Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!arisia!sgi!shinobu!odin!maddog!pkr
From: pkr@maddog.sgi.com (Phil Ronzone)
Newsgroups: alt.individualism
Subject: Re: Phil Ronzone's stereo
Message-ID: <3001@odin.SGI.COM>
Date: 19 Jan 90 19:12:27 GMT
References: <2310@odin.SGI.COM> <12569@phoenix.Princeton.EDU> <2356@odin.SGI.COM> <1990Jan13.090428.25775@agate.berkeley.edu> <2818@odin.SGI.COM> <21643@unix.cis.pitt.edu> <2904@odin.SGI.COM> <21697@unix.cis.pitt.edu>
Sender: news@odin.SGI.COM
Distribution: usa
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc., Mountain View, CA
Lines: 42

In article <21697@unix.cis.pitt.edu> rhg2@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Rich  Graham) writes:
>Reading your articles, though, gives me the impression that you believe
>that "ownership" is some kind of basic quantity that trascends culture,
>government, and social and cultural convention.  You speak as if "I own
>x" is an absolute, and is in accordance with some universal law.

I do take it as an absolute. There are hypothesis that tie it to some
natural laws, but I haven't accepted them yet. It is an absolute in
the same way that we assert 1+1 is 2. 1+1 = 2 is NOT a natural law.

And consider the implications of not being an absolute. I.e., it
"changes". WHO decides the change? And what is THEIR justification?


>Again, as far as I can see, the statement "I own these shoes" means
>"these shoes meet the qualifications set down by my society and myself
>under our system of ownership".  If the statement has a more significant
>meaning, I'd like to know what it is.

No. Ownership is strictly individualistic.


>Also, based on what you've said about ownership so far, I'd expect that
>you'd have trouble with the idea that anyone around you owns anything,
>since it all comes from natural resoures that were stolen from their
>rightful owners at one point or another.  If you buy from a thief, do
>you own it or not?  Indirectly, practically everything you and I own 
>has come to us from some theif.

No. I no know of no system of infinite regressive justice. After all,
the American Indians wipe out a previous set of tribes that migrated
across the Bering straight, and so on and so on.

Like law and order coming to a Western time in the Old West, when you
bring order it is not always possible to provide regressive justice.
But from that point on, one can have justice.


------Me and my dyslexic keyboard----------------------------------------------
Phil Ronzone   Manager Secure UNIX           pkr@sgi.COM   {decwrl,sun}!sgi!pkr
Silicon Graphics, Inc.               "I never vote, it only encourages 'em ..."
-----In honor of Minas, no spell checker was run on this posting---------------