Re: "Rigid Class System in Europe" Bob Roll Comments

Simon Brooke wrote:
in message <1156900460.276515.66270@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Pudd'nhead Wilson ('gwhite@xxxxxx') wrote:

Simon Brooke wrote:

I think you are a positivist and a utilitarian.

Then you are mistaken, but that's your problem not mine.

Well I add irrationalist too, at this point.

As a matter of fact, I utterly refute that there is any 'right' either
to life or to property.

Oh, but you say you have a "right" to other's money to pay your medical
bills.

Where did I say that, or anything remotely like it?

That what socialized medicine is.

SB> "Remember: it's significantly cheaper to run - Britain spends
significantly less of GNP on health care - than the US. If it breaks
down - and it isn't going to happen any time soon - that will be
because
of political buffoonery and incompetence, not because of anything wrong

with the concept."

One thing wrong with the concept is it is based on theft of rightfully
acquired property.

I said that a system
of socialised medicine was /more/ /efficient/ (in unit cost per health
outcome terms). It is 'better' because it is more efficient.

Compared to what?! There are no comparisons to any
modernized/industrialized geographic area with no government
(anarcho-capitalist, anarcho-libertarian, law-and-order anarchism,
etc.). The US "system" is so highly interfered with by government it
is worthless in that way. Furthermore, the idea that socializing
anything is "efficient" is without any rational basis. Socializing
means the "producers" get a fixed amount of the pie, no matter what is
valued or how it is produced. How that could possibly be "efficient" is
a stretch of logic so far that logic loses its meaning.

That doesn't mean it's a right, it only means that it works better.

So you believe. Suppose there was a true modern industrialized
anarchist society to compare against, and by some method of calculation
it cost $100 to set a broken leg in a commie society, and $200 to do
the same job in the anarchist society. This is not a statement of
efficiency because it exists in isolation by arbitrary subjective
valuation. The anarchists might prefer Twinkies to setting broken
legs, and Twinkies might cost less in the anarchist society. You can
make societal statistics and a aggregates look however you want. Many
of those statistics are produced with assets seized by The State.
Moreover, "efficiency" as used by most people implies the value
judgement of "wealth maximization," which has its own set of problems.

There is a calculator made just for you:
http://www.mises.org/store/Mises-Calculator-P293C0.aspx

According to you, I can take anything you hold, including your
life, with no compunction, because you have no rights.

No, I didn't say that, and you can't.

Sheesh! Well I don't have the time. Here is a few ideas from someone
else:

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/nine.asp

And no matter how you wish to avoid it, the practice of "right to
oneself/property" (in varying degrees) permeates every culture on
earth. As best I can see, it is a universal human meme. It is an
empirical fact. It is in the nature of the human individual to want
and seek freedom, and with that comes property. No one can seek
freedom and voluntarily be a slave simultaneously.

You can't because there is a
sufficiently powerful group which share common interests with me (viz:
we want to keep our property) that we can successfully oppose you. This
group has hegemonised its interest into the laws of the state. But it
isn't a right, it's simply the interest of a powerful constituency. If
the constituency of the propertyless becomes more powerful than the
constituency of the propertied, then you have the French Revolution and,
in the short term, all of us property owners lose our heads.

Who is propertyless? How many are naked aside from newborn babies?

So it's in the interest of property owners to prevent property ownership
from becoming too polarised. A large constituency of small property
owners is more powerful than a small constituency of large property
owners.

We don't have a 'right' to it.

Um, according to natural rights law theory, you have a right to an
*independent* life.

Yes, but the 'theory' is meaningless hand-waving.

Um, it is actually practiced (empirical) in varying degrees. It is in
front of your face and you don't see it. It also seems to be most in
alignment with how life observably works: individual liberty ("right")
results in broad experimentation and thus progress. Socialism is not
in alignment. Socialism drives towards non-experimentation and
homogenization. It is a destroyer of diversity and thus progress. Why
socialists call themselves "progressive" is one of the grand mysteries
of politics.

Property, on the other hand, is purely artificial:
merely a mechanism locking in privilege.

You've done nothing to justify your assertion it is "privilege." There
is no "privilege" impled by property, and you haven't shown in any way
why this would be so. You've only made empty claims about power and
hegemony.

If I climb a tree and pick an apple, on what possible basis is
acquiring, by my own work, the apple as my property a "privilege?" What
on earth granted this "privilege?"

It is self-serving hegemony in its rawest and least
attractive form.

So you prefer theft?

No, I prefer property.

Apparently not.

Note, of course, that while property is theft, theft is also property.

This makes no sense. If I work -- by mutual agreement -- and obtain
dollars for my efforts, by what twisted logic did I steal my dollars?
By the same token, whatever I acquire with those dollars by mutual
agreement is also not stolen. "Property is theft" is some slogan
handed out by socialists/statists, not one worthy of repeating, even on
the usenet.

You "should" hold on (from subsequent theft) to your property because
to act otherwise is to act irrationally (that is, if you accept your
ideology is based on reason). After all, you wouldn't go to the
trouble of acquiring it in the first place otherwise.

Now if you think that life is self-destructive, and not affirming, then
simply say "might makes right," and thus I can kill you with impunity.
Why, under your ideology, would killing you be wrong?

I cannot see any reason why shooting someone in the back of the head,
causing instantaneous death without suffering, would be a wrong done to
the person shot.

Well now we are getting somewhere. Wow!

It would be a wrong done to the material dependents of
the person shot, and it would be a wrong done to the friends and
colleagues of the person shot. Consequently, again, we're (almost) all
members of a constituency which opposes arbitrary killing, and that
constituency would stop you or bring sanctions against you; and again,
the interests of this constituency are typically hegemonised into state
laws. But, again, we oppose arbitrary killing because we can, not
because we should.

Might may not make right, but in the end it's all we have.

It is merely your conception of what you believe you see.

Any rights theory really comes down to consensual
acceptance of a single non-human authority, and, in a
multi-faith world, we don't have one.

It is true that in older natural rights/law theory, the thinkers did
include language of a "God." However, a deity is unnecessary to the
theory, and more modern readings would reveal this to you.

Call me old fashioned if you will, but given a choice between $DEITY
and hand-waving, I'll choose $DEITY. Descartes tried to argue from
first principles to the existence of $DEITY; arguments from first
principles to the assertion of particular, specific 'rights' are
equally vacuous.

A great philosopher, among and including *all* the other great
philosohers, tried and failed to "nail it shut." That should teach you
something. You think someone can write you a map to life with
language. It cannot be done at the deepest level.

Suppose I agree with you on this. Now, take me from the point where you
claim that /nothing/ can be proved by reasoning,...

What the hell? Where did I ever say nothing could be reasoned out?

... to the point where you prove that some
specific rights exist, and that you can know what they
are.

I don't know that I claimed it could be proven. I think I said it
could not due to the limitations of language.

Anything /does/ go. It's tough, but that's life.

I'm not denying that societies find ways to regulate themselves, but
that's a very different thing from asserting that there is some
principled or objective basis on which this is done. In practice,
powerful groups make rules to defend their interests - and 'property'
is a perfect example of that.

Actually, property is perhaps the only exception. But I'm not talking
about something like Columbus landing on the beach and claiming a
continent as the property of Spain. That is ridiculous.

As best as I have been able to tell, individual liberty is the only
thing thing that seems to be a candidate for objectivity. It seems to
be a life affirming concept (anti-destructive), and there would lie its
possible objectivity.

I can conceive no more perfect example of a vacuous argument than that.
Why is 'life affirmingness' any more interesting, logically, than any
other property? What is 'life affirmingness' and how is it measured?
Hand waving is not philosophy, it's rhetoric.

If you care nothing of science, I can see your point. But you are left
with nothing to talk about but an endless sequence of irrational
non-sequiturs. This would make you no different than a beast. You may
as well bark.

Science is an incomplete but rational study of the nature of our world.
The study of the world includes a study of life and our place in it.
The rejection of natural law is a rejection of rationality, because it
is nothing but the science of our nature. That is why you are a
positivist, and worse an irrationalist. I, on the other hand, am
merely pointing out my observations.

It is not clear how the greatest good for the greatest number could
even be ascertained, and despite the cloak, it is entirely a value
judgement, since we don't know which good is the right good, and we
don't have infinite time and resources to figure it out (scarcity is
real; life is heuristic).

Here we're in total agreement: the point where utilitarianism breaks down
is the point at which we try to assign objective measures to 'good'. So
long as, within a given community, there are fairly consensual
understandings of what is considered 'good', utilitarianism kind-of
works as a pragmatic approach to resource distribution. But as a grand
over-arching principle, it is ultimately broken.

And where is the base of values for summum
bonum? (You are back at square one -- where is *your* treatise?)
Moreover, the judgements will invariably come down to temporal special
interests and their minions. The greatest good for the greatest number
could destroy the individual liberty and chances of the next Gauss. It
is bad. Utilitarianism, as most often represented, is decidely not
objective. It is riddled with subjective value judgements.

I don't much, either, but I am reminded of what
Churchill had to say about democracy.

Since I don't want a government

You want property. How is property to be maintained without a government?

People maintain and create property by effort. No effort, no property.
Property boundary (definition) can also be maintained simply by
agreement. (For example, we could simply agree that the bike in your
garage is your's, and the one in my garage, mine. We would also be
agreeing on the garages.)

Government makes things worse and supports non-rightful claims to
property by threat and actual violent force. That is a big argument
against government, maybe the biggest.

I liked VD's comments about government intrusion:

"One last comment re Sheldon's observation that some leftists consider
property to be an opressive concept.

I can see how some might believe that (though I of course disagree),
since currently property as we understand it is enforced by government
force and not primarily by moral sanction.

And one who believes that property equals oppression might logically
think that the solution to 'property oppression' is to have government
employ force to PREVENT anyone from owning property.

However, we know that the real solution is natural property rights,
conferred by homestead or legitimate trade, secured by moral sanction,
following the principle of non-aggression.

For the utilitarians, one result of this may be that many, many acres
of land now held by wealthy people and corporations would be released
for use by others, since much of it, especially large, remote,
undeveloped parcels will be uneconomic to maintain or defend absent
government force.

It is likely that only active use of the land will justify the
insurance, defense, and maintainance expenditures under that system,
the kind of use that would tend to favor individual and cooperative
users.

On a utility basis then, the effect of a liberal order of land
ownership might resemble the INTENDED order of the Mutualists /
Georgists, while also having the low oppression quotient intended by
the property prohibitionists."
Posted by: Vince Daliessio at August 30, 2006 12:49 PM
http://blog.mises.org/archives/005542.asp

I would also point out that the biggest illegitimate holder of property
is governments. There would be much more land available for
homesteading if government was abolished.

Why, by a hegemonistic claim of 'right'. What if the unpropertied masses
dispute that 'right'?

Who is unpropertied?

Hegemony only works when you have power. Weapons
make power, if you have a monopoly of them.

This is rather pointless in context of the argument.

So either you form a
coalition with the other people who have weapons, or you go under.

Forming a cooperative defense (coalition) is per se neither hegemonic,
nor government.

Once you have a coalition of the powerful
dictating the distribution of
resources, then you have government.

{laughs} Well I do agree. {laughs}

But you can't have 'rights' without government, unless those 'rights' are
merely empty words.

This is a fictional statement. It is as if you believe government was
somehow created anterior to human society and somehow bestows upon its
*subjects* all rights and privileges. You have the cart before the
horse, so I see your confusion. Governments get created by a few
humans, not the reverse. You confuse government with society, so you
are inevitably a statist.

.