't justify the means. But, considering that most of the tax revenue goes not towards social welfare services, but towards all kinds of moral enormities with no redeeming value, you have even less of a leg to stand on.
My tax dollars go towards overthrowing and occupying Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade, to subsidizing Big Agriculture, Big Pharma and bailing out the banks on Wall Street. It goes towards drone bombing third world nations, inciting hatred and blowback which results in a rise in terrorism against us. It goes towards military industrial complex boondoggles like building unneeded and unused fighter jets, bombs and artillery.
These State actions that I am forced to help fund are deeply offensive to me. Can I respectfully decline to participate in supporting these atrocities? Absolutely not. I can expect a gun in the ribs and a one way trip to a jail cell.
So don't give me your loving bullshit about "society" "asking" me to help poor people get medical care. I, like most people I know, already give a portion of my earnings to charity so I have nothing to do with denying anyone access to medical care.
What if my local soup kitchen or the Red Cross just happened to be murdering innocent people, occupying and overthrowing democratically elected regimes around the world, and kidnapping thousands of Americans during the hours they weren't providing food to the hungry and medical care to the sick?
You'd probably say "you know what? This isn't a very good charity. I think I'll stop funding these guys and give my money to a group that is more morally consistent in their approach to charity."
That is how I look at the State. If were I too concede that the State does provide good social welfare services to the poor, the very fact that they also commit these inexcusable atrocities would give me every incentive to find another charity to help the poor, one that doesn't commit such egregious acts.
By supporting the State, especially the United States government, because you think it should provide welfare for the needed you are indirectly bolstering it's ability and legitimacy in committing war crimes and truly evil violations of human rights.
This is what tends to happen when you think a moral good can come from an immoral principle.
The ends do justify the means even in terms of your own goals.
Because among the biggest holes in your ideology is the fact that not being part of a government/dictatorship isn't actually an option. Anarchy can't protect itself and will be absorbed eventually.
Separately, you're abstract notion of freedom isn't a thing. By providing protection and a fall back for services such as healthcare the government can enable freedom that wouldn't exist if I were living at lower standards. You can reject this, but you have to at least recognize other people's utilitarianism.
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Jan 21, 2016 01:37
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Oct 9, 2015 23:48
human nature