[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Neuromancer wrote:
Weak.You wouldn’t know rational if it pissed in your eye.
Speaking of a weak argument.
Yes, speaking of a weak argument indeed. There is no such thing as a “natural right,” and the suggestion is patently ridiculous. Go find a hungry grizzly bear and expatiate on your “right to your own person.” Tell it how you are entitled to its lunch, seeing as “only rational beings can own property.” See what happens.
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Well the natural rights doctrine indeed has a rather weak foundation, but it is quite consistent if you accept the principle of self ownership.
If you dont and believe we belong to a collective, how “democratic” ever that may be, you have as little ground to stand on epistemologically as natural right libertarians.
So we either wage war on each other or we agree that everybody has at least to keep his mitts to himself ,if only for practical reasons, which sounds a lot like libertarianism to me.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:I can take a bear’s hide and decorate my living room with it. A bear is only concerned with eating. He has no natural rights. I do and I can prove it to anyone who tries to violently assert otherwise.
I am a rational being and have accepted my fate as a free person.
You still need the acceptance of the collective for your own livelihood and you can never be free. Sad.[/quote]
You hit the nail on the head: you have no rights which you cannot violently enforce.
And typically, you try to make the argument about individualism vs. “collectivism” when that has nothing to do with it. Acknowledging that “rights” are a manmade concept and social in their very nature, i.e., acknowledging reality, is not seeking the “acceptance of the collective.” It’s not having my head up my ass.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
I can take a bear’s hide and decorate my living room with it. A bear is only concerned with eating. He has no natural rights. I do and I can prove it to anyone who tries to violently assert otherwise.
So? A bear would eat you. And a bear would violently protect his notion of property (territory) and life.
I am a rational being and have accepted my fate as a free person.
Doesn’t matter what you accept if ultimately you can’t enforce it. You might have the illusion of owning your life because others allow you the use of it. Or, at least, enough of it to keep you satisfied. But, maybe someone else claims your life and disposes of it tomorrow. Happens all the time. In reality, others just let you use a life, until they don’t. It’s still predator and prey, hive, pack, pride, type stuff.
Correct, but this has nothing to do with natural rights, nor does a right to property follow from it. Ironically, the right to property can ONLY come from the “collective.”
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:I can take a bear’s hide and decorate my living room with it. A bear is only concerned with eating. He has no natural rights. I do and I can prove it to anyone who tries to violently assert otherwise.
I am a rational being and have accepted my fate as a free person.
You still need the acceptance of the collective for your own livelihood and you can never be free. Sad.
You hit the nail on the head: you have no rights which you cannot violently enforce.
And typically, you try to make the argument about individualism vs. “collectivism” when that has nothing to do with it. Acknowledging that “rights” are a manmade concept and social in their very nature, i.e., acknowledging reality, is not seeking the “acceptance of the collective.” It’s not having my head up my ass.
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So then what is the point of your ideology, exactly?
Because on the one hand we both seem to want what is “best for society” but on the other hand you seem to be the only one that does not understand how society arises. And this is why fundamentally you do not seem to grasp that collectivist ideology is the undoing of society.
If you do not understand socialism as a collectivist ideology then you do not understand what it is your ideology proposes.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
orion wrote:So we either wage war on each other or we agree that everybody has at least to keep his mitts to himself ,if only for practical reasons, which sounds a lot like libertarianism to me.
Correct, but this has nothing to do with natural rights, nor does a right to property follow from it. Ironically, the right to property can ONLY come from the “collective.”
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No. It comes from the ability to protect it individually. I do not need someone to stand up for my property but me. And I certainly would not try and convince them with the “good of the many” arguments that it is their moral duty to protect me.
You guys are not getting the point. You have the ability to make a conscious descision. You cannot control every aspect of the universe, which is what you are saying would need to be the case in order for me to “own” my own life. But in reality, I just need to be able to think and act for myself, which of course is automatic. Even if you do what someone else tells you to do you do it willingly, there is always another choice you could make. If I joined the military for instance, even though I am serving a role where I dfo what I am told, there is nothing but my own will to stop me from taking a loaded gun and shoving it down my superiors mouth and pulling the trigger if he deserves it. He doesn’t make that choice for me, I make it. The penalties of the actions don’t make the choice, I make it. I decide what my existance is going to be like with every decision I make. So do you and so does everyone else. Even a people who are not free, truly are free, they just believe they are not. Ability or lack therof does not mean a person is not free. It means they lack ability, not freedom.
V[/quote]
Yeah, but a bear can learn to stop going into another bear’s territory if it’s just going to earn him a beating. Then again, maybe one day he decides it’s worth it. Maybe he decides the fish on Alpha bear’s territory is worth a beating (or maybe he wins this time) if he encounters him and decides to stand and fight. Maybe it’s worth a couple swats on the rear if he just runs. Or, maybe, if he can get in and get out without being caught, he loses nothing.
Besides, you say you’re free because you can choose to do or not to do something that will have repercussions. I don’t see it that way. Yes, you can CHOOSE to shove a loaded weapon down a superior’s throat while in the military. But your boundries have been decided for you. You can choose to cross those, but the results originate from those boundries. You can accept one of the choices you’ve been given; behave and continue on, disbehave and face the consequences, disbehave and go on the run. Either way, your life reflects a choice between options that others have put to you.
Society is a collection of individuals. It is the aim of socialism to allow each individual to fully develop according to their own wishes (of course, so long as they do not violate the [democratically agreed-upon and enforced] rights of another). If by “collective,” you mean “democratic” (and by contrast, by “individualist” you must mean “coercive”), then it is the design of socialism to check the harmful effects of wealth concentration through collective ownership.
As one lone individual is incapable of extracting any but the meanest existence from nature, all benefits of modern society, and thus all wealth is necessarily social in nature, and it is for this reason that socialists intend to collectively control wealth, since it was collectively produced.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Either way, your life reflects a choice between options that others have put to you.[/quote]
Does this mean that man is not free in the choice he ultimately must make?
I am no more less free because my choices are those put to me by others or if they are put to me by nature itself. I still own the use of my mind and body in making those choices.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:Correct, but this has nothing to do with natural rights, nor does a right to property follow from it. Ironically, the right to property can ONLY come from the “collective.”
No. It comes from the ability to protect it individually. I do not need someone to stand up for my property but me. And I certainly would not try and convince them with the “good of the many” arguments that it is their moral duty to protect me.[/quote]
No. If no one but you acknowledges your right to a particular piece of property, and they want it, they will take it from you. Unless you are suggesting that you can individually beat back the rest of the population? No, in order for you not to overwhelmed, enough have to recognize your right to that property and thus refrain from attempting to take it that you are able to defend it yourself from those who still do not recognize your ownership.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Either way, your life reflects a choice between options that others have put to you.
Does this mean that man is not free in the choice he ultimately must make?
I am no more less free because my choices are those put to me by others or if they are put to me by nature itself. I still own the use of my mind and body in making those choices.[/quote]
Again, all animals own their body since they are the one’s that “live” in it. But nature shows us that other animals can come along, take it, and dispose of it.
Anyways, can you really own something that’s been recycled through the ecosystem for your use until it’s recycled again for use by others? Maybe nature owns your body. Nature is collectivist. It redistributes body and minds all the time.
I think you’re stuck arguing Un-Natural Rights…Or, Supernatural Rights…
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Society is a collection of individuals. It is the aim of socialism to allow each individual to fully develop according to their own wishes (of course, so long as they do not violate the [democratically agreed-upon and enforced] rights of another). If by “collective,” you mean “democratic” (and by contrast, by “individualist” you must mean “coercive”), then it is the design of socialism to check the harmful effects of wealth concentration through collective ownership.
As one lone individual is incapable of extracting any but the meanest existence from nature, all benefits of modern society, and thus all wealth is necessarily social in nature, and it is for this reason that socialists intend to collectively control wealth, since it was collectively produced.[/quote]
No. Collectivism is the idea that man is connected in his actions to other men and that his fate is necessarily determined by the “collective will” of society. It is the notion that society can think and act independently of the individuals that make up that society.
Society does not think or act. Individuals do. There is no collective will – there is only individual will.
Wealth is not “collectively produced”. What of the isolated hermit that fishes his bare hands and builds his own cabin. We either agree that what he produces is not wealth or agree that the collective has nothing to do with the wealth he creates.
Now we must expand this to fit our understanding of wealth created by voluntary society. Each person exchanges his talents for the talents of others and thru this process wealth is created. This does not mean the individual owes society anything nor does society owe him anything – because he has already given his own labor to it. He can serve society and be at the same time served by it or he can become a hermit as in the example above.
I think you just have a problem with the meaning of certain words.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
Society is a collection of individuals. It is the aim of socialism to allow each individual to fully develop according to their own wishes (of course, so long as they do not violate the [democratically agreed-upon and enforced] rights of another).
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But socialism does not accomplish this and by it’s very nature would prevent or hinder an individuals’s development.
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:Correct, but this has nothing to do with natural rights, nor does a right to property follow from it. Ironically, the right to property can ONLY come from the “collective.”
No. It comes from the ability to protect it individually. I do not need someone to stand up for my property but me. And I certainly would not try and convince them with the “good of the many” arguments that it is their moral duty to protect me.
No. If no one but you acknowledges your right to a particular piece of property, and they want it, they will take it from you. Unless you are suggesting that you can individually beat back the rest of the population? No, in order for you not to overwhelmed, enough have to recognize your right to that property and thus refrain from attempting to take it that you are able to defend it yourself from those who still do not recognize your ownership.
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[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
ephrem wrote:…that’s obvious and selfevident to me, i’m just not understanding why the OP needs to define this. Do you?
I didn’t need to define it. I just need people to accept it.
There are many ideologies we could do away with if we could just get those that promote collectivism and its many variants to accept the notion of individualism.
They cannot accept individualism until they accept the notion that they are the sole owner of their own life.
To some this seems very “self-evident” yet they still act contrary to this supposedly “self-evident” idea.
So it is either self evident and people just cannot grasp the ultimate consequences of it or it isn’t that self evident.[/quote]
…what other people do or say, think or believe, is of no consequence on being the owner of your life. You, on the other hand, must allow people to make opposing choices; choices that may contradict everything you hold dear. Otherwise you contradict yourself…
[quote]Sloth wrote:
Again, all animals own their body since they are the one’s that “live” in it. But nature shows us that other animals can come along, take it, and dispose of it.[/quote]
Yes, and humans are different than nonhuman animals. SWe can learn to cooperate with each other and form society. Animals cannot and even still it is a rare thing that they kill each other over territory.
In the animal kingdom it is survival of the fittest. In human society we can recognize that some weaknesses are an advantage and use it to progress society. That is the essence of cooperation. Nonhuman animals are very limited in their ability to cooperate and they rarely cooperate outside of their own packs. Why?
[quote]ephrem wrote:
LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
ephrem wrote:…that’s obvious and selfevident to me, i’m just not understanding why the OP needs to define this. Do you?
I didn’t need to define it. I just need people to accept it.
There are many ideologies we could do away with if we could just get those that promote collectivism and its many variants to accept the notion of individualism.
They cannot accept individualism until they accept the notion that they are the sole owner of their own life.
To some this seems very “self-evident” yet they still act contrary to this supposedly “self-evident” idea.
So it is either self evident and people just cannot grasp the ultimate consequences of it or it isn’t that self evident.
…what other people do or say, think or believe, is of no consequence on being the owner of your life. You, on the other hand, must allow people to make opposing choices; choices that may contradict everything you hold dear. Otherwise you contradict yourself…
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Believing is fine, acting is different.
I do not want people acting in accordance with collectivist doctrines though they can believe all they want to in them.
And as long as I am not contradicting other’s natural rights there is no contradiction.
Well, of course. That’s the only that’s been the common thread through all these posts, even if noone wants to admit it.[/quote]
Well if might makes right then there is no objective truth and then we have no point in debating the truth of certain ideas because now I just have to get physically stronger than everyone else to prove that I am right – even though I know that there will always be someone stronger than me ready to prove me wrong.
This seems antithetical to the very notion of human society to me.
[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Sloth wrote:
Again, all animals own their body since they are the one’s that “live” in it. But nature shows us that other animals can come along, take it, and dispose of it.
Yes, and humans are different than nonhuman animals. SWe can learn to cooperate with each other and form society. Animals cannot and even still it is a rare thing that they kill each other over territory.
In the animal kingdom it is survival of the fittest. In human society we can recognize that some weaknesses are an advantage and use it to progress society. That is the essence of cooperation. Nonhuman animals are very limited in their ability to cooperate and they rarely cooperate outside of their own packs. Why?[/quote]
As long as others decide letting you be is more profitable in the long run, maybe. That’s if they value the long run payoff. But it doesn’t mean you have natural rights. Just means someone, or a bunch of someones, see profit in letting you be. For someone else, the possibility of knocking you over the head for some crack money, or even just for fun, is profitable enough. It’s subjective.