Tom Robinson
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Posts posted by Tom Robinson
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Just wondering what your opinions are of me. Am I rational, intelligent, etc? What are the flaws you see with my views of things?
Be brutally honest in your replies.
Want honesty? I can't stand that quote from Churchill. It states the opposite of reality.
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When you are presented with the knowledge that, once grasped, would prevent you from taking another person's property in the name of god and the queen, then it is immoral to continue to do so. Morality is not a priori.
And if you are not presented with such knowledge, then presumably you are beyond moral judgment. Accordingly, we could not regard the terrorist acts of 9/11 as immoral unless we knew that the perpetrators had been "presented with the knowledge that, once grasped," would have prevented them "from taking another person's property in the name of god."
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I should point out that Bowden's use of the word "savage" is inaccurate in the context of the time though accurate in the modern context -- "primitive" is more accurate, for that time. There is an implicit evaluation, which I don't object to, but the question is what standard should be used in doing a historical moral evaluation, especially when looking 400 years back in history. If you use a modern moral standard, then Columbus's actions are indefensible, but that is not reasaonable: capitalism wasn't really discovered until after Columbus. Europe was still rather savage at the time.
I agree in general with your comments. But I am troubled by your phrase "modern moral standard." If morals, and more specifically rights, are derived from man's nature (as Rand discusses in "The Objectivist Ethics") then rights and the principle of not initiating force would be as valid 400 years ago as they are today -- unless one believes that there has been an essential change in man's nature since then. Therefore, a distinction between modern and pre-modern morals can only be descriptive, not prescriptive.
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PLAYBOY: Would you actively advocate that the United States invade Cuba or the Soviet Union?
RAND: Not at present. I don't think it's necessary. I would advocate that which the Soviet Union fears above all else: economic boycott. I would advocate a blockade of Cuba and an economic boycott of Soviet Russia; and you would see both those regimes collapse without the loss of a single American life.
Ayn Rand is right. Look how quickly, as a result of U.S. economic boycott, Cuba collapsed over the last 40 years. Yep. It happened in the twinkling of an eye. When Ayn Rand wrote those words, Cuba was on its very last legs. Given how much Cuba imploded in the last 40 years, surely Cuba will be fully ready for capitalism by, say, mid-2005?
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Would you ever vote for a Libertarian then, even though the basis of all their beliefs is irrational (they try to appeal to almost everyone - from Christians to Homosexuals, etc.)?
I think that if the state of America ever needed a huge overhaul (which I forsee is a good possiblity for the near to far future of this country) I think that an Objectivist might appeal to the public.
Great! Why not start an Objectivist political party? (Shall we call it the "Party of Reality, Reason and Rights"?) Of course, the cost to get such a party on the ballot in all 50 states would be in the several millions. However, falling short of that goal, there is no reason why a highly motivated (as well as attractive and persuasive) individual over the age of 18 could not run for public office on an Objectivist platform. Don't forget to tell the electorate that you favor abortion and drug usage rights and also want to pump up the War on Terror and extend it to Iran and N. Korea. Test the waters and then come back and give us a report.
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TomL:
No I wouldn't, because warts and blood are not a fundamental component of the concept "right", and are not presupposed by it. One does not need "blood" or "warts" in order to have "rights". One needs "reason" & "volition".
Robinson:
Good, if “one does not need ‘blood’ or ‘warts’ in order to have ‘rights,’” then Jones can draw all of Smith’s blood out of his body and Smith will still have his rights.
TomL:
No, I won't. Performing actions on a person's body is not the same thing as killing them.
Robinson:
If "performing actions on a person’s body is not the same as killing them,” then Jones could, with Smith’s permission, inject Smith with lethal dose of adrenaline and still be innocent of murder.
TomL:
In a social context only. On a deserted island, there is no such thing.
Robinson:
Yes, in asocial context one has ownership over his body. Therefore, in a social context, an owner can destroy his own property -- or contract another to do it for him.
TomL:
Only if she blows her own brains out before transplant surgery starts. If the doctors kill her to take out the heart, they are murderers.
Robinson:
If a doctor removes a person’s kidney without the kidney owner’s permission, he should be charged with assault and battery. If he removes the kidney with the owner’s permission, he is acting as the owner’s agent and has done no wrong. Similarly, if Dr. Jones ends Smith life with Smith’s permission, the doctor has acted as the owner’s agent and has done no wrong.
TomL:
How are mowing a lawn and killing someone the same thing? The mind boggles at this ridiculous comparison.
Robinson:
Who said murder and assisted suicide are the same thing? The mind reels at the confusion between these distinct ideas.
TomL:
He's screwed, but there's no one to blame but himself. Next!
Robinson:
When Jones follows Smith’s instructions and injects Smith with a lethal dose of adrenaline, there’s no one to blame but Smith himself. Next!
TomL:
Hell, no. In the case of Jones killing Smith, the contract is not one of assisted suicide, but of "consensual murder".
Robinson:
Consensual murder is a contradiction in terms and therefore invalid. Stick it in the same category of nonsense as consensual rape or consensual kidnapping.
TomL:
Jones is still a murderer, and goes to the death chamber for it. Assisted suicide, as I've already painfully described, does not involve death being induced by the other person.
Robinson:
So the person doing the assisting in assisted suicude should not fill the syringe with anything lethal -- otherwise it would be “consensual murder.”
TomL:
The contract is for Jones to help Smith, but Jones cannot actually physically KILL Smith. Smith must kill himself.
Robinson:
If someone helps a hit-man load his gun and take aim at an innocent target, shouldn’t the assistant be charged with murder along with the trigger man? How is it justifiable to help in one killing, but not another?
TomL:
You have repeatedly ignored my explanations of: the definition of "rights", "assisted suicide", equivocation of body parts with life itself, and numerous other things -- and continued to use your own flawed definitions and erroneous logic without explaining what you think is wrong with mine or explaining why yours are correct. I have repeated myself so many times its making my head swim. This is out of control, and no new material has been brought in for several posts. You are just repeating the same old, tired things. I'm done.
Robinson:
Gee, leaving so soon? I was just starting to have fun.
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Thank you. However, I am more interested in their particular debate over the idea of God. Both are profoundly intelligent, and I would be thrilled to peruse their arguments amongst each other. Will I find anything of that nature in this book, or just some random details about how she was friends with Ayn Rand?
Yes, as I've said, read Cox's book.
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But it is not the same thing for one man to kill himself, as it is for one man to kill another man, no matter how many times you say that it is. It has the same end result, but it is not the same action. Actions are not the same as the effects of those actions.
You might as well say that it is not the same thing for a man to draw his own blood (or remove his warts) as it is for another man to draw his blood (or remove his warts), and that therefore the former is legitimate and the latter is illegitimate. In order to prove the contention that self-induced death is permissible but contracted death is impermissible, you will have to demonstrate that the only one who can morally perform actions on a person’s body is the person himself. If I cut my wart out, it’s okay; if you cut it out it’s assault and battery!
Yes she can, because removal of one kidney or blood or her hair is not removal of her life, and thus does not negate her rights.Then contrary to your post earlier today, there is indeed such a “thing as a right to oneself.” If a woman owns her body parts, then she may rightfully sell them. If she owns her heart, she may rightfully sell it. If she wishes, she may also rightfully donate her heart to her son with a heart defect. She may also instruct her doctor to remove her heart and insert it into her son’s chest. If she does all of this by her own volition, then none of her rights have been negated. And if no one’s rights have been negated, then no one may be charged with murder or any other rights violation.
Perhaps legally in our current system, but I find the practice morally wrong and abhorrent.Then accordingly, you should find the practice of mowing one’s own lawn acceptable, but mowing someone else’s lawn morally wrong and abhorrent.
The point being that his mind, which is what gives rise to the right to life in the first place, is still there -- and still giving rise to that same right.Okay then, what if the subject injects himself with a lethal dose and then suddenly changes his mind? Any objections you apply to contractual death would also have to apply to self-induced death.
And by my previous explanation, that is not a contract for assistance in suicide, but something else entirely.Let me quote your words in their entirety: “I have no idea what the above nonsense means. It has no bearing on my statement to which it apparently was attempting to refer. A contract for assistance in suicide is not a contract for killing someone. I don't see how we can reject the statement of hierarchy which makes all rights possible based on a false equivocation between ‘suicide’ and ‘murder’.”
I replied, “If a ‘contract for assistance in suicide is not a contract for killing someone,’ then Jones should not be arrested for following Smith’s orders to give him a lethal injection of adrenaline.”
Do we agree?
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TomL:
No. I am saying suicide is a man's choice, but murder isn't.
Robinson:
If Smith’s taking his life by his own free will is not murder, neither is Jones’s taking of Smith’s life by Smith’s permission murder.
TomL:
I wouldn't; they have done nothing to injure anyone else. Punishment is for those who would injure others.
Robinson:
So following what you wrote before, “Only an objective individual can make the judgement” to commit suicide, we would add that non-objective individuals can also make the choice to commit suicide.
TomL:
It is not the same action. For Jones to kill himself is one action, named "suicide". For Smith to kill Jones, regardless of agreement, is a different action entirely, named "murder". Again, I am not talking about an emergent situation, but a normal, healthy Jones.
Robinson:
If we would punish Jones for taking Smith’s life with Smith’s permission, to be consistent we would have to punish Smith (if he survives the attempt) for doing the same thing that we would punish Jones for.
TomL:
No, we don't. I make no extrapolation from "kidney" or "blood" to "body". That is uniquely your error here.
Robinson:
Very well, if body and consciousness are not separate things, then a double amputee would have less consciousness than a man with all of his limbs.
TomL:
The morality being questioned is not whether the ending of Smith's life is wrong. The morality being questioned is: who is doing the ending, and how does the person doing the ending know the decision is consistent with reality?
Robinson:
If Smith contracts with Jones for Robinson’s murder (and Robinson does not wish to die), then both Smith and Jones should be charged with murder (or attempted murder). Following your argument, we would have to say that if Smith contracts with Jones for Smith’s own death, then the police would have to charge both Smith and Jones with attempted murder.
TomL:
Again, there is no such thing as a right to oneself. Rights only exist in a social context, and in the case of a man committing suicide, there is no social context. Only the man himself -- thus, no concepts of a right ever enters the picture.
Robinson:
Then a woman could not sell her kidney or blood or hair because she would have no property right in those things.
TomL:
This is not how assisted suicides are done. The helper may set up an apparatus to inject a chemical, but it is the person who is to be killed that physically causes the injection to occur -- not the helper. If the person wishing to die cannot physically push a button, then the helper cannot do it for him as no suicide is possible.
Robinson:
Just as I can confer on another person the power to sign my checks, I can confer upon him the full power to conduct the termination of my life. I need not be physically involved at all to have it occur with my consent.
TomL:
I don't know why you are stuck on "irreversibility", I said my argument had nothing to do with that, but rather fundamental nature of "life" as opposed to the non-fundamental nature of "kidney".
Robinson:
You are the one who introduced the objection: what if the subject changes his mind.
TomL:
Yes, there is. The medical professional may set it up such that the subject may inject themselves, but they must not inject the subject themselves. That is murder. Or, by your illustration of using a "medical professional", are you really talking about an emergent situation? Because THAT is different, and wholly outside the context of this thread.
Robinson:
If we are speaking of current law, no assisted suicides in any manner are permitted in the United States. If we are speaking of a society of contract, in which each person is given full exercise of his rights, then there is nothing immoral (rights violating) about an individual assigning an agent to take all steps necessary to end the person’s life.
TomL:
I have no idea what the above nonsense means. It has no bearing on my statement to which it apparently was attempting to refer. A contract for assistance in suicide is not a contract for killing someone. I don't see how we can reject the statement of hierarchy which makes all rights possible based on a false equivocation between "suicide" and "murder".
Robinson:
Good. If a “contract for assistance in suicide is not a contract for killing someone,” then Jones should not be arrested for following Smith’s orders to give him a lethal injection of adrenaline.
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Correct. But it is wrong for someone else to take that action into his own hands.
But someone acting under my instructions is performing actions on my behalf.
Reality does. Only an objective individual can make the judgement.So you would forbid only the suicides of non-objective individuals? And how would you punish those non-objective individuals who attempted suicide and did not succeed?
I am hardly in a contradiction; this is hardly the same thing. Killing oneself is not the same as killing someone else.You cannot punish Jones for taking the same action that you would allow to Smith. If Smith’s taking his own life does not violate any rights, then no rights are violated when Jones acts on Smith’s instructions to end Smith’s life. No rights violation, no crime.
No. Kidneys do not contain consciousness. At least none I've ever come across.Then we agree that the body and consciousness are separate things.
Yes. You cannot however, take someone else's life, even if they have agreed that its OK to do so.If ending Smith’s life is morally wrong (a rights violation), then it would be just as wrong for Smith himself to do it as Jones. If we punish Jones for assisting in suicide, then we would have to punish Smith for attempting his own suicide.
It is not the irreversibility of the procedure to which I refer, but the fundamental aspect of it. Life is the fundmental that makes donating a kidney possible. You can have life without a kidney, but you cannot have life without life.On April 29 you wrote, “What if he injects the chemical and you change your mind?” Now if you are concerned about the subject changing his mind once an assisted suicide has commenced, why would you not be similarly concerned about a kidney donor changing his mind once the surgery to remove it has commenced? The problem of irreversibility is the same in both cases. As for not having life without life -- who said otherwise? The point is that the consciousness ruling a body may not want life anymore -- and it is his right as owner of that body (or that life) to end it.
Yes, it would. His contract is for assistance, not for death itself. He must commit suicide -- he is not being killed.If I have the right to take an action with regard to my own property, then I can transfer the right to take that action to another party. There is no rights violation if a medical professional under the instructions of the subject takes every step necessary to inject the subject with a lethal dose of adrenaline.
He is only being helped to do it, and once the help is rendered, the contract is fullfilled, whether the attempt was successful or not. There is no surrending of one's life to the helper in an assisted suicide.Good. So we would reject the statement, “So, if one trades away the right to life, one has traded away the right to property, and the right to execute a trade over that property -- including one's body.” A suicide contract does not result in loss of property rights, including the rights over one’s body.
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Even with Ayn Rand, I think Vonnegut is still my favorite. But Rand's not far behind...
Never mind what others say. You are right to enjoy Vonnegut, one of the great masters of the comic novel. Cat's Cradle is perhaps the best satire of religion ever written.
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Disposal of the body is not the same thing as disposal of one's life, becuase life as man qua man is more than a beating heart.
The owner of the heart may legitimately take actions to make it stop beating. You have said, “There is nothing ethically wrong for a man to want to die and even for him to want someone else to do it. But in the abscence of an emergency, it is morally wrong for anyone else to execute that wish. Anyone who does so defaults on his own right to life.” First of all, who gets to decide whether it is an emergency? More importantly, you are caught in a contradiction. If Smith kills himself (presumably with his own permission), he has not violated anyone’s rights. Therefore if Jones kills Smith (with Smith’s permission), he has taken the same action that it was legitimate for Smith to commit. A legal system cannot punish one man for doing the same thing that another is legally permitted to do.
No, they aren't! How will take the consciousness out of man's body while keeping both intact? If you separate them, they will both die. Removing parts of a body, especially replenishable parts such as blood and marrow, or redundant organs is not the same thing as telling someone its OK to kill you.They are conceptually separable. If consciousness is one and the same as the body, then donating a body part, say, a kidney, would be the same donating a part of one’s consciousness. Having donated blood and undergone operations to remove neoplasms, I can state without fear of contradiction that my consciousness was not in the least diminished by the procedures. Ergo, consciousness and body are not identical. The consciousness rules the body and is the proper owner of it. As owner, the consciousness is within its rights to destroy the body.
What if he injects the chemical and you change your mind? What you cannot give up or stop is the ability to change your mind!A typo. I meant to say "you do not posses the right not be killed by yourself.
What if you want to donate a kidney and change you mind after the operation? If the irreversibility of a procedure makes it illegitimate, then there would be very few actions that a surgeon could perform.
The right to life gives one the right to property, which in turn gives one the right to execute a trade. So, if one trades away the right to life, one has traded away the right to property, and the right to execute a trade over that property -- including one's body. It is self-contradictory to attempt to trade one's life, because one's life makes trade possible.So if a man contracts to have his life ended, then he “has traded away the right to property, and the right to execute a trade over that property -- including one's body.” In that case, if an assisted suicide attempt should fail or be interrupted, the body of the would-be suicide would no longer belong to him. Who would be the new owner? The state? The first one to come along and claim finders-keepers rights? Furthermore, if someone assists another person in a suicide that succeeds, how could the assistant be charged with murder? You have stated that the one who trades away his right to life has traded away rights over his body. How is it the killing a crime if no rights are violated?
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No, you specfically referred to one's body as property, and property rights come from the right to life -- not the other way around.
Either an individual’s person (body) is his property or it is not. If a human body is the property of the occupant (the consciousness within), then the occupant may dispose of it as he wishes, including placing it in the hands of someone who will administer a lethal injection.
I'm not familiar with that, but it doesn't seem to make sense. There is no way for anyone else to occupy your body, so the principle has no application here.In theory, a surgeon could imprison a person, remove her brain and insert someone else’s. By the Lockean principle of first occupation, we say this is illegitimate because the original occupant is the only legitimate owner. But we do not have to resort to such a science fiction hypothetical. A fetus can occupy a woman’s body. Our position that a woman may rightfully abort the pregnancy is based on the premise that she is the exclusive owner of her womb and may legitimately eject anything or anyone inside her.
Yes, but not because no one else has occupied it. It is so because the body in question is the bio-matter which ultimately gives rise to the consciousness within. One body, one consciousness.Then, if you wish, the consciousness owns the body. But clearly they are separable. Otherwise, people would not be able to donate blood, bone marrow or internal organs.
No no. You also are mixing up actions with rights. You can in fact have someone take your life, but in the process you cannot give up your right to your life. Right has a very specific meaning. The person who has someone else kill them and thinks they have given up their right is mistaken, and dies committing an error.Then, if you wish, I retain my right to life until I breathe my last breath. I retain my right to life until the chemical that I have ordered a doctor to inject me with makes my heart stop beating.
You do not have any rights with respect to yourself or your own body at all. Ever.Then people who donate blood or body organs are acting illegitimately? “Is man a sovereign individual who owns his person, his mind, his life, his work and his products -- or is he the property of the tribe (the state, the society, the collective) . . . ?” -- Ayn Rand, "What Is Capitalism" It is clear that Rand and the Objectivist philosophy recognize ownership of one’s person.
You do not possess the right to be killed by yourself, and more importantly, you do not possess the right to not be killed yourself. Rights are a negative obligation on others. There is no such thing as a moral right to oneself.If "you do not possess the right to not be killed yourself," then there can be nothing immoral (rights violating) about your hiring someone to kill you.
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So it's time for anyone who still thinks that singular "their" is so-called "bad grammar" to get rid of their prejudices and pedantry!"
As H.W. Fowler asked, have you made up you mind to say, "Everyone was blowing their noses" or “Everyone were blowing their noses"?
Let's see how this sounds:
"Whoever allows a 'somehow' into their view of the means by which their desires are to be achieved, is guilty of that 'metaphysical humility' which, psychologically, is the premise of a parasite."
Try it another way:
"Whoever allows a 'somehow' into his view of the means by which his desires are to be achieved, is guilty of that 'metaphysical humility' which, psychologically, is the premise of a parasite."
Does the second version sound fussy or pedantic? Not to my ear. The second version is the one that came from Ayn Rand's pen. See "The 'Conflicts' of Men's Interests."
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Ayn Rand, from what I have read, learned virtually everything about politics from Isabel Paterson. I have also read that they had a falling out over the idea of God and religion. But, most importantly, supposedly there are some letters out there that illustrate their debate and disagreements. Does anybody have any idea where I can find these? I havn't read the journals or letters, so maybe they're in that book or something. Any help is appreciated.
No, Rand did not learn “virtually everything about politics” from Isabel Paterson but did call Paterson's The God of the Machine, "The best and most complete statement of the basic principles of our side, the greatest defense of capitalism I have ever read. It does for capitalism what Das Kapital did for the Reds." Since Paterson was a generation older and was steeped in the lore of American freedom long before Rand even arrived on these shores, it is simply not true that, as someone here said, they were "inducing, the same political ideas, at the same time." Rand owed a debt to Paterson and she acknowledged it by continuing to recommend Paterson's great book for years after their falling out. If you want to know more about their relationship I recommend The Woman and the Dynamo: Isabel Paterson and the Idea of America, by Stephen Cox (Transaction, 418 pp., $39.95). Cox has previously published numerous scholarly works on Ayn Rand.
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Fine, but you are failing to identify the cause of the right to life
Excuse me, but I say right to one’s own body. Right to life implies . . . at whose expense?
The fact of one's ownership of one's own body is not the causal factor for the right to life.Never said it was.
It is the fact of the existence of one's faculties of reason and volition which gives rise to the right to life, and one's ownership of one's body is a consequence of that. So, you are thinking the hierarchy is this:[property right to one's body] -> [right to life]
when in reality we actually have this:
[faculties of reason & volition] -> [right to life] -> [property right to one's body]
and for that matter, all other property rights.
My position is that the right to one’s own body is based on the Lockean principle of first occupation and first use. If I do not have a right to my own body it can only be because someone else has a prior (better) claim. But who could have a better or prior claim to my body than the mind that occupies it? In other words, the proper owner of each human body is the mind that originally occupies it.
What I meant in my question of physically turning off the faculties is that, if you can come up with a way for a man to physically turn off those faculties but still be alive long enough for someone else to kill him, then I'll jump the fence. If you commit suicide or give yourself a frontal lobotomy (which I think is physically impossible, by the way, to do with any degree of certainty that your body won't die), then your faculties and your thus right to life ceases, but in either case you're either not alive or not able to sign a contract, so who cares?If I am not allowed to have someone destroy my body, then it follows that I myself have no right to destroy my body, which in turn would mean that my body belongs not to me. To whom does it belong, then?
Here is one situation: if you could devise a machine that would give a man a frontal lobotomy if he pushed a button, and that man signed a contract saying that someone else could kill his (morally lifeless, but biologically living) body afterwards, then I'd say that was morally acceptable. The man's life qua man ends when he lobotomizes himself, so the death of his body after that is morally meaningless.If a woman has the right to sell her long, beautiful brown hair, then she has the right to sell her kidney -- or her cornea -- or her bone marrow -- or her ovaries. In short, there is no part of her body -- including her beating heart -- that she does not have the right to sell.
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I didn't miss that point, but I'm still not convinced that he meant it in that way. I don't think anyone, even a hardcore Marxist, would refer to misery as a "blessing," unless he were being facetious.
Fine, then when Churchill imposed socialism on Great Britain in WWI and WWII, he was being facetious. Ha, ha, what droll humor!
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
-Winston Churchill
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We cannot.
You are equivocating "life" with "property".
In fact, I am not. I never said that "life" is "property." My position is that an individual has proprietary rights in his own body, which includes the right of disposal, i.e. the right to terminate its condition as a living entity. If an individual is not the owner of his body, then who is?
The right to property is given rise to by the right to life, but the right to life is an entirely separate concept. You cannot simply call a human body "property", it does not fit the definiton of "property" until is devoid of reason and volition; that is, until its a corpse. Only then can it be considered "property".Very well, if a woman cannot call her body her property, then by what right can she sell her hair? Does she have to wait until she is dead to sell it? Of course not. Every human mind is the owner of the corpus in which it resides. The person owns it by the Lockean principle of first occupation and use. If I wish to have a tattoo placed on my arm, what gives me the right to do so? Must I die before a tattoo is placed on my body? No, my body is mine to have tattooed by the fact that I inhabit it, i.e., claimed it before anyone else did.
"Property" is that which a man creates through his own effort (both mental and physical), and thus his right to that property means it is his to use and dispose of as he wishes.In that case, no one could own the redwoods of California, for those ancient trees were not the product of any human effort. (Please note that I do not disparage your argument that “'Property' is that which a man creates through his own effort,” I argue only that there are other means of property creation.
Since a man does not create his faculties of reason and volition through his own effort -- they are handed to him by nature -- then he cannot claim them to "property". Likewise, he has no means whatsoever of disposing of them except by suicide. He may use them, but not dispose of them. He simply can't, there is no other way.If a man does not own his body, then he would have no right on his own to damage it irreparably. Are you arguing here against the right of suicide? If not, then what is wrong with contracted suicide?
If you can come up with a way for a man to physically shut off his faculities of reason of volition, I'll jump the fence.I believe you have already said it: lobotomy or suicide.
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Even if that's true, it's still a good quote, because it can easily be read as "capitalism is better than socialism." Churchill may not have been a great economist, but there are many great quotes that come from awful men. Quite a few of the quotes in my quotationary come from Bertrand Russell (mostly on religion), George Orwell, and H.G. Wells, all of whom were socialists.
The quote is not bad because Churchill said it; it is bad because it states the opposite of the truth -- and there is no reason to suppose that the speaker, the architect of British socialism, intended irony. The unequal sharing of the "blessings" of capitalism is anything but a vice. As Ayn Rand showed repeatedly (and with the volume turned all the way up), the virtue of capitalism is that it rewards each person ad valorem, not according to his needs but to his contributions. No one who reads Atlas Shrugged can miss that point.
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How many times are you going to completely change the subject of the thread in order to criticize the quote in my sig? In case you didn't notice, he also refers to misery as a "blessing." Learn to spot sarcasm when you see it.
Forgive me. I thought your topic was about collecting rational quotes. I took Churchill's words not as sarcasm but a reflection of his general ignorance of economics. After all, it was Churchill who said, "Our whole nation must be organized, must be socialized if you like the word." Ludwig von Mises wrote in 1950, "It is noteworthy to remember that British socialism was not an achievement of Mr. Attlee's Labor Government, but of the war cabinet of Mr. Winston Churchill." It would appear then that Churchill chose the "blessing" of socialism over the "vice" of capitalism.
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I'm trying to build a sort of "rational man's quotationary," using quotes from various philosophers, statesmen, authors, etc. I've got about 22 pages so far, some of which are quotes I have cut/pasted from the ones that appear at the top of this page. Is there anywhere I can go to see a comprehensive list of them? Also, is there anywhere where I can find citations for them?
“The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.”
-Winston Churchill
Uh, speaking of quotes, why is unequal sharing a vice of capitalism? Does anyone on this forum really believe that the fruits of production should be divided up equally?
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No. You are either not grasping or evading the definition of "right". A "right" exists only in a social context, as a negative obligation on others. Rights as such impose no negative obligation on oneself.
Then how can Jones be charged with Smith’s murder when it was Smith himself who authorized Jones to administer the lethal injection to him? Obviously, there is no rights violation if we have a signed and witnessed document from Smith granting Jones permission to inject him with a fatal does of adrenaline.
To kill oneself does not involve "rights" one way or the other, "rights" involve only what others may not do to you.“Rights” is a term that is frequently and appropriately applied to titles to things. In this discussion we can say that suicide and assisted suicide are legitimate based on an individual’s property right to his body.
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Not at all. You may kill yourself if you have no rational reason to continue living, but you cannot sign a legally enforceable contract with someone else to kill you. If he kills you, he is a murderer, contract or not.
You have a contradiction. If Smith kills himself (with presumably Smith's permission), the action is legitimate. If Jones kills Smith with Smith's permission, the action suddenly becomes illegitimate. Thus your law would be inconsistent, for it provides unequal treatment for the same action.
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The only way to cancel your own right to life is to kill yourself, or give yourself a frontal lobotomy. Anyone else doing it is murdering you, regardless of any legal contracts. A legal contract cannot nullify your ability to think for yourself, and thus cannot nullify your right to your life.
If I cannot legitimately contract to have someone else kill me, then I have no right to kill myself. Is that your position?
What Do You Think Of Me?
in Introductions and Personal Notes
Posted
If Churchill actually meant that “The inherent blessing of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings, and the inherent vice of socialism is the equal sharing of misery,” then it is hard to imagine why he introduced socialism to Britain in World War I and brought it back during World War II. Perhaps in Churchill's upside-down morality vices are preferable to blessings. In any case, even if Churchill meant that the vice of socialism is its equal sharing of misery, he would still be embracing a falsehood. Socialism does not mean equality. Members of the Communist Party in the USSR enjoyed luxury apartments, vacation homes, limousines and special stores that featured goods made in the West.