Francisco Ferrer

Does it sound debased and repulsive for a blood bank to own blood or a sperm bank to own semen? Then it should be no different for an individual. If ownership and exchange of such items is too repulsive for you, why not advocate banning the sale of such items?No and no. The two are very different. Straw man; that's not what I'm talking about. And because you are full proprietor of your own body, it is your right not to explain the difference, not to show how this is a straw man, and not to illuminate what you are talking about. Not necessarily so. Perhaps there are cases where this does not apply. And as proprietor of your body and your time, you are within your rights to keep such cases completely hidden from the discussion. I'm allowed to kill a maniac who is attacking me in self-defense, therefore I must own him!A few counter-examples that negate your statement: Child custody.Power of attorney.Trusts.Probate.Killing in self-defense does not contradict self-ownership because those who would attempt to do serious harm to another forfeit their self-ownership, i.e. freedom, autonomy over their bodies. Children are not full actors in society because they have not reached the age of consent. Self-ownership includes the right to transfer ownership in part or whole to others. Thus, power of attorney, trusts, and probate are consistent with self-ownership. Length of time used, particular circumstances, and the fact that changing all these property titles would introduce chaos into the world. Suppose A and B both claim to own a plot of land. A says he is the rightful owner due to length of time used. B says he is the rightful owner due to particular circumstances. Now, who is the rightful owner? Suppose C buys a house and punctually makes all of his mortgage payments for 5 years. However, the bank loses or falsifies the records, claims C has made no payments, and repossesses the house. Twenty years pass. C has discovered new evidence that he is the rightful owner. Why should a court let the bank keep the house based on the length of time principle? It's been done.Provide one case of a major city, major airport, or major shipyard closing down in response to a nuisance lawsuit. Or making a substantial damage payment to someone who recently came to the nuisance. That's a very funky definition of "damage" and certainly not like any of the ones I've heard from most NAPsters. This is shorhorning. Noise is a feature of the physical world and can be both painful and permanently damaging. Direct contact (person touching person) is far from the only way to initiate physical force. One would have to be extremely short-sighted not to recognize that high volume can be a form of trespass on the same order as dumping noxious waste into a neighbor's yard. Numerous court rulings--with or without the consent of Napster (now part of Rhapsody), with or without guidance on how to avoid funkiness--have recognized this. See http://airportnoiselaw.org/cases/causby-1.html If the law should be founded on the whims of judges--how "repulsive," how "funky," how "debased" they find certain behaviors--and not on a firm, objective standard, there can be no long term economic planning and thus no modern capitalist society.

You don't realize how debased and repulsive that sounds (the capital good part), do you? For the record, I don't think doing any of the other things require ownership. Does it sound debased and repulsive for a blood bank to own blood or a sperm bank to own semen? Then it should be no different for an individual. If ownership and exchange of such items is too repulsive for you, why not advocate banning the sale of such items? The power of use and disposal implies ownership and vice versa. If I say, "You may now have my car as your own," and then refuse to allow you to drive it or even sit in it, I have not given ownership to you at all. You may declare that you don't own your body, but if you insist that you are the only one who will determine what happens to your body, you are effectively declaring ownership. No one. See above. Authority to use and dispose of an item is defacto ownership. Homesteading doesn't follow from self-ownership at all. What it was was totally ad hoc bullshit that John Locke pulled out of his rear end to excuse the taking of land from Native Americans. That land the Indians had lived on and hunted on for centuries? Conveniently turns out that they didn't really own it. Any Lockean who tries to homestead any land I own that I haven't "mixed my labor with" will find themselves up booted out.Let's suppose we don't acquire land through making improvements on it. Ownership does not come from homesteading, we'll say. Now that we've eliminated that as a possibility, you will perhaps share with us what entitles anyone to occupy the place he currently resides in. Says who? Rothbard? I think if you move near the mill, then they certainly be compelled to stop polluting, even if they were there first.Fine. Try moving from a farm to an apartment right off Times Square and then sue the City of New York to make them stop all the traffic noise at night. Or try the same thing with an airport or railroad terminus or shipyard. I was unaware noise pollution damaged things. If a property owner next to a recently opened all-night body shop cannot get a good night's sleep, then his health may be damaged. There is abundant recent, objective data on the ill effects of sleep deprivation. I like it.Good, then show me the science that objectively measures bizarreness.The "I'll know it when I see it" part is what I was referring to.Unless you have a method of presenting evidence through telepathy, you'll have to do better than hunches and feelings in a court of law.

As an indication of the decline of language standards, the Winston commercial was once at the center of a controversy over the advertiser's use of the ungrammatical "tastes good like a cigarette should." Unlike the Hillbillies and the Flintstones, Walter Cronkite refused to deliver the ad copy as written. Today such usage would go unnoticed and certainly unremarked.

Why should we accept the opinion of Hobbes as an authority on government? His work Leviathan is full of non sequiturs. Example: if man, as Hobbes claims, is inherently aggressive and life in a state of nature is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish," how would his solution of a powerful sovereign to rule society help? Would not the sovereign be selected from the species of homo sapiens? Is that not the very species that Hobbes regards as inherently aggressive? If the person is not a capital good, then we should find no objection to laws that forbid the sale of human hair, blood, organs and semen. There is nothing overly broad or redundant about recognizing the logic of self-ownership. If A does not own his body, who does? God? Obama? The rest of the human race? From the axiom of self-ownership we arrive, by way of Locke's mixing of labor with land, at the principle of homesteading, the right to exploit natural resources, and the voluntary exchange of goods with others. Regarding annoyance: paper mills give off unpleasant odors. If a company builds a mill in the Alaskan wilderness, no one will object. On the other hand, if I build a cabin next to the mill, I will certainly notice the fumes. Yet I cannot order the mill to shut down for the simple reason that I have come to the nuisance. The mill has effectively homesteaded the right to emit smells. If you are unfamiliar with the "coming to the nuisance" principle of law, see Richard Epstein, "Defenses and Subsequent Pleas in a system of Strict Liability." As for translating "simple common sense prohibitions on annoyance into the language of property," property is at the core of annoyance prohibitions even under current law. X cannot successfully sue Y unless X can show that Y's actions have caused damage to X's person or property. I like it. Good, then show me the science that objectively measures bizarreness.

Let's consider a hypothetical case, and in this hypothetical case there is Iran(!) Yes, small countries get threatened sometimes by larger neighbors. If Country X is threatened by Country Y, it might do well to make common cause with Country Z that also considers Y a threat. I don't see invading country W as the first and only option. What if Big Countries T, U, and V also want W's resources and use Small Country X's invasion to invade and plunder X? Anyway, Iran, hypothetical or otherwise, has nothing to do with the topic of this thread: Rand's position on the treatment of Indian tribes.

I'm not applying modern concepts to old problems. I'm applying a treaty signed by the U.S. government in 1783 to the land it formally and legally had accorded to the Cherokee Indians. As for the land being lightly settled with no fences and no possibility of knowing whose it was--that was anything but the case with Cherokee land in Georgia, which by the early 1800's was in large part under cultivation and improved by permanent structures. Furthermore, the Treaty of Long Swamp Creek was quite explicit about boundaries. Once again, you are apparently confusing the Cherokee with nomadic tribes of the West. There were no hostilities between the Cherokee tribes living in Georgia and the United States government or the Georgia government in the forty years before the Cherokee's forced removal. The Cherokee were the exception that proved the rule? I suppose that means that because members of the tribe were no threat to the white man they therefore had to be moved to the other side of the Mississippi. The U.S. did not renege on the Treaty of Long Swamp Creek because the Cherokees had sided with the British. The treaty between the U.S. and the Cherokee was signed two years after the British surrender at Yorktown.

And who enforces the moral law? When it comes down to it, I wouldn't depend on another country's respect for the moral law to defend me, and neither would you. By obligating the US to adhere to a saintly standard of international diplomacy, you're effectively saying that the government should not do everything within its power to protect its citizens and the people within its borders. Why should we sacrifice our own safety and freedom for people in other countries? If those people want the US government to respect their rights, then all they have to do is cede their territories to the control of the US government. It's very simple. If they don't want to do that, fine. But then they have to accept the responsibilities and the burdens that come with being an independent nation-state, and one of those burdens is that the US is no longer obligated to respect their "rights". Do people serve the law or does the law serve the people? If the law contradicts the interests of the people in a serious way, then it should be ignored. Otherwise, you're saying that the segregationist sun-down laws (and some other ridiculous laws) that are still in the books across many cities in the US should still be enforced. The law is merely a tool, not a sacred cow. Sorry that was a brainfart. I was typing really fast and got a little ahead of myself. The problem is that since the Cherokee were within the borders of the US, they had no right to call themselves an independent nation. If they are a dependent nation, then they don't have the right to make treaties with the US in the first place. Similarly for any Indians inside as yet unorganized US territories west of the Mississippi river or in unclaimed territories west of that When they have the opportunity, moral men enforce moral law. That is not to say that it is likely or even possible to right all the world's wrongs. That's a liberal fantasy. If you insist that no country outside the U.S. can be trusted to act morally, then you'd be well advised to avoid foreign travel and foreign banks. There is no dichotomy between respecting the rights of U.S. citizens and those of foreigners. In fact, honoring the rights of non-Americans will in all but a few cases be reciprocated by other nations. Why should, say, the Swiss cede their sovereignty to the U.S.? The majority of the Swiss may rightly prefer being governed by their fellow Swiss than by a government thousands of miles away. And they'd be correct to doubt that the U.S. military would have an easy time bringing Switzerland under American control. But all this is beside the point. The Cherokee posed no threat to white Americans in 1838. Their removal was motivated not by any perceived threat but by the discovery of gold deposits on Cherokee lands. The law should serve justice, not merely the majority. If the Cherokee had no to right to make a treaty with the U.S., then why did U.S. officials sign a treaty with them? You may not like the price you got for your house, but you can't come back forty years later and say you changed your mind.

U.S. officials are morally obligated to respect the individual rights of all persons, just as we all are. A private citizen has no right to gang rape and mass murder Vietnamese civilians. Neither does a U.S. soldier. Receiving a federal paycheck does not exempt one from moral law. Secondly, U.S. officials are legally obligated to respect U.S. law, which specifically allowed for Cherokee control of certain lands in Georgia. If U.S. officials were worried about the Cherokee organizing "into a world power west of the Mississippi," why did they force them to march 2,000 miles to the west of the Mississippi? Or are you offering this as another example of government stupidity? How would the north Georgia Cherokees in 1838 (or later) have been conquered by Britain, France, Spain, or Mexico? Would the invading foreign armies have docked their navy at Savannah or Charleston and simply marched unimpeded though U.S. territory to reach their objective? I'm almost at the point where I have to treat your comments as satire.

This is just word games Mr. Ferrer. You can't define a word by something that it is not. If you were paying attention to my argument, you would have noticed that I defined "defense" as: Defense is when you take the necessary steps and precautions to prevent or repel an attack. Whether you use force or not in the course of defending yourself makes no difference. In the case of the Trail of Tears Indian ethnic cleansing, it was the U.S that was attacking, not the Indians. If A shoots neighbor B because B might shoot A (even though B has done nothing in words or actions to indicate such a threat), it is A who is attacking. It is A who is the violator of rights. Since the Supreme Court ruled that Obamacare is constitutional, then you agree with that too, right? Your analogy doesn't work because there isn't even a small possibility of war between the US and Mexico. And there was even less of a possibility that the Cherokee Nation would have launched a war on the United States of America in 1838.

I must say I'm shocked by this response. I had thought you were pretty well read and just chose the libertarian position for whatever reason. But, this smacks of a total lack of understanding of a basic principle, the right to life. Paid for by oneself. See how easy that was? If you want "easy," try self-ownership. We don't have to append "paid for by yourself" or anything else to self-ownership. Its implication are self-evident. And, by the way, "paid for by yourself" may not cover all possibilities. What about getting voluntary help for living expenses from others? What I understand is that the right to life, or "the right to life paid for by oneself" as you now call it, does not account for a complete range of individual autonomy. Item: How would a constitution protecting "the right to life paid for by oneself," rule out laws against selling body parts? If I am forbidden to sell a kidney or a cornea, my "right to life paid for by oneself," is still intact. Item: How would a constitution protecting "the right to life paid for by oneself," rule out laws against suicide? Item: How would a constitution protecting "the right to life paid for by oneself," rule out laws against certain dangerous sports? Item: How would a constitution protecting "the right to life paid for by oneself," rule out laws against certain dangerous drugs? The right to free speech is most assuredly a property right. Once one understands that an individual has ownership of his own body, it logically follows that he is within his right to operate his lungs, tongue and lips as he sees fit--provided such actions do not interfere with the property rights of his neighbors. Example: unless he "comes to the nuisance," by buying a house next to an opera singer who has lived there for some time, the new home owner is entitled to a reasonable amount of quiet at night. I have already explained how the principle of self-ownership would logically lead to penalties for the man who falsely yells "fire" in a theatre. There is no need to repeat it here. If you object to bizarre conclusions, perhaps you should write it into your ideal constitution that no interpretation of individual rights that is objectively and scientifically shown to be "bizarre" shall be permitted. Then we can look forward to a future justice declaring, "I know it when I see it." Swell. So perhaps if we cannot use "the right to life paid for by oneself" to permit drug use, we'll just have to put up with laws against drugs.

I do not argue from a "right to life" principle, for the same reason I do not argue from a right to food, shelter and clothing principle. "Right to life" raises a question that cannot easily be answered: paid for by whom? Example: Jones lives in the Republic of Pauperstan, has a fatal kidney disease, and must have a $10,000 dialysis machine. How will the law of his country enforce his "right to life"? I start with self-ownership, which is not contradicted by reality or any other feasible theory of property and deduce further rights from that. Really? "Right to life" is exactly the way Locke phrased it. You're attacking a straw man. My post did not attack anyone, straw or otherwise.

It is legitimate to own land. It is not legitimate to force people who are occupying land--and have a legitimate right to it by prior claim--off that land. As to the assertion that "native Americans didn't understand the concept of property and that it was therefore proper to attempt to work around them rather than with them," that is certainly not true of the Cherokee (or a number of other tribes). The Cherokee (who had homesteads, farms and towns little different from that of nearby white settlers) were living peacefully on their land in north Georgia in full compliance with the 1783 Treaty of Long Swamp. Since that treaty between the Cherokee and the United States had specified what land belonged to the Cherokee, it was the Indian removers in the United States government in 1838 who did not understand the concept of property because they refused to honor property rights written into the law. Seizing another human's body to use for one's own benefit is immoral. So is seizing another person's legally recognized plot of land.

That's ridiculous. Self-defense is defense, not using force. When you use force, it's called "war". Defense is when you take the necessary steps and precautions to prevent or repel an attack. The seizure of Indian lands was necessary for the defense of the nation. The Indian's refusal to comply with the demands of the US government and their subsequent interference in the attempts of the US to defend itself is necessarily a form of aggression. Good. If self-defense is not using force, then the executive branch should have simply relied on verbal pleas instead sending an armed force of 7,000 under General Winfield Scott to round up13,000 Cherokees. Since the armed men forced the Indians off their land, by your own definition it was not self-defense. In any case, the Indians were complying with the highest court in the land. It was the removers who were not. Just because Mexico is not at war with us now, doesn't mean they won't ever be. The costs of any war with Mexico would be extremely high. It follows then that even a relatively small probability of war would be intolerable. It's always better to nip a major future threat in the bud now by invading Mexico and forcing the Mexicans to live elsewhere than it is to have to fight it at its full-strength later.

Lol! It's not ethnic cleansing it's self-defense. What were we supposed to do, let a foreign power emerge right under our nose? It would have been ten times better for all parties concerned if the Indians had voluntarily ceded their territory to the US government like it was offered. Instead, they chose violent resistance over peace and prosperity. The definition of self-defense is using force against someone who has threatened or begun the use of force. There was no aggression or likelihood of aggression by the Cherokees in the 1830's. And there was relatively little resistance once the immoral, unconstitutional removal began Using your theory, I have the right to drive my neighbors off their land and seize it for my own use on the grounds that at some future point in my lifetime my neighbor might poison my well or sell the land to a man who might turn into a mass murderer.

I do not argue from a "right to life" principle, for the same reason I do not argue from a right to food, shelter and clothing principle. "Right to life" raises a question that cannot easily be answered: paid for by whom? Example: Jones lives in the Republic of Pauperstan, has a fatal kidney disease, and must have a $10,000 dialysis machine. How will the law of his country enforce his "right to life"? I start with self-ownership, which is not contradicted by reality or any other feasible theory of property and deduce further rights from that. What problem? One starts with the property of one's own body and through labor, creation, and exchange with others increases one's ownership of things outside one's body and prospers. It is not clear how the nebulous "right to life" solves the problem of acquisition--unless we decide the law must give a man whatever he needs to stay alive. As for selling one's body or parts thereof, I see nothing about it that is reprehensible or inconsistent with individualism. I do not know how well the theory will connect with the public at present. But when I sit down to consider man's nature, the principles of ethics, and the philosophy of law, my thoughts are not guided by what sells best.

Developing the land is now considered plunder? Obviously, you did not read all or understand any of what DeVoon wrote. Indians were expelled from their land without just cause and in violation of previous treaties and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling. By 1800 the Cherokees were no longer nomadic hunter-gatherers or a violent threat to whites. At the time of the removal they had permanent homes, farms, villages, Christian churches, a newspaper, and a written constitution--little different from what white men were doing a few miles away. Their removal was nothing more than ethnic cleansing.

Free speech ultimately rests on property and contract. I don't have the right to cause panic and injury by starting a stampede in a crowded theatre because a) if I don't own the theatre I have no right to abuse the actual owner's property by disrupting the performance he is putting on, and b) if I do own the theatre I have violated the terms of the contract to provide the patrons with a performance, not a riot. Murder and rape are most assuredly violations of property rights, specifically the ownership of one's own body. Self-ownership is also why conscription, compulsory education, and anti-drug laws are immoral. Procreation and adoption create certain parental obligations to a child. A young person cannot perform certain actions until he reaches the age of consent. I have not made an argument against blackmail--on this thread or elsewhere. Blackmail is simply the offer not to disclose particular information in exchange for money. That offer and the performance of that offer do not initiate force or violate anyone's property rights. Example: if X sees Y enter a motel room with a prostitute, X has every right to publish that information in a newspaper. Y does not own what X saw at the motel. Y does not own the newspaper. On the other hand, X has not trespassed on Y's property by offering to remain silent in exchange for money. I will certainly endeavor to follow your advice, but that comment is not a proper response to my position that imprisonment constitutes a limited, carefully stipulated ownership of another human being who has forfeited part of his autonomy by violating the rights of another. Example: if A vandalizes B's house, a court may rightfully require A to compensate B in full, or in the case of penury serve a prison sentence in which the damages are worked off.

Not at all. I'm simply pointing out that for over 200 years economists have been defending the free market on the grounds that it is history's most effective engine of material prosperity, and, unable to counter this argument, their opponents, who include not only Marxists but religious thinkers and conservatives, have raised the specter of capitalism's soullessness. I had already made this point well before you entered the discussion: "No, there is no yardstick for determining what socialists and fascists place such great store in: national pride, sense of community, brotherhood, inner glow, etc."

Rand's point was not that Indian tribes had forfeited their rights by attacking European settlers; rather she argued that they had no rights (even before the arrival of white pioneers) because they had not conceived rights and were not using them. [The Native Americans] didn't have any rights to the land and there was no reason for anyone to grant them rights which they had not conceived and were not using.... What was it they were fighting for, if they opposed white men on this continent? For their wish to continue a primitive existence, their "right" to keep part of the earth untouched, unused and not even as property, just keep everybody out so that you will live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it. Any white person who brought the element of civilization had the right to take over this continent. If Europeans could legitimately take land occupied by Indians because the Indians didn't believe in property rights, it would logically follow that Europeans could enslave Africans because (some) Africans had enslaved other Africans.

The standard that the individual is the highest authority on what is in his best interest. Without profits, without a price mechanism, without the ability to make expeditious changes in production and distribution, socialism will fail completely at meeting the wants of the average person. Naturally, unable to render anything other than economic inefficiency and stagnation, the socialist/fascist will typically assert that rather than focus on a bourgeois concern with consumer satisfaction, there are more important goals for society: national pride, brotherhood, the family of man, the glory of the working class, etc.

As I've said before on this thread, one does not need to refer to the subjective theory of value in order to demonstrate that socialism is inefficient in the allocation of resources and consistently fails to respond to the the wants of the average citizen.

Now that that's been said, we can return to the subject and see that the man who is fined, jailed, or made to pay compensation for selling a brass coin as a gold coin is not being punished for his words but for failing to perform what he was paid to do: deliver the gold. Two coin dealers can make the same promise, but if one of them fails to deliver what is proffered, only he is punished. Thus, fraud laws do not penalize speech but breach of contract. Then feel free to sue anytime you're on the street and see a building, a billboard or a bloated belly that you find emotionally distressing. If you own none of those items that upset you, you'll have scant luck getting the law to help remove them from your sight. Then the 50 states must be what you call "barbaric," for all of them "have laws providing that convicted defendants pay restitution to their victims." See here. In California, for example, "The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation automatically collects 50 percent of prison wages or other money deposited into your trust account to pay your restitution."

If you believe in a society in which contracts are regarded as mere word play and are not enforced, then don't expect any enterprise above the level of tiny corner markets. Taking someone's money through deception is no different than changing property line markers or deeds in the courthouse without the consent of all owners. It is trespass. You cannot make a claim for damages to something you don't own. You cannot collect when a vandal wrecks a house you don't have title to. If you claim your reputation is damaged, then you must show it belonged to you in the first place. Since your reputation exists only in the minds of others, how can you assert a right to collect for damages? You don't own what other people think. Then I assume you will be spending a great deal of time kicking ass in the U.S., which has the the world's highest prison population at 724 people per 100,000. And why shouldn't vandals pay for the cost of their destruction of property? Why should anyone be allowed to consume something and not pay for it?

If interpersonal utility comparisons are impossible as the subjective theory of value suggests, then you have no basis on which to say that it was unsuccessful, either. How can a nation that does not permit individual choice be successful in meeting individual preferences? Marx wrote in Das Kapital, "Just as the savage must wrestle with nature, in order to satisfy his wants, in order to maintain his life and reproduce it, so civilized man has to do it, and he must do it in all forms of society and under all possible modes of production. With his development the realm of natural necessity expands, because his wants increase; but at the same time the forces of production increase, by which these wants are satisfied." But in the Soviet Union, purportedly a nation guided by Marxism, the only wants being satisfied were not those of the working class, which sank to an even lower standard of living, but rather those of Stalin and the inner party. We do not have to demonstrate that life was better in the U.S., we only have to refer to the historical record that millions of Eastern bloc citizens preferred being someplace other than the Workers' Paradise. East Germany, for example, lost 20% of it population.

If the above were printed on a full page of the New York Times, it would be worth every one of the 70,000 dollars that the newspaper would charge.