tadmjones
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Posts posted by tadmjones
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I agree with the filter of reasonableness.Oh ok, I guess that can be an ambiguous statement.
What I meant by preserving the natural environment is taking steps to identify what pro-life attributes the natural environment offers and seeking to act in ways which does not diminish them, whenever reasonable.
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No, I'm not sure what you would be saying if you claimed humankind were outside the scope of nature. That would seem like an odd claim. What does it have to do with the OP?
Not the OP as much as what 'preserving the natural environment' would mean . That usually implies the environment minus all activities of humankind, the 'pristine earth' notion.
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Tadmjones,
By pollution I would be implying health hazards. I was not thinking so much of accidents but of day to day pollution. There was the fairly recent Fukushima disaster for example. However the resulting pollution was due to an accident and not a routine consequence of nuclear power generation. No one thought the Fukushima outcome was likely to happen.
This is different from say an industrial process where emission of pollutants is currently a given. I was thinking there may be two sorts of approaches to curbing pollutants - being to restrict emissions or to compensate those whose rights are being breached (where there is objective proof). There may be other ways.
There seems to be a weighing up of the pro-life element of curbing pollution (or forcing polluters to pay compensation) with the anti-life element of industry being restricted in some way.
How would one appraise what restrictions would be justified, objectively?
But you would agree that objectively defining what constitutes pollutants and health hazards is the first step, yes?
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Objectively define 'pollutants' as opposed to byproducts would be a good start. Objectiviely consider to what 'restrictions' refer. Compensation may not have to rely on force, I have a vague notion that certain industries need to have (for lack of a better term) 'industrial insurance' eg to obtain permits to generate nuclear power I believe a requirement already in place is that the builders and operators of those plants need to have adequate insurance to be able to pay for compensation if they cause an accident. Is this what you mean?
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I have a hard time paying my real estate taxes 'out of the value of my priviate home', I end up using my income to pay the tax. Loving the Georgian solution.
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What of individual C?
C paid A rent (making C. through his stupidity and ignorance a slave ,to some extent, of A) based on B's improvements, the land value tax is for C's benefit, not the slave holders.
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I have witnessed the depth and scope of your conviction, I doubt my assuring you of my understanding of the origin of rights(which I supplied earlier) would even put a dent in your conviction.Tadmjones,
I am quite convinced you don't understand what the Objectivist position is on the origin of rights. What do you think it is?
One of the aspects of O'ism that makes it so attractive to me as a philosophic system is the heavy reliance on epistemology. I find stressing the importance of integration is key to understanding O'ism. Falling victim to the use of stolen concepts and floating abstraction can really derail one's thought, you know what I mean?
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To be fair I would give the benefit of the doubt and assume the insidiuousness is unintentional and more a consequence of mistaken ideas. Mistaken on the premise of the rationalistic use of economic concepts of method by then going 'back' to moral/ethical base to assign a normative evaluation.
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Jon
Are you suggesting people are forced to pay rent?
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I agree to pay rent to use an apartment or house, the money I agree to pay (which is the sum the landlord agrees to accept to allow me use of property, eg the market price of the rent). The agreement between myself and the landlord is an example of voluntary trade. How am I being deluded into thinking that the price I agreed to pay , is not in fact the price I agrred tp pay?
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A vacant lot is an example of unimproved land."How can you use the law of causality as an argument for the existence of a non thing?"
Yeah how can you? I was using it to identify what makes something someone's property - but if you think property is "the existence of a non thing" you are probably in the wrong place.
"What is an unimprovement?" That was really poor English, but if you are refering to say an undeveloped vacant plot in the middle of a city, you'd be close to the mark.
"and how does one, even immorally, attach a value to it and charge someone based on it?" Easy. You just claim it as your property, prevent others from using it unless they pay you and then wait for them to pay you so they can access the community. In fact the more time such "property" passes hands, the less attributable the guilt and most landowners will eventually think they own an entitlement to it.
I say most people.
Build apartments on it and charge rent for use of the apartments.
A portion of the rent collected(via trade) is unearned because the apartment sits on land that one time had no building on it, this is an example of the law of causality?
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Your argument is based on the un-Ness of improvements, what are they what kind of entity is an unimprovement, or is it equivalent to unowned, which I belive would be begging the question.
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How can you use the law of causality as an argument for the existence of a non thing? Whati s an unimprovement and how does one ,even immorally, attach a value to it and charge someone based on it?
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The novel points to an actual "strike" , Judge Narragansett begins editing a copy of the Constitution. That scene always reminds me of Franklin's comment "A republic, if you can keep it" when asked what form of government came out of the convention in Philadelphia.
The Atlases of colonial America created the first real world Gulch. I do not think the end of history is at hand. There is a rational foundation, it needs to be rediscovered and perhaps refined.
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The Georgist argument , or the presentation of here in this thread, is an example of rationalism. Denying the morality of title or land ownership is based on the improper use of the terms of method in economics as a school of thought. Terms like 'rent, 'wage' and 'interest' are being used as if the are entities , and subsequently given properties, apart from the abstractions on which they are based.
Apart from an entry on a ledger, how can rent received by divided into separate 'parts'? If I rent an apartment in my building and charge someone x amount and they pay me x amount , what are they paying me other than x amount?
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My intentional derisive and sarcastic comment in #33 , was directed at your conclusion that "Japan was nuked to scare the Russians".Or not used them at all. That would have been the moral decision. But lol. Study the Cold War. The US was contemplating nuking its allies to prevent a Russian invasian. The MADness of that era.
Was Truman a monster because of the US's aerial bombings of the enemy's cities or the use of nuclear weapons? or both?
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Jon
With reality being the final arbiter, you would agree then that your understanding and or knowledge of the Georgist position doesn't make it a good argument, it just means you think it is, yes?
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Peikoff is wrong there, in my opinion. Rand was clear that retaliatory force should be directed against those who initiated it. Rand is logically coherent. If you kill innocent people to make it easier to kill your enemies, you are treating those people as means to an end. You are intentionally initiating force against them, sacrificing them for your own sake. That is evil, I think. Rand argued force initiation was evil. Peikoff cannot add an animal farmesque "unless its people in countries we are afraid of".
I don't think the bombing of hiroshima or nagasaki was moral either. For the same reasons. Study history. Japan was nuked to scare the Russians.
Indescriminate attacks, where force is not retaliatory, not objectively utilised, would be completely morally unjustified.
Given only two operable devices, it would have been smarter to bomb London or Dublin. If the Russians saw we were willing and able to bomb our allies, that would really have put the fear of God in those atheist bastards. Besides Japan was about to surrender anyway, almost seems like a wasted effort at that point.
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I said that voluntary trade is what brought the monetary gain.Tadmjones, why do you think "capital is the ownership of the land"? I want to be clear.
If you acknowledge monetary gains are achieved by holding merely a title, does it not matter what basis in justice that title is held. A slave owner would claim he owns slaves, he might prove he bought them. To assess the morality of the title we must look at what those titles are based on. If its immoral we ought to ignore his claims. Do you agree?
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I would say that people who place value on thinking rationally would be cognizant of any internal emotional response and apply the proper focus to analyzing any specific idea.
Speaking in public could cause communication of their ideas to be tempered with apprehension of expected hostility from the audience, though I do not think this would have any bearing on their reasoning, if they valued rational thought above acceptance, and if they value acceptance of the audience above reason, who cares "what" they think?
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What I meant was that land isn't literally capital, the capital is the ownership of the land. That one may trade and or leverage the legal distinction of holding title for monetary gain through voluntary association with others.Tadmjones
"Capital is ownership". Can you explain what you mean?
Pollution
in Ethics
Posted
"Willful" negligence and any harm that it may cause is an intiation of force. If governement is the agency and mechanism with which a civilized society deals with, retaliates against, the intiation of force then yes the 'government has the right', but only it is only in that context that the idea of a governemnt having a 'right(s)' makes any sense.