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Invictus2017

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  1. According to Merriam-Webster, to alienate is "to convey or transfer (something, such as property or a right) usually by a specific act rather than the due course of law". Once I've made the trade, the toothbrush has been alienated. But I also no longer have a moral sanction -- a right -- to act with regard to that toothbrush. I have alienated that right as well. Note also Rand's specific language: "Inalienable means that which we may not take away, suspend, infringe, restrict or violate -- not ever, not at any time, not for any purpose whatsoever." (underlining added) She doesn't object to voluntary alienation, just alienation by force or fiat. It is, in fact, my right to alienate my own rights, if I so choose.
  2. (I got busy, so I don't have time to make long answers. But I'll start answering piecemeal, as I can.) I'm not prepared to fully explain myself at this moment, but the gist of it is that there isn't any general right to refuse to provide testimony, just as there isn't a general right to refuse to permit a search pursuant to a valid search warrant, and just as there isn't a general right to resist arrest pursuant to a valid arrest warrant. I am not prepared to jettison rights, I'm trying to explain that such rights do not exist. Pace Rand, she is abusing the language here. If I own a toothbrush, I have a moral sanction to take certain actions with respect to it -- I have certain rights. If I sell it, I no longer have that sanction -- I no longer have those rights, the person to whom I have sold it has that sanction, those rights. This is precisely the referent of "alienate". Rights are alienable. Now, if you say that rights cannot be coercively alienated, I'm right with you. Philosophy is hierarchical, but the hierarchy is more complicated than you think. That is, the hierarchy isn't simply rights -> government. It it was, you'd be absolutely correct -- any contradiction between rights and government would prove a reasoning error and, assuming the derivation of rights is correct, the error would be in that concerning government. But what is prior to government is not all rights, but only the right to life (and maybe a few corollaries). Because you have a right to life, you need the ability to protect yourself from violence (I'm simplifying a little because I'm short on time), so you settle on government as a means of protecting yourself from violence. But to have a government, it is necessary to portion out certain activities as things you can do and things you cannot do. You can't, for example, go out and recover property stolen from you, ransacking one home out of another until you get that property. Instead, you have to let the government do it. As you examine the logic of this, trying to figure out exactly what you, your neighbor, and the government must do so that you may live your life without having to constantly protect yourself from violence , you settle on a consistent set of principles that define who may do what when. This, ultimately, is why you don't have a general right to refuse to provide testimony, or allow a search pursuant to a valid search warrant, or resist an arrest pursuant to a valid arrest warrant. Basically, the choice is between having these "rights" and having a government. Your logic would, in essence, require rejecting government in its entirety. This isn't 100% right, but I'm already a minute past when I needed to leave....
  3. You have taken my meaning correctly. But you need to understand that it doesn't apply to ordinary shortages of manpower. It can only apply where the shortage means that the government literally can't function as a government. So, if the government can continue to protect rights, albeit slowly and painfully, my argument fails. But a situation where a government can't govern -- that is, can't protect rights -- without conscription is way outside the norm. I'd go so far as to say that such a situation is outside the context of the Objectivist ethics and therefore outside the context of Rand's theory of government. In such a case, the government is in precisely the same situation a person is who is confronted by an emergency. His fundamental goal is to end the emergency so that he can return to normal life. If this is possible, he will take whatever actions necessary, even if those actions would be improper in other circumstances. In such a situation, the individual might choose to kill a stranger rather than allow himself to die, even if the stranger is blameless. And a government might engage in conscription, even though doing so would ordinarily be forbidden. I note that there is an alternative. My hypothetical individual might decide that he is unwilling to survive at the cost of an innocent life, and those running what would have been a government in ordinary times might refuse to conscript and let the population suffer the consequences of being ungoverned. Off the top of my head, I can't see a general argument that would require either choice.
  4. Indeed. Resolving contradictions like those is why I started this topic. Apparently Rand accepted the legitimacy of compulsory testimony. I say "apparently" because the only reference I have to this is an interview with Raymond Newman. It's on line but I can't get to it. Perhaps someone who has it will comment? Be that as it may, taking Rand's word would be accepting an argument from authority, so..... In my original post, I explained the necessity of compulsory testimony. I'll expand on it a little here. A legal system must be objective. It cannot be objective if it is arbitrarily deprived of the information it needs to properly judge. The need for anything entails its prerequisites, so the need for government entails that government not be arbitrarily denied the information it needs to be objective. So, a person may refuse to provide information, but not arbitrarily. Therefore, if the government determines, via an objective process, that a person has arbitrarily refused to give information that is required to produce an objective judgment, it may ignore the refusal and compel the information. Note that this does not imply an unlimited power to compel. And it allows for concepts such that embodied in the Fifth Amendment and the lawyer/client privilege. But it requires, in appropriate cases, that government compels testimony.
  5. I've reached my tolerance for MisterSwig's misrepresentations, so into my ignore list he goes.

  6. No change at all. It is nothing special, just one tiny part of the collectivism that endangers us. In itself, it's nothing to get all bent out of shape about. We certainly do not need to check our words to see if they might persuade one batch of sheeple that they'd rather be Nazis than Democrats or Republicans -- they're all out to gut our rights and then our lives....
  7. That's more or less what I said in my original post. My point there was this fact means that the NAP is not 100% correct, and should be given a hard look by, as you point out, considering the more fundamental principle of individual rights. (My actual argument is that, since government must be objective, and arbitrary refusal to provide evidence would negate that objectivity, no person may arbitrarily refuse to provide evidence, with the corollary that the government may, in appropriate circumstances, compel the provision of evidence.)
  8. No she did not. She argued that it is in each person's self-interest to do certain things, not that there was any sort of contract, social or otherwise, to do those things. Rand is not arguing here that there is an "agreement among people", but rather that each rational person must accept the principle of individual rights because he is a rational person, that this principle is an unavoidable conclusion of rational thought. It would not be negated if, for example, 100% of society decided that they could dispense with individual rights. All that would happen then is that the logic of the principle would be demonstrated -- the society would quickly disintegrate. From what does the government's function as an agent stem? Isn't there usually some sort of agreement or contract between agent and client? Not necessarily. The obvious examples being attorneys in various functions, such as protecting the rights of children and the insane and as appointed counsel, or parents acting as agents for their children. Be that as it may, this function stems from the necessity of government. That is, the choice nature gives us is either chaos or government and its agency. A rational person will reject chaos, so will therefore accept government, along with its agency. The "agreement" is really just a recognition of the necessity that nature presents.
  9. Let me put it this way: My right to do things with my widget is either conditional ("I have a right to do what I will with my widget, unless I have sold it") or alienable ("I have a right to do what I will with my widget, which I lose when I have sold it"). I hope that you see that this is essentially a syntactic -- not even a semantic -- distinction. The essential point is that, once I've sold that widget, I have lost the sanction to do as I will with the widget, I can no longer be said to have rights with respect to it. I also note that Rand here was talking about Man, not individual men. It is "Man's rights" that she is explaining as inalienable, not those rights pertaining to a particular person's life. Perhaps one can square this particular circle with the proposition that a man's right to life is inalienable -- it's a metaphysical aspect of being a human being -- but particular rights, such as a right with respect to a widget, are not. (But is that really true? Can't I sell my life, even if the government would not enforce such a sale?) I don't think it makes any difference either way. Actually, it's both. The sale is my acting as of right and alienates future rights (or, as I noted above, my right to the widget is conditional). I can understand that. But I'm not talking about a wholesale abandonment of the NAP, but rather a rederivation that corrects a relatively minor error. DavidOdden suggests another approach, the proposition that compulsory jury duty is, essentially, collateral damage from self-defense. I'm not sure that that would make you any more comfortable.
  10. A breach of contract not intended by a party, such as one caused by an outside force, or a misunderstanding of the terms of the contract. Agreed, with the proviso that the legal system might have to employ force (such as compulsory testimony) in order to determine those things. And, according to the NAP, that permits the use of force against Malik -- but not Apple. Your premise, then, is that, if I have used force, the government may use force against non-force-using third parties when necessary to address my use of force? (The "moral responsibility" argument is not part of Objectivism. But the proposition that collateral damage is an acceptable part of self-defense is, and would have much the same, ah, force.) No. I'm talking Objectivism as it is written. Force in society is legitimate only in the protection of rights. This protection may be done defensively, preventing rights violations, or retributively, compensating for violated rights. But neither supports the proposition that there is no limit to the force that may be employed against a person who has once violated rights. There is such a limit, and it is imposed by the fact that force is only legitimate when protecting rights. So, if I have committed an assault, the government may use such force as is necessary, defensively, to prevent my continued use of force, or retributively, to compensate my victim, but no further. Because once past that point, the government's use of force no longer protects anyone's rights, and is therefore illegitimate.
  11. You are mistaken. A “right” is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man’s freedom of action in a social context. Nothing there requires that rights be inalienable. Indeed, if I make a widget, I have many sanctioned freedoms of action that I lose once I sell the widget to you. Those rights are alienated by the sale. Ownership refers to legally enforceable rights. Title is a document that proves ownership ("I have a title to my house") or a legal status demonstrable by such a document ("I have title in my house"). Rand was correct on both counts. Compulsory testimony is a metaphysical necessity of proper government, juries and the attendance of a particular juror are not. The government should pay jurors, on the open market, for their service. Compulsory testimony can't be squared with the NAP. But compulsory testimony is a necessity for government and government is a necessity for society, so compulsory testimony is a necessity for society. The NAP must fall by the way, at least when it comes to compulsory testimony. Unless you want non-objective government or no government at all....
  12. Only certain violations constitute "crime". For example, one generally does not consider an unintended or exigent violation of property rights a crime. It transfers rights, not title. Title is involved only in certain kinds of transactions. Because those things are not given, it's not quite so easy. Be that as it may, that doesn't really address the issue that brought me to start the topic, the one having to do with apparent exceptions to the non-aggression principle, such as the use of force to enforce a subpoena.
  13. That's just one kind of indirect force. But it's the basic idea.
  14. Objectivism does not accept -- nor do I -- the notion of a social contract. Unless I actually give my consent, there is no contract. The propriety of the government's use of force does not stem from such a thing, it stems from its function as an agent of an individual who has an enforceable right.
  15. (I understand "to a person" as shorthand for "to a person or his property".) But this does not cover all types of indirect force. E.g., I don't see how to make it cover inadvertent breaches of contract involving a service. But never mind, that's not my real problem. Resisting a (properly validated) subpoena is not a species of force, because it does not necessarily involve acting on a person against his will. Consider, as an example, the situation where the FBI wanted Apple to hand over a tool to crack iPhones. The tool did not belong to the government, nor to the criminal, nor was it involved in the crime, etc. It's impossible to see Apple's refusal as an action against anyone. Nevertheless, had the FBI's demand been legitimate, I think (and I think you'd agree), Apple should have been required to hand over the tool. Now, either demands of that type are never legitimate or we have an example where there is no initiation of force yet force may nevertheless be employed to enforce the demand. I think it's the latter, which is why I think the non-aggression principle is an approximation that needs rethinking. A person who commits, say, assault does not thereby lose all right to be free from assault. And the justification for government use of force is that the individual must protect his rights and the government is his agent for that purpose.
  16. Go read some American history. Or, for that matter, world history. There's nothing new or special about the alt-right, nothing that justifies the panic I see here. And stop confusing the volume of noise in the media for what the public actually thinks/feels. I spend an inordinate amount of time listening to ordinary Americans (as opposed to media types, Objectivists, and inhabitants of various political and other offices) and I can tell you that few people have even the slightest sympathy for the alt-right. And that includes plenty of outright racists. They may hate Blacks, but they have no trouble seeing that the alt-right is not their friend. There is indeed catastrophe looming, and I'm sure that the alt-right will play a bit part in the coming nastiness, but they won't be the cause or the worst perpetrators. Let's not take our eyes off the fact that, in the competition for force, the American government has no in-country peers or even near peers, and that in the ideological realm, the chief danger is the collectivism preached by all segments of society (including, to be sure, the alt-right) and implemented by our masters in government.
  17. Instead of quoting Rand's examples of indirect force (which I'm well aware of), how about defining "indirect force". In particular, is it a species of force or a species of rights violation? And what is the differentia? And address how (and whether) a refusal to obey a subpoena constitutes indirect force and thereby justifies a government sanction. What about the scenario I described, wherein I allow you entry to my home and then deny you permission to use its exits? Consideration of those issues is what led me to my current thoughts. Note that I'm not disagreeing with the conclusion that contract violations and fraud can be replied to with retributive force, I'm arguing that the derivation of this conclusion needs to be rethought.
  18. Yes, they're dangerous. However, you'll have a whole lot of convincing to do to persuade me that I should give any mind-space to fighting what is, in essence, a criminal gang. They'll become more violent, whether or not people innocently propagate their memes, and eventually they'll step over the line. At which time the government will squash them like the cockroaches they are. Problem solved, and there's nothing in particular we need to do to see that it happens. And, ultimately, they're not the gang we need to worry about. That would be the government....
  19. My silence is largely due to disinterest -- I don't think memes much matter. People who are unthinking accepters of ideas are no more than force multipliers, and they'll serve whoever happens to catch their unthinking fancy. They won't serve reason, that's for sure. If they're not spreading Nazi memes, they'll be spreading Christian memes, or Antifa memes, or whatever. So why worry about whether saying "White lives matter" helps the Nazis? It only helps them against the equally evil, and abstaining from saying "White lives matter" will in no way serve rationality. Whether one does or does not say "White lives matter" should be decided based on the needs of your own life, and not on whether it serves the ends of one gang of thugs as they battle another gang of thugs for the alleged minds of sheeple. As to what I respond to, I wouldn't look for an agenda there. I don't really have one in this thread; it's whatever happens to trigger a thought I want to share. You might recall that I titled my intro post "Living on the edge of a volcano". I assumed that people understood that I was not merely referring to myself, but to all of us -- that we're all within range of an unthinking violence that could destroy our lives at any moment, that it is sheer luck that others here haven't experienced what happened to me or something equally awful. (Or worse. I'm still alive and in command of my faculties. Others have not been so lucky.) But I've seen little sign of it. Instead, we're beating up one another for the sin of saying/not saying "White lives matter". Sheesh. It may be true that ARI and company will save the day, that America will come to its collective senses and reject the irrationality that infects it today. But it is insane to act as if that will happen, to take no thought for the possibility -- I would say the near certainty -- that any rationality will appear only after a period of violence and destruction. I, of course, am acutely aware of that possibility, and so I'm easily provoked to say that we need to wake up and smell the coffee.... Hence, my reaction to the quote from the Declaration of Independence.
  20. And Objectivists are not immune from this. Quite the opposite. We're all too prone to think that, because the current situation doesn't make survival impossible, it can be tolerated...no matter how many rights are trampled, no matter how much of our lives are taxed and regulated away...what we have left is still better than doing the nasty, dirty,and dangerous work of putting an end to the anti-human society we live in. Of course, one day we'll wake up and find that the situation can't be tolerated. But by then, the only choice -- aside from simply giving up -- will be violence, either dishing it our or taking it or both. A lot of people, including -- and especially -- Objectivists will die. But that's for tomorrow, and we are Objectivists. If we can survive today, we don't need to concern ourselves with surviving tomorrow. (In case there's an idiot out there: that's bitterness and sarcasm. Adjust your response accordingly.)
  21. I have read that entry -- and the rest of the essay from which it is excerpted. In fact I quoted that very essay in the post from which you quoted. Did you not notice? If you wish to be taken seriously, I suggest that you assume that others have done their homework unless the evidence proves otherwise. If you do think that I have erred, describe the error. Snide suggestions of my incompetence will only damage your reputation.
  22. Gobble, gobble. (Hear that faint scream? That's my diet not so quietly expiring....) The argument I made applies to information needed in, for example, trials, because the government by its nature cannot function without such information. There can be no circumstance where the government properly says, "oh forget it, we'll just judge in the absence of information." Moreover, no rational person would want it to do that. As Rand pointed out, "Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action — means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life." But because no rational being would want his government to act without the information that is objectively necessary to render a proper judgment, there can be no right to withhold that information. (Note that this does not mean that the government has carte blanche to demand whatever information it wants. Rather, it must follow objectively validated procedures to determine that it needs the information, which includes the means for the one who has that information to challenge the government's alleged need. I note that this is, in principle, if not in practice, what happens in modern courts.) Making this sort of argument in the case of other government functions is not so easy. For example, a government needs manpower, but it has the option to hire that manpower rather than conscript it. There is therefore no metaphysical necessity for conscription as there is for the information needed for proper judgment, which makes the argument insufficient to justify conscription. There is a metaphysical necessity for sufficient resources to function as a proper government. But this cannot be a claim on particular resources. Thus, it cannot be used to justify eminent domain and the like. It is only in the case where there is a pattern of deprivation so severe that the government cannot function that the government would be permitted to -- and required to -- compel people to provide the necessary resources. In such a case, the argument does apply, because no rational person would want a government that was nonfunctional due to insufficient resources. Taxation is a harder issue. The argument has been made that the functions of government can be funded by user fees and the like. I'm not persuaded either way. What I will say is that, if it is true, taxation would be forbidden. Conversely, if this is not true, taxation would be necessary. (For my proposed city, I'm probably going to sidestep the issue by requiring, as a condition of citizenship, an agreement to contribute to the government by some predetermined formula. Citizens would have rights, such as the right to recover damages, that non-citizens would not have.)
  23. I was working on an essay about immigration, and realized that I had to first deal with an error in Objectivism. So here is what I ran into. (All quotes are from Rand.) "The basic political principle of the Objectivist ethics is: no man may initiate the use of physical force against others." ("The Objectivist Ethics".) And, "In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use." ("The Nature of Government".) These statements are false. To explain why, I need to go back to first (political) principles. A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action — means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. ("Man's Rights".) So, the determination of what constitutes a right requires an analysis of what actions the nature of a rational being require in a social context. From "The Nature of Government" (all further quotes are from there): Man's rights can be violated only by the use of physical force. It is only by means of physical force that one man can deprive another of his life, or enslave him, or rob him, or prevent him from pursuing his own goals, or compel him to act against his own rational judgment. This is not true. Fraud, for example, violates rights, but no physical force is used. Rand gets around this by asserting that fraud involves "indirect force", but this is silly — if there is any physical force involved in fraud, it is in the retrieval of that which was taken by the fraud, not in the fraud itself. Moreover, Rand nowhere explains how one determines what constitutes indirect force. What force, fraud, and certain other categories of action have in common is that, by their nature, they are incompatible with their object's actions to further his own life. Force necessarily deprives a person of the ability to act on his own will. Fraud necessarily deprives a person of the information needed to engage in voluntary trade. Rand observed that, "The precondition of a civilized society is the barring of physical force from social relationships — thus establishing the principle that if men wish to deal with one another, they may do so only by means of reason: by discussion, persuasion and voluntary, uncoerced agreement." Rand's error here is not in her conclusion, but only in how she arrived at it. Fraud, e.g., must be banned, not because it is a species of "indirect force", but because it is inconsistent with "voluntary, uncoerced agreement" which, in turn, makes it inconsistent with a person's acting to further his own life in a social context. Why is my way better? Because it allows one to solve other problems that would otherwise have to be dealt with ad hoc, by asserting that they involve some species of "indirect force". So, for example, if I invite you into my property and then forbid you to use its exits, I may not be using any sort of physical force, but I am preventing you from furthering your own life. Such an action would therefore violate your rights. So what to make of the "nonaggression principle" I started out with? It must be taken as a mere approximation, to be clarified later. (It's not really germane here, but I should note that Rand's critique of libertarianism — that it takes the nonaggression principle as an axiom when it is anything but — misses the real problem, which is that the nonaggression principle is simply false.) So what is it an approximation to? The essential point Rand makes is that society is a value because it enables one to obtain knowledge from and to trade with others in the service of one's life. What must be banned is not force, or even the initiation of force, but whatever, by its nature, is inconsistent with those values (which includes the initiation of force). Such things necessarily violate rights and it is proper to use force (or fraud or any other species of otherwise rights-violating action) to protect against them or to vindicate rights violated by their use. There is no short phrase for these things, so I am going to use the phrase "violative force" — with scare quotes — from hereon to refer to these things. (If you will, my "violative force" comprises physical force plus what Rand called "indirect force", except that my definition allows one to use reason to determine what constitutes "violative force".) The proper formulation of the nonaggression principle is that no person may use "violative force" against another. But this principle is not sufficient to for the needs of society. There are situations where it is proper to take actions that would otherwise constitute "violative force" to defend or vindicate one's rights. Such actions, "defensive force" and "retaliatory "force" (again, I'll keep the scare quotes), are not only permissible, they are necessary to a proper society. As necessary as they may be, society cannot function if their use is left to the judgment of each person. There must be an organization, the government, that constrains the use of all three sorts of "force". This constraint operates in two ways. The use of "defensive force" in exigent situations cannot, by its nature, be delegated to the government. If you have a burglar in your home, it's too late to call the police — your rights are being violated and only you (or others right there) can put an end to the violation. The government's function is, first, to define such situations and what constitutes "defensive force" in those situations and, second, to review each use of "force" to see whether it is "defensive" or "violative". You get to shoot the burglar, if that is your chosen method of self-defense, but you will be required to show that his actions were "violative force", thereby permitting you the use of "defensive force". Non-exigent uses of "defensive force" and all uses of "retaliatory force" must be left to the government, but the government must be utterly rule-bound, constrained to act objectively, as Rand noted: The retaliatory use of force requires objective rules of evidence to establish that a crime has been committed and to prove who committed it, as well as objective rules to define punishments and enforcement procedures. Consider, however, what would happen if people could arbitrarily deprive the government of facts it needs to make proper use of "force". Its procedures would then necessarily lack the objectivity that a government must have, and would therefore be inconsistent with the rights of the governed. It follows then that no person may arbitrarily deprive the government of the information it needs to properly employ "force", that doing so is in itself a violation of the rights of the governed. Note here that, under Rand's formulation, a refusal to respond to a subpoena would have to be classified as indirect force, but it is anything but obvious that such a refusal is any kind of force, or even that it violates anyone's rights. It was this conclusion that led me to rethink the formulation of the nature of force. Under my formulation, such a refusal is clearly "violative force" because it is demonstrably inconsistent with the requirements of life in society, just as much as non-defensive physical force, fraud, etc., is. But, to return to the point with which I began this essay, it is simply not true that, "In a civilized society, force may be used only in retaliation and only against those who initiate its use." Only by twisting the word force into a hyperpretzel is it possible to consider, for example, a refusal to answer a subpoena as an initiation of force justifying retaliatory force. This proposition needs to simply be excised from Objectivism, replaced with a more accurate description of what sort of actions are forbidden and when an action that would ordinarily violate rights is legitimate.
  24. That sounds about right. In any case, the essential point of the case is that, so long as the government claims that taking your property benefits the public, it can do it. So much for property rights -- if the government can so easily take your property, it is meaningless to call it your property.
  25. As if cattle rustling will create cows. Udder nonsense, of course. The Kelo decision was headline news. It took no special expertise to see its relevance.
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