Standing naked on my property

[Selene]

Many have opined that two (2) concepts in law address this issue:

Malum in se

An innately immoral act, regardless of whether it is forbidden by law. Examples include adultery, theft, and murder. See, e.g. United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321 (1998).

and malum prohibitum:

Malum prohibitum (plural mala prohibita, literal translation: "wrong [as or because] prohibited") is a Latin phrase used in law to refer to conduct that constitutes an unlawful act only by virtue of statute,[1] as opposed to conduct evil in and of itself, or malum in se.[2]

Conduct that is so clearly violative of society's standards for allowable conduct that it is illegal under English common law is usually regarded as malum in se. An offense that is malum prohibitum may not appear on the face to directly violate moral standards. The distinction between these two cases is discussed in State of Washington v. Thaddius X. Anderson:[3]

Criminal offenses can be broken down into two general categories malum in se and malum prohibitum. The distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum offenses is best characterized as follows: a malum in se offense is "naturally evil as adjudged by the sense of a civilized community," whereas a malum prohibitum offense is wrong only because a statute makes it so. State v. Horton, 139 N.C. 588, 51 S.E. 945, 946 (1905).

"Public welfare offenses" are a subset of malum prohibitum offenses as they are typically regulatory in nature and often "'result in no direct or immediate injury to person or property but merely create the danger or probability of it which the law seeks to minimize.'" Bash, 130 Wn.2d at 607 (quoting Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 255-56, 72 S. Ct. 240, 96 L. Ed. 288 (1952)); see also State v. Carty, 27 Wn. App. 715, 717, 620 P.2d 137 (1980).

[Wolf DeVoon]

 

Many have opined that two (2) concepts in law address this issue:

 

Malum in se

An innately immoral act, regardless of whether it is forbidden by law. Examples include adultery, theft, and murder. See, e.g. United States v. Bajakajian, 524 U.S. 321 (1998).

 

and malum prohibitum:

 

Malum prohibitum (plural mala prohibita, literal translation: "wrong [as or because] prohibited") is a Latin phrase used in law to refer to conduct that constitutes an unlawful act only by virtue of statute,[1] as opposed to conduct evil in and of itself, or malum in se.[2]

Conduct that is so clearly violative of society's standards for allowable conduct that it is illegal under English common law is usually regarded as malum in se. An offense that is malum prohibitum may not appear on the face to directly violate moral standards. The distinction between these two cases is discussed in State of Washington v. Thaddius X. Anderson:[3]

 

 

Criminal offenses can be broken down into two general categories malum in se and malum prohibitum. The distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum offenses is best characterized as follows: a malum in se offense is "naturally evil as adjudged by the sense of a civilized community," whereas a malum prohibitum offense is wrong only because a statute makes it so. State v. Horton, 139 N.C. 588, 51 S.E. 945, 946 (1905).

"Public welfare offenses" are a subset of malum prohibitum offenses as they are typically regulatory in nature and often "'result in no direct or immediate injury to person or property but merely create the danger or probability of it which the law seeks to minimize.'" Bash, 130 Wn.2d at 607 (quoting Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 255-56, 72 S. Ct. 240, 96 L. Ed. 288 (1952)); see also State v. Carty, 27 Wn. App. 715, 717, 620 P.2d 137 (1980).

 

 

Notwithstanding the foregoing, the matter of choosing one's course in life trumps received morality and codified legislation. I could have been a union machinist (perfectly legal and morally upright) or a gay blade like Joel Osteen (also legal and widely admired as a paragon of virtue) or maybe a Citadel HFT "dark pool" government relations K Street lobbyist...

 

 

...but, no, I had to walk to hell and back, for a new theory of justice. How stupid is that?

[Mikee]

"...but, no, I had to walk to hell and back, for a new theory of justice. How stupid is that?"

What the hell are you talking about? Do I detect self-pity?... I get that you wrote some books, evidently didn't take the world by storm (true also of Ayn Rand). You aren't going to invent human nature, only discover it like everything else in nature. Proof that you got it wrong is a good thing, it's called progress.

[Wolf DeVoon]

I didn't say I achieved anything worthwhile, Mikee. You pays your money and takes your chances.

6.5 million copies of The Fountainhead, 10 million copies of Atlas Shrugged.

[Selene]

I don't know about you, however your work meant a lot to me.

You may not remember that you were the first person on OL to message me when I joined.

And then you vanished and, frankly, a lot of us at OL were quire concerned about you.

Finally, if you can sleep at night because you followed your dream, that is a life that is full.

No one said it was easy.

I would have certain students bring in their birth certificates to class and I would ask them where the "fairness doctrine" was on the certificate.

You can put your head on the pillow at night and say well done.

A...

well done...

[Brant Gaede]

I didn't say I achieved anything worthwhile, Mikee. You pays your money and takes your chances.

Success is what ends up in your head. It should then travel existentially if all is right in the world, but if it doesn't or hasn't yet it doesn't necessarily mean you're a victim from its existential lack. Refusing to be a victim, usually an option, to the extent possible, is a great success in and of itself. It frees you up.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

I would have certain students bring in their birth certificates to class and I would ask them where the "fairness doctrine" was on the certificate.

:laugh:

I laugh easily I guess, especially legal humor.

[Mikee]

I didn't say I achieved anything worthwhile, Mikee. You pays your money and takes your chances.

6.5 million copies of The Fountainhead, 10 million copies of Atlas Shrugged.

The fact that I like you means more to me than how many books you sold. I've been wondering why I never heard of you before given I've read a lot of the libertarian, anarchist, objectivist literature over the last 40-50 years. Turns out I have heard of you once before. I searched RoR and found a single post of yours. It was in October 2005 and was sanctioned by one person only. I clicked the check mark (sanction) and got this: "You already voted on this one". So, that person was me. Good start. Though sometimes you remind me of the stray cat I've been feeding for the last two years, every time I bring him his food he hisses.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Hey!

I just went to that link and was reminded of the phrase: doubleplusgood ducktalker Objectivists. Robert Campbell explained what that means:

"Doubleplusgood duckspeaker" (I believe that's the correct form, not "ducktalker") means something in Orwellian Newspeak.

Doubleplusgood is Newspeak for "best." A duckspeaker is one who can quack out the party line without needing to think consciously about what he or she is saying.

Michael

[Selene]

I didn't say I achieved anything worthwhile, Mikee. You pays your money and takes your chances.

6.5 million copies of The Fountainhead, 10 million copies of Atlas Shrugged.

Good start. Though sometimes you remind me of the stray cat I've been feeding for the last two years, every time I bring him his food he hisses.

Mikee:

Excellently expressed.

I have had that experience with cats and dogs [i so wanted to add here - especially when it's pouring].

I think it is the feral part of the animal and kinda an automatic hard wired warning.

A...

OMG Phil - He is another person that is amusing to have around, especially when you

become immune to his nannyisms.

[Mikee]

Yes, the "feral" and "automatic hard wired" parts are the sane parts. It's insane to trust a human being.

[Selene]

Yes, the "feral" and "automatic hard wired" parts are the sane parts. It's insane to trust a human being.

Yes, the "feral" and "automatic hard wired" parts are the sane parts. It's insane to trust a human being.

Especially if the human is a politician, or, certain Federal workers.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Good start.

Hah. Good finish.

Like so many men he found that he had only one or two ideas -- that his little collection of pamphlets

contained the germ of all he would ever think or know. (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night)

[Mikee]

Good start.

Hah. Good finish.

Like so many men he found that he had only one or two ideas -- that his little collection of pamphlets

contained the germ of all he would ever think or know. (F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is The Night)

[Wolf DeVoon]

It's becoming more difficult to open your posts.

[Samson Corwell]

A right is a "a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way." Rights were enjoyed by the citizens and Athens and Rome. They were not universal rights because they did not apply to slaves or women or non-citizens. (See the aforementioned reference.) But much the same was true of the U.S. until modern times. Would we say the landowners of Virginia in 1800 did not have rights?

Quoting a dictionary definition makes for a terrible argument. One anarcho-capitalist I talked to on Facebook tried to claim the same thing, saying that the notion of rights has been around as long as the concepts of right and wrong. It's shot full of more holes than aerogel. It's a dreadfully transparent attempt at equivocation, basically making all permissions equivalent to some sort of "right".

Talk your average person about legal topics and you'll probably find that little of their thought on it is in terms of rights. How often is it that you hear people shouting "He violated that lady's rights." when they're protesting a murderer? Two people who I've chatted with, namely a conservative Christian and an anarchist, have offered novel views on the matter. The conservative claimed that it was the replacement of laws with the idea of rights that lead to the chaos following the Age of Enlightenment. Prior to the Enlightenment, he said, people were more concerned about the guidelines that they had to observe rather than what they were entitled to do. It was with "rights" that they became gutsier, one thing leads to another, and you get the World Wars, the Holocaust, and so forth. Reminds me of this scene from The Adjustment Bureau.

The anarchist held that rights weren't a good basis for politics. His position was that, in effect, rights were nothing but concessions from the people in power. Accepting these rights necessitated accepting the authority of the people in power.

To state that rights did not come into existence until 1400 is to ignore centuries of Roman law, English common law, and the Magna Carta (1215).

The Romans absolutely did not have the concept of rights. The notion of the person as disseverable from the polity in which he or she was born didn't even exist until after the fall of the Roman Empire. It's more accurate to say that the Magna Carta and common law served as the foundation for rights. It was either the term "liberty" or "liberties", I forget which, that meant something rather different from contemporary usage of the term.

As for rights not being dependent on property, name one right under our Constitution and I'll show you how it requires property either in oneself or in material goods in order to enjoy it.

The right to vote and the right to a fair trial. Pow! It's clearly false that all rights are property rights for the simple reason that "property" would be made meaningless. If all rights are property rights, then what's with the "property" qualifier to begin with. I think this dude explains it better than me (bold mine):

B. The fuzziness of ownership

Above, I granted for the sake of argument the claim that property rights do not clash. I suspect that this claim is what draws people to Rothbards position. It is certainly what drew me to it. And then I studied tort law, in particular the law of nuisance.

There are two houses next to each other. How much fumes/noise can one emit without infringing on the rights of the other?

The answer does not come from reflecting on the concept of ownership. You cannot get a valid conclusion by axiomatic-deductive reasoning. Rather it depends on various other factors. Indeed this was (implicitly) acknowledged by Rothbard in his seminal essay on this topic:

The reason why not is that these boundary crossings do not interfere with anyones exclusive possession, use or enjoyment of their property. They are invisible, cannot be detected by mans senses, and do no harm. They are therefore not really invasions of property, for we must refine our concept of invasion to mean not just boundary crossing, but boundary crossings that in some way interfere with the owners use or enjoyment of this property. What counts is whether the senses of the property owner are interfered with. (emphasis added) (p. 151)

There is nothing in the concept of ownership which favours one conception of invasion rather than the other. Rothbard goes for the latter because it is a sensible one on utilitarian grounds (otherwise the world would grind to a halt since merely speaking would be wrongful). This is what is doing the real work.

So property rights are not in themselves wholly determinate and, in the area of indeterminacy, they can clash. We resolve the issue by refining them but this is not done by reflecting on the concept of ownership.

C. Denying the claim

In the above the claim that if I am not a self owner others own me (partly) was assumed to be true.

This claim will now be challenged.

One possible alternative is that no one owns anyone (including themselves). That, however, is ambiguous. This alternative can be interpreted in two ways: (1) no one has any rights in others and himself and (2) whatever moral claims there are are not expressed in terms of ownership.

Under (1) everyone has a Holfeldian liberty to do whatever one wants. This means that killing someone else is not wrongful.

That view is obviously unattractive.

Now consider (2). Suppose it could be shown that moral statement could be translated in the language of ownership. That claim is true in a trivial way. I have a right that X can be translated to I own the right that X. But thats so trivial so as to be useless. What I mean is something like I have a right to exclude the whole world from X = I own X.

Suppose this could be done for every moral statement. A non libertarian statement such as that one has the right to an adequate level of health care would then be translated as that person partially owning others.

However all this change has done is given a rhetorical advantage to the libertarian position. No actual argument against such a right has been given. Of course the conclusion that someone owns others seems odd. But that is not because the underlying moral claim is wrong but because we do not normally translate those in the language of owning others.

The fact of the matter is that in my experience most Rothbardians try to reduce everything down to property and contract. Marriage is a contract, breach of contract is theft, all rights are property rights, blackmail can't be a crime because it assumes one owns their reputation, retail sales are contracts, debts are contracts, etc.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Rothbardians try to reduce everything down to property and contract.

That's laudable -- but the important problem is liberty vs. propensity of government to lie, cheat, and murder.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-08-31/movement-declassify-911-information-gathers-momentum-911-commission-chairs-and-congr

[Mikee]

It's becoming more difficult to open your posts.

It's the final scene from "The Last Samurai" where the Samurai rebels charge the Gatling guns with their swords and meet their demise. They were highly trained and zen disciplined and full of honor but no match for the guns of the new peasant soldiers. The not so brave new world.

[Brant Gaede]

It's becoming more difficult to open your posts.

It's the final scene from "The Last Samurai" where the Samurai rebels charge the Gatling guns with their swords and meet their demise. They were highly trained and zen disciplined and full of honor but no match for the guns of the new peasant soldiers. The not so brave new world.

In 1995 while looking for a house to buy in Tucson, a realtor took me to see a too expensive one (for me) I was interested in if only to look at. The owner was moving to Grass Valley, CA. In one room in a display he had several Japanese rifles of surpassing quality and condition made in the 1600s. It was in the 17th C., I believe, that firearms were outlawed in Japan because they were too effective and there was too much chance of displacing the Samurai whose Shogunate was more powerful than the Emperor relegated to a glorified figurehead. (I hope I'm getting this right.) In the 19th C. the Americans' Cmd. Perry arrived in Japan and the Shogun was weak and the Emperor called him in--this may have been quite a while later--and said he was dis-satisfied with Japan's being unable to stand up for its interests because of its primitiveness relative to the outside world so he was out and the Emperor was in and Japan began to modernize. (Now I'll go to Wikipedia but I won't follow up with corrections.) So what happened in the movie was a delay of maybe 200 years because of the firearms' disarming.

--Brant

edit: consider the stupidity of conventional military thinking: the late 19th C.--Gatling Gun became machine guns, but in WWI hordes of troops were ordered to their deaths in mass charges against trenches defended by machine guns (today it's the crews of US aircraft carriers and other naval surface ships lined up to die)

Edited September 1, 2014 by Brant Gaede

[Francisco Ferrer]

Quoting a dictionary definition makes for a terrible argument. One anarcho-capitalist I talked to on Facebook tried to claim the same thing, saying that the notion of rights has been around as long as the concepts of right and wrong. It's shot full of more holes than aerogel. It's a dreadfully transparent attempt at equivocation, basically making all permissions equivalent to some sort of "right".

Talk your average person about legal topics and you'll probably find that little of their thought on it is in terms of rights. How often is it that you hear people shouting "He violated that lady's rights." when they're protesting a murderer? Two people who I've chatted with, namely a conservative Christian and an anarchist, have offered novel views on the matter. The conservative claimed that it was the replacement of laws with the idea of rights that lead to the chaos following the Age of Enlightenment. Prior to the Enlightenment, he said, people were more concerned about the guidelines that they had to observe rather than what they were entitled to do. It was with "rights" that they became gutsier, one thing leads to another, and you get the World Wars, the Holocaust, and so forth. Reminds me of this scene from The Adjustment Bureau.

The anarchist held that rights weren't a good basis for politics. His position was that, in effect, rights were nothing but concessions from the people in power. Accepting these rights necessitated accepting the authority of the people in power.

The Romans absolutely did not have the concept of rights. The notion of the person as disseverable from the polity in which he or she was born didn't even exist until after the fall of the Roman Empire. It's more accurate to say that the Magna Carta and common law served as the foundation for rights. It was either the term "liberty" or "liberties", I forget which, that meant something rather different from contemporary usage of the term.

The right to vote and the right to a fair trial. Pow! It's clearly false that all rights are property rights for the simple reason that "property" would be made meaningless. If all rights are property rights, then what's with the "property" qualifier to begin with. I think this dude explains it better than me (bold mine):

B. The fuzziness of ownership

Above, I granted for the sake of argument the claim that property rights do not clash. I suspect that this claim is what draws people to Rothbards position. It is certainly what drew me to it. And then I studied tort law, in particular the law of nuisance.

There are two houses next to each other. How much fumes/noise can one emit without infringing on the rights of the other?

The answer does not come from reflecting on the concept of ownership. You cannot get a valid conclusion by axiomatic-deductive reasoning. Rather it depends on various other factors. Indeed this was (implicitly) acknowledged by Rothbard in his seminal essay on this topic:

The reason why not is that these boundary crossings do not interfere with anyones exclusive possession, use or enjoyment of their property. They are invisible, cannot be detected by mans senses, and do no harm. They are therefore not really invasions of property, for we must refine our concept of invasion to mean not just boundary crossing, but boundary crossings that in some way interfere with the owners use or enjoyment of this property. What counts is whether the senses of the property owner are interfered with. (emphasis added) (p. 151)

There is nothing in the concept of ownership which favours one conception of invasion rather than the other. Rothbard goes for the latter because it is a sensible one on utilitarian grounds (otherwise the world would grind to a halt since merely speaking would be wrongful). This is what is doing the real work.

So property rights are not in themselves wholly determinate and, in the area of indeterminacy, they can clash. We resolve the issue by refining them but this is not done by reflecting on the concept of ownership.

C. Denying the claim

In the above the claim that if I am not a self owner others own me (partly) was assumed to be true.

This claim will now be challenged.

One possible alternative is that no one owns anyone (including themselves). That, however, is ambiguous. This alternative can be interpreted in two ways: (1) no one has any rights in others and himself and (2) whatever moral claims there are are not expressed in terms of ownership.

Under (1) everyone has a Holfeldian liberty to do whatever one wants. This means that killing someone else is not wrongful.

That view is obviously unattractive.

Now consider (2). Suppose it could be shown that moral statement could be translated in the language of ownership. That claim is true in a trivial way. I have a right that X can be translated to I own the right that X. But thats so trivial so as to be useless. What I mean is something like I have a right to exclude the whole world from X = I own X.

Suppose this could be done for every moral statement. A non libertarian statement such as that one has the right to an adequate level of health care would then be translated as that person partially owning others.

However all this change has done is given a rhetorical advantage to the libertarian position. No actual argument against such a right has been given. Of course the conclusion that someone owns others seems odd. But that is not because the underlying moral claim is wrong but because we do not normally translate those in the language of owning others.

The fact of the matter is that in my experience most Rothbardians try to reduce everything down to property and contract. Marriage is a contract, breach of contract is theft, all rights are property rights, blackmail can't be a crime because it assumes one owns their reputation, retail sales are contracts, debts are contracts, etc.

No one has said that a definition by itself is an argument. Definitions are provided so that readers know exactly what is being expressed in an argument.

If you do not believe that rights existed in the ancient world, then it should be a simple matter for you to prove that libraries full of books on Roman law are in error. Start with these two:

Justinian: The Digest of Roman Law, translated by C.F. Kilbert, Penquin Classics, 1979.

Life and Law of Rome, A.J. Crook, Cornell University Press 1967.

When I seek an authoritative source on the nature of rights in our current legal system or in the philosophy, I don't go hunting about for an "average person." I tried that once and couldn't get anyone to admit he was average.

You can tell your conservative friend or "average person" that World War I had nothing to do with the expansion of individual rights. The progressive Woodrow Wilson, who was largely responsible for the outcome of World War I and the disasters that ensued in the decades afterwards, did more to destroy American property rights than any previous U.S. president.

By the time of the armistice, the government had taken over the ocean-shipping, railroad, telephone, and telegraph industries; commandeered hundreds of manufacturing plants; entered into massive enterprises on its own account in such varied departments as shipbuilding, wheat trading, and building construction; undertaken to lend huge sums to business directly or indirectly and to regulate the private issuance of securities; established official priorities for the use of transportation facilities, food, fuel, and many raw materials; fixed the prices of dozens of important commodities; intervened in hundreds of labor disputes; and conscripted millions of men for service in the armed forces." --Riggenbach, Jeff, Why American History Is Not What They Say

Regarding the Magna Carta, you are simply misinformed. To take only one example of many rights secured by that document:

No freeman is to be taken or imprisoned or disseised of his free tenement or of his liberties or free customs, or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go against such a man or send against him save by lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. To no-one will we sell or deny of delay right or justice.

Regarding voting and trial by jury, ultimately those rest on property rights. Voting rights give the citizen a stake, a share in his government. What is at risk in a criminal trial if not the loss of the freedom to move one's body from place to place or right to retain all of the property one currently owns?

As for the example of fumes moving from one's house to a neighbor's house, what is controversial about treating it as an invasion of one's property? If one cannot demonstrate harm, there is no liability. If one can demonstrate harm, it is no different than pursuing a claim for a bent fender in traffic court.

[Brant Gaede]

I appreciate Francisco's great knowledge from which he writes in spite of my issue with him on property rights vs the right to life which is just as much semantical as basic. (I say this although you cannot seek redress for a bent fender in traffic court.)

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

Regarding the Magna Carta, you are simply misinformed. To take only one example of many rights secured by that document:

No freeman is to be taken or imprisoned or disseised of his free tenement or of his liberties or free customs, or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go against such a man or send against him save by lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land. To no-one will we sell or deny of delay right or justice.

Regarding voting and trial by jury, ultimately those rest on property rights. Voting rights give the citizen a stake, a share in his government. What is at risk in a criminal trial if not the loss of the freedom to move one's body from place to place or right to retain all of the property one currently owns?

As for the example of fumes moving from one's house to a neighbor's house, what is controversial about treating it as an invasion of one's property? If one cannot demonstrate harm, there is no liability. If one can demonstrate harm, it is no different than pursuing a claim for a bent fender in traffic court.

What is at risk in criminal trial is a miscarriage of justice, allowing public outcry to poison the proceeding, bending the rules of evidence to frame and condemn innocent men, like Johnny Purvis and Jonathan Fleming. To date, the work of Innocence Project has led to the freeing of 316 wrongfully convicted prisoners. Miscarriage of justice is not unusual. Nearly every act of legislation is a wrongful taking of liberty or criminalization of dissent. What good is a "share in his government" when a man is always outvoted, his children irrevocably bound by the whim of his neighbors and acts of political folly that cannot be undone?

If first use of something is your touchstone, it justifies first use of public office, taxation, police power, welfare entitlements, and war.

[anthony]

What George argues for deserves to be referenced.

Fair enough.

OL page: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11329&page=16#entry215745

points to http://www.libertarianism.org/columns/social-laws-part-5

in which he quotes Mises: "“ociety is more than the sum of individuals of which it is composed.”

Mises again: "It is uncontested that in the sphere of human action social entities have real existence. Nobody ventures to deny that nations, states, municipalities, parties, religious communities, are real factors determining the course of human events." [Human Action]

Smith concludes:

Spencer likened the relationship between society and individual human beings to a house and the individual stones that make it up. A house is more than a mere heap of stones randomly arranged; rather, it consists of stones that are “connected in fixed ways.” Similarly, a society is more than a heap, or aggregate, of individual human beings; it consists of individuals who exhibit a “general persistence” in their mutual relationships. This permanent element is the “trait which yields our idea of society.” Society is therefore more than an aggregate of individuals; it is a system of individual relationships. Social institutions are recurring and (fairly) predictable patterns of interaction with definite characteristics that can be identified and studied by the sociologist.

I hate socialists, socialites, sociologists, social studies, social welfare, social services, and service to society. If that makes me a VUP (Very Unimportant Person compared to Smith) -- well, tough shit. "Society" is nothing but cowardice, bluff, and lame second-handing.

It's not the profession of sociologists (etc.) so much that bothers me, but that they are listened to; that their studies have assumed so much weight. They've attained an intellectual authority and power which is unquestioned by governments, so under-cutting individual liberty, seems to me.

Understanding man's nature by looking at Society is like understanding the African ant by observation of a termite mound (except it applies more accurately in the second case).

There must be an almost infinite number of permutations and combinations of possible relations between millions of individuals in society over lengthy time, driven by too many volitional, accidental and causal factors of which rational self-interest is probably the most minor.

The 'necessity and contingency" distinction is one (metaphysical) root of the analytic-synthetic dichotomy, according to the essay of Peikoff's.

I believe it's particularly relevant to "Society". Not everything we have Had To Be This Way.

(Not that I think Spencer was Comtean, for the little I know of his work, but something reminded me of Comte in the above quoted passage. I Wiki-d the two men, and found that indeed, "Spencer read with excitement the original positivist sociology of Auguste Comte".)

[George H. Smith]

It's not the profession of sociologists (etc.) so much that bothers me, but that they are listened to; that their studies have assumed so much weight. They've attained an intellectual authority and power which is unquestioned by governments, so under-cutting individual liberty, seems to me.

I discussed that issue in my latest Cato Essay, as well as in some previous essays. I wrote:

Those libertarians who associate sociology with the academic discipline taught in modern universities tend to be suspicious of this field of study, which is dominated by left-leaning intellectuals who view sociology as an indispensable foundation for social engineering. I confess that I have very little interest in what passes for sociology nowadays....

(Not that I think Spencer was Comtean, for the little I know of his work, but something reminded me of Comte in the above quoted passage. I Wiki-d the two men, and found that indeed, "Spencer read with excitement the original positivist sociology of Auguste Comte".)

That's an inaccurate statement. Spencer wrote extensive criticisms of Comte (e.g.,. "Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of M. Comte"), and he was not a "Comtean" in any significant sense. Although Spencer conceded that Comte made some valid points here and there, there was very little if any direct influence.

[George H. Smith]

As Locke stated in your quote above:

"Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property."

Locke's dictum allows any peasant to dig a hole in my garden and claim it as his property. It justifies war, conquest, capturing a slave, property in children, the formation of a sovereign government and taxation (by "labour" of warfare or persuasive negotiations).

see Labor Theory of Value http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

Just when I think that you cannot write anything more ignorant than what you have written in your previous posts, you manage to surpass my expectations. Congratulations.

Btw, the Wiki link you posted discusses the labor theory of value. That's not what Locke was discussing. He was defending a labor theory of original acquisition of property titles, which is a completely different thing.

Ghs