Standing naked on my property

[Wolf DeVoon]

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.

[Brant Gaede]

Wolf, who is unfavorably comparing you to Smith? It's not even clear if its Smith or Smith describing Spencer or both.

--Brant

it's apples and oranges, and I'm a pomegranate

[Wolf DeVoon]

Smith is a VIP. So are Machan, Huggins, Bissel.

I don't mind being a VUP. Guess how many books I sold in August? -- 2

Anyway, we drifted far off-topic, which is supposed to be about how horrible Islam is and why we should persecute Muslims.

oops -- wrong thread.

[Francisco Ferrer]

Congratulations. You've managed to use the term "property right" in so many ways that you may as well be appear to be babbling incoherently from the pont of view of 99.9999% of Earth's population. Do you seriously think your challenge to a phrase most people can easily comprehend ("right to liberty") can't be turned around on your use of "property rights"? What counts as an "initiation of force"? Your neighbor flashing you (it's a male)? Me pointing a laser beam through your window? How about verbal assault? Surely that's forceful. Farting in your general direction? Yes, when people say they have a right to life, it's so totally ambiguous as to whether they mean it should be illegal to shoot them unprovoked or that it should be legal for them to ransack my house and pillage my refrigerator for food. /sarc Maybe, just maybe, rights aren't axiomatic-deductive.

You bring up common law. What do you know about it that you haven't gotten from Rothbard? Did you know that it was a form of "statist" law?

If you are having trouble grasping the idea of property right, here is a quick definition: the recognition of an individual's authority to use or control a particular thing. If the words in this definition constitute babbling to you, please consult a dictionary.

You think that "right to liberty" is a phrase that that most people comprehend. Fine, then you should have no trouble expressing in words just what it means. Can Citizen A trade his right to liberty for Citizen B's car?

Quickly: Flashing is not force. Laser beams at an intensity to cause damage are. Words are not physical force. Words spoken and amplified at high decibels are. Carbon dioxide and other gases escaping from the human body are not damaging; other emissions are.

If people say a person has a right to life, they are omitting the context of "By what means?" During a nuclear war Citizen A has a "right to life" by crawling into the fallout shelter he built last year. He does not have a "right to life" by crawling uninvited into the fallout shelter Citizen B built last year.

"Right to life" is no more meaningful than "Right to food."

As for certain laws being statist, an analogy: the fact that algebra is most commonly taught by an employee of the state does not make algebra intrinsically statist.

[Wolf DeVoon]

here is a quick definition: the recognition of an individual's authority...

...the fact that algebra is most commonly taught by an employee of the state does not make algebra intrinsically statist.

I shouldn't intrude, but authority caught my eye. Authorship? -- and isn't authority what teachers and school boards claim?

[Francisco Ferrer]

If I have no authority over the pearl I found at the bottom of the ocean, who does? God? The King? The Department of Natural Resources?

thefreedictionary.com "Authority: legal permission granted to a person to perform a specified act"

[Wolf DeVoon]

If I have no authority over the pearl I found at the bottom of the ocean, who does? God? The King? The Department of Natural Resources?

Strange use of the term. You certainly didn't author it. Change pearl to oil field and reconsider.

Language hijacked by crown and ermine goons:

au·thor·i·ty

əˈTHôritē,ôˈTHär-/

noun

noun: authority; noun: auth.; plural noun: authorities

1. 1.

   the power or right to give orders, make decisions, and enforce obedience.

   "he had absolute authority over his subordinates"

   synonyms: power, jurisdiction, command, control, charge, dominance, rule, sovereignty, supremacy

   informal clout

   "a rebellion against those in authority"

   • the right to act in a specified way, delegated from one person or organization to another.

     "military forces have the legal authority to arrest drug traffickers"

     synonyms: authorization, right, power, mandate, prerogative, license, permission

     "the authority to arrest drug traffickers"
   • official permission; sanction.

     "the money was spent without congressional authority"
2. 2.

   a person or organization having power or control in a particular, typically political or administrative, sphere.

   "the health authorities"

   synonyms: officials, officialdom

--------------

Oxford English Dictionary:

Origin

Middle English: from Old French autorite, from Latin auctoritas, from auctor 'originator, promoter' (see author).

Phrases

Have ascertained something from a reliable source: I have it on good authority that there is a waiting list of up to five weeks

[Francisco Ferrer]

Thanks for providing two of the word's several definitions. I hope it is clear that I was not using either one you listed.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Thanks for providing two of the word's several definitions. I hope it is clear that I was not using either one you listed.

Yes, I understand. Can you clarify what you did mean by it? (French and Latin root is author, originator, promoter)

I'd like to agree that you own your life, however I find it difficult to understand how you originated it.

[Francisco Ferrer]

Thanks for providing two of the word's several definitions. I hope it is clear that I was not using either one you listed.

Yes, I understand. Can you clarify what you did mean by it? (French and Latin root is author, originator, promoter)

I'd like to agree that you own your life, however I find it difficult to understand how you originated it.

Here's a link to the post where I defined it: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14567&p=215837

One can come into ownership of property either by originating it or through first use. It is true that we do not create ourselves (i.e. our bodies) but we do have possession of them (we inhabit them and are the first to use them) and thus they are our own by right. As Locke put it:

Though the Earth…be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. 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. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Thanks for providing two of the word's several definitions. I hope it is clear that I was not using either one you listed.

Yes, I understand. Can you clarify what you did mean by it? (French and Latin root is author, originator, promoter)

I'd like to agree that you own your life, however I find it difficult to understand how you originated it.

Here's a link to the post where I defined it: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14567&p=215837

One can come into ownership of property either by originating it or through first use. It is true that we do not create ourselves (i.e. our bodies) but we do have possession of them (we inhabit them and are the first to use them) and thus they are our own by right. As Locke put it:

Though the Earth…be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. 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. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men.

Thanks. I'll check that post you linked. Meanwhile, I trust you accept that Locke's theory is dictum, an assertion without proof.

----

Whoa. "Legal permission granted" by whom?

[Selene]

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."

Hence the immoral institution of a progressive income tax that increases it's theft of your property as you produce more.

All taxation is theft.

All taxation is immoral.

A..

[Wolf DeVoon]

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

[Selene]

My understand would be that your garden is not in a "state of nature" by the very actions that you took to create it and transform it from it's "state in nature" to it's state in personum as your "property."

Doesn't that make more sense?

As to that creating "war," I believe man is creative enough to find lo's of reasons for war.

A...

[Francisco Ferrer]

Thanks. I'll check that post you linked. Meanwhile, I trust you accept that Locke's theory is dictum, an assertion without proof.

----

Whoa. "Legal permission granted" by whom?

I have written earlier on this thread on the logic of self-ownership:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14567&p=214734

Within a society (i.e. a place where two or more people may interact), there is a need for a common understanding on what belongs (i.e. may be used, controlled, consumed, sold) to whom. This concord may be regard as a statement of rights (i.e. a constitution), which is the foundation for a code of laws.

[Wolf DeVoon]

I have written earlier on this thread on the logic of self-ownership:

http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14567&p=214734

Within a society (i.e. a place where two or more people may interact), there is a need for a common understanding on what belongs (i.e. may be used, controlled, consumed, sold) to whom. This concord may be regard as a statement of rights (i.e. a constitution), which is the foundation for a code of laws.

Yes, I saw that item at the time you posted it. Sort of a straw argument that presupposes ownership a priori and unavoidable. You did not explicitly address the notion of liberty, although it's smuggled into the argument dressed as owning yourself (opposed to being owned by someone else). Ownership is not a first principle or immediately descriptive of life. Do dogs and dolphins own themselves?

We're on the same page with constitutional law, although I'm suspicious of a "statement of rights."

Also suspicious of the term "society." Code of laws arrived at how?

[Francisco Ferrer]

Yes, I saw that item at the time you posted it. Sort of a straw argument that presupposes "ownership" a priori and unavoidable. Does not address the notion of liberty, although you smuggled into the argument dressed as owning yourself (as opposed to being owned by someone else). Ownership is not a first principle.

We're on the same page with a constitution, although I'm suspicious of a "statement of rights."

Also suspicious of the term "society." Code of laws arrived at how?

No, it does not presuppose ownership. As I stated, one of the alternatives is "No person owns his own or any other person's body."

Nothing was smuggled into the argument. If a man does not have a right to himself (his body) then he does not have a right to do anything with that body, including walking or eating or drinking. Ownership presumes the moral or legal power to exert control of a thing.

Liberty is the extent to which one may act without violating the equal liberty of another human. Such a concept requires an understanding of what is properly mine and yours.

If you prefer, I won't say "society," I will say the name of every person that I'm referring to: Mr. M V Fitch, Mrs. R Gadsby, Mr. R K James, Mrs. H Kane, Mrs. J Lea, Mrs. L A Mitchell, Mrs. S A Stavrou, Mr. A P Watts, Mrs. E A Webster, Mr. J A Wyatt.

[Wolf DeVoon]

If a man does not have a right to himself (his body) then he does not have a right to do anything with that body

That's how we begin life at birth, in custody and incompetent. In the current state, few attain much else.

The sheep have been told their confidence is at a 7 year high by the propaganda peddlers working at the behest of the oligarchy. The sheep are also told that 10 million jobs have been added since the GOTUS played his first round back in 2009. The sheep have been told the record highs in the stock market prove that all is well. If the .1% are doing fantastic, some of the wealth must be trickling down. The sheep are told that QE and ZIRP were really to save Main Street and not the bonuses of Wall Street (at record highs by the way). The sheep are told to fear ISIS, Iran, Assad, Putin, and China. The sheep are told U.S. energy independence is just around the corner and to ignore the fact that gas prices have tripled in the last ten years. The sheep are told drones will keep them safe and the DHS militarizing the police is just for their safety and security. The sheep are told guns are dangerous in their hands, but not in the hands of the government. The sheep passively eat their iGadgets and barely bleat while being led to the slaughter house. [Jim Quinn]

The central constitutional issue is not property, but liberty.

Broadly speaking, the free exercise of liberty is a limitless horizon, if you have the courage and capacity to take action, accept the risk and suffer accordingly.

...No one is adequately prepared for the challenge of life and liberty. [The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch, pp.17, 19]

[Francisco Ferrer]

The central constitutional issue is not property, but liberty.

Again, liberty to do what with what?

[Brant Gaede]

The central constitutional issue is not property, but liberty.

Again, liberty to do what with what?

That's derivative; not a counter, but the answer is whatever you want that's not rights' violating. My answer. Wolf...?

--Brant

[Francisco Ferrer]

The central constitutional issue is not property, but liberty.

Again, liberty to do what with what?

That's derivative; not a counter, but the answer is whatever you want that's not rights' violating. My answer. Wolf...?

--Brant

In a social context, liberty has to be defined in terms of rights, and rights have to be defined in terms of what one owns.

[Wolf DeVoon]

The central constitutional issue is not property, but liberty.

Again, liberty to do what with what?

I'm sorry to revisit this question again. I'm not trying to persuade you of anything. We seem to agree that a constitution matters. In the past a constitution was understood to create and empower a government, not a system of law as such, but a territorial sovereign with an inextinguishable legal supremacy backed by an army, navy, and various civil departments to regulate private behavior, especially vigorous suppression of rebellion. The U.S. Constitution of 1787 had no Bill of Rights. It is not a very controversial observation today -- nor was it in 1957 -- that the Bill of Rights did little to limit the supremacy and arbitrary prerogatives of government overlords, aspirants, and institutional minions. Such scant protection of property in the 5th Amendment pertained to compensation for taking it by decree and, as Selene noted elsewhere, the New Deal erased that notion. ObamaCare is the fullest flower and fruit of widely accepted contemporary U.S. constitutional doctrine, that real and personal property exist only by permission of Congress and the Executive. If you own an oil well or a power plant or hospital, you "own" and control nothing. If you own nothing, you are entitled by law to take the property of others. Aside from defacto liberty (the great sphere of private life that no government can police) you and I have no freedom from federal, state, local, district, multilateral and quasi-independent agencies of government. In Britain, those last are called "quangos" -- semi-public administrative bodies outside the civil service but financed by the Exchequer and having members appointed by the government. In America, we have thousands of them charged with "community organizing," from which Barack Obama and Al Sharpton sprang to positions of national leadership.

It was certain from its inception that the U.S. Constitution would give us this result. At the time of ratification, economic and political crises prompted a thin majority of state legislators to concede supreme power to the proposed Federal system. They reaped a bitter harvest in a Civil War, the Legal Tender Cases, the Federal Reserve Act, and a multiplicity of regulatory agencies spun into every aspect of economic behavior, especially employment (use of your body to feed yourself) and the food and medicine you are allowed (or forced) to ingest.

What has been tolerated is property -- to be milked by government and its horde of locusts. What has been taken is liberty.

Under fascism, men retain the semblance or pretense of private property, but the government holds total power over its use and disposal... citizens retain the responsibilities of owning property, without freedom to act and without any of the advantages of ownership... government officials hold the economic, political and legal power of life or death over the citizens. [Ayn Rand Lexicon]

[Francisco Ferrer]

All of this is fascinating, which is why I always seek out your essays.

However, I do not see that it makes the case for liberty as a condition that can exist apart from property.

A: I have liberty. I may do anything I want. And as far as I'm concerned "anything" includes spray-painting that white fence.

B: Well, you cannot do that. Not without your neighbor's permission.

A: Why not?

B: Well, because the fence belongs to him.

A: Why should what belongs to him limit my liberty?

B: Well, because, actually, you don't really have unlimited liberty. You have liberty to act only on your own property.

A: What the hell is property?

B: It's what is yours by first use and possession, by labor, and by voluntary exchange with others.

A: Bummer! I don't care about property. I just want liberty.

As for constitutions, there is nothing in the idea of a constitution that requires a monopoly on the use of retaliatory force.

[Wolf DeVoon]

I have liberty. I may do anything I want.

Straw argument. Liberty pertains to freedom from government. It doesn't mean you can leap to Mars without mechanical appliance, nor live forever, nor trespass upon and cause damage to the property possessed and defended by others without consequences. No one likes my definition of justice ("armed defense of innocent liberty") but the essential business of law is to distinguish fact from falsehood, right and wrong, guilt or innocence.

The point of suffering through a courtroom drama is to honor James Madison's epigram of fairness: that no man should be allowed to judge his own cause. That's why lawyers, judges and juries make sense, not only in the specific situation of creating and advancing a new nation... but also in the historical sense that every society in the past faced the same issue and paid similar heed to a tribunal of reasoned inquiry, hoping to supplant unequal, reckless private combat with impartial due process. [COGGIG, p.130]

The concept of "wrong" is fundamental to the administration of justice. It's not an ethical term, but a logical and judicial one, implied by due process. No man should judge his own cause (True or false, right or wrong?) If false, courts would not exist; you'd have a right to conduct your affairs any way you please. If it's true, that no man should judge his own cause, then judicial procedures must be objective and fair. Anything less would be wrong as a matter of legal principle. [Laissez Faire Law, p.80]

[Brant Gaede]

The central constitutional issue is not property, but liberty.

Again, liberty to do what with what?

That's derivative; not a counter, but the answer is whatever you want that's not rights' violating. My answer. Wolf...?

--Brant

In a social context, liberty has to be defined in terms of rights, and rights have to be defined in terms of what one owns.

Rights are defined by right and wrong (social) actions respecting force. If you want to displace Rand, indicate your differences. I think that would be better than simply putting up your building next door. I criticize Wolf similarly. However, I love the constitutional take down.

--Brant