DaVinci

I'm curious to get some opinions on Desirism from people here as I don't think it has been discussed here before. http://desirism.wikia.com/wiki/Desirism http://wordsideasandthings.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-is-desirism.html

This topic is way over my head, but I'm enjoying reading it. [H]

Who is forcing people to breath pollution in? So long as you are free to move away no force is being used. Having a lit fire is not an act of agression. If pollution from a lit fire did cause you or your property any detectable harm you would have the right to sue in common law. If health care were fully privatised then there would be an incentive for people to get healthy and the polluting hospitals would be minimal in number. If they make too much pollution they get sued and sort out their problem. This pollution issue is a farce. Pollution is an example of "the trouble with the commons", not the trouble with the NAP. Freedom to move away is not the same thing as having consented to something. I can move away from a high crime area, but me moving, or not moving, has nothing to do with that I do not consent to having my property stolen or damaged. So how is this any different than a factory making medicine for sick people forcing those who are not sick to breathe in the polluted air? I do not consent to breathing in smoke from a factory. It seems to me like the NAP completely applies.

I'm still struggling with the pollution question. It does not seem like an extreme case. If I'm walking down the street and someone stabs me, they have violated the NAP. But if I get stabbed in an operating room by a doctor performing surgery that is not a violation of the NAP because of my consent. The hospital that performed the surgery pollutes the air in the cause of healing people, and clearly I prefer a little dirty air to dying. But some people are not dying and don't want to breathe in the hospital's dirty air yet they are being forced to breathe it. So the solution is either A. You accept breathing in the air as a cost of living in society, or B. If you don't like it, you can leave. But how are these choices any different than the ones presented by statists when we question taxation as force? They always say that taxes are a cost of living in society, and if you don't like it you can leave. Aren't libertarians being a little hypocritical with this pollution issue then?

NOOOOO!!! Intent does not matter at all. If I am a communist and I intend to create utopia, but instead cause the deaths of millions am I not culpable? If I am a parent and I intend to raise my kids right by not sparing the rod, am I still not an aggressor of violence? If I am playing with my gun and accidentally shoot someone in the house next door do I still not commit a crime of muder with maybe a mitigating circumstance as a possible argument (maybe)? If my girlfriend says something that hurts me then OF COURSE she didn't mean it, but I still was hurt and it needs to be dealt with through curious exploration. Now, if I push you into a wall to save you from a car, I would hope that you would thank me rather than press charges, and by far most people would. If you walked up to me in the street and started harvesting my organs without talking to me or anesthetics, then that is pretty vile. You get a lot of pain and sickness and warning before an appedix bursts (usually at least). Also irrelevant. If I make a camp fire that gets out of control by my negligence and I burn down your house, then I am responsible for that. If I am burning a fire over the years that fills your house and gives you lung cancer, then I am responsible even if my attempt was just to grill burgers. There are facts in your example. 1. I started a fire 2. You passed out That is it. My intent can never be disproven or proven. If someone passed out and hit their head because of my fire blowing onto their property, I would do whatever I could to try to restitute them for that. Intent is always irrelevant. Almost all of the most evil people in the world had good intent, but that does not make them less evil, let alone absolve them of their sins. Okay, so then the NAP goes down in the face of pollution like the article said?

I think in regards to the NAP we have to look at intent. So if I push you and you smash into a wall, that would violate the NAP. But if I push you and you smash into a wall, but you were about to get hit by a car then I have just saved you. If you are walking down the street and I stab you and run off, that would violate the NAP. If you are walking down the street and I stab you because your appendix was about to burst and I'm a trained doctor, then I have just saved you. So intent is important. So what about pollution? If I start a camp fire on my property to keep warm and all the smoke blows over to your property and you breathe it in and it makes you pass out then we have to determine my intent. If my intent was to harm you, then I have clearly violated the NAP. But what about if my intent was only to keep warm? Have I violated the NAP?

I think the guy who wrote the article and Stef were making somewhat similar points overall. That we need to get busy actually solving problems rather than talking about theoretical ways we might solve problems. Of course I think the reason behind writing the article was that he wants to point out these exceptions, or supposed contradictions to the NAP so that he can subtly argue for the current statist system as what we should be using to solve problems. Because otherwise why would he argue for us to "reject the NAP" after reading his article if not because he wants us to accept statism as a more feasible solution to our problems? He even compares the NAP to an inaccurate model of observation at the end of the article without any pointing to what he views as a correct model other than the aforementioned subtle statist endorsement that was peppered through the argument. In fact I find it odd to write an entire argument pointing out the contradictions of the NAP while not pointing out the contradictions of a system that does aggress on people. It would be like arguing that a free society is imperfect and that this imperfection implies that we must reject freedom as an inaccurate way of living, Then while arguing this point there is a purposeful omission of the imperfect nature of slavery and how much more egregious it is in comparison to true freedom. Then subtly argue for a less direct form of slavery as being more productive to solving problems. I mean, this whole article stinks of propaganda.

I read through all the comments and what struck me as odd was this idea that talking about it openly on a public forum is worng. That Facebook is for "surface interactions". No, Facebook is words that are visible on a surface. Just like books are words that are visible on a surface. So to me there is no real distinction bewteen the two that would lead me to believe Facebook is just for "surface intereaction". If anything a public forum allows for a back and forth, while a book is just ingested. So my personal feeling on the matter is that is completely acceptable to talk about your childhood openly. It is not revenge to point out the pain that others forced on you. It is not revenge to deliberately not care about the people who deliberately did not care about you. If so then we need to start caring about scam artists, right?

I always look at this "you can always leave" argument from the perspective of someone being raped being told the same thing. No sane person would beleive that saying "you can always leave" would justfiy rape, or be a defense in a rape case. This "you can always leave" argument is usually about taxation. Someone says "taxes are needed". Someone responds with "I don't like them", or "I think they are immoral". The first person will then respond with the "You can always leave" argument. But, it's not about leaving. It is about a lack of consent. So for example three men and one woman organize a rape group. They all agree that once a week when the woman is leaving work one of the men will get to "attack the woman" and "rape her" "against her will"as she is into rough sex in a public place. Now what happens when the woman decides that she does not want to have sex with the men anymore? What happens if during sex she decides for whatever reason that it's not okay? Is she just out of luck because she previously agreed to have sex? Of course not. If the intereation is completely voluntary then she should be able to opt out whenever she wants. Consenting to sex is not a fixed point, it is a continuum. So at any point and for any reason she should be able to opt out. This is a distinction that is vital to these types of conversations. The difference between a lack of consent, or opting out, and physically leaving an area. You should be alse to opt out without leaving a geographical location if it is a voluntary situation. So if taxes are voluntary then you should be able to opt out. Leaving should have nothing to do with it,

You need to hire a lawyer to answer this question. In the most general terms, your mom may have the right to enforce the contract if she has complied with certain requirements. First, it depends on exactly what the contract says. Second, you should understand that the property passed first to your father's estate upon his death. Thats's a fictional, abstract owner of everything he owned, which opens when an estate case is filed, and closes when it has done all its business of disposing of the property. Her claim to the property may properly directed against the estate, not just you. In some jurisdictions, the creditors of an estate are required to file a claim in the estate case in order to retain their claimed rights in its property, before it is distributed to the heirs. That requirement may depend on whether the estate was filed properly and whether she was notified properly. You should check to see what the estate filings say. Third, she may have recorded her claim on the property as a lien, in the county property records. Since the contract was made pursuant to a divorce, my guess is that the usual, correct thing to do would have been to record her rights via a deed, mortgage, or something, as part of the divorce settlement. You'd have to check both the property recording office and the divorce court file. So, short answer: maybe. Thanks for the resposne. I wasn't sure if any of this divorce agreement held up consdiering she has been married and divorced to another man since then, or what his death meant to the agreement. The house is in my name now and I didn't know how that would impact selling it. I actually gave the divorce agreement to a lawyer when dealing with my dads death but I don't think they ever really looked at it.

I inherited a piece of property from my father who passed away this year. He had made a divorce agreement with my mom years ago that when the property sold he would give her half the money from the sale. Is this still valid despite the fact that he died and I inhereited the property? If I sell it do I owe her half the money?

http://desirism.wikia.com/wiki/Objective_values What do you make of the claim that objectviity is not the same for ethics as it is for science?

This is true today in almost every place excpet the middle of roads and public parks, and people get drug out of those areas all the time by cops. I got kicked out of a "public park" at night before years ago when I was doing nothing worng. I wasn't using drugs, or drinking etc.

But then how is taxation different from a man raping a woman where she actually likes being dragged into an alley and held at gunpoint and being forced to have sex? It's not rape because she is okay with it. Isn't that voluntary in the same way that taxation is voluntary to the people who are okay with it happening to them?

If a person is walking down the street and gets punched in the face by someone, that is assault, and is a crime. But if a person gets punched in the face in a boxing ring that is not a crime. It is just considered a sport. It's a voluntary interaction. This seems to be how most people approach the idea of taxes. They say they are cool with it, and thus it becomes a voluntary interaction. Or they claim that there is just as much proof to support the idea that taxation is moral, as someone else has to cliam that taxation is immoral. So what do you think of these claims? How do you respond to them?

^ Can you expand on this and explain it in more depth?

Ha ha, okay. Fair enough I guess. I knew he took a scientific method type approach, but I didn't know if there was more to it than that. I'm ignorant on a lot of this stuff and I am trying to learn.

Is it deductive reasoning? Inductive reasoning? If it is inductive is is justifiable? Someone enlighten me.

I run into that a lot. People have very different interpretations of what is moral.

I love the flames and ominous music. lol

What does the word 'okay' mean? Sure, a man might steal food to survive, but how does that invalidate the argument that stealing is not UPB. So am I being immoral at this moment as children in Africa die of starvation? Is a man in a coma immoral because he is not feeding a starving person? In this case the word 'okay' would mean 'justified'. He can justify taking food because he is starving. The argument isn't about you though. In your example, if a starving child in Africa stole food from you (assuming that was possible) that would be preferable to them starving and you would really have not lost much. So it isn't immoral.

I've been running into this argument recently. The scenario basically goes something like this: If a homeless man can't afford to eat, then it is okay for him to steal food, or steal the money to buy food. If this food or money comes from someone who is wealthy then that person will still be wealthy despite the crime, and the only immoral thing about this situation would be that the homeless man would starve to death if he didn't steal. So essentially the claim is that it's immoral to let a starving man to die. This argument is usually played in such a way as to make arguing against the immorality of theft look petty in comparison to the suffering of a starving man. So what does everyone think of this argument? Is there validity to it? Is it completely ridiculous? How do you respond to the way the argument is meant to pull on heartstrings?

What? Have it sit in a closet? Yeah, If I'm spending money on something that I will never be able to use and just stick it in a closet never to look at it again. It would be like if I bought Picasso paintings because they appreciated in value. But I can't go to the store and buy food, clothes, or emergency medical aid with a painting. I would have to sell the painting for paper money at some point to benefit from having it. That's my problem with people who talk about gold as a store of value. Eventually you will have to sell it for paper money to get use out of it, and all the paper money you spent to get it in the first place could have been used to fix up your house, or pay off your car, or buy food, etc etc.

Right, but eventually you have to sell your gold and trade it back into paper money. Otherwise it is just going to sit in a box in a closet.

I still don't understand what having gold as an investment as part of a portflio is supposed to do for me? People keep saying "Inflation makes things cost more, but gold has retained it's value." Okay. So the point of gold is to buy low and sell high? Because that seems like the only practical application. Just holding it forever seems to not make sense.