No, the children don't get a say in the matter.
If you offer a kid a lolly if it will lick your ***** for the camera and the kid says yes, then it's OK?
Like I say, keep it simple, if adult, ie reproducing age, they have the only say that matters. If younger then it's down to those responsible and in control of them - but you can't they're responsible, have power and in the same breath deny them that responsibility and power based on what YOU deem appropriate. For example many Americans feel it is OK to mutilate a little baby boy's genitals and call it "circumcision" but those same Americans recoil in horror when Africans mutilate a little girl's genitals and call it "circumcision". They'll argue about which is "worse", mutilating little boys or mutilating little girls, while seemingly ignorant of the principle behind mutilating little children's genitals, of either sex, be it minor, major or just cut their heads off and kill em why doncha?
My own view is leave their bits alone until they're adults and let them choose if they want bits of themselves amputated - but I wouldn't force you NOT to because they're your children, not mine. Come anywhere near MY son with a scapel and you're life would be at risk.
It's a great example actually - anyone who claims you don't own your children, how would you feel if I decided to circumcise your 6 year old daughter? If I give her enough lollipops and painkillers that she doesn't object or even agrees, do you get a say in it or not? If you DO get a say in your daughter being mutilated - then by definition you get a say in your daughter being mutilated, geddit? To say "I do get a say but only if my say is no" doesn't make sense.
If you're allowed to physically mutilate your children I don't think it's a stretch to say you can photograph them. If the pics are digitised then there's no "scarcity" so if I take pics of your daughter naked and post them on the internet is that any business of yours or not? IF you can claim intellectual property and IF you own your child then yes, if not then no - but again, please don't ask me to accept that you believe 2 different things at the same time.
Sceptic:I would call myself a libertarian apart from the intellectual property thing, which is the reason I have not previously joined here and no longer financially support this org or LRW. Every time I reach for my credit card there's an article by Kinsella or someone that makes me put it away again.
Have you ever actually read Kinsella on this issue? Or even become acquainted with the arguments? Because, to be perfectly honest, I find it extremely hard to believe that someone who is a libertarian can be shown these arguments and remain pro-IP. There's a reason Kinsella is highly respected as a legal theorist in the liberty movement - his critique of IP is seminal, outstanding. So, I think the only options are: 1) you haven't heard the Kinsellian case, 2) you aren't actually a libertarian, or 3) you haven't heard the Kinsellian case and aren't a libertarian. Given what you wrote after this, I'm leaning heavily towards the latter - no offense.
It is simply logically incoherent to claim any kind of control over photographs, text, or whatever, of any kind, while claiming individuals do not have the right to make contracts on such things. If it's OK for you to steal music or software because it's your recording equipment and the owner "doesn't lose anything" then by your own argument child porn is perfectly peachy. End of discussion.
People, at least those concerned with rights, object more to the actions carried out than the filming of them. Rape, after all, is a crime.
I get the same "WTF?" feeling when I hear how it's a terrible crime that the goverment "steals" the value of your savings by printing more dollars (it's their press right?). They're 'only' devaluing your previous productivity by diluting the value of your store of value, same as 'sharing' music or software devalues the producers store of value, which according to Kinsella et al if perfectly fine, heck it's admirable that they'd spread the wealth, right? Freedom! We can all be rich by stealing!
This is the part where I begin to think you have absolutely no clue what you are talking about. There are two reasons to object to inflation. First and foremost, it wouldn't be much of a problem if the government didn't force us to use their money, through legal tender laws, taxes, and so on. Second, if you view bank notes as properly being warehouse reciepts (as many libertarians do), then inflation is fraud - the new bank notes come from nowhere and have no backing.
Responsibility can ONLY come with associated rights, ie power. No right, ie no power, then no responsibility.
What "power" comes with your responsibility not to murder or rape or steal?
As such, to keep things simple, I'd say parents DO own their children. You can fidget over the details if you like but in blunt terms if the parents do not have ownership and power over their children then they have no responsibility to them either.
Positive, uncontracted obligations stand in direct opposition to liberty - this is basic. The strikes against your knowledge of libertarianism are mounting.
As such pure libertarian principle should be to turn a blind eye to anything a parent does with THEIR child.
This is the kind of idiocy that comes from assuming that parents own children. This analogy to property is completely unwarranted - a child is an independent rights-holder and violating the child's rights is not acceptable.
As for all the waffle about where rights come from I'd have thought it obvious - human rights stem from the basic principle of "Do onto others.." No further nitpicking about self-awareness or anything else required. We respect human rights because we're human. Those who break that pact are enemies of us all.
How utterly unrigorous. What if I define "human rights" to include a right to healthcare, a right to food, etc? What if I'm a masochist and what I want "done onto me" is beatings and stabbings - can I go out and do that to others? Why should humans be considered special? Just because that's the species we belong to? Would it be okay for an alien race to murder us, since we're not part of their species? Etc.
"I wanna steal music cos I can get away with it" does not fit within that pact any more than stealing bread, gold or other people's children.
Further evidence that you have no clue at all as to what you're talking about, perhaps some evidence that you are trying to be a nuisance.
My own take? That we should move with the times and technology and acknowledge intellectual property as real, valuable, property.
I think we may need to create a new name for this fallacy: maybe "appeal to trite, vacuous platitudes"?
As for the point a child owns themselves and is no longer the propery of the parents, keep it simple, puberty, ie the point they become reproducing adults themselves. Why make it complicated?
Because puberty has no connection to rationality or the ability to consent.
Yes, that does mean parents could film their own children and sell the results to peacefully purchasing fellow perverts. Either that or you accept mob rule determining what's done with your property, in which case why not just call yourself a statist instead of a libertarian?
False dichotomy, and, I find it terribly amusing that the defender of intellectual property rights is calling out "statists."
Oh, and welcome to the forums.
Sceptic:For example many Americans feel it is OK to mutilate a little baby boy's genitals and call it "circumcision"
but those same Americans recoil in horror when Africans mutilate a little girl's genitals and call it "circumcision".
If you're allowed to physically mutilate your children I don't think it's a stretch to say you can photograph them.
February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Oh I see, I don't bow down and agree with the great Kinsella, thus i must be wrong. Funny, I thought this was a discussion rather than religious dogma?
Telling me I "don't understand" doesn't answer my points in the slightest. I do understand the concept of scarcity and why we came to develop private property back in the old days - but also consider it a logical extension that we should embrace intellectual property with the same vigor. What works for physical property works for digital or similar too, for all the same good reasons - without needing an justification such as "only a certain amount does or can exist, THEREFORE private property is a good thing".
No, private property is a good thing, period. That it came about via old-fashioned scarcity is irrelevant.
Same applies to money. That it came about as warehouse receipts does not mean that paper and digital money are somehow wrong in and of themselves if not actually connected to something in a warehouse. The issue is that because they are NOT connected certain parties, ie central banks in cahoots with government, tend to over-produce and thus devalue. IF they did not do that then I'd have no objection. That a crime is easy and you won't be punished doesn't make it right, be it some kid downloading illegal music or a govermnent printing up "extra" money to wage a war.
As for paying taxes in, for example, dollars, why not earn in rupees and then buy dollars to pay your tax? Then you'd LIKE the dollar being devalued, no? The problem is more a practical one, including that the Indian government also over-produces rupees.
People in Belgium value US dollars, not because they must hold them or pay tax with them or anything else (though their oil companies and government may like them or even need them is irrelevant). The average Belgian wants dollars because they buy stuff, period. That aspect IS the free market, the market in currencies and capital.
Don't get me wrong, I consider government-led (or plain bank led) inflation to be fraud, theft and evil - but I don't get the idea it's bad when they do it but just peachy when you do the exact same thing to other "intangible" items. Lack of tangibility is NOT the issue, it's the devaluing via unauthorised non-exchange reproduction that's the issue.
This website wouldn't exist without intangable electrons and digital code but it's real and we're writing on it. Should digital money only have value if backed by paper money? Should this website not exist unless it exists on paper somewhere? Perhaps every keystroke must be carved in stone? No, get with the times, the modern world is digital and digits have value and are property. They don't HAVE to be tied to anything physical as long as they're not reproduced outside of rightful ownership and exchange.
Yes I'm familar with the idea that a license doesn't extend to someone who didn't sign it - but on that basis you cannot complain about child porn by someone who didn't film it.
It's not that I don't understand the issue, I've been reading Lew Rockwell for years and have seen many attempts at the argument. I just don't consider it logical, rational or up to date with modern technology. I'd go so far as to say it's dishonest, panders to the rebellious spirit of youngsters and is as ignorant and as damaging as any other form of communism or attacks on private property and the right to make, and enforce, contracts.
Sceptic: do you believe that people can justly own other people in any way or to any extent?
Pro Christo et Libertate integre!
Juan, your response is incoherent. My argument WAS that you own your own children and can mutilate them if you wish - much as it may anger and disgust me or others. There's no hypocrisy on my part, I'm pointing out the hypocrisy of those who claim ownership rights over other people's children and claim to know or state what other parents can or cannot do.
At everyone -
There has to be some cut-off point between being the responsibility of others or responsible for oneself. Puberty is an ideal and biological marker and distinguishes children from reproducing adults. Otherwise we just get into long drawn out arguments over exactly just how rational, self-aware, God-fearing or some other arbitary criteria counts as 'adult', or even 'human'.
I base my libertarianism on logic, not ancient beliefs in the magical qualities of gold, lovely as it is, not on some blind faith in Rothbard, Mises and certainly not Kinsella. "Do unto others as you'd have done onto you" is the perfect, indeed "golden" rule. That a few may enjoy pain or whatever doesn't dilute it any more than complaining that absolute pure 24k is virtually impossible. Let's settle for 23.6506504060490k and grow up. The Golden Rule makes human rights instantly accessible, universal and coherent, while proven to be by far the best approach to take in almost all circumstances over the long term. Sure, short term gain can be made via theft or violence but the rule is best long term and thus should be universally embraced.
The problem is how often we break it, not that it's 'selfish' or unfair to furry things.
Private property is "selfish" and unfair to cattle - but it WORKS. Thus I can logically embrace it.
It's amusing to come here and be told I'm not a libertarian, when I'm so often the sole defender and explainer of the principles elsewhere - but I'm afraid I cannot embrace a logical and moral framework that falls apart the moment it involves furry animals, cute babies or where crimes can be easily gotten away with. That's not logical, it's not a principle, it's just common or garden sentiment and opinion with the usual "but doesn't apply to me" immaturity of a child.
McFall - "Sceptic: do you believe that people can justly own other people in any way or to any extent?"
Yes, if they produced them, ie if they are the parents. Children are unique in that sense.
You can purchase another persons' time, labor or products but not their person (morally and within my take on liberty). However if a person actually IS the result of your time and labor, you own them.
Likewise your parents own you.
For true freedom there has to be a point where you own yourself and as I've stated, I consider puberty, ie the dramatic physical and mental changes that occur as a child develops into an adult capable of reproduction, make the perfect market for that point. You are then an adult and no-body has the right to own you.
If you're an orphan then perhaps you can be homesteaded by the first person that finds you - but you can't homestead an adult...
Sceptic:Juan, your response is incoherent. My argument WAS that you own your own children and can mutilate them if you wish - much as it may anger and disgust me or others.
There's no hypocrisy on my part,
No, not in your opinion but if that's libertarianism then it's not logical.
If you don't own the child then on what moral basis do you have any responsibility to it or for it?
Some cultures don't believe in giving blood transfusions. Am I justified in forcing them to? Some believe it's OK to mutilate. Am I justified in forcing them not to? Some believe it's wrong to mutilate. Am I justified in forcing them TO mutilate?
The issue is am I justified in forcing other parents to raise or treat their children in the way that I approve of? If I'm not then you are not, nor is anybody. If we in general or not justified in forcing our opinions upon others then we do not have responsibility, for either the parents or the child/ren. However someone DOES have responsibility to and for the child, ie the parents that produced it.
That doesn't make the precious gift of a child's life "mere property", it makes it very special, highly valued and extremely precious property. IMO... yours may vary.
Again, if like me you consider private property damn-near sacred, then what's "mere" about it?
The issue is am I justified in forcing other parents to raise or treat their children in the way that I approve of ?
Sceptic: McFall - "Sceptic: do you believe that people can justly own other people in any way or to any extent?" Yes, if they produced them, ie if they are the parents. Children are unique in that sense. You can purchase another persons' time, labor or products but not their person (morally and within my take on liberty). However if a person actually IS the result of your time and labor, you own them. Likewise your parents own you. For true freedom there has to be a point where you own yourself and as I've stated, I consider puberty, ie the dramatic physical and mental changes that occur as a child develops into an adult capable of reproduction, make the perfect market for that point. You are then an adult and no-body has the right to own you. If you're an orphan then perhaps you can be homesteaded by the first person that finds you - but you can't homestead an adult...
You're contradicting yourself. Puberty does not make you any more or less a product of your parents, you just find it convenient. Either your parents own you or they don't.
"Oh I see, I don't bow down and agree with the great Kinsella, thus i must be wrong. Funny, I thought this was a discussion rather than religious dogma?"
He was asking if you have actually read Kinsella's argument. If you have, then surely you can offer up a critique that refutes his claims.
Sceptic:Oh I see, I don't bow down and agree with the great Kinsella, thus i must be wrong. Funny, I thought this was a discussion rather than religious dogma?
All I said was that it seemed highly unlikely that you were both a libertarian and did not agree with Kinsella on IP. Much like it would be highly unlikely for you to be a mathematician and not think that .999... = 1. That wouldn't necessarily disqualify you as a mathematician, but it might put your credentials into question. The same is the case here.
Telling me I "don't understand" doesn't answer my points in the slightest.
Indeed not, it just points out that perhaps your argument is either totally irrelevant or has already been answered. Like, for example, your continued attempts to use physical property as a metaphor for IP. However, it has been demonstrated by Kinsella that not only is this metaphor totally off, but, furthermore, IP directly threatens rights over real, physical property.
I do understand the concept of scarcity and why we came to develop private property back in the old days - but also consider it a logical extension that we should embrace intellectual property with the same vigor. What works for physical property works for digital or similar too, for all the same good reasons - without needing an justification such as "only a certain amount does or can exist, THEREFORE private property is a good thing".
This makes me question very deeply whether you know any libertarian theory regarding property at all. As Hoppe points out, the reason for a system of property rights is to reduce or eliminate conflict over the possession and use of property. Thus, it matters very much whether scarcity exists. If scarcity didn't exist, there would be no possibility of conflict. Again, if you'd actually read and understood the Kinsellian case against IP, you'd already know this.
Same applies to money. That it came about as warehouse receipts does not mean that paper and digital money are somehow wrong in and of themselves if not actually connected to something in a warehouse.
It does if they are claiming to be warehouse reciepts. That's called fraud.
As for paying taxes in, for example, dollars, why not earn in rupees and then buy dollars to pay your tax?
Well, there are several problems here. First of all, the government could set an official exchange rate which was utterly unconnected with reality, and thereby increase the exploitation. Second, this still means you are forced to use dollars, and thus are subject to the arbitrary changes the government makes to the supply of money. Third, the government doesn't just magically change dollars into goods and services - it buys from people. Which means whatever the tax is paid in is going to be circulated and, thanks to legal tender laws, your hand will be forced when someone wants to use them to pay you.
Lack of tangibility is NOT the issue, it's the devaluing via unauthorised non-exchange reproduction that's the issue.
I can't say I even know what you mean here. It seems like you are saying that any "unauthorised non-exchange" reproduction is wrong. Which raises the question - is all manufacturing wrong? All mass production? Is agriculture wrong if the farmer uses the seeds from one season's crop to grow the next?
No, get with the times, the modern world is digital and digits have value and are property.
Again, this "get with the times" thing. Appeal to trite, vacuous platitudes. You are question begging.
As to your second post, where you address "everyone," the "Golden Rule" remains completely unrigorous and gets into a ton of trouble when any sort of hard case is presented to it. And your appeal to utility - i.e., "it WORKS. Thus I can logically embrace it." - is contradicted by your support of IP, which, as Kinsella mentions, has never been shown to work in any study of its effects. It is always either neutral or destructive.
This is going in circles.
Exactly, just like animals. Again, only someone that has the ability to consent can actually be raped. Because rape is sex without consent, by definition. But we have no way to know if a child consented to it or not.
No, not "just like animals". In their case there is hardly any prospect of a development of a rational faculty. And again: absence of consent does not equate licence to do whatever one wishes to a child. That is nuts.
This is simply a slippery slope argument. Is spanking a child assault? Is not letting a child crawl off the property imprisonment? Is taking a child to the store kidnapping? I am sorry. I understand you find child sex apprehensible, as I do. But it does not make it illegal.
Yet it does. The existence of vagueness does not mean everything and anything is justified so stop acting as if it does.
Not really. Courts are no better than parents at determining whether they are doing good by their children. This is a completely statist appeal, that government knows best.
Bullshit. The courts are the institutions which decide whether a property right is to be enforced or not. All they need to do is refuse to recognize that a parent is acting in a child's interests, and for the PDA to thus refuse to continue enforcing their claim, and the child's custody will be up for grabs. No interference is even necessary - all the court need do is refuse to grant the defendants standing, and stop protecting their "right".
Anyway, I'm done with this, as it's not going anywhere. I'll be taking a break for the next few days, so see you all then...
To Juan, yes, I agree, the child can leave at any time, so ultimately I suppose the only way a parent can get it to abide by certain rules is to set conditions for remaining on their property.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
"Either your parents own you or they don't."
I've already said, they do. They just quit owning you once you're old enough to own yourself. I personally look at puberty as that moment, as it's a universal physical change that does indeed mark adulthood.
"You haven't read Kinsella" or variations thereof. I have, and many others, I am just not swayed by the argument. I agree that private property originally stemmed from scarcity, I just disagree it must therefore always be so.
Imagine a world of nanotech where anyone could create anything they like? Do we just abandon the division of labor and hope the nanotech can continue, forever, to produce machines that can repair, maintain and improve upon the machines? Or do we continue to reward people for producing better machines, better designs and for the time spent learning such stuff? Your route leads to a world of unskilled vegetables staring blankly at technology they don't understand that just went wrong.
Again it's like money. Many of the reasons why reproducing vast quantities of "dollars" are bad apply equally to reproducing vast quantities of other people's IP. You cannot print or copy/paste wealth. Sure, it works and feels great in the short term but long term you distort the marktet, motivation etc.
As for "studies" I'm a sceptic remember? Just as you cannot measure wealth and progress that didn't happen due to government interference you cannot measure wealth and progress that didn't happen due to the belief that piracy etc would destroy the activity's profitability thus the activity didn't occur etc. Studies of the unknown and unmeasurable don't impress me much. Yes, that works in reverse too, we cannot know what wonderful utopia there would be if we were able to steal everything either - but I'm not swayed by any argument or study I've ever seen that somehow we "know" or can prove utopia would be closer in a world where people know in advance their ideas or creativity would be 'freely shared' the moment it was produced.
You may recall the dot com bubble burst, which itself was heavily led by the "make it free and figure out some other way of monetizing it later". It doesn't work on a universal level. For example many websites "work" on the basis of "free but with adverts". How can everything be "free" and yet still have people willing to advertise stuff that costs money?
As for the government buying stuff etc, I agree and have already said government led inflation is theft and evil - but still see IP theft as evil and I don't buy the "lesser evil" argument here any more than voting for lesser evil politicians. The fact is contracts should be enforced - including upon co-conspiritors in the crime.
Saying child porn is wrong and you shouldn't watch it (I agree btw) doesn't make sense under the argument that only the first person broke society's contract but all other perverts should be free to distribute it because it's their VCR or DVD drive and they're "not hurting anybody".
It doesn't make sense to say that reproducing money is evil theft because it steals others savings and productivity - and in the same breath claim that it doesn't matter a damn if you're doing to to music or software producers because somehow THEIR productivity and value doesn't matter huh?
The profit motive, the price mechanism, the essential greatness and civilising factors of private property and the division of labor, all wonderful things - unless we are likely to get away with the stealing, in which case stealing is "freedom"? Sorry, I don't buy such hypocritical BS.
Anyway, how does one stop the emails, as I'm out of this 'discussion'?
It's ok, found the link.
Brainpolice:I don't see how it follows even from a fairly common cultural norm against it that such people will necessary be completely exiled from communities.
Of course not, you don't have children (although, neither do I at that).
Brainpolice:I think you just have a strong preferance for disassociation and superimpose this onto your vision of libertarianism. But I don't think it logically follows from libertarianism that every single identity group atomistically isolates into their own enclaves, which simply is not realistic or practical for the functioning of a society.
I just think you're clueless. Really now, do you actually believe that parents will be comfortable living in the same community with the people we're talking about? Of course not.
Why isn't it realistic?
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
Juan: Do you think that a free society would be just a bunch of small towns with their own morality/thought police ? Because if that's not the case, I don't see how your socially conservative utopia is going to 'work'...
Strawman. Typical leftist you seem very keen on defending this "right" of yours Juan, one must wonder why that is...
That's irrelevant to the question, and it doesn't follow that because one has children one favors total exile for people who watch child pornography.
I'm not claiming that people will necessarily be comfortable with it, I'm claiming that it's absurd to assume that absolute exclusion from the entire community is what logically follows. Furthermore, this isn't the type of thing that one likely knows about in the first place, this is something that most likely takes place in the privacy of one's home without anyone else knowing. So "the community" isn't likely to even know who is watching child pornography to begin with. The fact of the matter is that the people that one lives around is quite circumstantial, we can't just arbitrarily choose who lives in society.
It isn't realistic because of the incentives towards social cooperation and the benefits of trade. It does not follow from the fact that everyone is free that they suddenly become atomists. It isn't realistic for the same reasons that primitivism isn't realistic, I.E. it bumps up against the division of labor and greatly limits the availability of resources. In a more modern and healthy society, economic incentives start to trump cultural identity group concerns. It simply is not in my rational self-interest to isolate myself to such a degree. If I desire a given resource or service, I'm going to pursue it regaurdless of cultural identity.
It also is unrealistic because it's unsustainable to try to maintain such absolute cultural isolation in light of economic incentives. It's impossible to absolutely stop natural trends towards inclusivity and integration, and some degree of inclusivity and integration follows from the mere existance of a society. No society or community is a total bubble that is purely isolated. It always relies on the importation of resources to sustain itself and grow, and this inevitably leads to a higher degree of social cooperation among different identity groups. Cosmopolitanism simply follows from an economic approach to society.
Brainpolice:That's irrelevant to the question, and it doesn't follow that because one has children one favors total exile for people who watch child pornography.
Usually it does, that is, if the parents don't hate their children.
Brainpolice: Furthermore, this isn't the type of thing that one likely knows about in the first place, this is something that most likely takes place in the privacy of one's home without anyone else knowing.
That's just a red herring.
Brainpolice: we can't just arbitrarily choose who lives in society.
Of course we can, don't be so silly.
Brainpolice:It isn't realistic because of the incentives towards social cooperation and the benefits of trade.
What's your point? It doesn't follow from "I don't like you" that "I refuse to trade with you". I have no qualms with trading with you, it's exactly as Mises said, the division of labour does not result from any propensity to trade. Rather, it arises from self interest. On the other hand, who I live with has nothing to do with the division of labour and everything to do with whether or not I like these people.
Brainpolice:It does not follow from the fact that everyone is free that they suddenly become atomists.
Strawman. I've never claimed such a thing, rather, I've claimed that upon abolishing the state communities won't suddenly start the morning by gathering in a circle and holding hands with one another.
Jon Irenicus:No, not "just like animals". In their case there is hardly any prospect of a development of a rational faculty.
And it is irrelevant whether one has the capacity for developing rational faculty, because it does not tell us if consent was granted or withheld.
Jon Irenicus:And again: absence of consent does not equate licence to do whatever one wishes to a child. That is nuts.
The only thing it would probably not equate licence to do to a child is kill the child, since once someone is killed, it becomes impossible to determine if the person was consenting or not, or if they even had the power to do so.
Jon Irenicus:Yet it does. The existence of vagueness does not mean everything and anything is justified so stop acting as if it does.
Then don't be like all the other hacks I find in life and rather than just spouting your beliefs, attempt to answer my questions and to make some kind of consistent argument.
Jon Irenicus:Bullshit. The courts are the institutions which decide whether a property right is to be enforced or not. All they need to do is refuse to recognize that a parent is acting in a child's interests, and for the PDA to thus refuse to continue enforcing their claim, and the child's custody will be up for grabs.
And the PDA probably would not be around for long for not enforcing parent's rights.
Jon Irenicus:Anyway, I'm done with this, as it's not going anywhere. I'll be taking a break for the next few days, so see you all then...
Typical.
At most, I think only 5% of the adult population would need to stop cooperating to have real change.
Sceptic:It doesn't make sense to say that reproducing money is evil theft because it steals others savings and productivity - and in the same breath claim that it doesn't matter a damn if you're doing to to music or software producers because somehow THEIR productivity and value doesn't matter huh?
Of course. Neither one is theft or stealing.
Can someone start a separate thread about patents/copyrights/trademarks please, instead of hijacking this thread?
It's over now, Sceptic bowed out.
GilesStratton: Juan: Do you think that a free society would be just a bunch of small towns with their own morality/thought police ? Because if that's not the case, I don't see how your socially conservative utopia is going to 'work'... Strawman.
Typical leftist you seem very keen on defending this "right" of yours Juan, one must wonder why that is...
GilesStratton: Brainpolice:That's irrelevant to the question, and it doesn't follow that because one has children one favors total exile for people who watch child pornography. Usually it does, that is, if the parents don't hate their children.
That sounds like democratic BS. Yeah, of course it's easy to favor such a thing or even vote for it, but how many people would actually pay for or engage in fighting for this? And keep in mind that tracking this is not trivial. This kind of stuff only works when you can pass responsibility to someone else, e.g. through vote in communitarianism or democracy.
I don't believe anyone here can make a solid case for punishing the viewing of pornography. If I am correct that makes this a debate about the filming of pornography.
I don't know if parents own their children or not, but...
If you come to my home to take my child away for any reason you should come prepared to defend yourself.
If I hear that you are making pornography with a child you should be prepared to defend yourself.
In a free society I would hope that there would be a PDA in my area that I could hire to help support me. You might have other priorities and so hire a different PDA.
Would this be an acceptable society?
MatthewF:Would this be an acceptable society?
No, that would be chaos. What if I think you should die for paying for sex?
Who's going to enforce that?
MatthewF: Who's going to enforce that?
You were the one that said you would go after people who make child pornography and have a PDA to back you up. This is simply a might makes right mentality. I am sure there are people out there that would think fornicating is worthy of death.
My apologies. That did sound rather violent. However, what would prevent exactly this scenario from occurring in a free society?
MatthewF: My apologies. That did sound rather violent. However, what would prevent exactly this scenario from occurring in a free society?
The cost. You'd be hemorraghing money to do what..? Kill pedophiles? I doubt you'd be able to kill that many anyways. You'd probably get your head blown off pretty quickly(either when you try to enter another person's house to murder them, or when multiple PDA's are sent to kill you for murder).
Good point. I would probably have better things to spend my money on.
So, would there be many PDA's that would come after me if instead of shooting this person I was to simply haul them in(or pay to have them hauled in) to my PDA?
If not, are we saying that there is nothing that can be done about filming child pornography?
If this is so, I would still be willing to live with it in exchange for being free. Just don't quote me on that if I ever run for public office again
Juan:How are communications going to be monitored to know who sees what
That's a different question entirely.
Juan:For instance, who's going to "physically remove" homosexuals from "society"
The owner of the community, of course, who else?
Juan:If you don't like the idea that people (including children) may choose things you don't like, then maybe you should give up libertarianism ?
Or perhaps, you need to come to terms with rules.
Eduard - Gabriel Munteanu:This kind of stuff only works when you can pass responsibility to someone else, e.g. through vote in communitarianism or democracy.
Or when people like having high values for their property, which they do.
GilesStratton: Juan: How are communications going to be monitored to know who sees what That's a different question entirely.
Juan: How are communications going to be monitored to know who sees what
GilesStratton: Juan: For instance, who's going to "physically remove" homosexuals from "society" The owner of the community, of course, who else?
Juan: For instance, who's going to "physically remove" homosexuals from "society"
GilesStratton: Or perhaps, you need to come to terms with rules.
Communities aren't owned by single people in a free society, different portions are owned by different people. A community owned by a single person would be a mini-monarchy.
What is that even supposed to mean? Again, you fall back on conservative viewpoints in favor of "order" for the sake of "order", based on an assumed traditionalist morality.
GilesStratton: Eduard - Gabriel Munteanu:This kind of stuff only works when you can pass responsibility to someone else, e.g. through vote in communitarianism or democracy. Or when people like having high values for their property, which they do.
That has nothing to do with what's in question. It doesn't follow from someone wanting high values for their property that they can justify a uniform law banning a vice they don't like for an entire community.
There is a good reason why I call you a conservative, you know, since you fall back on arguments that justify arbitrary authority that clearly rub up against libertarianism.
Brainpolice:Communities aren't owned by single people in a free society, different portions are owned by different people. A community owned by a single person would be a mini-monarchy.
Call it what you like. You can't refute the economic incentives.
Brainpolice:What is that even supposed to mean? Again, you fall back on conservative viewpoints in favor of "order" for the sake of "order", based on an assumed traditionalist morality.
It means that you're a child.