I guess I was wrong. It seems that for libertarians, the concept of rights being as practical as the concept of respect is hopelessly complicated. :-)

BTW, why are you waxing poetically with David about axiom. You two still haven't been able to figure out what the heck it means re: his rant. Now that David's out of the car, perhaps you two can get back to work on it.

---

From: Ilene Skeen <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Monday, June 24,[masked]:27 PM
Subject: Re: [aynrand-8] I Own Me - a defiant declaration

Well said, David, I agree entirely.

Now if you could understand that how you fell into this trap is by calling "I own me" an axiom. Notice that Marc said he could care less about whether it is an axiom.  Of course, the error suits his purpose of using words as floating abstractions. 

You countered him heroically and thoroughly, except for the root of the problem.

Best,
Ilene

On Jun 24,[masked]:16 PM, "Marc Gerstein" <[address removed]> wrote:

The concept of rights is as practical as is the concept of respect. Not complicated.

---

From: Ilene Skeen <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Monday, June 24,[masked]:20 AM
Subject: Re: [aynrand-8] I Own Me - a defiant declaration

Rant on, Marc.  And if I don't like it I can leave, but while I'm here, the biggest gang calls the shots and l
should just shut up and pay for it.  So because human nature is not perfect, the concept of rights is impractical and anyone who thinks otherwise is dreaming.  Is that the gist of your message?

On Jun 24,[masked]:56 AM, "Marc Gerstein" <[address removed]> wrote:

Oh my, you really do want to stay with your Libertarian dogma. OK. If that's what you want to do with your ownership of you, so be it.

But for the benefit of others who might have been following this, here's the answer: The ONLY way any of us can enjoy the benefit of whatever rights we have is by others around us making voluntary choices to respect our rights.

Ken Kaplan was on target when he suggested a compromise solution between Fred smith and John Doe. Other solutions may be possible. The key is that each make a choice to respect the rights of his neighbor. And realistically, it needs to be a voluntary choice. Anybody on this board who has had any contact with the legal system knows how limited and impractical that can be as a solution to every dispute that may arise. Every one of us depends on this mode of rights-protection every time we walk down the street. Unless you are a big, imposing, possibly well armed person, your right to life depends on others you encounter on the street making voluntary choice to refrain from robbing and/or killing you. As anyone who knows anything about policing knows, police can't be everywhere all the time. Ultimately, our moment by moment safety depends on voluntary choices made by those around us to respect our rights. Asserting moral propositions at meetups or on e-mail forums, that is the intellectual con game. One can assert, declare, expound, moralize etc. all one wants but unless others around you choose to respect your ownership of yourself, then it counts for absolutely nothing.

This is not a tyrannical thing imposed from above. It's nature.

I think everyone in this forum agrees that the right to survive is as fundamental as it gets. It comes with being alive. But it does not stand alone as the only fundamental right that arises from life itself. Ilene Skeen was on target when she objected to my first hypothetical because it involved only one person. For it to make sense to her, I need to add another person. Yes. She was right. The fact that we do not live in isolation, that we are communal, likewise is intricately bound up with the human condition itself. So that brings us to the first question I posed, the one David never addressed: What ownership means.

Because of the social nature of humans, ownership of anything does not confer absolute and unconditional rights to use what one owns as one wishes. If I own a car, I do not have the right to drive it across someone else's property, nor do I have the right to drive it while drunk  (a condition that makes it more likely that I would wind up sacrificing another to myself), nor do I have the right to drive 80 mph in a residential lane, etc. If I own a firearm, I do not have the right to fire it randomly out the window. If I own a plot in a residental suburb, I do not have the right to erect and maintain a large noisy factory because I'd be sacrificing my neighbors to myself. Etc. etc. etc. While my ownership of me does give me the right to not sacrifice myself to others, it also comes with a responsibility to not sacrifice others to me (anyone who knows anything about Ayn Rand obviously recognizes that proposition).

But isn't there a conflict? If I'm obligate to refrain from sacrificing others to myself, doesn't that infringe on my absolute right, as owner of me, to do whatever I want with me? Yes, it does. Anyone who thinks being human confers on them an absolute right to live only for themselves is deluded by a childish fantasy and is doomed to a life of perpetual misery and moral and mental agony.

Yes, I am the United States of Marc, the People's Republic of Marc. And as ruler of this nation, I relinquish some of my privileges of ownership, or rather we can say I choose to license it out, in return to the ability to live among society. Am I free to choose to not do this. Maybe I could find some corner of the world where I could live as a hermit, but as a practical matter, I'll go with the notion that this is a compulsory license. But that's OK. That, is nature, just one aspect among many. For example nature does not give humanity an unconditional right to life. in fact, it's quite the contrary. There is a 100% probability that all of us will die, whether we choose to or not. Nature dictates it. Likewise, we do not have the right to enjoy life free from the burden to finding ways to feed ourselves. If we default on this obligation, nature imposes the death penalty. Likewise, those of us who live in areas where it sometimes gets cold cannot claim the right to be free of the obligation to find a way to keep warm. If we default on this obligation, nature imposes a death penalty.

In sum, ownership rights are never unlimited, not with cars, not with firearms, not with land, not with me, and in all cases our right to enjoy what we own is subject to our obligation to refrain from using what we own in a way that sacrifices others to ourselves. As to how our rights get enabled, protected, etc., that comes about through others making voluntary choices not to sacrifice us to them and in a practical societal sense, that comes about by building the sort of society that motivates the greatest number of people to choose to be as respectful as possible to the rights of everyone else. The contemporary U.S. is not perfect -- I don't know any place that is. But it does seem we're better at that, a heck of a lot better, than the society in which Ayn Rand grew up.

By the way, I'm not sure how government spying or Eric Snowden got shoved into this discussion, but I suppose when dealing with dogma-addicted Libertarians, it can't be helped (like a heroin addict who needs a fix). As one who worked a couple of blocks away from the World Trade Center and saw first hand what our Security agencies are working to prevent, all I can say is if it comes to a choice between (1) efforts to prevent things like that versus (2) bowing to some sort of childish society-denying I only care about me assertion of rights by David Wallace or K Zanrtonavich, then I choose option #1 and if David and K don't like it, then they can leave (unlike many countries, all one has to do to emigrate is buy a plane ticket and refrain from carrying prohibited items past TSA -- a bit of a burden, but others have it a heck of a lot worse) or whine at Libertarian meetups or on e-mail message board. (My guess is David and K will chose the whining option because it takes courage to pack up and leave, and besides, I'm not sure where they could go -- the trail of immigration/emigration implies that as imperfect as our society may be, we're still by far the best on this planet).

---

From: David <[address removed]>
To: [address removed]
Sent: Monday, June 24,[masked]:55 AM
Subject: Re: [aynrand-8] I Own Me - a defiant declaration

""What's killing the world is the political state convincing people that they deserve to be robbed, murdered, or threatened with robbery and murder."

That is an idea. 

It is a bigger idea quibbling over loud music. 

Before you take this conversation down the rabbit hole I should refer you to YouTube videos by David Friedman and the like on "the mechanics of freedom". 

The fact of the matter is we do not live in a free society. We live in a society that is not only tyrannical but grows more so every day. In the real world beyond your navel gazing , men like Eric Snowden and Bradley Manning are standing up for freedom and paying the price. 

They will sleep better tonight knowing that when the fighting is done and the freedom is won you've solved the problem of loud radios. 

By the way asking people if they know the answer that you're thinking of is a little intellectual con game called "what's my name". 

On Jun 23, 2013, at 8:57 PM, Marc Gerstein <[address removed]> wrote:

"What's killing the world is the political state convincing people that they deserve to be robbed, murdered, or threatened with robbery and murder."

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