I don't understand the idea that we can solve all our problems by suing the offenders. Not everyone has the time or money to sue. Businesses know that.
Theoretically, licensing means a person has passed a test of some sort. Not everyone knows the reputation of all the people they need to do business with. I don't know that guy down the road. In fact, I don't know any mechanics. Is there any (existing or theoretical) way I can assure myself that a mechanic I pick will be at least marginally competent? Should there be? Or should I just have to take my chances?
I'm in a new location, I need a new doctor. Now, the AMA is a private association, not governmental at all. If they say a doctor is a doctor, I trust them. It sounds like you've made a blanket decision not to trust any governmental licensing boards. Do you trust the AMA? Are there any groups you do trust to give to evaluate the competence of any professions?
The laws you speak of do not protect people from things. They provide a method, for those that have the time and money to pursue it, for recouping losses and punishing those who are incompetent or negligent. The damage is already done, though. And what is to keep the person from going out and doing the same thing? Is it enough to punish after the fact, or should there be some method for attempting to preemptively protect people? A license can be revoked if the holder is negligent or unscrupulous.
I understand that you are critical of the current system, but you still haven't explained what you would do in its place.
So, how would you solve the underlying problem? Obviously, you think government is incapable of doing the job. Do we need a market for verification and bonding companies? Or is it simply 'buyer beware,' and we all take our chances?
I disagree that government licensing and regulation of industry is primarily about creating a barrier to entry or taxation. But many industries do need a barrier to entry. Do you really want any Joe Stoner doing surgery on you? The barrier is there to protect the public, not to protect entrenched interests in industry. Do you disagree with the basic premise that people need or desire protection from negligent, unskilled, and or unscrupulous businesses, or do you disagree with the methods used? What might work better?
It seems you have a very cynical view of government, as if it exists only to cause problems. Government is made up of individuals, mostly trying to do the right thing, just like businesses are. But aside from the fact that all large organizations' main purpose is to perpetuate their own existence, businesses exist only to profit their shareholders through whatever means necessary, while governments exist to profit all citizens.
Why should someone need a license to investigate something? I have no love for the RIAA, but that law seems to be a much bigger threat to individual freedom than the RIAA itself. I'm curious, in your political philosophy, is there any activity that should be licensed? Should it be by government or private group? I accept the necessity of licensing driving, practicing medicine, general contracting,plumbing, electrical work, architecture, and many other professions, and I don't see any difference in licensing investigators. We want to make sure they are following best practices so no one gets hurt.
I'm not a nihilist, but I know the goal of nihilism is not annihilation. And I know that you have not bothered to look up any of the economic research I suggested you peruse. Google "fairness reciprocity economic research" or go to wiki and look for the links on the game theory page, if I remember correctly. In short, most of your suppositions about human nature have been proven wrong.
I don't want the cessation of life as a goal, that is a straw man, and bordering on ad-hominem. I began doing that to you to try to show you how damn annoying it is when others put words in your mouth. Don't like it, do you? Stop doing it to me. I want freedom for the individual. I won't try to claim that you merely want to enslave others if you agree not to claim that I want to end all life. What insanity, does that type of debating tactic really fly in your circles?
You do not have the right to breath. You have the power to do so. Unless you are trapped under water. Without other people, I have the right to swing my fist wherever I like. Does that right still exist if other people are around? In short, your arguments, which I have heard many times before, have no validity. It is based on false distinctions.
If your argument is valid, then even more problems crop up. Without other people around, I have the freedom to go anywhere, use any natural resource, and experience anything I like. Where then is the justification for private property? As in real estate, not personal property.
If I and your neighbors have an agreement that he will pay a certain amount into a pool to be used for things we vote on whenever he makes a transaction, and that if he neglects to do so the rest of us will no longer trade with him or let him co-administer the pool or derive any benefits from it, that is fair, correct? You do not have the right to overturn any other previous agreements our neighbor might have entered into. You have no right to trade with him, by your own admission, this is something that requires other people and is therefore a privilege, not a right.
We are not victims of circumstance nor masters of circumstance. We are not separate from circumstance. And you have failed utterly to define a distinction between self and non-self. Do you decide to take a breath? Really? Always? Who is breathing you when you aren't? Is it self, or non-self? Your point is so far off base it doesn't even qualify as wrong.
I want to break this down logically for you. In a free market, non-coercive system, either people can use economic pressure to gain their ends, or they can't. If they can't, and a free market is truly free from any unfair influence based on monetary power, then we don't have an issue. You can use your system, and I can use mine, and nobody is oppressing anyone because it isn't possible.
You with me so far?
Now, assume that individuals or groups can use economic pressure to achieve their goals. This is either unfair coercion, or it is fair and justified. If it is fair and justified then we don't have an issue. There may be oppression going on, but it is justified. You may use your power to corner markets or deny people access to markets; you may collude with others to raise prices; you may attempt to ignore the negative externalities, or free ride on others positive externalities; you may use imbalance of information, monopoly, externalities, and other modes of market failure to gain advantage; or basically do anything in your power that doesn't directly initiate violence on another. But I and my little group can do the same.
Now, if using this kind of individual or group economic pressure to achieve goals is unjustified, then the market is not perfect and needs some kind of control structure. A government, if you will. Remember, anarchy is not about no government. It is about no rulers. Then the only issue is, what kind of government, and when is the force it uses justified? That is, when is it initiating force, and when is it retaliating to force used against its members?
It really sounds as though there is a blind spot in your thinking. You want things to be a certain way, and reason backwards to a position that supports your desired conditions. When someone uses your starting position to argue to undesired conclusions, you assume they must be wrong or illogical, not that your starting position or desired conclusion is invalid, or that the one doesn't necessarily lead to the other.
I've used the logical starting point of libertarianism and objectivism to reach a very different conclusion than their supporters desire. I've done it with no logical inconsistency, nor moral ambiguity that is not present in the starting position of those philosophies. You can't refute my conclusions, yet they make you very uncomfortable and you are certain they must be wrong, though you can't point out how. Certainty is simply another name for faith. It is not a logical process, it is an emotion. Feelings of certainty are no indicator of correctness or truth.
It seems you strongly desire a world where every individual is free to do what they please, and no person or group is free to impose its will on another. That is admirable, and I desire the same thing. Please understand that. My system does not involve a person or group imposing its will on another in any way that would not already happen under a complete free market, non coercive system. If you do not like what I am proposing, that is fine, but you can't just toss out my conclusions. You have to deal with them one way or another, because in any true anarchist system, they will come up, and in much uglier forms than I am proposing.
In fact, the reason I am proposing what I do is simply to deal with that fact: a minority of people will attempt to use their power, be it political, social, or economic, to oppress others and gain further power. This constitutes a positive feedback loop, and any system which does not take this into account will self destruct as the selfish sociopathic minority gains all power.
In conclusion, I don't believe you can argue any stronger argument against my system than "I don't like it and I hope others won't either." You simply have to agree that in a free society, I would be free to attempt to set up such a system. You would be free to discourage people from participating, but you simply couldn't stop them if they wanted to participate. So if we do set up a non-coercive free market s
First, what I am advocating is nothing like communism. The fact that you keep comparing my ideas to communism without explaining the similarities, and then blaming me for your misunderstanding is disturbing. My ideas are based on free association, anarchism in the original sense of the word. There is no coercion or force used.
Life is not a guarantee, it is a gift. Agreed. But if a system exists that guarantees the basic minimums necessary for survival, why would anyone choose to participate in a system that does not guarantee those minimums? There are no such things as natural rights, unfortunately. There are only the rights we agree to uphold for each other. Rights derive from agreements between individuals, and need not be justified though the naturalistic fallacy, nor through appeal to divine authority. A right is valid in context, when individuals agree to uphold that right. Therefore, if a group of individuals collectively agree that they will uphold the right of each member to have access to the basic necessities they need to support themselves (That is to say, at the minimum a plot of arable land including enough materials to make suitable housing and clothing.) then that becomes a right, according to that society. Take it or leave it.
When you claim that humans have choice, but stop there, as if an individual human's choice is somehow a root cause and not a part of a chain of cause and effect, you place responsibility unfairly on the shoulders of that individual, and absolve any other factors of responsibility. As a thought experiment, look at the child soldiers in Africa. Is it fair that they be held responsible for their actions, while the adults who enslaved and brainwashed them are not? Our choices impact the choices that others make. No man is an island, and nothing we decide comes entirely from within us. I say there is no clear demarcation between self and non self, and I challenge you to present one.
That wiki page says that it expired in Canada in 1985, which has life+50 year copyright terms. But this figure does not jibe with the date the author died. The page goes on to claim that in countries that have a life+70 year, it will expire in 2008, while in the US it will expire in 2030. Something is off.
Contracts are created through free association. I enforce the contract by refusing to deal with those who break it. If a group of individuals all freely agree only to do business with like minded people, that is just and fair. If one of their members does business with someone else, all the members would then be beholden not to do business with that person.
It really sounds as if you want to create a society where the individual reigns supreme, but not if that individual chooses to express his desires through a group. It sounds as if you wish to limit people's ability to redress wrongs, where only the powerful have the ability to choose their course, and lesser men would not have the power to band together into groups to protect their interests. In short, a sort of neo-feudalism, which is what most Objectivists seem to desire, and why I have such a problem with the idea.
You haven't thought through the consequences of your philosophy. Let me pose some thought questions to you. First, what if one person owned all the resources in the world? In order to live, we would have to pay him, and we'd all work in his factories and stores. This would be a bad thing, right? What if it was only two people who owned everything? What if it was half the people in the world? In short, if every single person does not have access to the means to support themselves, then we do not live in a free society. A free society is not the freedom to choose between slavery and starvation.
Now, the world is already in a situation where a small minority owns the majority of the resources, and the vast majority must do what they say. This minority works together to keep the majority poor and themselves rich. They collude together, and although they do resort to force, they do not need to in order to maintain control. Or rather, they can always claim their use of force is in response to others trying to take what is rightfully theirs.
Unfortunately for your philosophy, people see themselves as members of a community first, and traders second. It's in our nature. We can only really conceptualize around 150 individuals. Everyone outside of this circle of 'real people' is an abstraction, less than human. Oh, intellectually people may agree that everyone is a person the same as them, but that is not how they really feel. A few people, through much spiritual effort, manage to transcend this limitation and feel empathy for all humans, but it is rare. People want to trade with their friends first and foremost, that is human nature.
I am not proposing any type of 'commune,' and I think that you reading things into what I am writing that I did not intend is getting in the way of any real communication. People in my system would still engage in free market trade! If they don't like the trade-off, they are free to engage in trade with others who do not make the same demands. All I propose is that anyone who wants to trade with me sign a contract saying they will a.) support a basic minimum guarantee of access to resources necessary for survival to all people, b.) only trade with people who make the same agreement. Think about it as a system of governance, including taxation and social services, that people are free to buy into or not. I really don't see how you can stay logically consistent with your beliefs and disapprove of what I'm suggesting. Sounds like some serious cognitive dissonance going on in your head.
Nah, flawed analogy. More like, I have a box of merchandise in my garage. I leave the door open, and someone comes along and posts signs saying, "free stuff in this guys garage, take all you like!"
You keep telling yourself that my community will dissolve. Look around the world a bit. Look at Europe, or South America. I think you are wrong. I am only attempting to think through the logical consequences of a true free market, coercion free polity. Very ugly things will emerge, and groups like I'm advocating will be necessary to combat them. People will join groups like mine because they see the value to themselves.
No, I am taking everything into account. The economic concepts I write about are well understood and established principles of the field. Not all trade is fair, there is economic coercion involved in a lot of it. Not everyone walks away from a trade feeling as though they got a good value.
You seem to be saying that it is okay to make economic slaves out of people, is that really what you mean?
A fair life is a selfish goal, of course I agree. But it is more complicated than that, as the research I indicate shows. Most people prefer to live fairly and equitably, but in a system that does not reward cooperation and punish free-riders, people feel forced to act selfishly in order not to be taken advantage of. People are only really free to be themselves in a group that supports their ideals. In Africa there is an old proverb that explains the reciprocal relationship between individual freedom and group responsibility. "Only free individuals can create a strong tribe. Only a strong tribe can keep individuals free."
So, knowing that living in a fair and equitable society is a selfish goal of the majority of humans, and knowing that people do not feel free to be fair and equitable in an unfair society, and given that economic pressures are unbalanced due to the positive feedback cycle of wealth creating more opportunity for wealth creation and accumulation, don't you see that groups such as I advocate are inevitable in a truly coercion free, free market system?
What about a publicly available URL for child porn? What about a URL to make donations to a terrorist organization? What about a URL where, every time you go there, it sets off an automated script that pulls the trigger on a shotgun and shoots an adorable kitten in the face?
Visiting a public URL in itself is never wrong. What you do there may or may not be. We aren't talking about just 'visiting a public URL.' We are talking about taking a service you don't pay for.
No one is making heretics out of anyone. It sounds like you are advocating socialism, that I have an obligation to do business with others, even if I don't want to. What I am proposing is all built on free association and contract. There is no coercion. You are talking about forcing me to do business with people I don't like. Or restricting my ability to form contracts with others. If people don't want to limit themselves to only doing business with people who are cooperative and take responsibility for externalities, that is their right.
The thing that you don't seem to understand is that this is where the free market leads, and not only to reasoned and thoughtful goals such as mine. Christians will be forming compacts not to sell to Muslims. Whites will be forming compacts not to deal with blacks. The rich will be forming free associations with each other to economically limit the choices open to the poor. All without coercion, merely with economic and social pressure.
Is it coercion to tell a man who has no food, no land, and no means of support, "You do what I say or you starve to death?" Why should I be forced to support such a man? Why shouldn't I profit from his misfortune? Why shouldn't I use my wealth to ensure that there is a steady supply of such men? Isn't that in my rational self interest?
Have you even considered these issues when forming your philosophy?
Please explain how will and self are not illusion. Show me, if you can, how self or will are outside the chain of cause end effect, how will is not determined by things outside of will. If you click submit, it is because the chain of causality leads to that. When you get lunch, it is similarly because that is the effect created by the universe of cause. You are arguing for acuasality of will, saying that will is somehow special and unlike anything else we've seen in the universe, somehow separate from it.
Yes, people choose things. But those choices are determined by the entirety of the rest of the universe. The universe is like the faces/vase illusion. look at it one way, you see the faces of self. Look at it another, you see the vase of the external universe. But it is neither, it is merely light and dark shapes, and it is our mind that creates the separation, because that is what mind does, it separates things into categories.
I made it clear, anyone can deal with non-cooperators. They just can't deal with the rest of us if they do. If someone decides to break their contract with us, we are under no obligation to continue to deal with them.
When exchange takes place, value is created. I value what you have more than what I have, and vice versa. The question is, who gets the bulk of the value created? I may value that food you have only a little more than the money I have, but I'm poor and hungry, so I part with it. You may value the money I have far more than the food you have, but you know I'm poor and hungry, so you demand a higher price knowing I have few other options, being poor and having no transportation and thus no access to wider markets. You receive the majority of the extra value created in the trade, while I am only a little better off.
Selfish people attempt to maximize the value they receive and minimize the value others receive. But according to recent research, most people do not function this way. Most people value fairness and reciprocity far more than personal gain, and would prefer the trade to create equal extra value for both parties.
If people are dogmatic, full of prejudice, stubborn, angry, and destructive, then they are not truly happy or secure. They are putting on a middle class happy face for social reasons, and are an example of the negative externality of scared, angry desperate people I was talking about.
There is simply no reason to have detailed street level photos of military bases online. It won't help citizens ferret out any wrongdoings on the government's part, and it may help someone plan an attack. Google should never have asked, and they did the right thing by removing them.
It's not coercion to refuse non-cooperators the benefits of membership in a society. If they don't want to participate, they don't have to, no one is forcing them. But you should not force me, or anyone else, to have to deal with them in any fashion. As I mentioned, helping others is in everyone's rational self interest. Happy, secure people are a positive externality, and scared, angry desperate people are a negative externality. If I and my society wish to exclude non-cooperators who do not wish to bear their share of the costs of externalities, it is our right not to help them in any way. Selfish non-cooperators can deal with other selfish non-cooperators and try to take advantage of each other all they like.
Rand and I agree on one thing: rational self interest is the only good. We differ markedly on what we consider rational. For instance, I try to show how charity is in one's rational self interest. Rand looks at the weak with contempt.
Choice and inevitability are the same. You are not separate from the universe. Your will is not apart from the endless chain of cause and effect. Like everything, it is both an effect of other things, and a cause. As much as will and self are illusions, they are necessary illusions. Everyone knows the feeling of having a lot of control, and a little. We should strive not to create conditions that make people feel as if they are not in control.
That's why I dislike Rand's philosophy so much. She got it (in my opinion!) soooo close to right, but then she spiraled off into loony selfishness. Non-self is another key concept of Buddhism. Meaning, there is no rational distinction between self and non-self. Everything is a part of that chain of cause and effect, even the self, even the will. What is inside, once was not.
Yeah, it's easy to misinterpret. And there are a wide variety of Buddhist monks. You know how Buddhism came to China? Bodhidarma left India and travelled to China. He found a group of fat, lazy Confucian monks, he told them they were fat and lazy and should listen to him. They laughed at him, so he sat outside and didn't move until they agreed maybe he had something to tech them (the legends say his gaze bored a hole into a cliff and they were impressed, but you know how legends work.) So the first thing he taught them to do was not be fat and lazy, so he developed a martial arts based exercise routine. They practiced, and became very good at martial arts. You know who those monks were? The Shaolin monks!
Here's another great anecdote, told in Buddhist circles for thousands of years. Two Buddhist monks are out traveling and they come to a river. There's a woman there who needs help crossing, so the first monk picks her up and carries her across. They travel on for a while until the second monk just can't contain himself any longer, "Brother," he says, "We are forbidden to touch women, why did you do so?" The first monk says, "Hey, I put that woman down an hour ago, why are you still carrying her around?"
The middle path of Buddhism is the path between extremes. I've heard it explained thus: the string that is too tight snaps, while the string that is too loose slips the fret.
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I don't understand the idea that we can solve all our problems by suing the offenders. Not everyone has the time or money to sue. Businesses know that.
Theoretically, licensing means a person has passed a test of some sort. Not everyone knows the reputation of all the people they need to do business with. I don't know that guy down the road. In fact, I don't know any mechanics. Is there any (existing or theoretical) way I can assure myself that a mechanic I pick will be at least marginally competent? Should there be? Or should I just have to take my chances?
I'm in a new location, I need a new doctor. Now, the AMA is a private association, not governmental at all. If they say a doctor is a doctor, I trust them. It sounds like you've made a blanket decision not to trust any governmental licensing boards. Do you trust the AMA? Are there any groups you do trust to give to evaluate the competence of any professions?
The laws you speak of do not protect people from things. They provide a method, for those that have the time and money to pursue it, for recouping losses and punishing those who are incompetent or negligent. The damage is already done, though. And what is to keep the person from going out and doing the same thing? Is it enough to punish after the fact, or should there be some method for attempting to preemptively protect people? A license can be revoked if the holder is negligent or unscrupulous.
I understand that you are critical of the current system, but you still haven't explained what you would do in its place.
So, how would you solve the underlying problem? Obviously, you think government is incapable of doing the job. Do we need a market for verification and bonding companies? Or is it simply 'buyer beware,' and we all take our chances?
I disagree that government licensing and regulation of industry is primarily about creating a barrier to entry or taxation. But many industries do need a barrier to entry. Do you really want any Joe Stoner doing surgery on you? The barrier is there to protect the public, not to protect entrenched interests in industry. Do you disagree with the basic premise that people need or desire protection from negligent, unskilled, and or unscrupulous businesses, or do you disagree with the methods used? What might work better?
It seems you have a very cynical view of government, as if it exists only to cause problems. Government is made up of individuals, mostly trying to do the right thing, just like businesses are. But aside from the fact that all large organizations' main purpose is to perpetuate their own existence, businesses exist only to profit their shareholders through whatever means necessary, while governments exist to profit all citizens.
Cocaine makes you feel more powerful and important than you really are. Hookers always tell you you're doing the right thing.
Why not?
I'm not a nihilist, but I know the goal of nihilism is not annihilation. And I know that you have not bothered to look up any of the economic research I suggested you peruse. Google "fairness reciprocity economic research" or go to wiki and look for the links on the game theory page, if I remember correctly. In short, most of your suppositions about human nature have been proven wrong.
I don't want the cessation of life as a goal, that is a straw man, and bordering on ad-hominem. I began doing that to you to try to show you how damn annoying it is when others put words in your mouth. Don't like it, do you? Stop doing it to me. I want freedom for the individual. I won't try to claim that you merely want to enslave others if you agree not to claim that I want to end all life. What insanity, does that type of debating tactic really fly in your circles?
You do not have the right to breath. You have the power to do so. Unless you are trapped under water. Without other people, I have the right to swing my fist wherever I like. Does that right still exist if other people are around? In short, your arguments, which I have heard many times before, have no validity. It is based on false distinctions.
If your argument is valid, then even more problems crop up. Without other people around, I have the freedom to go anywhere, use any natural resource, and experience anything I like. Where then is the justification for private property? As in real estate, not personal property.
If I and your neighbors have an agreement that he will pay a certain amount into a pool to be used for things we vote on whenever he makes a transaction, and that if he neglects to do so the rest of us will no longer trade with him or let him co-administer the pool or derive any benefits from it, that is fair, correct? You do not have the right to overturn any other previous agreements our neighbor might have entered into. You have no right to trade with him, by your own admission, this is something that requires other people and is therefore a privilege, not a right.
We are not victims of circumstance nor masters of circumstance. We are not separate from circumstance. And you have failed utterly to define a distinction between self and non-self. Do you decide to take a breath? Really? Always? Who is breathing you when you aren't? Is it self, or non-self? Your point is so far off base it doesn't even qualify as wrong.
I want to break this down logically for you. In a free market, non-coercive system, either people can use economic pressure to gain their ends, or they can't. If they can't, and a free market is truly free from any unfair influence based on monetary power, then we don't have an issue. You can use your system, and I can use mine, and nobody is oppressing anyone because it isn't possible.
You with me so far?
Now, assume that individuals or groups can use economic pressure to achieve their goals. This is either unfair coercion, or it is fair and justified. If it is fair and justified then we don't have an issue. There may be oppression going on, but it is justified. You may use your power to corner markets or deny people access to markets; you may collude with others to raise prices; you may attempt to ignore the negative externalities, or free ride on others positive externalities; you may use imbalance of information, monopoly, externalities, and other modes of market failure to gain advantage; or basically do anything in your power that doesn't directly initiate violence on another. But I and my little group can do the same.
Now, if using this kind of individual or group economic pressure to achieve goals is unjustified, then the market is not perfect and needs some kind of control structure. A government, if you will. Remember, anarchy is not about no government. It is about no rulers. Then the only issue is, what kind of government, and when is the force it uses justified? That is, when is it initiating force, and when is it retaliating to force used against its members?
It really sounds as though there is a blind spot in your thinking. You want things to be a certain way, and reason backwards to a position that supports your desired conditions. When someone uses your starting position to argue to undesired conclusions, you assume they must be wrong or illogical, not that your starting position or desired conclusion is invalid, or that the one doesn't necessarily lead to the other.
I've used the logical starting point of libertarianism and objectivism to reach a very different conclusion than their supporters desire. I've done it with no logical inconsistency, nor moral ambiguity that is not present in the starting position of those philosophies. You can't refute my conclusions, yet they make you very uncomfortable and you are certain they must be wrong, though you can't point out how. Certainty is simply another name for faith. It is not a logical process, it is an emotion. Feelings of certainty are no indicator of correctness or truth.
It seems you strongly desire a world where every individual is free to do what they please, and no person or group is free to impose its will on another. That is admirable, and I desire the same thing. Please understand that. My system does not involve a person or group imposing its will on another in any way that would not already happen under a complete free market, non coercive system. If you do not like what I am proposing, that is fine, but you can't just toss out my conclusions. You have to deal with them one way or another, because in any true anarchist system, they will come up, and in much uglier forms than I am proposing.
In fact, the reason I am proposing what I do is simply to deal with that fact: a minority of people will attempt to use their power, be it political, social, or economic, to oppress others and gain further power. This constitutes a positive feedback loop, and any system which does not take this into account will self destruct as the selfish sociopathic minority gains all power.
In conclusion, I don't believe you can argue any stronger argument against my system than "I don't like it and I hope others won't either." You simply have to agree that in a free society, I would be free to attempt to set up such a system. You would be free to discourage people from participating, but you simply couldn't stop them if they wanted to participate. So if we do set up a non-coercive free market s
First, what I am advocating is nothing like communism. The fact that you keep comparing my ideas to communism without explaining the similarities, and then blaming me for your misunderstanding is disturbing. My ideas are based on free association, anarchism in the original sense of the word. There is no coercion or force used.
Life is not a guarantee, it is a gift. Agreed. But if a system exists that guarantees the basic minimums necessary for survival, why would anyone choose to participate in a system that does not guarantee those minimums? There are no such things as natural rights, unfortunately. There are only the rights we agree to uphold for each other. Rights derive from agreements between individuals, and need not be justified though the naturalistic fallacy, nor through appeal to divine authority. A right is valid in context, when individuals agree to uphold that right. Therefore, if a group of individuals collectively agree that they will uphold the right of each member to have access to the basic necessities they need to support themselves (That is to say, at the minimum a plot of arable land including enough materials to make suitable housing and clothing.) then that becomes a right, according to that society. Take it or leave it.
When you claim that humans have choice, but stop there, as if an individual human's choice is somehow a root cause and not a part of a chain of cause and effect, you place responsibility unfairly on the shoulders of that individual, and absolve any other factors of responsibility. As a thought experiment, look at the child soldiers in Africa. Is it fair that they be held responsible for their actions, while the adults who enslaved and brainwashed them are not? Our choices impact the choices that others make. No man is an island, and nothing we decide comes entirely from within us. I say there is no clear demarcation between self and non self, and I challenge you to present one.
That wiki page says that it expired in Canada in 1985, which has life+50 year copyright terms. But this figure does not jibe with the date the author died. The page goes on to claim that in countries that have a life+70 year, it will expire in 2008, while in the US it will expire in 2030. Something is off.
Contracts are created through free association. I enforce the contract by refusing to deal with those who break it. If a group of individuals all freely agree only to do business with like minded people, that is just and fair. If one of their members does business with someone else, all the members would then be beholden not to do business with that person.
It really sounds as if you want to create a society where the individual reigns supreme, but not if that individual chooses to express his desires through a group. It sounds as if you wish to limit people's ability to redress wrongs, where only the powerful have the ability to choose their course, and lesser men would not have the power to band together into groups to protect their interests. In short, a sort of neo-feudalism, which is what most Objectivists seem to desire, and why I have such a problem with the idea.
You haven't thought through the consequences of your philosophy. Let me pose some thought questions to you. First, what if one person owned all the resources in the world? In order to live, we would have to pay him, and we'd all work in his factories and stores. This would be a bad thing, right? What if it was only two people who owned everything? What if it was half the people in the world? In short, if every single person does not have access to the means to support themselves, then we do not live in a free society. A free society is not the freedom to choose between slavery and starvation.
Now, the world is already in a situation where a small minority owns the majority of the resources, and the vast majority must do what they say. This minority works together to keep the majority poor and themselves rich. They collude together, and although they do resort to force, they do not need to in order to maintain control. Or rather, they can always claim their use of force is in response to others trying to take what is rightfully theirs.
Unfortunately for your philosophy, people see themselves as members of a community first, and traders second. It's in our nature. We can only really conceptualize around 150 individuals. Everyone outside of this circle of 'real people' is an abstraction, less than human. Oh, intellectually people may agree that everyone is a person the same as them, but that is not how they really feel. A few people, through much spiritual effort, manage to transcend this limitation and feel empathy for all humans, but it is rare. People want to trade with their friends first and foremost, that is human nature.
I am not proposing any type of 'commune,' and I think that you reading things into what I am writing that I did not intend is getting in the way of any real communication. People in my system would still engage in free market trade! If they don't like the trade-off, they are free to engage in trade with others who do not make the same demands. All I propose is that anyone who wants to trade with me sign a contract saying they will a.) support a basic minimum guarantee of access to resources necessary for survival to all people, b.) only trade with people who make the same agreement. Think about it as a system of governance, including taxation and social services, that people are free to buy into or not. I really don't see how you can stay logically consistent with your beliefs and disapprove of what I'm suggesting. Sounds like some serious cognitive dissonance going on in your head.
Are you saying that people just accidentally go to that URL and get sued? Because that is what your analogy implies, and I don't think that's valid.
Nah, flawed analogy. More like, I have a box of merchandise in my garage. I leave the door open, and someone comes along and posts signs saying, "free stuff in this guys garage, take all you like!"
You keep telling yourself that my community will dissolve. Look around the world a bit. Look at Europe, or South America. I think you are wrong. I am only attempting to think through the logical consequences of a true free market, coercion free polity. Very ugly things will emerge, and groups like I'm advocating will be necessary to combat them. People will join groups like mine because they see the value to themselves.
No, I am taking everything into account. The economic concepts I write about are well understood and established principles of the field. Not all trade is fair, there is economic coercion involved in a lot of it. Not everyone walks away from a trade feeling as though they got a good value.
You seem to be saying that it is okay to make economic slaves out of people, is that really what you mean?
A fair life is a selfish goal, of course I agree. But it is more complicated than that, as the research I indicate shows. Most people prefer to live fairly and equitably, but in a system that does not reward cooperation and punish free-riders, people feel forced to act selfishly in order not to be taken advantage of. People are only really free to be themselves in a group that supports their ideals. In Africa there is an old proverb that explains the reciprocal relationship between individual freedom and group responsibility. "Only free individuals can create a strong tribe. Only a strong tribe can keep individuals free."
So, knowing that living in a fair and equitable society is a selfish goal of the majority of humans, and knowing that people do not feel free to be fair and equitable in an unfair society, and given that economic pressures are unbalanced due to the positive feedback cycle of wealth creating more opportunity for wealth creation and accumulation, don't you see that groups such as I advocate are inevitable in a truly coercion free, free market system?
What about a publicly available URL for child porn? What about a URL to make donations to a terrorist organization? What about a URL where, every time you go there, it sets off an automated script that pulls the trigger on a shotgun and shoots an adorable kitten in the face?
Visiting a public URL in itself is never wrong. What you do there may or may not be. We aren't talking about just 'visiting a public URL.' We are talking about taking a service you don't pay for.
No one is making heretics out of anyone. It sounds like you are advocating socialism, that I have an obligation to do business with others, even if I don't want to. What I am proposing is all built on free association and contract. There is no coercion. You are talking about forcing me to do business with people I don't like. Or restricting my ability to form contracts with others. If people don't want to limit themselves to only doing business with people who are cooperative and take responsibility for externalities, that is their right.
The thing that you don't seem to understand is that this is where the free market leads, and not only to reasoned and thoughtful goals such as mine. Christians will be forming compacts not to sell to Muslims. Whites will be forming compacts not to deal with blacks. The rich will be forming free associations with each other to economically limit the choices open to the poor. All without coercion, merely with economic and social pressure.
Is it coercion to tell a man who has no food, no land, and no means of support, "You do what I say or you starve to death?" Why should I be forced to support such a man? Why shouldn't I profit from his misfortune? Why shouldn't I use my wealth to ensure that there is a steady supply of such men? Isn't that in my rational self interest?
Have you even considered these issues when forming your philosophy?
Please explain how will and self are not illusion. Show me, if you can, how self or will are outside the chain of cause end effect, how will is not determined by things outside of will. If you click submit, it is because the chain of causality leads to that. When you get lunch, it is similarly because that is the effect created by the universe of cause. You are arguing for acuasality of will, saying that will is somehow special and unlike anything else we've seen in the universe, somehow separate from it.
Yes, people choose things. But those choices are determined by the entirety of the rest of the universe. The universe is like the faces/vase illusion. look at it one way, you see the faces of self. Look at it another, you see the vase of the external universe. But it is neither, it is merely light and dark shapes, and it is our mind that creates the separation, because that is what mind does, it separates things into categories.
I made it clear, anyone can deal with non-cooperators. They just can't deal with the rest of us if they do. If someone decides to break their contract with us, we are under no obligation to continue to deal with them.
When exchange takes place, value is created. I value what you have more than what I have, and vice versa. The question is, who gets the bulk of the value created? I may value that food you have only a little more than the money I have, but I'm poor and hungry, so I part with it. You may value the money I have far more than the food you have, but you know I'm poor and hungry, so you demand a higher price knowing I have few other options, being poor and having no transportation and thus no access to wider markets. You receive the majority of the extra value created in the trade, while I am only a little better off.
Selfish people attempt to maximize the value they receive and minimize the value others receive. But according to recent research, most people do not function this way. Most people value fairness and reciprocity far more than personal gain, and would prefer the trade to create equal extra value for both parties.
If people are dogmatic, full of prejudice, stubborn, angry, and destructive, then they are not truly happy or secure. They are putting on a middle class happy face for social reasons, and are an example of the negative externality of scared, angry desperate people I was talking about.
There is simply no reason to have detailed street level photos of military bases online. It won't help citizens ferret out any wrongdoings on the government's part, and it may help someone plan an attack. Google should never have asked, and they did the right thing by removing them.
It's not coercion to refuse non-cooperators the benefits of membership in a society. If they don't want to participate, they don't have to, no one is forcing them. But you should not force me, or anyone else, to have to deal with them in any fashion. As I mentioned, helping others is in everyone's rational self interest. Happy, secure people are a positive externality, and scared, angry desperate people are a negative externality. If I and my society wish to exclude non-cooperators who do not wish to bear their share of the costs of externalities, it is our right not to help them in any way. Selfish non-cooperators can deal with other selfish non-cooperators and try to take advantage of each other all they like.
Rand and I agree on one thing: rational self interest is the only good. We differ markedly on what we consider rational. For instance, I try to show how charity is in one's rational self interest. Rand looks at the weak with contempt.
Choice and inevitability are the same. You are not separate from the universe. Your will is not apart from the endless chain of cause and effect. Like everything, it is both an effect of other things, and a cause. As much as will and self are illusions, they are necessary illusions. Everyone knows the feeling of having a lot of control, and a little. We should strive not to create conditions that make people feel as if they are not in control.
That's why I dislike Rand's philosophy so much. She got it (in my opinion!) soooo close to right, but then she spiraled off into loony selfishness. Non-self is another key concept of Buddhism. Meaning, there is no rational distinction between self and non-self. Everything is a part of that chain of cause and effect, even the self, even the will. What is inside, once was not.
Yeah, it's easy to misinterpret. And there are a wide variety of Buddhist monks. You know how Buddhism came to China? Bodhidarma left India and travelled to China. He found a group of fat, lazy Confucian monks, he told them they were fat and lazy and should listen to him. They laughed at him, so he sat outside and didn't move until they agreed maybe he had something to tech them (the legends say his gaze bored a hole into a cliff and they were impressed, but you know how legends work.) So the first thing he taught them to do was not be fat and lazy, so he developed a martial arts based exercise routine. They practiced, and became very good at martial arts. You know who those monks were? The Shaolin monks!
Here's another great anecdote, told in Buddhist circles for thousands of years. Two Buddhist monks are out traveling and they come to a river. There's a woman there who needs help crossing, so the first monk picks her up and carries her across. They travel on for a while until the second monk just can't contain himself any longer, "Brother," he says, "We are forbidden to touch women, why did you do so?" The first monk says, "Hey, I put that woman down an hour ago, why are you still carrying her around?"
The middle path of Buddhism is the path between extremes. I've heard it explained thus: the string that is too tight snaps, while the string that is too loose slips the fret.