Brainpolice said:For example, one's ownership over their home, even if it is a just case of ownership, does not give you the right to assault and murder people just because they are in one's home. In other words, property rights do not trump life and liberty.
That strikes me as odd. I thought... well, I remember reading two very poignant scenarios in which consistency in justice must prevail over liberal morality if consistency is to be maintained.
One example was that a man who has been lost in the woods for days and is on the verge of dying comes onto your cabin property and begins shuffling through your kitchen. You shoot him. Are you in the wrong or the right? The article said in the right -- for you were defending your property.
If you invite a friend over for dinner and then shank him as soon as he enters the door, well, that certainly feels different, but why is one okay and not the other (at least according to my understanding of BP's statements)?
Daniel Waite:The moment you become an aggressor, you have given up your rights.
And how exactly does that follow from self-ownership? Do you own the people on your property now?
Market anarchist, Linux geek, aspiring Perl hacker, and student of the neo-Aristotelians, the classical individualist anarchists, and the Austrian school.
wombatron: Daniel Waite:The moment you become an aggressor, you have given up your rights. And how exactly does that follow from self-ownership? Do you own the people on your property now?
Poor form on my part, my apologies. Your question backs me into a corner and I must admit I made an incorrect statement. Allow me to rephrase: once you become an aggressor, your victim has the right to defend their property.
Daniel Waite: wombatron: Daniel Waite:The moment you become an aggressor, you have given up your rights. And how exactly does that follow from self-ownership? Do you own the people on your property now? Poor form on my part, my apologies. Your question backs me into a corner and I must admit I made an incorrect statement. Allow me to rephrase: once you become an aggressor, your victim has the right to defend their property.
And defending their property does not require physical violence against the offender unless the offender presents a threat to life or there are conditions of escalation in the process of repossession or restitution. If they just arbitrarily kill them when there is no need to, that is not the same thing as repossession or restitution, it is an arbitrary and clearly disproportionate use of violence that has nothing to do with the nature of the initial crime and is not necessary to remedy it.
once you become an aggressor, your victim has the right to defend their property.
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."
Juan:Which is a tautology nobody is disputing.
I wouldn't say it's a tautology.
lets suppose brainpolice is correct:
lets say a tresspasser does a moral wrong. and trespasses.
lets then say a landowner freaks out, and lacking mercy that day kills the trespasser.
lets call that killing a moral wrong.
are both moral wrongs, equally wrong?
is one more wrong than the other?
what is the correct proportional response to the first wrong?
and what is the correct proportional response to the second?
im trying to explore your world of thought. come play with me
(apologies that not all my posts meet ISO124467 guidelines of spelling and grammar. but it is the internetz)
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring
nirgrahamUK: lets suppose brainpolice is correct: lets say a tresspasser does a moral wrong. and trespasses. lets then say a landowner freaks out, and lacking mercy that day kills the trespasser. lets call that killing a moral wrong. are both moral wrongs, equally wrong? is one more wrong than the other? what is the correct proportional response to the first wrong? and what is the correct proportional response to the second? im trying to explore your world of thought. come play with me (apologies that not all my posts meet ISO124467 guidelines of spelling and grammar. but it is the internetz)
The fundamental point would be that both are wrongs. Person A commiting a wrong does not give their victim, person B, the right to then escalate things to the point where they do a wrong as well. It gives their victim the right of self-defense if their life is threatened or in conditions of escalatio, and it may very well give them the right of repossession or restitution of some sort. But a right to use arbitrary violence is not granted.
If you steal my guitar, you don't suddenly lose your right to life. I have a right to repossess the guitar, and if you threaten me physically or if things escalate in the process, then and only then does violence become necessary. The purpose of repossession and restitution is to restore a positive benefit of their property rights that was taken from them, not to arbitrarily inflinct physical harm on the offender. Hence, both the victim's property rights and the offender's right to life is consistantly upheld.
i say that your theory of justified violence is arbitrary.
you cant determine that violence is necessary to achieve your defensive aim. (see prior post about child with knife, child with gun, child who fires bullet)
as a defender with a belief that violence is necessary in defending yourself from some bodily violent attack (some steps down the escalation from trespassing) you will by necessity hope to be more violent than the other, so as to defeat him. by being more violent you always become the agressor despite the initial tresspass which had up till then painted you as the defender.
Brainpolice: nirgrahamUK: lets suppose brainpolice is correct: lets say a tresspasser does a moral wrong. and trespasses. lets then say a landowner freaks out, and lacking mercy that day kills the trespasser. lets call that killing a moral wrong. are both moral wrongs, equally wrong? is one more wrong than the other? what is the correct proportional response to the first wrong? and what is the correct proportional response to the second? im trying to explore your world of thought. come play with me (apologies that not all my posts meet ISO124467 guidelines of spelling and grammar. but it is the internetz) The fundamental point would be that both are wrongs. Person A commiting a wrong does not give their victim, person B, the right to then escalate things to the point where they do a wrong as well. It gives their victim the right of self-defense if their life is threatened or in conditions of escalatio, and it may very well give them the right of repossession or restitution of some sort. But a right to use arbitrary violence is not granted. If you steal my guitar, you don't suddenly lose your right to life. I have a right to repossess the guitar, and if you threaten me physically or if things escalate in the process, then and only then does violence become necessary. The purpose of repossession and restitution is to restore a positive benefit of their property rights that was taken from them, not to arbitrarily inflinct physical harm on the offender. Hence, both the victim's property rights and the offender's right to life is consistantly upheld.
Answer my questions.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
Juan: He doesn't have the right. Whether he breaks the window to save his life or just for fun is irrelevant. Happy now ?
No, because I agree with you. More seriously, no, because I asked BP not you.
nirgrahamUK: i say that your theory of justified violence is arbitrary. you cant determine that violence is necessary to achieve your defensive aim. (see prior post about child with knife, child with gun, child who fires bullet) as a defender with a belief that violence is necessary in defending yourself from some bodily violent attack (some steps down the escalation from trespassing) you will by necessity hope to be more violent than the other, so as to defeat him. by being more violent you always become the agressor despite the initial tresspass which had up till then painted you as the defender.
Actually my entire objection to your absolutist view on property rights is that it justiies arbitrary violence by merely appealing to ownership, divorced from any other context.
GilesStratton: Brainpolice: nirgrahamUK: lets suppose brainpolice is correct: lets say a tresspasser does a moral wrong. and trespasses. lets then say a landowner freaks out, and lacking mercy that day kills the trespasser. lets call that killing a moral wrong. are both moral wrongs, equally wrong? is one more wrong than the other? what is the correct proportional response to the first wrong? and what is the correct proportional response to the second? im trying to explore your world of thought. come play with me (apologies that not all my posts meet ISO124467 guidelines of spelling and grammar. but it is the internetz) The fundamental point would be that both are wrongs. Person A commiting a wrong does not give their victim, person B, the right to then escalate things to the point where they do a wrong as well. It gives their victim the right of self-defense if their life is threatened or in conditions of escalatio, and it may very well give them the right of repossession or restitution of some sort. But a right to use arbitrary violence is not granted. If you steal my guitar, you don't suddenly lose your right to life. I have a right to repossess the guitar, and if you threaten me physically or if things escalate in the process, then and only then does violence become necessary. The purpose of repossession and restitution is to restore a positive benefit of their property rights that was taken from them, not to arbitrarily inflinct physical harm on the offender. Hence, both the victim's property rights and the offender's right to life is consistantly upheld. Answer my questions.
I have clarified my position ad nauseum. Your insistance on "answer my questions" is silly because you have already been addressed and your questions are based on false assumptions about my viewpoint.
Juan:Well, if there is an aggressor it means there is a victim. And victim means somebody whose rights are being violated. There's no new information in there...
Rights are not tautologies, they are guiding principles in acting ethically.
Saying "If A does X to B, B has a right to defend against X" does not represent a tautology, it represents an ethical statement.