Dupin
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Posts posted by Dupin
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What 2946 calls the reversed situation – first people then station – always happens. Broadcast station investors aren’t, to use a favorite word of 2046’s, dumb. They don’t build and operate stations in no man’s land and wait for the day when lots of people have moved to the area to make money.
Rand worried about the radio wave infringement question so it probably isn’t absurd for us to worry about it too.
What other justification could there be for a universal or automatic easement for radio waves other than that the ether is owned in common by everyone and the government parcels out frequencies in their name. In practice that‘s what is done, so we’re just arguing about nomenclature.
In another thread MisterSwig makes the case for a valid concept of public property, a public property based on private property that uncorrupted by Leftism. It applies to very few property types: the ether, land not privately owned, high airplane space. Maybe there are other types but I can’t think of any.
In this thread MisterSwig asks why Rand didn’t realize we need this idea of true public property. One conjecture, and of course we can only conjecture, is that she felt stuck with the Leftist interpretation of the phrase. She ended up using the idea in the particular case of the ether, but would not call it public property.
We need to realize that we own the public property – streets, parks, government buildings and so forth – because it gives us the right to restrict immigration as if we were restricting who can enter our homes. This is our country, something lots of Objectivists don’t understand.
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After describing the relevant difference between a radio broadcast station and a plot of land I tried to sum it up with
“A broadcast station doesn’t have the same level of existence as land does.”
Admittedly the idea of “levels of existence” won’t bear close inspection but it’s good enough for poetry.
2016 isn’t content to call it dumb, it is “literally dumb,” and yours truly is “someone not fit to be reasoned with,” LOL. How 2046 can pour it on.
Addressing myself to others than 2046, if my poetic phrase offends just consider my description of the difference and leave it at that. The point is that it’s a significant qualitative difference relevant to the analogy I had made and I think MisterSwig was making.
In any case I set that difference aside and wrote that
“... if the radio waves are undetectable without an appropriate radio receiver and otherwise harmless, I think the automatic easement, where the ether is viewed as public property, is the solution.”
That is, the solution to justifying radio stations. Then I quoted MisterSwig who I thought said it rather well. 2016 finds this incoherent. He explains (I interpolate some unstated assumptions) that if a broadcaster homesteads a wavelength when no one owns property between him and his listeners, he owns that wavelength. If someone then:
“... builds his house [in between] and ... complain that he's being ‘penetrated’ with the radio emission ... the common law will regard him as having ‘come to the nuisance.’ [That is, it’s his own fault, the radio waves were there first.] It's kind of like an easement, yes. This is kind of the whole point of the Rand essay. However, at no point, does something called ‘the public’ own the radio emission, or the air, or anything at all.”
The situation 2046 posits is so rare that I doubt it ever happened and ever will happen. In the real world many people and their property already surround a new radio station. It’s a legal maxim that law shouldn’t be based on “hard cases.”
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Suppose you live on a farm in the boondocks. A man, a rather mean man, manages to buy up parcels of land that together form a ring around your farm. Then he starts charging you a toll to cross over to and from your farm.
A more realistic example would be that the man buys up a long strip of property tangent to yours so you either pay the toll or go many miles out of your way going around the strip.
In either case though, you have a common law right to access your property more or less directly, and to actualize that right you apply to the local government for what is called an easement, which entitles you to cross over the mean guy’s property at designated points even though you don’t own them.
The easement is based on the fact that you simply must have access your property.
The radio broadcaster is like the farm owner, he wants to send his electromagnetic waves to people far away who want to receive them, yet various people’s ethereal property is in the way, like the mean man’s ring or strip was. So the broadcaster ought to be given an automatic easement for his radiation to cross over everyone’s property.
The analogy is pretty good but has a weak spot. In the farm case access is absolutely essential to the farm’s value to its owner, and furthermore the land of the farm is “just there,” always has been and always will be. In the broadcaster’s case too, the ability to broadcast is essential to the station’s value. However the broadcast station is an ephemeral affair, something artificially constructed. It could just as well have not been constructed, or having been constructed can be taken down again. A broadcast station doesn’t have the same level of existence as land does.
It may not be a slam dunk, but if the radio waves are undetectable without an appropriate radio receiver and otherwise harmless, I think the automatic easement, where the ether is viewed as public property, is the solution. As MisterSwig says:
“... when people form a community or society ... [they] must agree to share some things which come along with the nature of a properly functioning city. And we have learned, through trial and error, that these things can include publicly claimed lands and spaces.”
Not to mention the ether.
If I understand MisterSwig’s discussion of Rand’s article, she dimly recognized that radio broadcasting presents a property rights problem. At first she just ignored it and attacked the idea of public property without recognizing that there is a valid, property rights based version. Then she ended up implicitly using the valid version without recognizing it – to our detriment when it comes to the problem of immigration.
It seems to me that an automatic, universal, easement for broadcasting radio waves requires public ownership of the ether. I haven't thought about it much though.
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2046,
1000 kHz, that is, one million cycles per second, is a number, a particular measurement of frequency. “1000 KHz” can no more perform physical work than “5 inches can.” However an electromagnetic wave of 1000 kHz of such and such wattage can carry energy from one place to another and also information, like an iron bar 5 inches long, 2 inches wide can make a good window sash. An attribute versus a concrete having that attribute.
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I find MisterSwig’s arguments persuasive. He can defend his position but I would reply ...
2046,
The electromagnetic spectrum is a range of frequencies, like a series of inches is a range of lengths. Both are abstractions and neither takes up any space at all. Rand is not only talking about frequencies but their use, that is sending electromagntic waves (at whatever frequency) through the air / ether. That radiation is what passes through people's property, not an abstract frequency which is just a number.
So “He's living in it" is quite frankly a dumb argument.” is quite frankly wrong.
Eiuol,
You claim that MS argues that “when someone claims to own something they are not in direct control of ... it's illegitimate. After all, they aren't living in it.” Their ownership claim is illegitimate. They don't own your property.
2046 is sarcastic:
"... all of reality should be communist because we're living in the visible light spectrum. It's passing through us! Blind people are the real capitalists ..."
Whoever this mocks it isn't MisterSwig. If someone shines an intense light or laser through your airspace or bright lights through your windows at night you might have reason to complain.
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Eiuol,
Indeed eye witness testimony is unreliable, that is, sometimes the witness, however honest, is mistaken. This is true in general but of course it doesn’t mean that eyewitness testimony is always false. In fact eye witness testimony carries considerable weight in a courtroom.
In the case here we have two independent eye witnesses who say they saw men who, besides carrying a rifle, were (1) dressed all in black, (2) wearing a black mask. Yes, both witnesses might be mistaken and in the same way, but a real investigation into the incident would include them and their testimony.
Unlike the Daytona Antifa massacre the FBI took charge of the El Paso massacre from the beginning. Since the FBI has a long history of corruption we should be very skeptical about what they do and say.
About the alleged manifesto. For what it’s worth – I know anybody can post anything on Twitter – here are some Tweets revolving around someone calling himself “Taylor made a 3,” account @CabooseL17. That account was opened in 2012 and has over 500 tweets. If you look at several at random his political position is anti-Trump.
The first tweet has since been deleted. The rest were there at least on August 7. I have expanded the abbreviation “Idk” ==> “I don’t know” in a couple of tweets, corrected “weitibg” ==> “writing” in one tweet, and corrected some minor typos and spelling mistakes, besides adding a period when the tweet ended without one.
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Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 4
“Patrick has autism and was in special ed classes. I’ve read his writing. He couldn’t have written that document. I don’t know how this happened. He had to have been influenced by someone. He had to have had help. I grew up next to him.”Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 4 Replying to @LMKnightArt
I know Patrick Crusius. He didn’t write that manifesto.Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 5 Replying to @semperKAG @BabeReflex_8 and 43 others
Like none of this makes sense. He didn’t speak to anyone outside the family till he was like 4. He was sweet and his family was weird but not crazy. I glued a penny to the street in front of my house and watched him and his siblings try to pull it up for hours.Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 5 Replying to @semperKAG
I just don’t want to be a part of an 8chan conspiracy chain. All I know is that I deeply believe that he wasn’t capable of doing what he did by himself. We’re in shock. No one knows how this happened.Jubal E. Harshaw @alimhaider·
Aug 5
So the El Paso shooter was in special ed.
[image quote]
Rutkoske, who suffers from dyslexia and ADHD[,] said he wa friends with Crusius for more than 10 years and was in the same special ed classes with the 21-year old from elementary school to high school.
“He was soulless, he lacked emotion, you couldn’t se any feeling in his eyes, he was an empty vessel.”B @beowulllf
Aug 5
Well, that makes two sources. I wonder why the news hasn’t caught onto this?Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 5
I don’t know. I’ve called. ... Like I know he did this but there is just no way he didn’t have some kind of help. He had to have been radicalized and I know he didn’t write that manifesto. He didn’t have the capacity.B @beowulllf
Aug 5 Replying to @CabooseL17 @alimhaider
It’s amazing that this info isn’t getting more attention.Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 5 Replying to @shaunking @realDonaldTrump
I was his neighbor. I really don’t think it is. He wasn’t capable of writing that by himself. There has to be a second party involved.Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 6 Replying to @jelavelechat @LMKnightArt
I grew up next to Patrick and his family. They lived down the street from me on the corner.Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 6 Replying to @McGriddles243 @beowulllf @alimhaider
Ok to be clear. Patrick is 100% guilty and the shooter. I just don’t think he wrote that document. And if he did, he had help.Maria Sederholm @Wordofbeak
Aug 6
Do you know for a fact that he had autism? I mean, do you know if he was diagnosed by a doctor, or is it something you've heard by others or assumed was the case considering his behavior and him being in special education classes?Taylor made a 3 @CabooseL17
Aug 6 Replying to @Wordofbeak @LMKnightArt
Assumed through interaction and accounts of others.
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A major difference is that Crusius was taken alive. Ordinarily policemen would without hesitation shoot a man – repeatedly – welding a gun who had just killed someone or was about to. Yet when a man who had just mowed down 20 some odd people held up his AK-47 and said he wasn’t going to use it anymore or was out of bullets (I gather something like that happened) the police believed him and held their fire.
The hand – and arm – is quicker than the eye. Police know that a man can deploy and shoot his gun faster than they can react.
Another thing, and it is bizarre. One shopper says she saw several men dressed all in black enter Walmart right after Crusius. All had guns and began firing after he did, and continued firing. Her testimony is heartfelt and sincere:
And another shopper saw a masked six foot tall shooter dressed all in black, which couldn't have been Crusius.
They could well expect to get away with it. Most shoppers would be running for their lives and they could expect to kill any witnesses. That two survived is their bad luck. Investigative reporters should follow this up.
46 people were killed or injured. I understand that an AK-47 magazine holds only 30 rounds. And not every shot would hit someone, with an amateur gunman a large percentage would not. How many magazines did Crusius have?
Another point. Crusius’s manifesto is “too good to be true.” He sounds intelligent enough to know that his act would play into the hands of those he claims are his enemies, politicians and pundits who want open borders. Yaron Brook, for example, is now saying in so many words that people who oppose open borders create an atmosphere fostering mass murderers like Crusius. (On the other hand mass murderers aren’t known for their ability to see ahead.)
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I thought “fire” was appropriate given the intensity of the debaters on both sides.
The attack Biddle refers to may have been by Richard Ruggiero rather than ARI Watch. He had posted something about Barney on TOS’s Facebook page and Biddle (I guess it was) quickly deleted it. Now he attacks from his own Facebook page. You can find it by searching Facebook for Richard Ruggiero – he’s the first one listed – and scrolling down the timeline.
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The metaphor should be clear:
Fire <==> disagreement between TOS and the attackers.
Petrol throwing <==> publicizing it.
I doubt if many of TOS's readers had heard of the attack before the article, now they all have. From a “pragmatic” perspective TOS should have ignored the attack and let it die a natural death. Instead they infuse more life into it, that is, they unwittingly advertise the attack even as they fight it. It’s a tar baby. -
This article recently appeared on the website of The Objective Standard (you might need to use your mouse wheel to scroll below the photograph):
https://www.theobjectivestandard.com/2019/07/regarding-carl-barney-and-scientology/
The whole business is weird. From a purely propaganda point of view maybe they should have just ignored the attack instead of throwing petrol on the fire.
Favorite Book(s) of All Time
in Literature
Posted
Four that come to mind ...
The Island of Captain Sparrow, by S. Fowler Wright
What Mad Universe, by Fredric Brown
Invasion of the Body Snatchers, by Jack Finney
Cyrano de Bergerac, (play) by Edmond Rostand (Brian Hooker translation)