bugzysegal

Ok so, I'll ask where does property come from and I'm under the impression that the answer is "from the exercise of self-ownership." So external property rights come from the exercise of internal self-ownership. Ok, I say, where does self-ownership come from? I'll get responses mirroring these ideas on page 76 of UPB. "Now the first “property” that must be dealt with is the body. “Ownership” must first and foremost consist of control over one’s own body, because if that control does not exist, or is not considered valid, then the whole question of morality – let alone property – goes out the window" This denotes the nature of all other property rights stemming from self-ownership. "Thus the very act of controlling my body to produce speech demands the acceptance of my ability to control my speech – an implicit affirmation of my ownership over my own body." This reflects the factual ability to control, and the exercise of that control somehow implying self-ownership. <that implication is the part that needs explanation. Stefan seeks to do this in surrounding statements: "Clearly, the body cannot entirely control itself, but rather must be to some degree under the direction of the conscious mind.. What this means is that a man is responsible for the actions of his body, and therefore he is responsible for the effects of those actions" "responsible" is used here not in the way that we say that the drought was responsible for the lower yield of crops this year. That's fine, but notice by doing this, Stefan smuggles the morality into the conversation. Before that we have a-moral facts: conscious minds exist, bodies exist, and consciousness sends electric impulses to extremities resulting in motor control. No problem. Which of those is a "moral" fact? Once you use "responsibility" in the way that Stefan does here...: "If I say to you: “Men are not responsible for the actions of their bodies,” it would be eminently fair for you to ask me who is working my vocal chords and mouth. If I say that I have no control over my speech – which is an effect of the body – then I have “sustained” my thesis at the cost of invalidating it completely" ...the argument has been concluded before being made. Stefan then moves the argument to say that if you deny the action or the causal link, you are denying the as of yet unexplained underlying moral premise. Since the former part of that sentence is contradictory, so would the second part. The problem is the unexplained underlying morality of the situation. One day we may be able to relinquish motor and speech control. These events at the level of the brain are being better understood every day. How then, is absolute slavery not possible? Even if, after a while, you were screaming in your head "no! no!! no!!!" What would that mean for your self-ownership? What is free-will worth if it affects nothing? This might seem really simple for all of you, but for some reason it's like Greek to me. ( .) (. )

Ill keep my ears peeled

It depends on how successful my business, the market share I currently have, my predictions about short term and long term market fluctuations, my ability to absorb losses, my ability to survive lawsuits, and whether of not I'm a dick. Ok, let's talk facts. The Mexican drug cartels do use violence. Canadian candy companies have pled guilty to price fixing. Apple has been caught price fixing. How do violent cartels in black markets persist, considering they definitively are outside the scope of government? Why don't market forces correct them? Despite it being hard to start and maintain a successful business, if your business is very profitable, does it not give you greater room to take risks? Why can't those risks include fraudulent behavior? What about companies who run the calculations of doing recalls, calculate the cost of likely lawsuits, and if the latter is smaller than the former they don't recall?

I'm not disputing that cartels incentivize competition to under bid them. However, when the top players of a particular market decide to price fix, and they punish competitors through violence, competition tends to die off, no? Undoubtedly there are consequences for this bad behavior, but will they be enough to stop price fixing? Please don't confuse me for arguing for a state solution. I think it's demonstrative that states cannot manage markets effectively. The idea that the invisible hand will guide everyone towards fair business practices, might be overly optimistic. In the long run, I agree that competition will win out, but in the short run I can see there being the potential for bursts of widespread violence. When you say it's "self-correcting" that's not comforting to the farmer who's land was scorched because he didn't work with cartel distributors. There will be losses. I also think it's unreasonable for statists to demand that there be gaurenteed permanent solutions to any possible problem, seeing as the cumbersome nature of central planning guarentees the opposite. We should not deny that problems exist though.

I could be way off here, but I think Libur8us is talking about something like propositional logic being the method of forwarding arguments, as opposed to natural langue (the kind I'm using now and the kind that Stefan typically uses). Propositional logic, "studies ways of joining and/or modifying entire propositions, statements or sentences to form more complicated propositions, statements or sentences, as well as the logical relationships and properties that are derived from these methods of combining or altering statements." For example:α → β α β This reads if a then B. a, therefore B.

A cartel is business managers colluding to fix prices and limit competition. It's a shorthand. You can hold those business operators or dons accountable, but that doesn't change the fact that the cartel exists. In fact, cartels have quite a foothold in black markets, that is markets outside the bounds of state regulations. A cartel member might not steal from his neighbor, but he might higher thugs to destroy his neighbor's business if it is undercutting the cartels fixed prices right? Just so we are clear the googled definition is: an association of manufacturers or suppliers with the purpose of maintaining prices at a high level and restricting competition. Theoretically if these markets were not black, one might be able to hold such entities responsible in a court of law, but I don't see anyone taking down OPEC.

Interesting. Loathing my managers in the food service industry was one of the reasons I was so happy to transfer from the branches I worked at. My final occupation with that company was with a group of managers I found more accommodating and I had a much better time there. If I had wanted to pursue a full time career in the industry, I would have likely done it at that store for those reasons. Dr. Carl Hart notes that there has never been a drug free society, and that we wouldn't want one if it were possible. Moreover, what if one merely enjoys altered states? Is that unhealthy mentally? Undoubtedly alcohol is physically unhealthy when consumed in great excess, but not in moderation.

True, but cartels can for independently of states I think. Collusion and nefarious business practices would(might) be initiated where a business sees an opportunity to get away with it or cover their tracks. Even worse would be the prospect of a cartel hiring private security firms to bully competitors or dissenters within the cartel, and so long as the risk of court costs, private security, and possible loss of customer base was less than behaving ethically....problems might ensue. That's not to say a government would help, but problems arise government or not. I think collusion and cartel-like behavior are two that ought to be considered.

Undoubtedly, but what about liking and being close with the people you work with who aren't necessarily your superiors?

I have a similar problem when I address a very smart friend of mine. I articulate that political power is the means by which businesses can act coercivly and that in a stateless society, there would be no such avenue since these business wouldn't have a monopoly of force backing them. She intimates a version of the "power vacuum" argument in which she says business will use their capital to coerce people directly. Moreover, business will accumulate their own power and influence others. I guess from here I could ask whether she means influence people to do things against their will? If yes, coercion and private law can alleviate or DRO (since she is a law-student I'll take the private law approach). If no, the ability to generate a greater number of voluntary interactions isn't coercive. This makes sense right?

What about the notion that it produces workplace satisfaction...wouldn't the measure of this be somewhat incalculable while also being invaluable?

I would say you don't want that move, because by formalizing all arguments, you open up ethics to all the problems of set theory and the problems of first-order logic. By keeping arguments in natural language, you are in a way safeguarding them and in another sense preserving meaning. For instance, the logical operator ^ conjoins like the word "and" or "but." However If you substitute "But" for "^" then something can be lost. Take the following sentence for example: It is raining and I know it is raining. Nothing out of the ordinary right? What about the following: It is raining, but I know it is raining. The reason this sounds strange is that we use "but" not just as a conjunction, but usually to point out some countervailing distinction between the conjuncts. In short, language is more versatile than formal logic and formal logic is inadequate for the task of solving the deepest problems of philosophy.

Photons? j/k lol. Seriously though, sign me up. Hitchens had a point about being able to face death with reason, that has created the niche for religion and so much room for bad reasoning.

Thank god porn is free, am I right? For real though, bad math.

Oh I thought the article was about workplace "Democracy" Ill give it closer attention. BTW my response doesn't support it. Even if you believe that aggregating preferences results in something useful, Kenneth Arrow mathematically proved that such an endeavor is unfair. My bad.

Oh. It seemed dismissive and directed at me. I wouldn't disagree that from the perspective of morality built from property rights, you are one hundred percent correct. I just submitted a question to be heard on the radio show attacking Stefan's defense of self-ownership and emerging property rights. What I work off instead is also universally preferable though. I think we should pick this up after my call in. There is a good possibility I'll be on your side of the argument. I'm not afraid to be wrong, but I don't like being dismissed.

No one cares about the mathematical dissolution of democracy

Thanks for calling me evil. Note that I never even contradicted the conclusions about what is enforceable. I arrive at similar conclusions to you, the property rights proponent, through different means. I support your position politically, advocate peaceful parenting, and am a proponent of voluntarism, but I'm evil. In rare circumstances we ought to penalize members of our communities for refraining from acting in certain situations. You are literally alienating an ally,

1. I straightforwardly reject your narrowing of the scope of ethics. Ethics is a methodology of arriving at moral solutions to practical problems. 2. We objectively value conscious creatures and their well-being.

Accurate. Nearly all values doesn't hold up as universally preferable. Even if you granted, for the sake of argument, that labor was inherently valuable(which is way to much to grant) democracy is actually incapable of aggregating preferences. Arrow's impossibility theorem states that no vote count for more than 2 options can satisfy these criteria: If every voter prefers alternative X over alternative Y, then the group prefers X over Y. If every voter's preference between X and Y remains unchanged, then the group's preference between X and Y will also remain unchanged (even if voters' preferences between other pairs like X and Z, Y and Z, or Z and W change). There is no "dictator": no single voter possesses the power to always determine the group's preference. If I want to preserve anything that looks like the general preference, welfare, or good through voting, I have to devise a way around this. The short answer is that no such path exists and that this theorem has only been further solidified since its inception.

Would you say that when it comes to words with moral content, the problem persists because moral words are seen as pointing to some fundamental truth?

By the way, so far from what I can discern of your argument for self-ownership, what it boils down is "might makes right" for the exercise of motor control. why do we reject this argument elsewhere, but accept it as the fundamental source of self-ownership? Maybe that's a gross mischaracterization, so if you have an argument for it that would provide clarity, do share.

For the most part I'd agree. Where there is a wallet there is a way though.

I agree, but I do worry about it none-the-less. I wonder if the laws passed against making films of atrocities committed at factory farms, would instead be enforced by injunction in a stateless societies courts, or through some other means.

While i describe the measures based on what I think of as moral assessments as legal, the reason those measures are taken is the moral underpinnings of the situation. When you ask what should be enforceable, as in should that man be killed for not acting, this is a strange situation in that there wouldn't be anyone else there to do so. No would could or should point a gun at the guy (since there would be the easier measure of just throwing a life saver, or if this is retrospective consideration shooting the man won't bring the other back. Law is supposed to trace morality, and reinforce moral behavior.