Standing naked on my property

[Samson Corwell]

Life is a process that requires oxygen, nutrition, protection from the elements, and sometimes expert medical attention. Unless we add a rather detailed qualifier, to insist that a person has a "right to life," is perforce to say he has a "right to oxygen, nutrition, protection from the elements, and sometimes expert medical attention."

Elsewhere you have been emphatic that "in a free society all human interactions should be voluntary." The problem is that such a goal is not one and the same as the same as a "right to life." And unless your legal system makes it very clear which goal is paramount, those who favor using police power for wealth transfer will be only too happy to generate costly government schemes for promoting everyone's "right to life."

When we say a person has ownership in something, it does not have to mean the possession of that property came though purchase. Following Locke, we can say a person attains rightful ownership though original use. Person X finds a diamond in the wilderness. He cuts it, polishes it and makes it his. Person Y occupied his body first and still occupies it now; he has not yet abandoned it. Therefore Y has an unimpeachable claim on his body through original use and continued habitation of the property.

You say kidneys are a part of a man, but not a possession. I knew a man who had his gall bladder removed and kept it in alcohol. Was the gall bladder not a possession? What about clippings of his hair and fingernails?

Ownership only makes sense in terms of use, control and disposal. I may sell you my car, but if I don't allow you to drive it or to transfer ownership to someone else, in what real sense are you the owner?

Similarly, while it is conceivable that someone could sell himself into slavery, I do not see how the attributes and contents of one's mind could be transferred to another under present technology.

When we say a person has rights in his body, we are in effect saying he has a right to do with that body as he wishes and, if he can, to keep that body alive without interference. Adding he has a right to life is at best redundant and at worst a potential foot in the door to the welfare state.

If the purpose of property rights is "to protect a person's ability to live," then there could in fact be valid laws against suicide and euthanasia, for such life-ending activities would contradict the presumed "right to life" basis for rights. Furthermore, under such a premise, any other activity that is dangerous could be strictly regulated or banned.

If "property rights are the implementation of the right to life," then, by the same token, the statist could assert that regulation of drugs is also the implementation of the right to life. Fewer dangerous drugs on the street, more lives saved, more "rights to life" protected.

Right, because that's exactly what people mean by "right to life". As for the bit about a "voluntary society", it's an impossibility, unless you hope to get everyone to consent to your favored scheme of property law. Anyway, if property rights are indeed the base of your system, then you have yet to explain where a right to own property fits in. I'm sure most people would be less than thrilled to know that they're a piece of property that owns itself. How less than dignified. (Surely that relationship is backwards to begin with.)

[Brant Gaede]

A right to life when? -- age of consent? birth? third trimester? conception?

Conception...

Strike is temporarily suspended, provided that Fisher doesn't show up and get treated like an equal again.

There is no right to life except as a technical aspect of due process: "If you kill someone, he/she can't appear in court to argue his/her side of the controversy" [COGIGG, p.65] and "The courts have to remain open to those in custody. Custody is not a first principle." [pp. 56, 57]

"The right to petition and to be represented by counsel is the first and only explicit constitutional right." [p.56] It pertains without limitation to animal, mineral, vegetable, and abstract relations such as promises, covenants, associations, employment, bequests, debt, wrongful death, injury, trespass, fraud, and nuisance -- i.e., any cause or controversy that a lawyer wants to argue, including an unwanted pregnancy and the potential to conceive children in the future.

However (and it's a big however), there is no right to successfully argue, prosecute, or defend anything. Every conceivable interest or right you can conceivably claim, there are multiple parties (including the state) whose interests and claims may sharply contradict yours, and/or whose motion to dismiss could put an abrupt end to whatever you hoped to argue in court. Cases proceed at the discretion of a trial judge. Hung juries are not uncommon.

Please don't quote Locke or NAP or utility. None of it cuts any ice in laissez faire law.

Whom do you quote aside from above?

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Hard to stay silent with this avalanche of hooey. A right to life when? -- age of consent? birth? third trimester? conception?

Conception...

Classic conservative, not Objectivist, and no way in hell Wolf DeVoon.

-Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

Whom do you quote aside from [your own text]?

I wish there were other authorities. I quoted Magna Carta and said it wasn't obligatory legal or constitutional precedent. However, in a very general way, I haven't invented anything. Adversarial common law and equity were perfectly understandable to the Founders. The unique problem of constituting an ancap judiciary forced some innovation, particularly in the definition of justice.

It's my great, sincere hope to be proven wrong about the definition of justice. Rather frightening if I got it right.

"Justice is the armed defense of innocent liberty."

The purposes and limitations of a first principle are: (1) to establish the context and scope of discussion; (2) to affirm the existence of a fundamental truth pertaining to the topic generally; and (3) to define that truth, employing the least ambiguous and most cognitively fruitful concepts that are logically germane to the definition. Men and women have reasoned about law for centuries. Familiar terms, the relations of which are obvious in the structure of a predicate, compel any adversary to concede or to contradict squarely, because a first principle necessarily addresses a fundamental question.

Article IV was another innovation, linking the right to bear arms and the police power.

[Francisco Ferrer]

Right, because that's exactly what people mean by "right to life". As for the bit about a "voluntary society", it's an impossibility, unless you hope to get everyone to consent to your favored scheme of property law. Anyway, if property rights are indeed the base of your system, then you have yet to explain where a right to own property fits in. I'm sure most people would be less than thrilled to know that they're a piece of property that owns itself. How less than dignified. (Surely that relationship is backwards to begin with.)

Laissez-faire is a voluntary society in the sense that each person is allowed to use what he rightfully owns, provided that he does not infringe on the equal right of every other person. True, a man who claims, wrongfully, that he has a right to a share of Bill Gates's fortune will probably not consent to the laissez-faire arrangement. But I do not know of any advocate of a free society who claims that such a system is going to please everyone.

Where does the right to property fit in? At precisely the point when a woman--legally--shoots a man for breaking into her home.

People who are less than thrilled at having full ownership of their bodies are free to invite others to run them over and hack off pieces of them. In such a way would their dignity as non-self-owners be preserved.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Laissez-faire is a voluntary society...

Where does the right to property fit in? At precisely the point when a woman--legally--shoots a man for breaking into her home.

No one volunteers to be born. No one selects their parents, the time and place of their birth, nor their fitness to acquire and exercise liberty.

Among the relations we inherit or draw by lot, given the circumstances of life, you'll have to find a less ideal way to describe laissez-faire.

Property (a home, a gun) is a matter of possession, broadly contingent on competence, responsibility, and defacto legal regime.

Your title deed exists only in the sense that your neighbors consent to that privilege. [COGIGG, p. 83]

[Brant Gaede]

Laissez-faire is a voluntary society...

Where does the right to property fit in? At precisely the point when a woman--legally--shoots a man for breaking into her home.

No one volunteers to be born. No one selects their parents, the time and place of their birth, nor their fitness to acquire and exercise liberty.

Among the relations we inherit or draw by lot, given the circumstances of life, you'll have to find a less ideal way to describe laissez-faire.

Property (a home, a gun) is a matter of possession, broadly contingent on competence, responsibility, and defacto legal regime.

Your title deed exists only in the sense that your neighbors consent to that privilege. [COGIGG, p. 83]

Existence by permission subjugates, obviates, and destroys not only individual rights, but the philosophy they are based on. So far in reading you I see no way to actually get to where you seem to want to go or the object of it all beyond a system I can't figure out. Laissez-Faire City is up and gone, right?

--Brant

where did it go?

[Mikee]

Your existence is an accident of nature. You have no intrinsic value. You have no value to another lifeform except via the contracts and agreements for mutual defense and life support you make with others. Your rights are simply the expectation that these agreements be honored by others as long as you honor them yourself. Constant vigilance is a requirement of nature. There is no right to passivity and living in ignorance or the expectation that someone will be there to protect your rights without any effort on your own.

[Brant Gaede]

Your existence is an accident of nature. You have no intrinsic value. You have no value to another lifeform except via the contracts and agreements for mutual defense and life support you make with others. Your rights are simply the expectation that these agreements be honored by others as long as you honor them yourself. Constant vigilance is a requirement of nature. There is no right to passivity and living in ignorance or the expectation that someone will be there to protect your rights without any effort on your own.

Oh, sure. Fight for your freedom. Agree!

Nature has accidents? We could do a worthless 500 post thread on that. This is just human-being belittling.

"No intrinsic value" is an equivocation on "value" that buries the concept. "Intrinsic value" is a sub-category of value and valuing. Take away "value" and you only have "intrinsic"--intrinsic what?

"Your rights are simply" is simply much more than that and encompass the morality of living and social existence. "Expectation" my ass. Who fights for an "expectation"? "To the barricades, comrades! To the barricades! Viva las expectativas!"

Your last sentence is completely wrong. You have the right to be stupid and do those things. The right comes before the consequences. The only right you don't have is to violate the rights of someone else.

--Brant

[Mikee]

You are hopelessly confused. Games with semantics is not where the rubber meets the road. Your concept of "rights" leaves no expectation of survival except by the charity of others or pure dumb luck. Good luck to you.

[Brant Gaede]

You are hopelessly confused. Games with semantics is not where the rubber meets the road. Your concept of "rights" leaves no expectation of survival except by the charity of others or pure dumb luck. Good luck to you.

Now you want me to get into "the charity of others" instead of answering anything I said.

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

1. Existence by permission

2. I see no way to actually get to where you seem to want to go or the object of it all

3. Laissez-Faire City is up and gone, right?

4. where did it go?

1. You've seen men killed. You've seen babies born. Me, too (both cases). The start and finish of existence are unchosen and involve decisions made by others -- parents, employers, criminals, legislators, cops, doctors, scientists, drunk drivers, tyrants, chumps (the entire "community" of others). What happens between the event of birth and your ultimate fate is determined in part by voluntary choices, but just as often by one's stupidity and enormous influences involving history, schooling, culture, and the defacto legal regime wherever you happen start life or wander later, if you're allowed or required to travel. Some jurisdictions won't let people let leave. Others demand mobilization. I'm in favor of liberty, but there's less of it today.

2. What I have endeavored to express is a very short list of achievable goals. Essentially it consists of dumping all "moral" obligation, all expectation of a fair shake, and declaring one's autonomy as soon as possible to the full extent of one's ingenuity. It's natural and normal to make mistakes, so it's a bumpy ride, and there are numerous temptations to compromise. Most people are reluctant to dare much at all beyond a good degree, a good job, nice neighborhood, house, spouse, children, grandchildren, and comfortable retirement. Their moral sense is superglued to their stomachs. That's why I prefer to associate with scoundrels and pirates. My passport has a name slightly different than my birth certificate, and I have residency and funds in several countries. I have a company owned by another company in a tax haven. Whether I've done this perfectly or not is unimportant. The main idea is to escape the notion of unchosen obligation, right or wrong, and to vigorously pursue one's liberty and personal happiness, right or wrong.

3. Laissez Faire City International Trust was dissolved. The community of freeman survived and prospered, formed other enterprises.

4. LFCIT failed because the big shots balked at surrendering "sovereign individual" solipsism, negligence, fraud, and arbitrary abuse of power. I did what I could to educate and persuade them to embrace the rule of law. At the end, it was acknowledged and accepted -- too late to undo the damage done. The good news is an enduring constitutional template for those who wish to live in freedom.

[Mikee]

If you think I belittle human beings you have zero comprehension of what I am all about. What in your machine gun, entertainment only, stream of consciousness responses would motivate me to anything other than dismiss you as a crank?

[Brant Gaede]

If you think I belittle human beings you have zero comprehension of what I am all about. What in your machine gun, entertainment only, stream of consciousness responses would motivate me to anything other than dismiss you as a crank?

I took on your post 183 point by point and instead of defending any of it you first tried to switch to another subject then, failing that, you go ad hominem on me. Yeah, I'm a crank. Kickback's a bitch.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

1. Existence by permission

2. I see no way to actually get to where you seem to want to go or the object of it all

3. Laissez-Faire City is up and gone, right?

4. where did it go?

1. You've seen men killed. You've seen babies born. Me, too (both cases). The start and finish of existence are unchosen and involve decisions made by others -- parents, employers, criminals, legislators, cops, doctors, scientists, drunk drivers, tyrants, chumps (the entire "community" of others). What happens between the event of birth and your ultimate fate is determined in part by voluntary choices, but just as often by one's stupidity and enormous influences involving history, schooling, culture, and the defacto legal regime wherever you happen start life or wander later, if you're allowed or required to travel. Some jurisdictions won't let people let leave. Others demand mobilization. I'm in favor of liberty, but there's less of it today.

2. What I have endeavored to express is a very short list of achievable goals. Essentially it consists of dumping all "moral" obligation, all expectation of a fair shake, and declaring one's autonomy as soon as possible to the full extent of one's ingenuity. It's natural and normal to make mistakes, so it's a bumpy ride, and there are numerous temptations to compromise. Most people are reluctant to dare much at all beyond a good degree, a good job, nice neighborhood, house, spouse, children, grandchildren, and comfortable retirement. Their moral sense is superglued to their stomachs. That's why I prefer to associate with scoundrels and pirates. My passport has a name slightly different than my birth certificate, and I have residency and funds in several countries. I have a company owned by another company in a tax haven. Whether I've done this perfectly or not is unimportant. The main idea is to escape the notion of unchosen obligation, right or wrong, and to vigorously pursue one's liberty and personal happiness, right or wrong.

3. Laissez Faire City International Trust was dissolved. The community of freeman survived and prospered, formed other enterprises.

4. LFCIT failed because the big shots balked at surrendering "sovereign individual" solipsism, negligence, fraud, and arbitrary abuse of power. I did what I could to educate and persuade them to embrace the rule of law. At the end, it was acknowledged and accepted -- too late to undo the damage done. The good news is an enduring constitutional template for those who wish to live in freedom.

Greg thinks he's done all of this without the internationalism and theorectical hoopla. The consequent societies are too small or confining for me. You in your head and he more existentially. None of this is going to change much, person to person. Our only obligation is honesty insofar as it's affordable. For our own sakes so it's to ourselves. Honesty in the 1930s USSR was one's death warrant. Russians are inheritors of a wagonfull of crap.

--Brant

[Mikee]

Ha! You call that a ad hominem? Keep searching under that lamppost Brant.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Russians are inheritors of a wagonfull of crap.

Maybe we met different Russians. Those of my acquaintance were stridently self-interested, mostly rational anarchists,

fearless warriors, a little crude, a little over-medicated, but willing to follow instructions and do what had to be done.

If Greg can define justice, I'll pull my book from distribution and eat a sawhorse.

[Samson Corwell]

Right, because that's exactly what people mean by "right to life". As for the bit about a "voluntary society", it's an impossibility, unless you hope to get everyone to consent to your favored scheme of property law. Anyway, if property rights are indeed the base of your system, then you have yet to explain where a right to own property fits in. I'm sure most people would be less than thrilled to know that they're a piece of property that owns itself. How less than dignified. (Surely that relationship is backwards to begin with.)

Laissez-faire is a voluntary society in the sense that each person is allowed to use what he rightfully owns, provided that he does not infringe on the equal right of every other person. True, a man who claims, wrongfully, that he has a right to a share of Bill Gates's fortune will probably not consent to the laissez-faire arrangement. But I do not know of any advocate of a free society who claims that such a system is going to please everyone.

Where does the right to property fit in? At precisely the point when a woman--legally--shoots a man for breaking into her home.

People who are less than thrilled at having full ownership of their bodies are free to invite others to run them over and hack off pieces of them. In such a way would their dignity as non-self-owners be preserved.

Right. It's voluntary in the sense that what you do is entirely up to you...so long as you follow our rules! There's is no such thing as a "voluntary society" and there never can be such thing as a "voluntary society". It's warping of words to be sure and can be done with any system. Let's say we have Libertopia or Ancapistan and fast forward a hundred years. The region has centralized and is now governed by Megacorporation, Inc. The people born there sure as hell didn't choose their circumstances. So, what are you going to say? "Don't like it, then move."? Great, we're back where we started!

Taxes are voluntary...youl'll just be thrown in jail if you don't pay!

Paying back your debts is entirely up to you...you'll just have your home confiscated if you don't!

[Samson Corwell]

Your existence is an accident of nature. You have no intrinsic value. You have no value to another lifeform except via the contracts and agreements for mutual defense and life support you make with others. Your rights are simply the expectation that these agreements be honored by others as long as you honor them yourself. Constant vigilance is a requirement of nature. There is no right to passivity and living in ignorance or the expectation that someone will be there to protect your rights without any effort on your own.

<sarcasm>Lovely.</sarcasm> To have only value as a tool is just disgraceful and undignified.

[Brant Gaede]

Russians are inheritors of a wagonfull of crap.

Maybe we met different Russians. Those of my acquaintance were stridently self-interested, mostly rational anarchists,

fearless warriors, a little crude, a little over-medicated, but willing to follow instructions and do what had to be done.

If Greg can define justice, I'll pull my book from distribution and eat a sawhorse.

I met Russians in Russia.

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

Ha! You call that a ad hominem? Keep searching under that lamppost Brant.

I didn't say argumentum ad hominem. There is a slight difference. (Not sarcastic.)

Anyway. Let's call a truce before we fire any more rockets and drop any more bombs.

--Brant

"Can't we all get along?"

why ya beatin' up on a helpless old man? (The world wants to know.)

________

it's time for Adam . . .

[Darrell Hougen]

Hard to stay silent with this avalanche of hooey. A right to life when? -- age of consent? birth? third trimester? conception?

You come into the world with a claim on your parents, cops, courts, teachers, power utilities, doctors, grocery stores, and farmers

-- unless you're born female in Bangladesh or Guatemala or the Congo with a congenital defect to make it a fucking slam dunk.

Protest march over. Back on strike.

Let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees. I've been talking about the rights of emancipated adults. Babies, children, old senile people add complexities to the discussion but don't fundamentally change things.

Your parents have an obligation to take care of you until you reach adulthood. That obligation was chosen by them when they freely engaged in the activity or activities required to create you.

The cops, courts, teachers, power utilities, doctors, and grocery stores don't have any obligation to do anything for you that you or your parents aren't willing to pay for.

With the exception of a parent's obligation towards his or her child, obligations arise as a matter of trade for mutual benefit. When two people exchange value for value they are both obligated to fulfill their end of the bargain. Fulfilling the obligation is in one's self interest for the same reason that trade is in one's self interest in the first place. Each party to a trade benefits. Therefore, fulfilling one's obligations is, as a matter of principle, in one's self interest. Therefore, it is moral. In other words, it is right.

In the case of parents having children, the child is not a party to a trade since he or she doesn't yet exist, but the parents hope to benefit through the creation of a beautiful, adorable little child and are obligated as a matter of principle to raise the child until that child can take care of himself (or herself). Fulfilling one's obligations is moral and is therefore right.

A person has a right to those actions that are right. The word "right", taken as a noun, refers to those actions that are right, where the word is used as an adjective.

When one says a person has a right to life, he is saying that the person has a right to take those actions necessary to sustain his life --- that it is, in essence, right for him to do so.

Darrell

Edited August 29, 2014 by Darrell Hougen

[Samson Corwell]

With the exception of a parent's obligation towards his or her child, obligations arise as a matter of trade for mutual benefit.

Well, no, not all of them. You have the obligation to serve on jury duty when summoned, comply with search warrants, comply with child support payments, alimony (it's not a contract!), damages, serve jail time when convicted, and, last but not least, pay your taxes.

[Selene]

Samson:

"Alimony" which is generally referred to as "maintenance," either interim, or, a specific amount of years, or, lifetime.

These are put into a Stipulation which, for example, in NY is "incorporated by reference" and not "merged" into the Judgment of Divorce.

This is referred to as a stand alone contract which can be enforced in a Court of "competent" jurisdiction.

So, I am not sure what you mean by "it's not a contract."

A...

[Darrell Hougen]

Life is a process that requires oxygen, nutrition, protection from the elements, and sometimes expert medical attention. Unless we add a rather detailed qualifier, to insist that a person has a "right to life," is perforce to say he has a "right to oxygen, nutrition, protection from the elements, and sometimes expert medical attention."

Elsewhere you have been emphatic that "in a free society all human interactions should be voluntary." The problem is that such a goal is not one and the same as the same as a "right to life." And unless your legal system makes it very clear which goal is paramount, those who favor using police power for wealth transfer will be only too happy to generate costly government schemes for promoting everyone's "right to life."

When we say a person has ownership in something, it does not have to mean the possession of that property came though purchase. Following Locke, we can say a person attains rightful ownership though original use. Person X finds a diamond in the wilderness. He cuts it, polishes it and makes it his. Person Y occupied his body first and still occupies it now; he has not yet abandoned it. Therefore Y has an unimpeachable claim on his body through original use and continued habitation of the property.

You say kidneys are a part of a man, but not a possession. I knew a man who had his gall bladder removed and kept it in alcohol. Was the gall bladder not a possession? What about clippings of his hair and fingernails?

Ownership only makes sense in terms of use, control and disposal. I may sell you my car, but if I don't allow you to drive it or to transfer ownership to someone else, in what real sense are you the owner?

Similarly, while it is conceivable that someone could sell himself into slavery, I do not see how the attributes and contents of one's mind could be transferred to another under present technology.

When we say a person has rights in his body, we are in effect saying he has a right to do with that body as he wishes and, if he can, to keep that body alive without interference. Adding he has a right to life is at best redundant and at worst a potential foot in the door to the welfare state.

If the purpose of property rights is "to protect a person's ability to live," then there could in fact be valid laws against suicide and euthanasia, for such life-ending activities would contradict the presumed "right to life" basis for rights. Furthermore, under such a premise, any other activity that is dangerous could be strictly regulated or banned.

If "property rights are the implementation of the right to life," then, by the same token, the statist could assert that regulation of drugs is also the implementation of the right to life. Fewer dangerous drugs on the street, more lives saved, more "rights to life" protected.

The right to life, like all rights, refers to the right to engage in some action. It means the right to take those actions necessary to stay alive. If you want to put it negatively, it means the right not to be killed or enslaved. A slave cannot always take those actions necessary to stay alive. He can only take those actions which is master permits him to take. I should add, as I have said before, the right to life also means the right to take those actions necessary to thrive or flourish --- that is, to put distance between oneself and the immediate needs of survival.

To say a person has the right to life doesn't imply that he has a right to obtain anything that he needs for survival. He merely has the right to attempt to obtain those things. He has the right to take those actions necessary to obtain the things that he needs to survive. He doesn't have a right to demand that anyone else provide them for him. To do so would undermine the ability of the latter person to pursue the things that the latter needs to survive, or thrive, or flourish.

The notion that all human interactions should be voluntary is implicit in the right to life, but we have to back up in order to understand where the right to life comes from.

A right is a moral principle. It is right (used as an adjective) for people to act in a certain way. It is right for them to act in their own self interest. And, it turns out that it is in the self interest of people to live in peace with other people and trade with them. That is, a person benefits much more from living peacefully with other people, acquiring knowledge from them and engaging in voluntary trade with them than he does by attempting to steal from or enslave other people. Therefore, it is right for him to live in peace with other people and engage in voluntary trade with them. Therefore, living in peace with other people and engaging in voluntary trade with them is his right. The last two sentences are equivalent. In the first, the word "right" has been used as an adjective and in the second it has been used as a noun, but the sentences have exactly the same meaning.

In one says that man has a right to life, the meaning is that it is right for man to live in peace with other men and engage in voluntary trade with them. The notion that all human interactions should be voluntary is implicit in the right to life.

Note, that it is not just right for some people to live in peace and engage in voluntary trade with other people, it is right for all people to do so. It is not just in the self interest of some people, it is in the self interest of all people. Therefore, a society in which people live in peace and trade with each other voluntarily is possible. The right to be free of violence and force is a reciprocal right. It is an implicit agreement. "You don't mess with me and I won't mess with you." The statement, though never spoken, acknowledges the equal and reciprocal nature of the right to live at peace with other people. The reciprocal nature of the right to life encompasses all people.

Darrell