private owneship of land and natural resources

[merjet]

Arkadi, there is more on OL about Locke's idea of property rights. Click the link here.

[Brant Gaede]

Property rights are created, maintained, and then practically defined by force--ruling or otherwise. The right to create and acquire property is inherent and primary and a separate consideration. If I make a piece of furniture it's mine. If you try to steal it I'll try to stop you using self defense. Division of labor means I hire protection, maybe make a government to help with that, the functions of which are laid out by legal philosophy based in turn on more general philosophy. Like philosophy itself, rights are a human invention--but not arbitrary if done with rational consideration of man qua man.

--Brant

force rules the world

[Peter]

whYNOT wrote: But the primary principle holds true. Property, individualism and rights are fairly recent concepts which can't be reverse-applied to peoples who didn't conceive of or practice them. end quote

Exactly, Tony. In medias res. Starting in the middle of things. Don’t start in the middle of things if you are looking for first principles. But in reality we would need to start as things are now and that is with politics. That could be a starting point for argumentation. For the sake of argument we are in agreement that some document, the Magna Carta, The UN charter, the U.S. Constitution, etc., is something we ALL agree we will abide by.

Eyal Mozes wrote on Objectivism at we the living (or OWL) cultural requirements for a free political system Date: Wed, 28 Jan 2004 08:24:17 -0500: . . . . If there is no disagreement on crime, i.e. everyone with no exception understands individual rights and respects them, then no one would want to commit any crimes, and so protection from crime is not needed; and while there might still be disputes about contracts, so contract arbitration may still be needed, everyone would voluntarily comply with the decisions of any arbitrator that they have agreed to accept, so the use of retaliatory force for contract enforcement would also not be needed. The *only* function that might still be needed for the retaliatory use of force would be national defense. This is the society Rand described in Galt's Gulch. In Galt's Gulch there is no police, no enforcement of contracts, no protection from crime, because none is needed. The only institution needed to protect individual rights is Galt's screen hiding the gulch from the outside, a form of national defense. The only way to achieve such a society is the way it is done in Atlas Shrugged: hand-pick the people allowed to enter the area, make sure (among other requirements) that all of them understand and respect individual rights before they are allowed to come in, and find some way to make sure outsiders cannot come in without permission. The result, as Rand recognized, is far from an ideal society; its inhabitants are eager to leave it and "go back to the world" as soon as they can; the reason is that any such society would necessarily be very small-scale, with a small number of people and therefore with limited opportunities for productive achievement. end quote

[Peter]

Or we could go back to first principles. Homo sapiens evolves on day one billion since the beginning of the earth, lives in a small clan (family values rule and are abided by, or Mommy and Daddy will be angry) and the clan comes into contact with another small clan. Gosh. They look like me. What should I do? The premise of the TV show “Lost” was interesting. What if 100 people crashed on a desert island and were not rescued? What society could, would, or SHOULD evolve?
Peter

Notes. From Wikipedia where donations are gratefully accepted: Lost is an American television drama series that originally aired on the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) from September 22, 2004, to May 23, 2010, over six seasons, comprising a total of 121 episodes. Lost is a drama series containing elements of science fiction and the supernatural. It follows the survivors of the crash of a commercial passenger jet, flying between Sydney and Los Angeles, on a mysterious tropical island somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean . . . . Season 1 begins with the aftermath of a plane crash, which leaves the surviving passengers of Oceanic Airline's Flight 815 on what seems to be an uninhabited tropical island. Jack Shephard, a doctor, becomes their de facto leader . . . . They encounter a French woman named Danielle Rousseau, who was shipwrecked on the island 16 years before the main story and is desperate for news of a daughter named Alex. They also find a mysterious metal hatch buried in the ground. While two survivors, Locke and Boone, try to force the hatch open, four others, Michael, Jin, Walt, and Sawyer attempt to leave on a raft that they have built. Meanwhile, flashbacks centered on individual survivors detail their lives prior to the plane crash.
end quote

[anthony]

whYNOT--

"The "sanction" is what he gives himself (and others)"--

But why cannot I act without giving myself a "sanction" to act?

As for my giving "sanction" to others, it is strictly equivalent to my following the NIOF principle.

I thus fail to see why would one possibly need, besides NIOF principle, an idea of "right" here?

I feel you are mixing morality with rights. The connection between them is crucial, sure, but they should be hierarchically sorted and emphasis placed on the foundation.

"Individual rights are the means of subordinating society to moral law". [Appendix: Man's Rights, CUI]

Objectively, NIOF in itself is not a code of morality and is not a stand-alone principle. It's simply one logical and necessary derivation of a far greater and more complex concept, "man's right to life". But then, "life" (with all the other large concepts it subsumes) has to be understood first to grasp the essentiality of that "right".

When performed by a rational, self-responsible person, the sanction he takes for himself to act freely, is the sanction he knows others equally take. As it is an objective principle, this precedes reciprocity (while also not obviating it) I think.

Life is self-generated, self-sustaining action of thought and deeds. In practice, this looks to me about accentuating the positive and the active, over the negative (NON-initiation of force) and passive.

It may seem a trivial point but is not, over the long run, I think. If one focuses overmuch on what one CAN'T do (initiating force, fraud) to others, it will begin to shift or narrow the focus from what one CAN and ought to do, morally and selfishly. Assuming a rationally selfish individual who, by definition, won't have the slightest notion or desire to prey on, interfere with or deceive others - and who implicitly and explicitly claims ("sanctions and defines") his right to those actions which his living demands - "CAN" means: what he chooses to do, within possibility. It is right, and his "right", that he does so.

[Arkadi]

whYNOT--

Now I think I see your point. Given that the are social powers operating so as to limit my freedom of action (when the latter does not violate the NIOF principle), I have a moral right to (and must, if I am to realize my human potential) disobey such powers, as well as resist and retaliate their operations.

Correct?

[anthony]

whYNOT--

Now I think I see your point. Given that the are social powers operating so as to limit my freedom of action (when the latter does not violate the NIOF principle), I have a moral right to (and must, if I am to realize my human potential) disobey such powers, as well as resist and retaliate their operations.

Correct?

Retaliate, no. Oppose vocally and intellectually, the increasing limitations on the individual's freedom of action in our statist-collectivist countries, yup. Restrictions of free acts, by the interference in private choices, by strangling regulation, and by economic 'redistribution', does violate NIOF, directly by the State, and indirectly by the majority of a populace which demands them (and so, empowers the State).

What we accept widely as "human rights" really boils down to 'human claims' by many, coercing other people to provide what they feel they need.

Even so, little for it but that retaliatory force should remain the monopoly of the government, as it must in a properly free society. You can imagine the anarchic mess resulting if everybody retaliates (and re-retaliates) for every real or perceived or invented wrongful act. It would be self-disinterested and irrational for an individual to seek this state of affairs - as it would be to openly flout the State's power, as you suggest.

Earlier, I was projecting some, to a society (non-existent, or at best a semblance) in which the individual is considered supreme, and a vastly-reduced government has no other purpose but protect the system of individual rights through objective laws and guard against abuses of the right to life, by one on another.

[phantom000]

I had thought, just as an experiment, about a society where the property law was based around that old phrase 'we do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children.'

You could legally own anything you produce yourself, such as crops, textiles, etc. But you cannot own anything that you did not make, such as the air, the soil, or the water. You are basically renting those from the state who is holding them in trust for the next generation so that then their turns comes they will have clean water, clean air and fertile soil just like you did.

You could argue that you can't own such things because 1. You did not create them, merely found them and 2. they were here long before you were born and will be here long after you are dead and gone.

Of course, one obvious snag is something like metal ore? You did not create it, but its not going to do anyone any good until someone cuts it out and smelts it.