Truth To Power wrote:So, you claim that slavery is right as long as the masters have the power to keep the slaves enslaved, and that the Nazis were right to exterminate Jews just as long as they had the power to do so. The only way they could ever establish that it might be wrong was to try it, and see if they lost the war. Tamerlane was actually right to exterminate millions of people, including whole societies, because he ultimately won the war.
taxizen wrote:In terms of natural rights yes.
You are assuming there are
no rights -- except
property rights, of course....
"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." -- Voltaire
The propertarian must always resort to absurdity to justify the atrocities committed in the name of the Great God Property. ALWAYS. Observe:
You are quite comfortable, I am sure, with slavery if it is not a human being enslaved: dogs, cows, sheep etc.
See how you always have to resort to absurdity? Slavery is labor compelled by force. Labor is human effort devoted to production. Therefore, nothing but humans can ever be enslaved.
You know that, and so does everyone else reading this.
You are quite comfortable with mass exterminations if it is not human beings being exterminated: lice, mice, bacteria etc.
Correct. Because human beings have rights, which other organisms do not.
That is because you are a "humanist" with humanism being a peculiar cult that deifies some abstraction of a particular species of which the cultist coincidently happens to be a member. lol.
Nope. Human beings have rights because of their biological nature: uniquely, among all organisms, they have moral capacity (i.e., the capacity to respect others' rights, which is the crucial requisite for having rights of one's own).
The Romans of that great empire of antiquity were not humanists; they kept humans slaves for the same reasons they kept animal slaves because it was useful for them and because they could.
Animals cannot be slaves, and the Romans would rightly have laughed in your face at the
absurd suggestion that they could not tell the difference between slaves and domestic livestock.
They are not weird in this either because pretty much all people throughout history all over the world have a similar approach to life. The humanist is the exception and a hypocritical one at that.
More absurdity. Now you are even pretending you cannot tell the difference between human beings and bacteria.
Truth To Power wrote:It is not a notion. It is a self-evident and indisputable fact of objective physical reality. I would like readers to note that by dismissing that self-evident and indisputable fact as a "notion," you are still trying to find some way of not knowing it, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.
False and evil?
Yes. Your beliefs are false and evil.
Why not just call me a heretic and be done with it?
Because I do not mean you are a heretic (someone who preaches beliefs at variance with accepted religious doctrine). I mean that your beliefs are false and evil.
Land or at least space is uncreated by the hand of man, that much is "an indisputable fact of objective reality"
Then why did you try to minimize and dismiss it as a "notion," hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm?
but your following assertions that human beings have equal rights to anything or a right to liberty is pure theology and a logical non sequitur as well.
You either believe in equal human rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor or you don't. You don't. Simple.
In any case, I have given my reasons for my belief in equal human rights, and they are based logically on known facts of the physical universe -- specifically, the origin and nature of human beings.
Truth To Power wrote:So, you believe in a right to liberty as long as it is only your liberty to rob, oppress, enslave, starve and murder those whom you have the power (granted by government -- which you refuse to pay for -- in the form of legal privileges such as land titles) to rob, oppress, enslave, starve and murder.
Thought so.
Such is the dishonesty of idealists that they wilfully misrepresent and misunderstand those that do not conform to their belief system.
<yawn> Let's see who is dishonest, shall we? Observe:
I do not say anyone has a right to liberty, not intrinsically.
Do you claim a right to use and enjoy your property as you see fit, including depriving others of access to what nature provided for all?
It is something that is often desired but there are no god or gods dispensing rights to liberty and if there were that would only have validity in so far as those gods had the MIGHT to make it so. So it also goes with human legal systems.
I am not the one invoking gods, here, and legal systems just codify and organize pre-existing beliefs about rights. They are self-evidently not their own ultimate cause.
Truth To Power wrote:As long as just compensation is made to those who are thus deprived of it, matter can be made into private property by removing it from its natural place by labor. A location ("space") on the earth's solid surface by definition cannot be removed from its natural place by labor, and can therefore never rightly be made into private property.
Okay so let's try this weirdness for it's practicality.
Without reading further, I know I will be showing your "argument" is fallacious and absurd.
A lonely bedouin out in the Sahara finds a patch of land by an oasis, takes by his labour sand and clay to make a house for himself. It is nothing special barely more than a mud hut, no electric and no modern conveniences but it makes for a shady spot to shelter from the midday sun. Oh noes! He stole your sand! He stole your space!
First absurdity: it is self-evidently not my sand or space.
He owes you compensation and.. err... every other human (but not other animals) on the face of the planet an equal share.
Second absurdity: he could only owe compensation to the extent that he deprived someone else of what they would otherwise have. No one else wanted to use that clay and sand, so they have suffered no deprivation, and are therefore owed no compensation. If someone else HAD wanted to use that clay and sand, and the Bedouin deprived them of it, then yes, of course he would owe them just compensation.
So if he doesn't want to be dubbed an heretical oppressor of natural rights to liberty by crazy ideologists he should to post a cheque every year for... how much?..
More of the inevitable absurdities....
His house is practically worthless, if he tried to sell it he might get a few dollars or a canteen of water or something similar. So the compensation should be proportionately small. One millionth of a dollar seems a fair but arbitrary total compensation so one millionth of dollar divided by 7 billion for each individual human that he cruelly and unjustly deprived of their liberty, means he should pay out 7 billion cheques each year each to the value of 7e-15 dollars (that's 1 over 7 million billions).
And more...
So land is special for you because it is space.
Truth To Power wrote:No, it is special because it is something nature has provided, which can never be a product of labor.
Fine but so is sunlight,
Correct.
so solar panels are an oppression of natural rights to liberty?
Another obvious absurdity. A solar panel only deprives someone else of sunlight if it intercepts sunlight they wanted to use.
Truth To Power wrote:We use space. But using -- especially temporarily, for a matter of moments -- is not owning.
All ownership is temporary if for no other reason than the owner is temporary.
Ignoratio elenchi fallacy.
It is owning;
Everyone reading this is aware that it is not. Your claim is ABSURD.
it is claimed,
No it isn't. It is just used. Your claim is ABSURD.
it is used,
Lots of things are used without being owned. I'm using the English language right now without owning it.
it is traded,
No it isn't. It is just used. Your claim is ABSURD.
it is stolen.
No it isn't. It is just used. Your claim is ABSURD.
What do you think ownership is?
Ownership in the relevant sense is a legal entitlement to use, control, benefit from, and dispose of something as property.