Liberty, society; taxes, user fees, social goods

A society is the sum total of the people that comprise it. If the people are good so is the society and if they are evil, the society is evil.
In a tyrannical dictatorship, if i am not wrong, the finer points of society and various societal interactions are suppressed and regulated, so the society isn't a natural free one.

 

if the right to life is natural why can't you tell a lion or a hippo to fuck off and respect your right to life? Because it's not "natural". It's a deal between humans: "hey, let's not kill eachother, it better for us like this"

I do agree these rights should not be inalienable

didn't you just say according to your opinion a natural right is one that exists without society thus it cannot be taken away by society? Doesn't movement exist outside a society? And if movement is not a right should I be able to lock you up in my cellar if I want to?

nope, that's why public property is needed. Or private property destined for for movement that has indiscriminatory rules on who can use it.
But speaking of property...how are you more entitled to call a piece of land as your own than a prairie dog or wolf or deer or any other anymal?

I gave an example in post no. 10 in this thread (the one with the picture). Can you respond to that?

 

I missed this old thread the first time around and caught it again with the recent update.

Its an interesting thread, if only because DP's P&R section, which is open to one and all has a lot of libertarian influence within it. The volume of libertarian thinking within this section of DP is far larger than what one runs into within the general population.

Basically, I agree with the thinking of IUL and NPT.

First there are no hard truths about political systems or philosophical ways of thinking. There are no absolutes. There is no right or wrong. It is always in the eyes of the beholder. In that regard, there aren't absolutes that determine whether a philosophy is more moral or less moral or whether a form of economics is right or wrong.

In fact when one asserts right or wrong for a philosophy, a set of morals, or a preference for a particular political or economic system its usually a dead give away they are more preacher and polemicist than thinker.

Experience has definitely tought me that I see human kind as part of bigger societies. We are to a certain extent interdependant. At its most egregious, those that fall sick, run into hardship, face situations beyond their control...ie the people in China right now facing hardships due to the earthquake, the people of New Orleans and throughout the devastation range of Hurricane Katrina, the people in Myanmar who faced devastation from that storm, and so on.....life changes dramatically ....and at times due to unforeseen circumstances.

Beyond that there is something that expands the individual when being part of things beyond oneself. It's marriage, a relationship, having children, being part of a family, a tribe, a team, a town, community, or a nation. People's life and experiences grow in all those circumstances.

I like most, find being a part of a nation a growth and expansive experience.

For a long time I operated businesses and my income was subject to roughly 50% taxation including state and federal taxes. I worked with many in the same boat. Nobody I knew slacked off because the state was taking $0.50 on every dollar. Nobody worked less. Frankly we were fortunate to be among the high earners at that bracket. We all complained, but the taxes never deterred anyone I knew from working harder. From businesses I've operated and the business principals with whom I dealt (in excess of 1,000) none of them would have stopped working for greater income because of the tax burdens.

At some point, in an enlightened and educated society citizens get a sense of those times when government is overly burdensome, costly, meddlesome, etc. Typically democratic societies respond to that by changing those in power and emphasizing different policies. Likewise when government leaves too much to private enterprise, citizens often demand more in government services. The voice of many is a sense of where a society moves.

Fortunately, wealthy societies and democratic societies convey far greater freedoms than those that are poorer or controlled either by overbearing governments or overbearing non-governmental groups that have grabbed power.

When taxes get too high....I can feel it. When costs get high I can feel it. Today I can feel the difference in gas prices and consumer prices. It hits me daily.

From experience I see little difference between the negatives associated with government and the negatives associated with the market when it left free to operate with few restrictions.

The mortgage debt problems of today are essentially a result of an industry and industries that operated without restrictions. New form mortgages were developed to provide for variable rate returns. Lending originators were freed from having to hold loans and sold them all to Wall Street. Wall Street, repackaged the loans and resold them. Virtually none of these arenas were under any kind of scrutiny. Lending institutions had been kept under state watch during this period and were primarily removed to a federal watchdog that simply didn't regulate. This style of capitalism primarily worked on the short term basis. Every institution involved was passing the efforts to a different group, and more interestingly every player except for the end buyer of the packaged mortgages was operating on short term gain.

The current result is a financial and life disaster for many that is way beyond the control of any individuals. This is one result of unbridled unemcumbered business.

Its neither better or worse than any other disaster. It merely shows one of the negatives attached to unemcumbered capitalism with regard to the rest of society.

 

Earl, Iul, Lightless, thanks for the excellent points and food for thought.

I find social contract (and related) theory particularly interesting, as I am intrigued by the very concept of nationalism and related political development. I may have mentioned this elsewhere, but if anyone hasn't read from among the following, some great work in the "historicist" ideas of Benedict Anderson, Ernest Gellner, and Eric Hobsbawm. (In particular, I long ago really enjoyed Gellner's Nations and Nationalism; tops also for me are Anderson's Imagined Communities and Hobsbawm's Nations and Nationalism Since 1780). These guys are not flawless, in my opinion - in particular, Hobsbawm is a marxist historian, and I do not agree with his conclusions respecting the "ineluctable" end of the nation state in Nations...1780, but strictly speaking to the heart of the latter-day discussion in this thread - the notion of "natural" rights, "natural" political-economic systems and "constructed" realities - all of these authors have richly and concretely explored this very area.

At any rate, this 5-month old thread seemed extraordinarily important a few days ago, but now that thoughtful responses have been given, the momentum has once again been dropped, it seems. Thanks to the three of you for expending the energy to make good faith posts.

 

Hmm, how many people does it take to make a society.
If there was only one man in this whole world, the concept of rights would be irrelevant .. Add another man and the concept of rights would be relevant.

So do two people constitute a society. Three? ... four?

And
http://briandeer.com/social/thatcher-society.htm

 

A society was entered into when two people climbed out of the primordial swamp and agreed on a set of rules with respect to each other.

 

They were probably equally matched.
I don't think a strong man would give a weaker man equal rights, unless he was afraid of men stronger than him.

 

Precisely why society differs from a state of nature, and why laws exist to protect the vulnerable. Precisely why the concept of "natural rights" as opposed to constructed society is malarkey.

But let's look a bit closer. In atavistic societies, the concept of private property, from all that we can tell, was wholly alien. In these small societies, people aggregated in clans and other smallish social units, and agreed upon common goals - as this was seen as more optimally redounding to the benefit of the individuals making up the clan. From then, to today, people living together, from simple to complex systems, construct the arrangements by which they conduct their lives, respecting each other. Constructed, not "natural law."