Replies

Please explain in what way I am dismissive of anyone's property rights.

My question, more or less, was ”By what right do, or what is the rationale or motivation that serves as a basis for, the owners of the property to agree upon the rules pertaining to the behavior in question and to then task the government with objectively enforcing the rule?” (That isn't exact. The question changed a little along the way as I tried to communicate with you.)

I gave you the answer to my question by stating "..they think that the behavior in question (impaired driving) poses a danger and that they have the right to impose restrictions to reduce or eliminate that danger." (I also noted while not giving blanket approval, much of what you have said is correct once this is understood.) My answer is based on "one person's (or group's) rights end where another person's (or group's) rights begin. (And I admit that determining that point can be tricky.)

The summation of your responses seems to me to be that the majority owners do what they do for no better reason than that they can. They do not recognize their rights as being limited by the minority's rights, which even if it is because the minority signed away their rights in some agreement, seems to me to be dismissive of minority rights.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the combination of your two thoughts means:
1) You regard conduct in society to not be something that the majority has the right to deem appropriate or inappropriate.
2) However you regard the guidelines for what the majority can deem appropriate or inappropriate to depend on what the members of society have agreed to.

In regard to 1: Rights end where other rights begin. If we are writing about conduct which is a natural right, like speech (what if I said property rights?), such conduct is not something the majority has the right to deem appropriate or inappropriate absent some violation of the rights of others, like speech that is slander.

In regard to 2: To a point, but that's not where I was going. When I wrote "The guidelines depend on what the members of society have agreed to" I was considering that there have been various forms of society down through the ages and that there are various forms of society in the world today. Their members all had or have somewhat different agreements in regard to the respective societies. To the extent that we do not have a world society, the various societies in the world live in a state of nature with regard to each other. In other words, force rules.

So how do members of society agree upon what they deem to be appropriate or inappropriate?

Those with the most power come to an agreement, convince those they can and coerce the rest to their will. (The drunk driver in question may or may not have reneged on his agreement. Most likely he never agreed in the first place, though his ancestors may have. But then, did his ancestors have the right to "agree away" his minority property owner rights? If so, property rights can't be natural.) But back to the "most power." That doesn't necessarily mean physical power. It could also be intellectual, cultural, economic, religious, or any of a number of other things. The same thing could be said of "coerce."

What is the check against society agreeing that they can deem a given conduct in society to be appropriate or inappropriate?

In your world there doesn't appear to be one. Other than that, I would say it is "rights end where other rights begin" and the willingness of the society to take that as a basic principle.

I support my assumption with what I wrote in post 138, below:

...because those laws are an expression of our agreements, as co-owners.

It's an assumption that the drunk driver agreed to such an agreement and your next paragraph is based on this assumption.

It is also supported with what you wrote in post 144:

I started that part of post 144 with: This leads me to offer the following, much of which I plagiarized so you may have to go to the author if you don't like it or you need more details: Then I went on to turn your argument against you to show that society can prohibit drug use on private property.

You attribute to me: "Then the majority can not tell a person that the person cannot drive while drunk on property that belongs to that person just as much as it does to anyone else. However, the majority would have that right if it was agreed to by all that they have that right."

Then you state: It is by the reasoning in the quotes above that all have agreed; the majority does have the right to declare that no person may drive drunk on public property.

And if I was going to say that I would add "or do drugs."

But I wouldn't say that because "the reasoning in the quotes above" does not support the assumption that "all have agreed." The "reasoning in the quotes above" states "if it was agreed." It doesn't say it was actually agreed.

By the by, I don't recall (I am not going to reread it all right now) that I have basic problems with most of your comments about agreements and laws and so forth. My major problems have to do with:

1. The motivation, rationale, impetus, whatever you want to call it for prohibition. All I get from you is that the majority does it because they can and the minority agreed (freely) to this and I do not believe that is the way things actually do or should happen in society. This would mean that the majority is exercising power for the sake of exercising power and the minority agreed, for whatever reason, to be subjugated to the majority. OK, it could happen. But:

2. You didn't recognize that your argument for prohibiting drunk driving is just as valid for prohibiting doing drugs: majority rules when establishing societal prohibitions. (I don't believe that as stated by the way. And as a follow on to the "but" above: I believe the minority has rights whether or not the majority likes and recognizes it.)

Ok. I read this is and then came back to it a couple of days later. Much of our inability to communicate is likely due to the fact that posts are spread out over days, rather than taking place in one face-to-face discussion. Amid these lapses, I have switched back and forth from over-explaining minutia, to giving inadequate explanations of large, more important details. Some of what I have said is in the context of no government, some in the context of American government. To me it makes sense, but to someone not reading my mind or whose head does not contain my brain, it almost certainly could not make sense.
The diatribe that follows is not meant as an explanation of how civilization developed, but rather an attempt at illustrating what I have written, in a proper context.

- I define natural rights as the freedom to exercise any activity except those that initiate coercion or fraud against any individual's person or property - the only exception to this being that coercion may be initiated in self-defense against those who initiate coercion or fraud against one’s person or property.
- Imagine this setting, which I steal from Thomas Paine, "...let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest, they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world."
- In this setting, suppose, in your words, "Having land as property is initially achieved by staking off the piece of it you want and keeping others off of it by use of force, or losing it to them through their use of force."
- In this setting, my land is rightfully my soveriegn part of the world - my desires, regardless of how arbitrary, are law. The one exception to this lies within the definition of natural rights above. I do not have the right to fire flaming arrows onto the adjacent property, etc.
- Now suppose the persons in this setting form a society; a grouping of people having common interests. The common interests, this early in their society's existence, would likely amount to procurement of food, water, clothing, and shelter. Unless each landowner is blessed with a piece of land that is fertile, irrigated, and inhabited by edible plants and animals, he will likely need to conduct trade with other members of society beyond those whose property border his.
- This brings about the most obvious desire for public property - local transportation. Landowners could charge for use of their land as a route to and from destinations, but for the purpose of discussion and since this has not been the case in any society that I know of, I will stick with the desire for transportation as a justification for establishing some public property.
- Before this, all land was privately owned and thus each owner was basically king, while on his land. Now a given area of land is owned by all, through mutual surrender of pieces of private property or through claiming disputed property as public or through some other means.
- The natural rights definition clearly guides the behavior of the persons, in terms of their personal interactions; don't kill or harm one another's bodies. But now that the land is jointly owned, rights in terms of land ownership seem blurred. Can I start fires where ever I want on this land, as I can on my private property? If a path is cleared as a primary means of transit to and from popular destinations, can I set up a hut in the middle of this path, thus blocking traffic?
- Public property is owned by all citizens. Therefore, all citizens have the right to establish rules for behavior on public property. Citizens have the right to use their property in any manner that they see fit, so long as they do not violate the rights of others. They have the right to exercise their arbitrary desires, so long as they do not violate the rights of others. But now competing interests can arise, rights can conflict, because the property is jointly owned. Rules need to be established to prevent and resolve such conflicts.
- Because of competing interests from which desires governing the use of property arise, co-owners of land must come to an agreement on how to use their land. In coming to an agreement, the owners willingly surrender some or all conflicting freedoms that they desire to exercise; in other words, they choose to restrain themselves from certain behaviors on, or uses of, the property.
- To maintain least violation of natural rights, the society must pass laws that ensure minimal violation of the rights of its members. Since the society lacks a government, has written no constitution, has no courts, etc, minimal violation of the rights of its members boils down to a set of rules whereby as many people as possible can enjoy exercising as many of their arbitrary desires as they want, short of doing harm to one another's bodies.
- Up to this point, there is no safeguard from tyranny of the majority. Recognizing this obvious problem, individuals in this society would likely seek a check against this power of the majority. Therefore, the society would likely decide that all laws must apply equally to all members of the society.
- Now there are limits to majority powers, defined not in terms of minority rights, but rather restricted by their own self-interests, since any law/rule must apply equally to all.
- If the public property is owned by a large number of people, it is convenient to have elected representatives to decide upon uses of the property, on the behalf of the people that they represent, so as to facilitate manageable discussion. We express our disapproval of certain uses of our property through the the votes of our legislators or referendums, whose outcomes we accept as our collective approval.
- Note that throughout these statements, the jurisdiction of the legislative body was the realm of public property, not private property.

In regards to your concern that I imply "majority owners do what they do for no better reason than that they can":

I think that this is entirely possible, but I do not foresee any danger resulting from this, due the self-interests of the people to whom the laws would apply (everyone). I believe that self-interest is a reliable check against oppressive laws being made for the sake of making laws.

You also wrote that, "They do not recognize their rights as being limited by the minority's rights..."

That is correct. Technically speaking, their rights are not limited by the minority's rights. There may be a small minority that wishes to use public land for a nudist colony, but the majority says no, and thus the nudists are denied the right to strut around nude on the public property - as is everyone else. But, those nudists can go back to their private property and strut around nude until their appendages freeze over or sunburn. So long as laws must apply equally to all, I do not understand the problem with majority powers not being defined in terms of minority rights. I think that what I suggested has an acceptable outcome in terms of a lack of tyranny from the majority.

Finally, you wrote of my arguments that, "You didn't recognize that your argument for prohibiting drunk driving is just as valid for prohibiting doing drugs."

Like you, I'm not going to sift through 160 posts to refute this. I'll just state clearly here that I do recognize that my argument for probibiting drunk driving is just as valid for prohibiting doing drugs on public property.