I imagine, given my experience with others who have said a similar thing, that you have some notion of arbitrary right to ownership and/or disposal of *stuff*, and you're assuming that these notions must apply to any definition of property. Since all you've given me so far is "Marxist property concept is self-contradictory" and not told me exactly why you think this, merely suggested that I prove that it isn't, we're not going to get very far. Stop being a coward and present your case.
attempting to break the paradigm by appeal to an edge case.
Reductio is valid logic. If your assertion produces an absurdity then your assertion is wrong.
It's a weapon which cannot even be used in legitimite self-defense, because you cannot limit the damage to your attacker
You cannot "limit the damage to your attacker" with a gun: if you shoot someone with a gun then you should be prepared for them to die. If you have any other understanding of gun use then you should immediately dispose of any guns you have.
inevitably murder many innocents in the process.
Bullshit. If I have a lot of land and a good engineering team, I could design an atomic bomb to destroy, say, an organised gang of trespassers which has moved many miles into my land, but which does not "inevitably murder many innocents". Or maybe I'm just manufacturing atomic bombs for export. What business is it of yours?
the construction of such a device would in fact constitute a massive tort
What is the relationship? What is the duty of care? What is the damage? There is ultrahazardous activity recognised in tort law but that merely identifies who is liable in the event of actual damage. If the mere construction were a massive tort as you describe then it would be unreasonable for the government to build a working atomic bomb near you too.
Furthermore it could easily and reasonably be interpreted as a direct threat to that entire group of people
Now you're getting somewhere. Oh, I interpret the gun you're carrying as a direct threat to me every time you're within shooting distance of me in the street. I interpret the knife you're eating your food with opposite me as very threatening, too. And those nasty words I heard you say a couple of days ago - you didn't actually indicate any intention to do harm, but they sure sounded subversive. If we're using potential intention as a reason to tweak a notion of property, every restriction is on the cards. Woohoo!
Rights are not floating abstractions,
Correct. Rights are entitlements to certain protections enforced by law.
they are practical, powerful observations based on the nature of our own existence as human beings existing in the universe we exist in.
"Rights are powerful observations" simply makes no sense. Perhaps you are trying to say that rights are derived from observations, but I can't see where "practical" would fit in then. As for "the nature of our own existence", is this your nature or my nature you're using? We're both equally human so any conclusion of yours which runs contrary to my nature must be wrong. Or are you like the zealot who assumes that it's not possible to conclude that Jesus doesn't exist, only possible to be in denial / blind to his love / something equally specious?
It's quite simple, and most people get the idea once they've overcome the idealism of youth: property rights exist because they help society function. That is all. Your building an atomic bomb in your back yard does not help society. The fact that socialists think the workers should own the means of production whereas capitalists think that businessmen are better at that sort of thing simply reflects different beliefs about the sort of society each group wants and convictions about
Erm, of course I was expanding on it. A few thousandths of an inch. Hopefully showing how incomplete it is.
The Marxist usage of "property" is only self-contradictory if you assume certain attributes of property which Marx does not. Let's consider another example where you don't just knee-jerk in response to an obvious political opposition:
If you happened to own land with the appropriate natural resources to build a working atomic bomb, should the law permit you to? The answer is, of course, "no". If you answered "yes" you can stop reading here and grow up - Internet libertarian extremism is embarrassing enough and even arch-capitalist Ayn Rand understood this.
But isn't this contradicting property rights? No, and anyone who thinks so has wrongly identified the working definition of property. If you describe your understanding of Marxist property, I can almost guarantee I'll be able to expose a similar mistake.
You're just annoyed because you want words to be redefined to suit your political viewpoint. The technique's as old as the study of rhetoric, several notable regimes of C20 have employed it, and many fictional novels have incorporated it. When an outsider not mired in the doublespeak looks in, he can see it instantly.
The slaves were freed in the sense that they were freed from a certain (depending on which slaves you're talking about) slavery. When you say "the slaves are freed" you don't mean "for all X, every ex-slave has the freedom to do X". I know some disorders make this extremely difficult to understand, but context is important. There's no absolute freedom vs no-freedom. There is just freedom to do X in situation Y.
Summary of lesson: If no context is stated, it is because it is implicit, not because it doesn't exist.
In the event that the outcome goes the wrong way, all that's needed is for enough campaign groups on both sides of the political spectrum to encourage their supporters to routinely record the police whenever they see them, providing they are in groups of more than some particular size and providing their camera streams to a remote server.
R v Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy brought the saying to English law that it is not enough that justice must be done - it must also be seen to be done. The principle is about impartiality and appeared before video cameras, but surely preventing or destroying any recording of a police officer acting in public under colour of law is, "creat[ing] a suspicion that there has been an improper interference with the course of justice."
Your logic is flawed. I didn't say that people must fire someone who behaves disruptively, I said they had the right to make that choice.
You said: "If you start calling me names [...] your behavior negatively affects your ability to do your job." This is what I was disputing. Say you're my boss and normally we get along. One day you do something really dickish and I call you out for it as I see it, my straight talking might be beneficial to you and/or the organisation.
Your logic is flawed again. Just because your friend faced bureaucratic hurdles with one form of assistance doesn't mean he was deprived of his "right to eat".
Contrary to what people seem to think, many social welfare programmes today are not means-based, rather behaviour-based - the problem is far more apparent today than 2-3 decades ago. So the checkbox bureaucracy determines you can do X then says that you will not be helped further because you should be doing X instead. X may be a work-related programme which your doctors agree is inappropriate or impossible for you but which the bureaucracy says you can do: see the PRWORA 1996. Similar restrictions have appeared in the UK over the last decade.
(Well, it's worse than that: the government contracts medicals out to private companies which send underqualified staff to examine patients for complex conditions which they do not understand. Contracts are renewed on the basis that the company will determine some proportion of people healthy rather than by actually treating each case on its merits. But descriptions of this corruption fill thousands of pages on the Internet.)
plus private and charitable sources of food as well.
The possibility that you might receive something is not the same as the right to receive it. I'm not sure why people find it so hard to understand the difference - I'll give an example from another area in case it helps. Say you return to your house and see what looks to be a burglar in the window. You have the right to call on police assistance to apprehend the burglar while he's still in your house, but when the burglar runs out the back and into his motorcycle with your jewellery, you don't have the right to compensation.
That's geopolitical consultant, you insensitive clod;-). Pushing for the downfall of a superpower so you can flood a desperate, depressed region with tobacco - you've got to hand it to her, she's worse than any fictional supervillain.
Ken Clarke's achievement is almost more disturbing, as he went from being a pro-tobacco health secretary (the competition in the NHS which the BMA have just spoken up against, again, started with him) to 10 years as a director of British-American Tobacco before making a return into today's government. The only problem he had with Thatcher was that he never had the chance to take over her position. Some people regard him as a more moderate and reasonable Tory; I regard him as one of the most clever but most nasty.
By sufficiently dogmatic philosophising, everything which happened a moment ago is the cause of everything which happens now, and so on as far back as you want. So if you like you can throw your arms up in fatalistic impotence.
The test here is much simpler: "Are you significantly adversely affected in context X as a direct result of doing Y?" If yes, then you don't have the freedom in context X to do Y.
Consider an example of a freedom you have:
Let X be employment. For Y being certain religious speech, Y is a protected freedom.
Unlike you, the law is mature enough to be able to conclude that you were fired because your boss heard you express a religious view at the bar without panicking that this means someone's birth has to be blamed. If it makes this conclusion, the firing is determined to be illegal. There's your freedom protected by a right.
In what world (but the US) is "people in the US who agree with my political stance" equivalent to "most people"?
The latest Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English is quite clear about the currently understood notion of freedom: the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
(Recall that English is descriptivist. This definition, especially in this dictionary, comes from observing real usage.)
Note the absence of "as listed by government". It is thoroughly dangerous to try to redefine freedom in this way. You are free to do things because they are within your capacity and because nothing stops you. Whether the the thing stopping you is physical law, paralysis, a tiger, a factory outside your house, a partner or a despotic policeman, the result is the same. And whether you should fight that hurdle to freedom should be determined by whether that freedom is achievable and whether you think you ought to have that freedom, not by whether it is the government you are fighting.
Don't let your directed paranoia dig your grave for you. The colour of law makes humans no more or less human.
Let's say I own the business and I hire you to do a job for me. If you start calling me names or are otherwise disruptive, of course I should be able to fire you: your behavior negatively affects your ability to do your job.
If I call you a cunt then that negatively affects my ability to do your job? Please never hire anyone, as it's often the best people (which I do not claim to be) who throw out the occasional harsh and sometimes well-placed insult and you'll be losing out significantly. If your'e the boss and they never have a bad word to say to your face, it's because they're saying it behind your back.
But, since it wasn't obvious to you from the whole post, the "cunt" was implying some form of criticism and the illustration was that you don't have freedom of speech in the workplace if you cannot criticise your boss without the danger of being fired for it.
Well, I don't know about what rinky-dink backwater nation you come from, but in the US, the government does, in fact, provide food to everybody who needs it.
The catch here is that "need" will be defined in law by a long and bureaucratic set of check boxes rather than by an assessment of whether there is actually a need. For some obscure reason about 10 years ago I ended up helping someone in the US off SSI etc as their health improved and to start up what became a reasonably successful business.
Despite a severe disability from late teens it was several years of effort by friends with professional assistance to get the claim for assistance accepted - this was before I knew them. Medically, of course, the diagnosis had been obvious, but what seemed to matter was the check boxes and the quirks of law, not the opinions and documentation and meetings of specialists.
Yes, the timeframe is different. How is that relevant?
The "somehow" is very relevant to protection of freedoms. Example: assume I am ginger, and because I'm ginger I get skin cancer, and because I have skin cancer my job performance is diminished and I am asked to leave. Even if ginger people are more likely to get skin cancer so the consequence is "somehow eventually" related to my employment termination, this isn't why I was asked to leave: other factors can legitimately be taken into account.
Similarly, assume freedom of speech wrt/ reasonable criticism of boss is protected by law. Just because I've said something which criticises my boss it doesn't mean that I'm immune from firing. My dismissal would only be considered unacceptable if the criticism contributed toward the firing.
As for "eventually", see all the usual arguments for a statute of limitations.
At least you're no longer implying that gravity restricts your freedom.
Of course it restricts your freedom (are you implying that it doesn't?), but it's absurd to expect to achieve freedom from gravity on Earth. It's therefore nonsensical for the law to try to protect that freedom by granting you some right. The government enforces your rights by imposing requirements on how it or other people behave - that's all it can do.
Yes, the government fails to recognize certain rights (notably freedom of association) in some situations (places of public accommodation, workplaces, etc). Again, how is this relevant?
Imagine that I have an Asian partner but am not Asian myself. The freedom for us to associate with each other in places accessible to the public is protected in law. Freedom of association blind to race is way more important than any association rights you think you should have on the basis of being racist, so if you want to set up an establishment accessible to the public then you must respect our decision to associate. Your fallacy here, I think, is assuming that government is the only one giving or taking away freedoms: in fact, as a racist hotel owner who expresses his racism in the selection of clients, you are taking away freedom. So any right to colourblind association makes your behaviour unacceptable.
To think of freedoms only in terms of government enumerations is using the word in the manner that most people use the word.
No, it isn't. It's been hijacked as you describe by some political interests and their adherents in the US, probably the result of propaganda to make people feel more free than they really are. But people build social relationships, personal and business, and that's where the majority of freedoms are granted or restricted.
The First Amendment recognizes a right to speak free of government restriction, which is a political freedom (yes, not an absolute freedom).
Sort of, but in a quite specific sense. This Amendment prevents laws being created which specifically target certain types of speech but it does not prohibit laws (e.g. right to eject trespassers) which have the consequence of restricting speech. It grants no freedom for you which it must then protect. Contrast, say, the freedom to chose who you have sex with: the law considers this a right in the sense that it (i) will protect you if someone tries to rape you or has raped you; (ii) will not routinely entertain laws which have the consequence that rape is sometimes OK. Freedom from rape is protected as a right in the US but freedom of speech is not in general protected as a right in the US (there are only specific cases where it is: in certain federal buildings, by certain state constitutions, religious speech not affecting employability, etc.).
California fails to recognize certain property rights under some circumstances, which allows people to do various speech-related things in more places.
You're spinning it the wrong way. California grants the right to do various speech-related things under some circumstances, which allows people to override what you have termed "certain property rights".
Experiencing a serious consequence "somehow eventually" is not the same thing as being immediately fired for saying something. The determining factor is whether a series of humans have made a series of decisions based on what was perceived to be a freedom. If you want to watch this applied, watch what happens when someone is fired on the basis of gender/race/religion.
If I am not substantially free from the consequences of my speech then I do not have freedom of speech. Perhaps the inability to understand this is why Americans thinks so highly of their First Amendment, which is in fact a right not to be subjected to certain specific sorts of laws rather than a right to any particular freedom.
See e.g. the California constitution for a clause which actually guarantees you a degree of freedom of speech. Then read Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins to find out the consequences.
You're also guilty of doing the assumption thing, in this case assuming that a freedom must apply everywhere and absolutely, when in fact all freedoms exist only to a limited extent and the extent depends on the context. To think of freedoms only in terms of government enumerations is biased and limiting.
In particular, you do not have the freedom to behave as you want in a personal relationship with someone. Your freedom of speech, assembly, press and religion may be restricted by being in a relationship. They are restricted by your partner as a condition of you getting to stay in that relationship. The consequence of breaking the rules may involve sanctions on or abandonment of the relationship by your partner.
What about the rape? A right is a legally enforced defence of a freedom, and the law considers that the woman has a right not to be raped. Because you have no right to free speech, asembly, press, religion while in a relationship, you have no right to resist any sanctions for trying to exercise those non-existent rights. Contrast this with the right to freedom of religion in employment which means that you do have a right to resist being fired for announcing your religion.
Note here that freedom to do something must mean protection from certain negative consequences of doing it - otherwise there's no meaning to freedom (or right) at all.
If you're still not getting it, ask yourself, "Does the US have freedom of speech?" Well, clearly you don't have freedom to speak what you want, because you can't just go anywhere you want and say what you want. A freedom is the power to do something unhindered, and you are clearly hindered from doing it. Maybe you'll want to point at the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." That's not a guarantee of free speech at all, is it? It merely says that no law will be made to abridge it. And a law which incidentally restricts the ability to speak somewhre, e.g. one concerning the right of property owners to eject those who say something disagreeable, is clearly not considered to be "abridging the freedom of speech".
If that wasn't obvious enough, read up on Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins. This highlights the significant difference between the First Amendment and certain states' constitutions' provision of speech/redress rights. Because of the California constitution, people are permitted to walk around certain private property (e.g. shopping centres) to solicit donations, petition signatures, etc. The First Amendment is a right not to have certain laws made, but does not give you the freedom to do anything at all in a general sense. Article 1 of the CA constitution, on the other hand, grants freedoms. Understand?
The right to ones own property (the fruits of ones own labour) is a real right - you can have and enforce that right without violating anyone elses rights.
Almost every social/political/economic system agrees on some notion of property, from Marxist communism with its notions of "personal property" and "private property" to fee simple/temporary IP entitlement/etc of common law nations to childlike Randian possessiveness. The right to own property "without violating anyone else's rights" means everyone agreeing on what is ownable and how ownership is assigned.
Stating that you intend to solve rights issues by declaring property rights is barely a restatement of the problem, not a solution.
And why do I have "no relationship" (perhaps "changed relationship" would sound more reasonable)? Because my boss has decided to change the relationship based my criticising him in speech. And why can he do that? Because I don't have the freedom to speak that criticism.
If you're having trouble understanding this, see the other example I posted where I tell my boss I'm Muslim. Saying that sort of thing is a protected freedom and I cannot generally be fired for it. The law would not make some dumb argument like, "Oh it's not that your employment was denied for your religious speech, it's that your relationship was terminated so you had no business turning up! Who cares why your relationship was terminated?"
Now it might be that the law doesn't give you the right to stay on the premises, instead allowing you to seek redress by other means, but that's a quirk of process. It recognises your freedom to the speech, IOW your right not to be fired as a consequence.
Why did the government force me? Because I was trespassing.
Why were my acts trespass? Because my boss didn't want me working there.
Why didn't he want me working there? Because I called him a cunt.
So, why am I trespassing? Because I called my boss a cunt.
A particular system is chugging along. The new input yesterday is that I called my boss a cunt. The new output is that the government imposes some force on me. The processor of the input is my boss, and the fact he has taken into consideration is that I called him a cunt. What are the other factors you are introducing to this system?
If you think there's something completely absurd in the sequence, consider an example where it is already recognised in law: imagine that instead of calling my boss a cunt, I announced that I'm a Muslim. The next day I'm fired. A week later my ex-boss enjoys a fat lawsuit. Why is that? Because that warmongering womaniser Kennedy decided that American employees should have a lot more freedom of religion than they did before. This by implication includes the right for someone to speak their religious affiliation: I am protected from the consequence of the speech having an audience.
This is freedom of (religious) speech because I can speak it without hindrance or restraint.
If I don't have the right not to be fired for calling you a cunt then in what way do I have the freedom to call you a cunt?
Now everyone everywhere has the unfettered ability to declare in the middle of an isolated forest the need to kill the head of state, for example, but hardly anyone anywhere has the unfettered ability to do the same in the middle of a crowded street. It is the consequence of having an audience that is being punished.
If the consequences for exercising the freedom are potentially serious to my life - in this case because other humans make it so - then I don't have that freedom at all. That the resultant harm is less direct than a government-enforcer immediately coming to my door to beat me up is just part of the blame-passing bureaucracy of modern society, but the effect is the same.
The freedom to do something means the power to do something without hindrance or restraint. The threat of loss of work is a hindrance. Thus it cannot be said that I have freedom of speech wrt/ my boss if I cannot criticise my boss without being fired. It is no different from not being able to insult the head of state with the threat, say, that police protection is withdrawn from my household.
It is intellectually dishonest to see an unambiguous, clear-cut chain of events and announce the cause to be somewhere in the middle of the chain, don't you think?
there is no workable system of protecting all rights, therefore society and government require some rights to be given up. Am I correct in this line of logic?
That's pretty much what I was suggesting in the initial post, yes. No workable society has overarching absolute-anything rights: anyone who claims this is achievable will inevitably be found guilty of narrowly redefining terms (freedom, right, etc.) to hide his intentions.
You can only define some vague beliefs then create a weighted function with input constraints, changing your weights and constraints as society develops in line with the will of either the people or the special interests which gain disproportionate power.
Indeed. The big stories, like the one resulting in a fat Czech getting a fat cheque, sell so many papers that it's worth the libel hit. The only thing the mainstream press are afraid of is insulting someone who might later be their sponsor or have the power to whisper a good word to government.
You've combined some reasonable obervations with some unsound conclusions.
We've seen in the past some alternatives done by people without greed on their mind (at least in the beginning) which then promptly get offered massive sums of money that only an idiot would turn down in exchange for selling out to some big company... which then turns it into exactly what you say.
Yes, except that there is the occasional "idiot" who doesn't sell out. They are the people you don't hear about. By keeping the world talking about the big winners (by some moulded definition of winner), you keep people chasing the dragon. Unfortunately, the guy who remains true to himself tends to get obsoleted by an inferior copy with better marketing, so either way you're fucked:-).
Anarchy doesn't work in efficiently enough to be useful beyond a small size, I challenge you to show me an example of it working.
Trying to engineer a system where power remains as distributed as possible is not anarchy. On the contrary, it requires many rules to prevent power concentrating. The non-cynic would say this was a primary aim of the founders of the US.
Wikipedia is more or less a failure
Wikipedia was, from the start, an MMORPG with Jimbo Wales as monarch. Official and unofficial processes are thoroughly undemocratic and deliberately promote cronyism. Wales is just another businessman-evangelist who has won fame and fortune with false promises and volunteer labour from the faithful. I tip my hat to the bearded embezzling shyster - he really knows his game.
Competition and diversification in our own species is what keeps us from going extinct.
Competition results in consolidation results in globalisation results in one very homogenised planet relying on a few large power structures. This is quite the opposite of the diversification required for survival, where people cooperate independently rather than submit to centralised control.
raping you for EVERYONE elses gain,
Don't believe everything you read. Especially not the propaganda of the winner.
Slashdot Mirror
Is this to be interpreted as a declaration of war on the IMF? Because that was long overdue.
Specifically?
I imagine, given my experience with others who have said a similar thing, that you have some notion of arbitrary right to ownership and/or disposal of *stuff*, and you're assuming that these notions must apply to any definition of property. Since all you've given me so far is "Marxist property concept is self-contradictory" and not told me exactly why you think this, merely suggested that I prove that it isn't, we're not going to get very far. Stop being a coward and present your case.
attempting to break the paradigm by appeal to an edge case.
Reductio is valid logic. If your assertion produces an absurdity then your assertion is wrong.
It's a weapon which cannot even be used in legitimite self-defense, because you cannot limit the damage to your attacker
You cannot "limit the damage to your attacker" with a gun: if you shoot someone with a gun then you should be prepared for them to die. If you have any other understanding of gun use then you should immediately dispose of any guns you have.
inevitably murder many innocents in the process.
Bullshit. If I have a lot of land and a good engineering team, I could design an atomic bomb to destroy, say, an organised gang of trespassers which has moved many miles into my land, but which does not "inevitably murder many innocents". Or maybe I'm just manufacturing atomic bombs for export. What business is it of yours?
the construction of such a device would in fact constitute a massive tort
What is the relationship? What is the duty of care? What is the damage? There is ultrahazardous activity recognised in tort law but that merely identifies who is liable in the event of actual damage. If the mere construction were a massive tort as you describe then it would be unreasonable for the government to build a working atomic bomb near you too.
Furthermore it could easily and reasonably be interpreted as a direct threat to that entire group of people
Now you're getting somewhere. Oh, I interpret the gun you're carrying as a direct threat to me every time you're within shooting distance of me in the street. I interpret the knife you're eating your food with opposite me as very threatening, too. And those nasty words I heard you say a couple of days ago - you didn't actually indicate any intention to do harm, but they sure sounded subversive. If we're using potential intention as a reason to tweak a notion of property, every restriction is on the cards. Woohoo!
Rights are not floating abstractions,
Correct. Rights are entitlements to certain protections enforced by law.
they are practical, powerful observations based on the nature of our own existence as human beings existing in the universe we exist in.
"Rights are powerful observations" simply makes no sense. Perhaps you are trying to say that rights are derived from observations, but I can't see where "practical" would fit in then. As for "the nature of our own existence", is this your nature or my nature you're using? We're both equally human so any conclusion of yours which runs contrary to my nature must be wrong. Or are you like the zealot who assumes that it's not possible to conclude that Jesus doesn't exist, only possible to be in denial / blind to his love / something equally specious?
It's quite simple, and most people get the idea once they've overcome the idealism of youth: property rights exist because they help society function. That is all. Your building an atomic bomb in your back yard does not help society. The fact that socialists think the workers should own the means of production whereas capitalists think that businessmen are better at that sort of thing simply reflects different beliefs about the sort of society each group wants and convictions about
It hasn't failed at all. It's providing a tidy profit for all those who intended to gain from it.
Erm, of course I was expanding on it. A few thousandths of an inch. Hopefully showing how incomplete it is.
The Marxist usage of "property" is only self-contradictory if you assume certain attributes of property which Marx does not. Let's consider another example where you don't just knee-jerk in response to an obvious political opposition:
If you happened to own land with the appropriate natural resources to build a working atomic bomb, should the law permit you to? The answer is, of course, "no". If you answered "yes" you can stop reading here and grow up - Internet libertarian extremism is embarrassing enough and even arch-capitalist Ayn Rand understood this.
But isn't this contradicting property rights? No, and anyone who thinks so has wrongly identified the working definition of property. If you describe your understanding of Marxist property, I can almost guarantee I'll be able to expose a similar mistake.
You're just annoyed because you want words to be redefined to suit your political viewpoint. The technique's as old as the study of rhetoric, several notable regimes of C20 have employed it, and many fictional novels have incorporated it. When an outsider not mired in the doublespeak looks in, he can see it instantly.
The slaves were freed in the sense that they were freed from a certain (depending on which slaves you're talking about) slavery. When you say "the slaves are freed" you don't mean "for all X, every ex-slave has the freedom to do X". I know some disorders make this extremely difficult to understand, but context is important. There's no absolute freedom vs no-freedom. There is just freedom to do X in situation Y.
Summary of lesson: If no context is stated, it is because it is implicit, not because it doesn't exist.
void *myHeap = (free(malloc( get_version() * 100 * MEG )), &myHeap);
Did I do it right? One word should be enough for any man.
In the event that the outcome goes the wrong way, all that's needed is for enough campaign groups on both sides of the political spectrum to encourage their supporters to routinely record the police whenever they see them, providing they are in groups of more than some particular size and providing their camera streams to a remote server.
R v Sussex Justices, ex parte McCarthy brought the saying to English law that it is not enough that justice must be done - it must also be seen to be done. The principle is about impartiality and appeared before video cameras, but surely preventing or destroying any recording of a police officer acting in public under colour of law is, "creat[ing] a suspicion that there has been an improper interference with the course of justice."
Your logic is flawed. I didn't say that people must fire someone who behaves disruptively, I said they had the right to make that choice.
You said: "If you start calling me names [...] your behavior negatively affects your ability to do your job." This is what I was disputing. Say you're my boss and normally we get along. One day you do something really dickish and I call you out for it as I see it, my straight talking might be beneficial to you and/or the organisation.
Your logic is flawed again. Just because your friend faced bureaucratic hurdles with one form of assistance doesn't mean he was deprived of his "right to eat".
Contrary to what people seem to think, many social welfare programmes today are not means-based, rather behaviour-based - the problem is far more apparent today than 2-3 decades ago. So the checkbox bureaucracy determines you can do X then says that you will not be helped further because you should be doing X instead. X may be a work-related programme which your doctors agree is inappropriate or impossible for you but which the bureaucracy says you can do: see the PRWORA 1996. Similar restrictions have appeared in the UK over the last decade.
(Well, it's worse than that: the government contracts medicals out to private companies which send underqualified staff to examine patients for complex conditions which they do not understand. Contracts are renewed on the basis that the company will determine some proportion of people healthy rather than by actually treating each case on its merits. But descriptions of this corruption fill thousands of pages on the Internet.)
plus private and charitable sources of food as well.
The possibility that you might receive something is not the same as the right to receive it. I'm not sure why people find it so hard to understand the difference - I'll give an example from another area in case it helps. Say you return to your house and see what looks to be a burglar in the window. You have the right to call on police assistance to apprehend the burglar while he's still in your house, but when the burglar runs out the back and into his motorcycle with your jewellery, you don't have the right to compensation.
That's geopolitical consultant, you insensitive clod ;-). Pushing for the downfall of a superpower so you can flood a desperate, depressed region with tobacco - you've got to hand it to her, she's worse than any fictional supervillain.
Ken Clarke's achievement is almost more disturbing, as he went from being a pro-tobacco health secretary (the competition in the NHS which the BMA have just spoken up against, again, started with him) to 10 years as a director of British-American Tobacco before making a return into today's government. The only problem he had with Thatcher was that he never had the chance to take over her position. Some people regard him as a more moderate and reasonable Tory; I regard him as one of the most clever but most nasty.
By sufficiently dogmatic philosophising, everything which happened a moment ago is the cause of everything which happens now, and so on as far back as you want. So if you like you can throw your arms up in fatalistic impotence.
The test here is much simpler: "Are you significantly adversely affected in context X as a direct result of doing Y?" If yes, then you don't have the freedom in context X to do Y.
Consider an example of a freedom you have:
Let X be employment.
For Y being certain religious speech, Y is a protected freedom.
Unlike you, the law is mature enough to be able to conclude that you were fired because your boss heard you express a religious view at the bar without panicking that this means someone's birth has to be blamed. If it makes this conclusion, the firing is determined to be illegal. There's your freedom protected by a right.
In what world (but the US) is "people in the US who agree with my political stance" equivalent to "most people"?
The latest Oxford Pocket Dictionary of Current English is quite clear about the currently understood notion of freedom: the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint.
(Recall that English is descriptivist. This definition, especially in this dictionary, comes from observing real usage.)
Note the absence of "as listed by government". It is thoroughly dangerous to try to redefine freedom in this way. You are free to do things because they are within your capacity and because nothing stops you. Whether the the thing stopping you is physical law, paralysis, a tiger, a factory outside your house, a partner or a despotic policeman, the result is the same. And whether you should fight that hurdle to freedom should be determined by whether that freedom is achievable and whether you think you ought to have that freedom, not by whether it is the government you are fighting.
Don't let your directed paranoia dig your grave for you. The colour of law makes humans no more or less human.
Let's say I own the business and I hire you to do a job for me. If you start calling me names or are otherwise disruptive, of course I should be able to fire you: your behavior negatively affects your ability to do your job.
If I call you a cunt then that negatively affects my ability to do your job? Please never hire anyone, as it's often the best people (which I do not claim to be) who throw out the occasional harsh and sometimes well-placed insult and you'll be losing out significantly. If your'e the boss and they never have a bad word to say to your face, it's because they're saying it behind your back.
But, since it wasn't obvious to you from the whole post, the "cunt" was implying some form of criticism and the illustration was that you don't have freedom of speech in the workplace if you cannot criticise your boss without the danger of being fired for it.
Well, I don't know about what rinky-dink backwater nation you come from, but in the US, the government does, in fact, provide food to everybody who needs it.
The catch here is that "need" will be defined in law by a long and bureaucratic set of check boxes rather than by an assessment of whether there is actually a need. For some obscure reason about 10 years ago I ended up helping someone in the US off SSI etc as their health improved and to start up what became a reasonably successful business.
Despite a severe disability from late teens it was several years of effort by friends with professional assistance to get the claim for assistance accepted - this was before I knew them. Medically, of course, the diagnosis had been obvious, but what seemed to matter was the check boxes and the quirks of law, not the opinions and documentation and meetings of specialists.
Thanks for playing.
Yes, the timeframe is different. How is that relevant?
The "somehow" is very relevant to protection of freedoms. Example: assume I am ginger, and because I'm ginger I get skin cancer, and because I have skin cancer my job performance is diminished and I am asked to leave. Even if ginger people are more likely to get skin cancer so the consequence is "somehow eventually" related to my employment termination, this isn't why I was asked to leave: other factors can legitimately be taken into account.
Similarly, assume freedom of speech wrt/ reasonable criticism of boss is protected by law. Just because I've said something which criticises my boss it doesn't mean that I'm immune from firing. My dismissal would only be considered unacceptable if the criticism contributed toward the firing.
As for "eventually", see all the usual arguments for a statute of limitations.
At least you're no longer implying that gravity restricts your freedom.
Of course it restricts your freedom (are you implying that it doesn't?), but it's absurd to expect to achieve freedom from gravity on Earth. It's therefore nonsensical for the law to try to protect that freedom by granting you some right. The government enforces your rights by imposing requirements on how it or other people behave - that's all it can do.
Yes, the government fails to recognize certain rights (notably freedom of association) in some situations (places of public accommodation, workplaces, etc). Again, how is this relevant?
Imagine that I have an Asian partner but am not Asian myself. The freedom for us to associate with each other in places accessible to the public is protected in law. Freedom of association blind to race is way more important than any association rights you think you should have on the basis of being racist, so if you want to set up an establishment accessible to the public then you must respect our decision to associate. Your fallacy here, I think, is assuming that government is the only one giving or taking away freedoms: in fact, as a racist hotel owner who expresses his racism in the selection of clients, you are taking away freedom. So any right to colourblind association makes your behaviour unacceptable.
To think of freedoms only in terms of government enumerations is using the word in the manner that most people use the word.
No, it isn't. It's been hijacked as you describe by some political interests and their adherents in the US, probably the result of propaganda to make people feel more free than they really are. But people build social relationships, personal and business, and that's where the majority of freedoms are granted or restricted.
The First Amendment recognizes a right to speak free of government restriction, which is a political freedom (yes, not an absolute freedom).
Sort of, but in a quite specific sense. This Amendment prevents laws being created which specifically target certain types of speech but it does not prohibit laws (e.g. right to eject trespassers) which have the consequence of restricting speech. It grants no freedom for you which it must then protect. Contrast, say, the freedom to chose who you have sex with: the law considers this a right in the sense that it (i) will protect you if someone tries to rape you or has raped you; (ii) will not routinely entertain laws which have the consequence that rape is sometimes OK. Freedom from rape is protected as a right in the US but freedom of speech is not in general protected as a right in the US (there are only specific cases where it is: in certain federal buildings, by certain state constitutions, religious speech not affecting employability, etc.).
California fails to recognize certain property rights under some circumstances, which allows people to do various speech-related things in more places.
You're spinning it the wrong way. California grants the right to do various speech-related things under some circumstances, which allows people to override what you have termed "certain property rights".
Experiencing a serious consequence "somehow eventually" is not the same thing as being immediately fired for saying something. The determining factor is whether a series of humans have made a series of decisions based on what was perceived to be a freedom. If you want to watch this applied, watch what happens when someone is fired on the basis of gender/race/religion.
If I am not substantially free from the consequences of my speech then I do not have freedom of speech. Perhaps the inability to understand this is why Americans thinks so highly of their First Amendment, which is in fact a right not to be subjected to certain specific sorts of laws rather than a right to any particular freedom.
See e.g. the California constitution for a clause which actually guarantees you a degree of freedom of speech. Then read Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins to find out the consequences.
You're also guilty of doing the assumption thing, in this case assuming that a freedom must apply everywhere and absolutely, when in fact all freedoms exist only to a limited extent and the extent depends on the context. To think of freedoms only in terms of government enumerations is biased and limiting.
In particular, you do not have the freedom to behave as you want in a personal relationship with someone. Your freedom of speech, assembly, press and religion may be restricted by being in a relationship. They are restricted by your partner as a condition of you getting to stay in that relationship. The consequence of breaking the rules may involve sanctions on or abandonment of the relationship by your partner.
What about the rape? A right is a legally enforced defence of a freedom, and the law considers that the woman has a right not to be raped. Because you have no right to free speech, asembly, press, religion while in a relationship, you have no right to resist any sanctions for trying to exercise those non-existent rights. Contrast this with the right to freedom of religion in employment which means that you do have a right to resist being fired for announcing your religion.
Note here that freedom to do something must mean protection from certain negative consequences of doing it - otherwise there's no meaning to freedom (or right) at all.
If you're still not getting it, ask yourself, "Does the US have freedom of speech?" Well, clearly you don't have freedom to speak what you want, because you can't just go anywhere you want and say what you want. A freedom is the power to do something unhindered, and you are clearly hindered from doing it. Maybe you'll want to point at the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech." That's not a guarantee of free speech at all, is it? It merely says that no law will be made to abridge it. And a law which incidentally restricts the ability to speak somewhre, e.g. one concerning the right of property owners to eject those who say something disagreeable, is clearly not considered to be "abridging the freedom of speech".
If that wasn't obvious enough, read up on Pruneyard Shopping Center v. Robins. This highlights the significant difference between the First Amendment and certain states' constitutions' provision of speech/redress rights. Because of the California constitution, people are permitted to walk around certain private property (e.g. shopping centres) to solicit donations, petition signatures, etc. The First Amendment is a right not to have certain laws made, but does not give you the freedom to do anything at all in a general sense. Article 1 of the CA constitution, on the other hand, grants freedoms. Understand?
The right to ones own property (the fruits of ones own labour) is a real right - you can have and enforce that right without violating anyone elses rights.
Almost every social/political/economic system agrees on some notion of property, from Marxist communism with its notions of "personal property" and "private property" to fee simple/temporary IP entitlement/etc of common law nations to childlike Randian possessiveness. The right to own property "without violating anyone else's rights" means everyone agreeing on what is ownable and how ownership is assigned.
Stating that you intend to solve rights issues by declaring property rights is barely a restatement of the problem, not a solution.
And why do I have "no relationship" (perhaps "changed relationship" would sound more reasonable)? Because my boss has decided to change the relationship based my criticising him in speech. And why can he do that? Because I don't have the freedom to speak that criticism.
If you're having trouble understanding this, see the other example I posted where I tell my boss I'm Muslim. Saying that sort of thing is a protected freedom and I cannot generally be fired for it. The law would not make some dumb argument like, "Oh it's not that your employment was denied for your religious speech, it's that your relationship was terminated so you had no business turning up! Who cares why your relationship was terminated?"
Now it might be that the law doesn't give you the right to stay on the premises, instead allowing you to seek redress by other means, but that's a quirk of process. It recognises your freedom to the speech, IOW your right not to be fired as a consequence.
Why did the government force me?
Because I was trespassing.
Why were my acts trespass?
Because my boss didn't want me working there.
Why didn't he want me working there?
Because I called him a cunt.
So, why am I trespassing?
Because I called my boss a cunt.
A particular system is chugging along. The new input yesterday is that I called my boss a cunt. The new output is that the government imposes some force on me. The processor of the input is my boss, and the fact he has taken into consideration is that I called him a cunt. What are the other factors you are introducing to this system?
If you think there's something completely absurd in the sequence, consider an example where it is already recognised in law: imagine that instead of calling my boss a cunt, I announced that I'm a Muslim. The next day I'm fired. A week later my ex-boss enjoys a fat lawsuit. Why is that? Because that warmongering womaniser Kennedy decided that American employees should have a lot more freedom of religion than they did before. This by implication includes the right for someone to speak their religious affiliation: I am protected from the consequence of the speech having an audience.
This is freedom of (religious) speech because I can speak it without hindrance or restraint.
If I don't have the right not to be fired for calling you a cunt then in what way do I have the freedom to call you a cunt?
Now everyone everywhere has the unfettered ability to declare in the middle of an isolated forest the need to kill the head of state, for example, but hardly anyone anywhere has the unfettered ability to do the same in the middle of a crowded street. It is the consequence of having an audience that is being punished.
If the consequences for exercising the freedom are potentially serious to my life - in this case because other humans make it so - then I don't have that freedom at all. That the resultant harm is less direct than a government-enforcer immediately coming to my door to beat me up is just part of the blame-passing bureaucracy of modern society, but the effect is the same.
The freedom to do something means the power to do something without hindrance or restraint. The threat of loss of work is a hindrance. Thus it cannot be said that I have freedom of speech wrt/ my boss if I cannot criticise my boss without being fired. It is no different from not being able to insult the head of state with the threat, say, that police protection is withdrawn from my household.
You may proceed by equivocation ;-).
It is intellectually dishonest to see an unambiguous, clear-cut chain of events and announce the cause to be somewhere in the middle of the chain, don't you think?
there is no workable system of protecting all rights, therefore society and government require some rights to be given up. Am I correct in this line of logic?
That's pretty much what I was suggesting in the initial post, yes. No workable society has overarching absolute-anything rights: anyone who claims this is achievable will inevitably be found guilty of narrowly redefining terms (freedom, right, etc.) to hide his intentions.
You can only define some vague beliefs then create a weighted function with input constraints, changing your weights and constraints as society develops in line with the will of either the people or the special interests which gain disproportionate power.
Indeed. The big stories, like the one resulting in a fat Czech getting a fat cheque, sell so many papers that it's worth the libel hit. The only thing the mainstream press are afraid of is insulting someone who might later be their sponsor or have the power to whisper a good word to government.
You've combined some reasonable obervations with some unsound conclusions.
We've seen in the past some alternatives done by people without greed on their mind (at least in the beginning) which then promptly get offered massive sums of money that only an idiot would turn down in exchange for selling out to some big company ... which then turns it into exactly what you say.
Yes, except that there is the occasional "idiot" who doesn't sell out. They are the people you don't hear about. By keeping the world talking about the big winners (by some moulded definition of winner), you keep people chasing the dragon. Unfortunately, the guy who remains true to himself tends to get obsoleted by an inferior copy with better marketing, so either way you're fucked :-).
Anarchy doesn't work in efficiently enough to be useful beyond a small size, I challenge you to show me an example of it working.
Trying to engineer a system where power remains as distributed as possible is not anarchy. On the contrary, it requires many rules to prevent power concentrating. The non-cynic would say this was a primary aim of the founders of the US.
Wikipedia is more or less a failure
Wikipedia was, from the start, an MMORPG with Jimbo Wales as monarch. Official and unofficial processes are thoroughly undemocratic and deliberately promote cronyism. Wales is just another businessman-evangelist who has won fame and fortune with false promises and volunteer labour from the faithful. I tip my hat to the bearded embezzling shyster - he really knows his game.
Competition and diversification in our own species is what keeps us from going extinct.
Competition results in consolidation results in globalisation results in one very homogenised planet relying on a few large power structures. This is quite the opposite of the diversification required for survival, where people cooperate independently rather than submit to centralised control.
raping you for EVERYONE elses gain,
Don't believe everything you read. Especially not the propaganda of the winner.