Should protesters respect private property?

[Lloyd Danforth]

people are things

No.

People are strange


When you're a stranger


La da da da....de da da de

[Russell Kanning]

Russell doesn't think it's important, but Russell doesn't think a lot of things are important.

man have you got me pegged

[MaineShark]

since people are things, it is wrong to say the universe made of people and things. There is no and. 'People' are not seperate from 'things', they are included in it. Do I need to draw you a venn diagram? 'People' would be inside of 'things'. No and.

Squares are rectangles.  We still refer to them by different terms.

I figured most folks here were smart enough to understand that the "things" category meant "things other than people," just as someone looking at a box for "squares" right next to a box for "rectangles" would know how to sort a stack of objects containing each sort.

Joe

[Eli]

Russell doesn't think it's important, but Russell doesn't think a lot of things are important.

man have you got me pegged

i've been trying to grok you for years man.  I'm finally getting the hang of it.

[Eli]

???

no need for two boxes....unless you want to label one box non-square rectagles and one square rectagles.

Unless you want to keep your squares and rectangles seperate.  The do serve different purposes.

[Caleb]

I have to agree with Joe on this one.  If I have something, and you take it without asking me for it, you have effectively declared that you do not respect me or my rights.  If you do not respect me or my rights I have no obligation to respect you or yours.  You have said, "Anything you want from me you can have, including my life."

Or if you like you have said, "What's yours is mine." so the corollary must also be true.

What is property?  It is a thing that I have put my name on.  So you can come to me and ask me for it.  As far as literal property (eg real estate) any place I haven't made an attempt to keep you out of, you are allowed into, temporarily.  I will let you stay as long as I like, commonly understood to be 1 mph (a leisurely walk across my lawn).  If there isn't a fence or shrubbery delineating a border, you usually can see some physically boundary saying where my lot ends and my neighbors begins.

At the risk of ending this fascinating discussion about rectangles, squares, and what the meaning of the word "is" is, I thought I'd throw in a thought or two on the enforcement of property rights, particularly the claim that a person has a right to defend his "rights."

The problem, as I see it, is that there is no universal consensus on morality. Let me give an example from a different thread: There are some of us who believe that voting is immoral, that it actually is an act of oppression against me. Since I feel this way, do I have the right to go on a shooting spree, taking out as many voters as I can? After all, in my judgment, the voters are oppressing me, taking away my rights.

Similarly with property "rights". There are genuine disagreements among people as to what rights an individual actually has to property, particularly land. If each individual acts as the enforcer of his own self-perceived rights, and acts out against any act against those rights as he defines them, then it seems to me that the situation becomes very much a situation of "might makes right," and the winning moral code will be that of those who have the most firepower, not the strongest moral argument. I'm no Ayn Rand fan, but didn't she say something like "Force is the negation of reason"?

In fact, it seems to me that governments have been established as a means of providing some sort of objective standard by which actions can be judged. I may feel that you have aggressed against me by the mere act of voting, but the (supposedly impartial) judge, the law, says that I may not seek vengeance in this case, nor may I defend myself. Each individual is supposed to subject his own standard of morality to the law, so that individuals will know what they may or may not do. Otherwise, an individual might be subjected to violence based on the idiosyncratic morality of the hypersensitive or trigger-happy. I am not *justifying* government, merely trying to understand how it came about.

In a world without government, would it not be that we would each be accountable to the differing (and sometimes idiotic) moral codes of our fellow men?

It seems to me that pacifism is the only solution to this problem. The only solution that can rid us of the scourge of government without subjecting us to the whims of conflicting moral standards.

[kola]

Ignoring the ridiculous trigonometry analogies, I have mixed feelings about this topic.

Is a persons home private property?

Is he/she owns acreage it is their private property?

Is there a simple answer or it that impossible due to bureaucratic complexity?

I would not appreciate people protesting at my home, on my front lawn at all hours of the day (and night) who support the war and praise BushCo.

Nor would I appreciate demonstrators outside my Chiro clinic protesting and stating  that chiropractic adjustments paralyze patients. They would also be intimidating my patients as they entered and exited my clinic and this would be detrimental to my income and l;ivlihood to put fppd on the table for my family.

I am more than open to anyones thoughts.

Kola

[Caleb]

I think that love is the only moral imperative. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I don't think I would want someone to intimidate my customers, so I don't think that would be good to do to you. I don't see the action as wrong because it infringes your property rights, it is wrong because it infringes on the command that I love you.

[kola]

btw..from my days and the beatnik days, people are "squares".

Kola

[MaineShark]

The problem, as I see it, is that there is no universal consensus on morality. Let me give an example from a different thread: There are some of us who believe that voting is immoral, that it actually is an act of oppression against me. Since I feel this way, do I have the right to go on a shooting spree, taking out as many voters as I can? After all, in my judgment, the voters are oppressing me, taking away my rights.

As you've been asked there, prove it.  You have no claim, if you cannot prove actual harm.

Similarly with property "rights". There are genuine disagreements among people as to what rights an individual actually has to property, particularly land.

I don't know any rational people who offer and "genuine disagreement" about that.  There are people, property, and unclaimed "things."  A person turns unclaimed "things" into property by homesteading it.  Because he has expended his labor to do that, any theft of his property is aggression against him as a person.  He can keep it, sell it, or abandon it (in which case it becomes available for someone else to homestead - I do this with my trash when I take it to the dump each week - they homestead the recyclables that I abandoned and use the sale of those to help fund the dump).  Giving it to someone is simply a sale for non-material benefit.

And before anyone starts griping about "non-material benefit," what that means is typically things like emotional rewards and such.  Two chefs can take the same ingredients and make me a meal.  One makes an "okay" meal and one makes a "great" meal.  Both meals consist of the same food, and have the same nutritional value, so they are not materially different, but the taste of one is much better, and I derive a non-material benefit from that better taste, which I would pay a premium for.

There's no room for disagreement about ownership of property.  It derives from human labor, and any theft of property is an act of violence.

There's disagreement about exactly what constitutes homesteading.  Typically, it revolves around "demonstrable intent" and such.  You can declare yourself "owner of Mars," but I don't think you could demonstrate actual intent to go there and make use of that claim, due to your lack of a rocket ship, etc.  I can easily demonstrate my intent to own my home and land here.

If each individual acts as the enforcer of his own self-perceived rights, and acts out against any act against those rights as he defines them, then it seems to me that the situation becomes very much a situation of "might makes right," and the winning moral code will be that of those who have the most firepower, not the strongest moral argument. I'm no Ayn Rand fan, but didn't she say something like "Force is the negation of reason"?

It is never, under any circumstances, just to initiate force against any person.

Universal morality.

In fact, it seems to me that governments have been established as a means of providing some sort of objective standard by which actions can be judged. I may feel that you have aggressed against me by the mere act of voting, but the (supposedly impartial) judge, the law, says that I may not seek vengeance in this case, nor may I defend myself. Each individual is supposed to subject his own standard of morality to the law, so that individuals will know what they may or may not do. Otherwise, an individual might be subjected to violence based on the idiosyncratic morality of the hypersensitive or trigger-happy. I am not *justifying* government, merely trying to understand how it came about.

Government came about because some scumbags wanted power over others.  It had nothing to do with defending rights.  Government came about due to "might makes right."

In a world without government, would it not be that we would each be accountable to the differing (and sometimes idiotic) moral codes of our fellow men?

No, we would be accountable to the only universal moral principle that has been demonstrated: aggression is always wrong.

It seems to me that pacifism is the only solution to this problem. The only solution that can rid us of the scourge of government without subjecting us to the whims of conflicting moral standards.

Governments just adore pacifists.  Very easy to oppress.

The fact that the world is imperfect, and on rare occasions there might be disagreements about property rights among rational people as a result of slight differences of opinion does not provide cause to jump to a demonstrably-failed system.

Joe

[Eli]

And I don't think love is imperative at all.  Most of what I would have others do is leave me alone.  I work hard to do the same for them.  I don't expect others to love me.  I'm sorry but I think that your position is dogmatic rather than reasoned.  Even if you apply golden rule you haven't reached a universal standard of behavior.  That is my problem with Kant and Christ. 

[Eli]

btw..from my days and the beatnik days, people are "squares".

Kola

If I recall my beat slang only some people are squares.

[MaineShark]

And I don't think love is imperative at all.  Most of what I would have others do is leave me alone.  I work hard to do the same for them.  I don't expect others to love me.  I'm sorry but I think that your position is dogmatic rather than reasoned.  Even if you apply golden rule you haven't reached a universal standard of behavior.  That is my problem with Kant and Christ.

"Love" is a demonstrably-silly thing to base morality on.  It doesn't guarantee the pacifism that Caleb wants, and could lead to greater levels of violence than most other systems.

If someone were to believe (as many do) that wrong-doing in this life is punished invariably in an afterlife;
and, that person loves all others, thereby wanting to save them from punishment;
then he should kill all others, such that they cannot do wrong (or further wrong), thus saving them from punishment.

All out of "love."

Joe

[Lloyd Danforth]

And all of the immoral shit that has happened over the 'love' of some god

[J’raxis 270145]

... I am not *justifying* government, merely trying to understand how it came about.

That's not how government came about, but it is why they would like you to think they exist. Government came about when the first primitive human forced another to go to work for him. (This probably coincides with the invention of agriculture: The same time period when slavery begins to appear in the historical record.) All the justifications for government that exist, besides "might makes right," are nothing more than after-the-fact rationalizations.

It seems to me that pacifism is the only solution to this problem. The only solution that can rid us of the scourge of government without subjecting us to the whims of conflicting moral standards.

You argued that in an ungoverned society, everyone would have different ideas of when defensive force is warranted. A "pacifist" is just a special case, i.e., a person who believes the times when defensive force is warranted equals zero. If you believe that we could successfully converge everyone to this zero value, what makes you think it's impossible we couldn't converge everyone to some other nonzero value?