Do we have "natural" rights?

Yes. Unlike you, I don't find it ethical to steal from others or use violence against peaceful people, and again unlike you, I can provide reasoning and sound logic for my principles.

 

I don't either. You have no idea what you are talking about, as usual.

Did you say something about holding yourself out as logical and reasonable?

 

Of course you do. You've made it clear many times that it's fine for government officials to take what others produce to suit your agenda and to use violence to enforce a monetary monopoly.

 

You were talking about stealing.

 

Very true, they may kill each other over food or territory in most cases.

 

Sounds like you are too.

 

What post are you referring to? I think you're mistaken.

 

*shrug* I might be. I was basing it on his characterization, but I had thought I had seen you post before that you believed the state had a right to take in tax "what it needed." Am I wrong?

 

Logically, there is no difference. Stealing is taking the property of another without his/her consent. Just because you have a large organization doing it at the behest of some people doesn't make it objectively any different from one directly taking the property of another.

 

Now, Technobabble. You are insisting that there is an objective morality based on the 'survival of the species'. Now why a morality should be based on the survival of the species is alien to me. Your argument stems from the objective fact that we all have the same subjective preference to survive. If we all liked picasso it would not means that his paintings contain an 'objective' beauty, it would mean that we all hold the same subjective opinion.

Furthermore, why it is the 'survival of the species' is perverse. Such a stance would justify eradicating the 'defective', it would justify forced eugenics and so on and so forth. Furthermore evolution acts on the level of the gene or as far as we are concerned, the level of the individual so why is it that you place survival of the species as your initial premise.

An objective set of principles determined from subjective axioms.

e.g.
Subjective premise: I like toast.
Objective principle: I should eat toast.

While I was using society in a very vague sense, I will respond to this. By society I clearly mean a vague grouping of people with either directly or indirectly interact with. To give a simple example the ancient tribe. Now what is allowed in the ancient tribe? Anything that is not prevented by the other members of the tribe is 'allowed' in that sense. To make my use of the term society into something more than it is, is merely making an argument out of nothing.

In modern democracies the majority has the power.

As above.

This is a disingenuous argument.

My statement was that those with the power and will to enforce their morality, will do so.

Now, as I hold that no moral value-systems are right it certainnly does not follow that 'might makes right'. Clealry you are attempting to make me look like a bad guy.

As there are no 'right' moral systems (or wrong ones for that matter) it is certainly the case that the 'enforced morality' i.e. the moral code which you are forced to follow will be determined by who has the 'might' in any area be it on a local level or an international level. Now, does it follow that such an 'enforced morality' is right? No, of course not.

Inevitably we all can only act according to our subjective value-judgements (yes, even you) and the 'enforced' moral system will reflect that. The 'enforced' moral system is no more right than any other it just happens to be the one being 'enforced'. Also, it is clearly the case that the 'enforced' moral system will differ greatly within itself. For example, if I live in a totalitarian regime then i can still talk to my friend about how bad the leader is without being killed but could not do so on the street.

 

Your definition of stealing is wrong.

If that was the definition of stealing, you would be "stealing" to enforce a contract that gave you right to payment, you would be "stealing" if you got payment as compensation for someone who negligently injured you, and the government would be stealing for collecting taxes.

None of which are stealing or theft.

 

A contract is documentation of consent. The other two are more interesting examples. Whether a person considers either theft is generally a function of whether they believe they have consented to the authority of the agency enforcing ruling or tax. King John said he was imposing taxes, those he taxed said he was stealing. Dunno, seems like a workable definition.

 

Your definition of stealing is arbitrary and irrational.

When a contract is created between two people, then title is transferred. If I agree to give you a cow for a pig, and deliver the cow to you and you refuse to hand over the pig, you are now stealing because the pig is mine. If you do work for me and I then do not pay you what I agreed to pay you, then my withholding of the money is theft because it is no longer my money when the terms of the transfer on your side are complete.

Negligence is a property issue. When the property of the offending party causes damage to the victim or his or her property then it's theft if the victim is not made whole (compensated for all losses incurred.)

The government is stealing for collecting taxes because it is taking property that was never offered nor volunteered.

Please provide your definition of theft so that we can objectively determine what is theft and what is not. Assuming, of course, that you have a rational definition of theft.

 

"Subjective" implies a bias on the part of the subject. If all human beings have a preference to survive, then it's an objective preference. It's not a bias on the part of anyone. You have a preference to breathe. Do you believe that is a subjective preference?

I disagree wtih Technobabble on the survival of the species part. People have a preference to survive, but that preference becomes largely subjective when applied to who else lives.

Yes, that's right.

The same holds true for the scientific method. It is a set of system for observation, measurement, and experiment which are determined through reason determined from subjective axioms:

Subjective premise: I wish to discover the rules of nature
Objective principle: The way to discover the laws of the universe in the most objective way possible is through these techniques.

Discovery of the laws of nature can be done without the scientific method, but it is haphazard and unproveable. Without the scientific method, we would still be living in a state something like the 17th century, waiting for really smart people to stumble on new ideas.

Simliarly, one can have an ethical framework based on an principle which is objective, such as natural law, or which is arbitrary, such as democratic rule.
Either your ethics are rational, or they are not. If you have a rational system of ethics, I'm very open to hearing them. But, I suspect, that you don't, as you seem to rely on what others tell you is right and wrong rather than having the tools to reason them for yourself.

Then I will just say that you were being unreasonable and ignore the original comment as irrelevant.

This is not true and it is, in fact, unprovable. First off, you cannot even define "the majority", since half the individuals within a state are not usually what is referred to as "the majority." Certainly even those who are allowed to participate frequently do not, so they cannot be called part of "the majority", and "the majority" rarely, if at all, effect real change.

It's the government that holds power, and usually a small number of people within it. Even in a direct democracy, such as that of ancient Athens, the majority never held power but were swayed by demagogues who held great political power and had many citizens killed off in political purges, exiles, and other removals of rights.

In modern democracies, the majority get to select from a very small pool of candidates who then generally hold very little real power as the bureaucracies created by their predecessors have become bloated, dictatorial, and entrenched.

I'm just trying to find out if you adhere to reason, or intuition.

Noone is forced to follow anyone else's moral code. One may be punished for not obeying dictates by those with the power to make and enforce those dictates, but that is not the same as forcing you to accept the morals.

I've never claimed that my value judgments aren't subjective. What I claim is that my political principles, that is, what is justly enforced through law, is based on objectively derived principles from the natural rights system of ethics.

To explain the difference, I use the matter of adultery, or more specifically, the cheating of one spouse which leads to emotional distress in the other.

I find that sort of adultery to be morally wrong. I agree that my feelings on the matter are intuitive and biased toward the feelings of the wronged spouse. There is no objective reason for me to feel that way, except that people who would do that to their spouses are probably not the sort of people I want to hang out with. And, indeed, such people I refuse to associate with.

However, in the natural rights framework of ethics, adultery is merely a choosing of association. It is neither force nor fraud against the life or property of another, and therefore to punish the adulterer by depriving him or her of property or life would be unjust. If the law can be said to be just when depriving one peaceful person of his right to associate, then it is just in any restriction of association including even preventing such associations as our arguing on the internet.

There is a case to be made for the existence of natural rights, which is the argumentation ethic developed by Hans Herman-Hoppe, but I am not yet prepared to defend it as I have not studied all the arguments against.

You still seem to argue that the lack of enforcement of thing means it does not exist. Again, by way of example, the scientific method exists. It is a set of techniques. Science cannot be done without it, yet it cannot be enforced. No one is required to use those techniques in their attempts to discover the nature of the universe and a totalitarian regime can enforce a different method of discovery, but that does not mean the method does not exist. It is the same for natural rights. Whether or not the ethics are followed, the fact is that they exist and from them can be objectively derived a system of right and wrong for human interaction.

If you believe all humans should have equal rights, then, objectively, no other system exists which can objectively define equal rights for all.
If you believe that government should be always be just when intervening or not intervening in human interaction, then natural law is the only framework in which justice can be objectively derived. All other systems are arbitrary, and, ultimately, boil down to either might is right, or is right/wrong because you feel that it is but cannot reason it out.

 

Under the natural rights ethic, natural rights are unalienable as in they cannot be contracted away. Your consent to be taxed is only valid so long as your consent is not withdrawn. A valid contract can only be that which transfers title or labor for title and can never violate the rights of another. So while it's only just if both parties consent, not just anything can be consented to.

 

The statists that don't understand ownership and theft may want to watch this. It does a solid job debunking the statist worldview.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muHg86Mys7I&feature=channel_video_title"]YouTube - ‪The Philosophy of Liberty‬‏[/ame]

 

All of my examples would be stealing under the definition Bleeding gave.

None are.

Obviously that cannot be an accurate definition of stealing.

 

If two people differ on whether consent was given, they can reach different conclusions using the same definition of stealing. It's quite possible for someone to believe one or more of those examples are stealing and for you to disagree without making that definition invalid.

 

Which definition of mine are you talking about?

But under your definition, enforcing a contract would be stealing.

Therefore your definition cannot be correct.

Causing damage is not theft.

That is not an accurate definition of theft. See above.

Wiki's is not to bad:


In criminal law, theft is the illegal taking of another person's property without that person's freely-given consent.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theft

 

It doesn't matter. You base your definition of stealing to be what you want it to be. The Roma, or Gypsies don't believe that it is stealing when they take the property of non-Roma. Is there definition correct or incorrect? Certainly it's no more nor less valid than your definition

No, it wouldn't. I've made it clear. When you transfer title, the property is yours even if the other party has not given it up. I'll give an example. You are selling your wheelbarrow for $20. I give you $20. The wheelbarrow is now mine even if you have not taken it out of your garage. If I go and retrieve it even though you decide you want to retain it, I am taking my property and you are trying to steal it by not giving me what is mine.

You are thinking of a contract as something that is not fulfilled until both parties have possession of the property transferred. You can think of it more like a car title. If you've ever sold a car, you will fill out a title form and sign over ownership to the new owner. That person now owns the car, even if they don't have possession of it yet.

There's nothing worse than using reasoning with someone and they just say "nu uh, no it isn't." If you don't agree with my reasoning, then please, use refutation. Otherwise, I'll just ignore your juvenile responses.

If I damage your property, then I have stolen from you the use of it. It is the same with trespass. If you have another way to describe, please do.

See what "above"? You arbitrary declaration that taxation is not theft because you don't want it to be? Use some reason for once. If I'm wrong, prove that I'm wrong.

[/quote]

Where, under taxation, is consent freely given?

 

It essentially boils down to these two statements and so I will take these as the starting point.

First off, we note that these two are entirely subjective (as all such statements are) but we will take them as given. Then we not the ambiguity in 'just', this is merely begging the question. We want to ascertain a system to determine what is just and so we conclude it is a system where the government acts justly, a tautology at best.

As this vague 'just' leaves us nowhere I will assume it is the Libertarian 'just' and reason from there.

Now,the first question that arises is the following. Which way are we arguing? Are we taking the above statements as our basis and then reason forward? Or are we taking Libertarianism to be just and then reasoning backward to these two statements? This is an important question. At the moment the ambiguity of just leaves us nowhere.

If it is the case that we take these statements as the initial point and we must ascertain 'just', and I hate to say it but statement 2 does not contribute in anyway to our debate due to it's implicit 'just'. So, moving on, I ask whether or not these statements lead us to libertarianism. In the most absurd case a mass suicide would yield equal rights, or perhaps everyone enslaving themselves into the matrix. There are many configurations of 'equal' rights, it is a question of what should be included. However we do note that equal rights require a lack of violent compulsion, or does it? A completely anarchic system of anything goes allows anyone to use violence and so there exists an equal right to violence. It is evident that we need more than 'equal rights' to make your proposition fit the Libertarian framework.

The reason why I ask what direction you are arguing in is to ascertain the following. If 1 and 2 could be shown to lead to a system that was not libertarian in nature then would you accept it? Or have you taken the libertarian postion to be the conclusion and are then rationalising your decision? It is an important point. In the former case, I have to criticise 1 and 2 and in the latter libertarianism.

To flesh out these ideas we consider the following case, let us suppose that 1 and 2 did lead to libertarianism but with the following problem, the libertarian system set technology reeling backwards towards the stone age. Would you call an end to it? Now, you might settle for colonial technology but I imagine that even you would balk at having to use stone tools. Now of course you will say that this is a ridiculous claim and it may very well be but that is how we test such matters. If it is the case that you would not accept such a world then it is evident that we must add a third requirement for technological development, now even if this third requirement only rears it's head in the extreme case we have already demonstrated the two axioms are not the one's you truly hold.

Furthermore you will argue that a libertarian system would not lead to such a situation (I don't think it would either) but this merely shows that you are in fact arguing backwards from a libertarian system to these two 'principles' as if these principles were the guiding force then technological development would not be any sort of issue, neither would any economic success of libertarianism. If you are not willing to support libertarianism (which we are taking to be the system derived from the two principles) if it hurls us backwards through time then we should dispense with just two principles, add more or get rid of them entirely.

Now, I reckon being a human being that you would not accept such a reversal in science and living standards and so we can safely say that you have in your own mind incorporated libertarianism into your value-judgements and are now rationalising backwards, as in this situation http://www.world-science.net/othernews/071106_rationalize.htm(no insult be inferrance intended).

Now you are probably asking as to the point of the above antics but it is massively important to ascertain what it is you are doing, pinning it down now saves a lot of time running around in circles (something I abhor from arguing with creationists so often).

On a second point I raise the question of choice and rationality. An important topic I have so far skirted but will now indulge in. Before jumping too far in I will ask for your opinions (seeing as libertarianism involves a lot of 'let everyone choose'). The main questions I have are in regard to the mechanisms of choice. Two questions in particular, that with regard to environmental influences and that with regard the rationality of any given choice.

 

Just because someone refuses to acknowledge the existence of the sun does not mean the sun's existence is a matter of subjectivity.

 

My, what an intelligent and thoughtful rebuttal. Very impressive stuff.

 

If there are crimes against nature, there are nature rights.

 

A lengthy and futile attempt to justify non-morality.

Tell me, does the sun exist?