Well, rather than respond to everything individually, I will respond to this and hopefully answer all other posts.
FAIL! I do not think you even want to touch the couple of examples I laid out. When people realize the explanation sounds even more ridiculous than their assertion, they tend to dodge having to give it, for the sake of pride.
First of all, your last sentence here is incorrect. I dont believe property rights are 'the most important thing ever.' I do, however, believe that individual rights in general are the most important thing. Property rights are simply one of those individual rights that I defend most often because it is property rights that under the greatest degree of attack. But the truth is, I defend all other rights that flow from mans primary right to life equally. For instance, if your right to freedom of speech were under assault by envious masses, I would defend you using the same principles and virtually the same arguments I use when defending the right of an individual to his possessions.
"The right of an individual to his possessions." This is where the argument comes in. You think it is an injustice for someone who has absolutely nothing, to take to feed his family from someone that has everything. You think raising taxes by 3% is far worse than dropping wages by 4%. I will give all of my blessings to the first person to show me where LordBT has blamed business or those that have money(property) for anything. You are a constant champion for them. Example 3: you consider death by starvation a "market correction."
Try answering these instead of battling the biggest softball response among the many aimed at you.
Such is the problem with coddling those that do not coddle Received...
I think you have made clear your disdain for the concept of inherent individual rights on a previous thread, but it is certainly evident with regard to the concept of property rights. To sum up in brief, I accept completely the concept of inherent rights of the individual, and reject any notion that rights belong to society, the majority, the king, the state, the Fuhrer, or even God, Himself. They belong to the individual by virtue of his nature as man.
The bold is an absolutely meaningless statement. It's just poetry. It's the same argument as just saying FREEDOM and thinking it holds value on it's own. You don't even illustrate a particular right, at all. So:
Should everyone have the RIGHT to be free from slavery, or the RIGHT to own slaves?
Both of those are "RIGHTS" but they are mutually exclusive to one another. Can you not see this?!
We live in a give and take society LordBT. Maybe that poetry pulls at your heartstrings(like poetry does...) but it doesn't address a single problem inherent within any society. None what-so-ever. Maybe if you encouraged yourself to find examples of things, you would arrive at the same conclusion as I have.
In this whole post you offer ZERO EXAMPLES. None. Zilch. Nada. Do you house a comprehensive view on things or do you just tell others what others like you tell you?
I think you can look at rights in one of two ways. One way or another, rights exist. They will either belong to those who seize them by force--might makes right--or it will belong to all men equally by virtue of their very being--right makes right. You have accepted the former, and I have accepted the latter. That is why you and I disagree on everything. We hold opposite principles and, thus, reach opposite conclusions. You believe that society determines what rights we possess. I claim that human nature determines what right we possess. But then we are talking about two different things: me, rights and you, privileges.
NO SIR! There is a third and it has everything to do with what we live in: A MONETARY SOCIETY. If you do not have the money for the yacht, then you do not have the RIGHT to one. It is as simple as that.
So, with money comes more FREEDOM, or MORE RIGHTS.
Let me give you a bottom-up example:
If a man is jobless and needs to feed his family and a job offer comes along that pays him half of what he use to make, HE DOES NOT HAVE THE FREEDOM TO TURN IT DOWN without considering the FREEDOM TO STARVE. Desperation resides at the bottom. Now, let us look at trust-fund babies who do not do anything with their lives:
WAIT! They aren't desperate at all. They are blessed by simply existing. WAIT AGAIN! Where have I heard that before? OH! That was your argument of "...it will belong to all men equally(??????) by virtue of their very being--right makes right." Never mind that "right makes right" is so obvious a statement it is pointless. Let us go further and say that trust-fund babies have what we NEED in a monetary society and are MIGHT in and of themselves because of it:
A trust-fund baby has to do something fun today, so they hire a gardener to do some yard work. That gardener has to feed his family and offers to do it for $100. The trust-fund baby comes back with $50 dollars, having way more time to spend researching the market since they do not have to work. The man only has one offer that day, so he has to take it, again, to feed his family. The gardeners DESPERATION makes it so this trust-fund baby holds MIGHT.
Your argument is "we are all born into rights." But, that trust-fund baby seems to have to the right to boss the other around because desperation exists. We are not born equally, just as we do not all hold equal intelligence.
Now, it goes further! In this country, making a 10% return on investment on $1,000,000 is much easier than making the same 10% ROI on $100,000. That ROI on $100,000 is easier than it would be on $10,000, which is easier than on $1,000 and on down. At the top, you have the ability to flip cash in the commodities trade, something someone at the bottom cannot do. At the bottom, a disproportionate percentage of your income goes to NEEDS, such as food, housing, and gas, so there is little room for investment. So, people with money in our country tend to make plenty more of it rather easy because they only give .0001% of it each year to feeding themselves AND GAS.
There are STAGNANT FUNDS in this country too. Another argument I posed to you that was not as soft as Received's post was: there is far more lazy money in this country than there are lazy people. What would happen if we took that lazy money and carroted lazy people into working? Production would go up(good for society), but so would competition(bad for business). If competition goes up, prices wars drop consumer good's prices and that is good for the consumer, but bad for business. Unemployment would go down, which is good for society(a group of people living under the same social framework), but horrible for business. A steady unemployment rate creates desperation, which leads to lower wages.
All of your arguments do not serve you, even in the slightest. Your concern for your property creates MORE CONCERN for those that hold WAAAAAY MORE PROPERTY than you ever imagined. Some do not even know what all they own, just that it is out there and they might have a clue as to how liquid they are. Their money is treated as a high score.
You routinely rail against taxation, and never against wages. You seem content, and that is great. But some people cannot be content, and I stress CANNOT when their wages are abysmally poor. They didn't ask to be desperate! There are people out there that work HARD and will never make in their lives what a lazy trust-fund baby will spend in a year. They are working hard FOR that trust-fund baby.
It's circular then: desperation leads to low wages, which leads to desperation, which leads to lower wages, which leads to desperation and it just continues. All that wage-givers have to do is keep the unemployment percentage on their side of zero, and the further up it is, the more desperate we are and the lower our wages will be.
There are countries with an unemployment rate of ZERO, and there are a few countries with a JOB SURPLUS! There, employees have the FREEDOM, the RIGHT to leave their job and go to one that demands their services for higher pay. This forces the company that lost that employee to find another one and OFFER THEM MORE MONEY FOR RETENTION'S SAKE! This is still the market at work. It is still Capitalism. It's just bent on production.
So, final nail! What is keeping us from producing? It's lazy money! The fact that you can just trade in commodities and make enough money there. You didn't produce the oil, you didn't even pull it out of the ground. You just bought it on a tier and sold it on another for a profit. We have billions circulating everyday for just this purpose and it produces nothing. Actually, it produces HIGHER PRICES AT THE PUMP FOR ME AND YOU who spend a disproportionate amount of our income on it versus trust-fund babies!
Look at it this way. When I was ten, I was allowed to stay up til 9:00. Occasionally, I was allowed to stay up later to catch a movie. Those are examples of privileges, not rights. Today, I stay up as late as I wish. That I do by right. How late my ten year old gets to stay up is entirely up to me. I determine that time by right. She gets to stay up as a privilege bestowed upon her by me. She has no 'right' to stay up beyond the time I set for her. But I have the right to set that time. I act by right, and what she does is done by privilege. Apply that to a social setting and you can see that if society (whatever that is) determines what my 'rights' are, then I have no rights. I have privileges.
"Look at it this way. DICTATORSHIP." That's all I heard. Can anyone show me a REASON for anything done in this paragraph? Anyone?
Please everyone, use his privilege argument on the basis of pay.
LordBT, giving your daughter 2 more hours to watch a movie is a privilege in your view. Giving your daughter $20 to buy candy must also be a privilege. So, is giving you $400 dollars to feed your daughter a privilege? If it is, then why just rail against Government? Why not businesses too? AGAIN EVERYONE, all of my BLESSINGS to the first person who shows me where LordBT has blamed either business or those with money for anything.
Do we not call the rich "the privileged?" For having money? So when someone gives you money, it must also be a privilege.
Here you are, in this paragraph, outlining where you should have the ability to dole out privilege AND SHOULD SOMEHOW NEVER BE SUBJECT TO PRIVILEGE AT THE SAME TIME. That is what dictators demand! These are the kinds of people that think "THIS IS MY HOUSE AND DAGNABBIT, YOU'LL DO WHAT I TELL YOU" is a reason somehow, when it isn't a reason, it is a threat. There is an implied "or else" in there.
There are good reasons for why your child should listen to you. There are good reasons for why society should have to listen to you just the same! But, there are elements who could care less what you think. You are just a number to them that is either good or bad, or; profit or loss. You get rid of the bad and keep the good. Give or take! However, there are some times, where people do the right thing, and that is bad for others, and they have the power to get rid of your desperate personage, AND DO! That is when it is really wrong! Your ideas fail to address this in any fundamental way. They actually just steer it into an unproductive nightmare that threatens society more than trumped up charges like "gays in the military" or scare words like "liberals" that do not house any reality when compared to what they actually are... Your voting block does that mindless tripe!
You value the 'right' to property only insofar as it accomplishes your social goals and aspirations. You see the individual as simply a cog in the societal wheel that you use as you see fit. If one person has more possessions than you think he should, you believe you have some 'right' to seize them. You never, however, lay out exactly from where you derive this power to initiate force against another human being who is doing you no harm. That is why the comparison to the pick-pocket, the thug, or the common thief is so appropriate. You use the same method to achieve your ends--force. You simply hide behind altruism and use it as blank check on your actions. That would make the thief a bit more honest. At least he doesnt pretend what he is doing is moral. He knows what he is taking doesnt belong to him. And you know it too. But that doesnt stop him, and it doesnt stop you either.
What force?! Desperation is a force! It forces me to take lower wages. You do not see that at all. It is simply a real concept that has not entered your brain, or maybe it has at some point, but it doesn't fit your preconceived notions, so it "must be wrong somehow..." YOU ARE WRONG! Hunger forces people to seek food.
Here is a full paragraph that might as well be summed up as: "The poor HOLD SO MUCH POWER OVER EVERYONE ELSE, THEY USE FORCE EVEN!" It's a laughable claim LordBT! No one in their right mind should buy what you are asserting here, again, without example!
Calling the poor thieves. I guess they aren't stealing too much, or they wouldn't be poor. Would they? Probably just what they NEED at the moment. If there were decent wages, maybe we wouldn't have the problems you describe?
Your obedient trust in the Invisible Hand of the market, your god, accounts for everything, so it describes nothing and helps no one. It is as illusive as any god...
Cont'd...
