Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!snorkelwacker!apple!agate!usenet From: gsmith@garnet.berkeley.edu (Gene W. Smith) Newsgroups: alt.individualism Subject: Re: Phil Ronzone's stereo Message-ID: <1990Jan19.102907.29189@agate.berkeley.edu> Date: 19 Jan 90 10:29:07 GMT References: <2310@odin.SGI.COM> <12569@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2356@odin.SGI.COM> <1990Jan13.090428.25775@agate.berkeley.edu> <524@smcnet.UUCP> Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator;;;;ZU44) Reply-To: gsmith@garnet.berkeley.edu (Gene W. Smith) Distribution: usa Organization: Garnet Gang Gems of Wisdom, Inc. Lines: 62 In-reply-to: byoder@smcnet.UUCP (Brian Yoder) In article <524@smcnet.UUCP>, byoder@smcnet (Brian Yoder) writes: >> It became "your" stereo not in a state of nature, but in a >> civil state which guarantees property rights and prints currency. >That's a description of the circumstances, not the method. The government >(if it's working properly) ensures your property and other rights. It also (if it is working properly) helps to *define* your property rights. It must do so, in order to insure them. We have many real-life examples of where government goes overboard and tramples on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But if it is working properly, it should be finding some sort of tolerable accomodation of the various competing interests and desires of its citizens which also suffices to let Phil Ronzone buy and keep his stereo. But I don't think there is a single magic formula which tells us always how this accomodation is achieved. >> If you want to base your right to "your" stereo not on a social >> contract, but on the state of nature, the answer to your question >> is easy. If enough people want to take "your" stereo, then they >> do. >If enough people want to kill me they will probably do that too, but >does that mean that I have no right to live? Again, *if* you based your right to live solely on your personal strength in a state of nature, then life is nasty, brutish and short according to Hobbes. But it seems clear that you *don't* do so, so the question is moot. >Is murder unjust when practiced by one person but just when done >by a mob? Is capital punishment unjust? >Would you agree with the statement that "Everything the majority >decides is JUST no matter what it decides."? No. My objection was not to the notion that individuals or minorities have rights, but to the idea that human beings can be treated as atomic units without reference to a social order, and that we walk around with innately defined property rights which inhere in us solely as individuals. "Man is a social animal" and all that. >Who said that the property was not earned? Who said it was? A common assumption on this group that "I earned every penny, and I should be able to keep it and not pay taxes". But the interlocking net of agreements making up the social orders decrees that you shall get such and such an amount. Your right is a *contractual* right. >I would assume that Phil worked for the money to buy that stereo. Sure. Did he work for the right not to pay taxes? -- ucbvax!garnet!gsmith Gene Ward Smith/Brahms Gang/Berkeley CA 94720 "I am quite prepared to prove in court that I am neither stupid nor insane." quoted from ONE FOR THE BOOKS, the authorized biography of Captain Carnage.