Posted on 03/16/2011 7:07:40 PM PDT by sickoflibs
Nice turn of the phrase. Here is another one, written by Freeper MrB, that bookends nicely with yours.
"You have NO "rights" that inherently impose an involuntary burden on another person." - MrB
Meaning your property rights don't burden another with going around your property to get to their destination? They can cut right across it?
Well of course humans can have a sustainable economy based on predation, plunder and coercion. Some conduct their plunder of external sources of wealth, and some like the Soviet Union and now North Korea consume the wealth of everyone inside the barbed wire of their national prison boundaries.
(I just listed to a lecture by Yuri N. Maltsev, who work as an economist on Mikhail Gorbachev’s economic reform team, who stated that the period of the highest productivity in the USSR was in 1932 when Stalin’s secret police were killing 12,000 people a day in a reign of terror. Later we find that about 10% of the entire adult population had passed through the Golag and it was the country’s largest “employer”.)
However, all these predatory schemes are not really “sustainable” in the full meaning of the word, for the instant they run out of resources that can be appropriated the economy collapses. For example, what is the long term prosperity plan of the klan of Somali pirates who presently have a “sustainable” economy based on holding people hostage?
Sometimes the collapse of these societies is violent and destructive and something else is able to rise from its worthless rubble like when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics died after consuming even its own human resources. Sometimes the economy falls to a level of subsistence that is just enough where the ruling elites find a level of “sustainability” on the backs of the hoi polloi, like in today’s Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), where an estimated 10,000 elites run the country.
But I don’t consider the DPRK’s economy to be “sustainable”, in the modern context of what leftists say they want. (as distinct from what will really happen when leftists get their way). Gaia worshippers would faint at the environmental cost of the DPRK’s “sustainable” economy.
It is literally true that when government intrudes to destroy price signals, because nobody, even government bureaucrats know whether or not his enterprise is adding to the stock of wealth or consuming from it.
In the post-mortem of the USSR we now know that vast State enterprises had negative “profit” over periods of decades. Because their metrics were ideological/political and not economic, they didn’t even know they were not economically profitable and therefore they consumed capital instead of contributing to it.
When all the capital is consumed, an enterprise cannot function unless it gains access to wealth from some other source. When humans cannot live without those enterprises, (like those that supply food, clothing and shelter), then people either adapt to what they can forage for and scrape together, or they die. Only the most healthy of humans can do so, and only for short periods of time. Such a life is no place in which to raise children, nor have the elderly live out their days in peace. It is a return to when life was nasty, brutish and short. It is the life that socialists will bring to its victims, no matter how much their good intentions say otherwise because socialism by it very foundational principles must destroy the very information that a economy must have in order to remain “sustainable”.
I do have difficulty connecting it back to post 20 involving the human condition several millennia in the past.
The thing about the statement that kicked off our exchange (Without a sustainable economy, it is IMPOSSIBLE for humans to exist.) is that it is so broad I find it hard to justify, particularly if you consider the earliest days of humanity.
I'd have less to no trouble if the statement was something like: Without a sustainable economy, it is IMPOSSIBLE for a highly organized society of humans to exist.
William Flax
Peter didnt write this article but this ping list started with him late 2008 because he is the most articulate Austrian economic speaker, and very entertaining sometimes.
“I’d have less to no trouble if the statement was something like: Without a sustainable economy, it is IMPOSSIBLE for a highly organized society of humans to exist.”
I can accept that.
“I can accept that.”
So it appears were finished without even calling each other names :)
Well, he was literally correct enough that it was the gentlemanly thing to do. I would only defend my position by asking who would willingly live in a society that was so reduced to subsistence and isolation that free exchange and the division of labor was not possible?
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. I threw my back out and have been laid up for a few days. As to your comment:
Meaning your property rights don't burden another with going around your property to get to their destination? They can cut right across it?
You would need to ask MrB as to his original intent, I like it because it is simple way of saying to someone, "Yes, you do have the right to a college education, you just don't have the right to force me to pay for it."
Or in your example, the pilgrim's right to travel, does not override the property owners right to control access to said property. At least that is my take on it. As I am a political hobbiest and not a political philosopher, it is hard for me to describe my take on a third persons comment any better than this humble attempt.
Which means to me that the statement "You have NO "rights" that inherently impose an involuntary burden on another person" is inaccurate given that the property owners right to control access to said property will, at the property owners discretion, compel the Pilgrim to take a different (probably longer or more difficult) route or even not travel at all, and thus burden his right to travel.
That doesn't mean you are wrong to say "Yes, you do have the right to a college education, you just don't have the right to force me to pay for it."
I trust your back will get better and stay that way.
Thank you for the kind wishes. I also hope that it stays better once it gets there. Warmest regards.
Sorry this is late, just came across it today.
I disagree with you Kris. The land owner didn't COMPEL the pilgrim to take the trip in the first place. Second, the land owner owned the land before the pilgrims trip, so the land owners rights supercede any claim the pilgrim MIGHT have. Also, the pilgrim has a choice in ways that he can go, his choosing a path or direction, or to even go on the trip. His choosings do not obligate others. You stated "You have NO "rights" that inherently impose an involuntary burden". Pilgrim made a choice, first to go on the trip, then the direction he took which is voluntary on his part. So he chose his burden. The fact that he came upon the land owners property was a burden of his own choosing, or voluntary on his part.
To recap:
In post 21 Sergio wrote to another poster:
Nice turn of the phrase. Here is another one, written by Freeper MrB, that bookends nicely with yours.
"You have NO "rights" that inherently impose an involuntary burden on another person." - MrB
In my post 22 I replied to post 21, pasting the quote "You have NO "rights" that inherently impose an involuntary burden on another person." and responding:
Meaning your property rights don't burden another with going around your property to get to their destination? They can cut right across it?
In post 31 responding to my 22 Sergio stated “ Or in your example, the pilgrim's right to travel, does not override the property owners right to control access to said property” to which I responded (post 32) : “Which means to me that the statement "You have NO "rights" that inherently impose an involuntary burden on another person" is inaccurate given that the property owners right to control access to said property will, at the property owners discretion, compel the Pilgrim to take a different (probably longer or more difficult) route or even not travel at all, and thus burden his right to travel.”
Now to your post.
“The land owner didn't COMPEL the pilgrim to take the trip in the first place.“
In post 22 I wrote of burdening “another” (called a Pilgrim by Sergio) “with going around your property to get to their destination”. You’ve added something to what I wrote. I did not write of the land owner compelling the pilgrim to take the trip in the first place. For all my words say, the land owner could have done so or not. Your addition drives in a particular direction.
“Second, the land owner owned the land before the pilgrims trip, so the land owners rights supercede any claim the pilgrim MIGHT have.”
I did not write of the land owner owning the land before the pilgrim’s trip. For all my words say, the land owner could have done so or not. The land could have been open range in unorganized territory or the Pilgrim could have had permission to cross the land from a previous owner who sold the land after the start of the Pilgrim’s trip.
In addition, that “land owners rights supersede any claim the pilgrim MIGHT have” is unproven so far as I recall. So far as I know, it is generally held that one person’s rights end where another person’s rights begin. It is particularly asserted by some that real property rights always trump or supersede all other rights, but I do not recall ever seeing anyone make a case that truly supports that assertion. To do so you’d have to make the case that a land owners property rights supersede another’s right to leave the property after being invited on to it or the right to call for help or say “stop” upon the land owners assault.
“Also, the pilgrim has a choice in ways that he can go, his choosing a path or direction, or to even go on the trip.”
I did not write of the Pilgrim having a choice or not “in ways that he can go” or “to even go on the trip”. The Pilgrim may or may not have a choice, or at least a good one. To some degree it depends on what you mean by “choice”. I could travel from Springfield IL to Peoria IL by starting out heading south and traveling till I got to Peoria, but that’s not usually a good choice.
You stated "You have NO "rights" that inherently impose an involuntary burden".
Actually, Sergio quoted someone else using those words. I merely re-quoted them in my posts as I questioned them.
Pilgrim made a choice, first to go on the trip, then the direction he took which is voluntary on his part. So he chose his burden. The fact that he came upon the land owners property was a burden of his own choosing, or voluntary on his part.
It would seem by that logic that everything is voluntary if it can be traced back to a previous voluntary choice, and since everything can be traced back to a voluntary choice there must be nothing that is involuntary. The voluntary choice that everything can be traced back to is a choice to do something to continue living.
Aside from that, as noted above several things were added to my original words, things that drove to your conclusion.
I originally wrote of “another”, referring back to the “another person” from Sergio’s quote. Sergio came back with the word “Pilgrim” in place of “another”. “Pilgrim” has a certain connotation lending itself to “choice” and “voluntary”. “Another” does not. “Another” could be a Pilgrim, but also could be a refugee, one who is forced to be where he is, one who would not make the choices he is forced to make if he was free from whatever is forcing him and could then make the choices he would voluntarily make.
“Another” could also be a father with an injured child, on a trip to get to medical attention before the child dies. His choices may be to be at the land owner’s boundary on the trip, taking the shortest direction to medical attention, or allow the child to die. Either choice is forced by lack of other choices. Neither choice is truly voluntary in my view. You might say that the “voluntariness” traces back to the father’s earlier choices that led to him having a child or to the still earlier choice of the father to eat enough to continue living and thus be in his present situation, but I don’t see a reason to say that.
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