Why Im no longer an ACist

[adanthar]

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For starters, the right to food and water is easily demonstrable to be inseparable from the right to life

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Again, what is the "right to life?" Where does it come from? (This is not the same as self-ownership.)

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It arises from the same nebulous area as self-ownership does. But that's got little to do with your argument, because...

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I am asking you to substantiate your assertions. Right to health care, right to sustenance, etc., are observably not supported by a very large number of people.

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...who cares? What does the number of people that do or do not believe in a given right have to do with whether the belief system the right is based upon is logically consistent?

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You cannot compare even a right to basic sustenance as axiomatic versus self-ownership as axiomatic. There is no comparison.

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Again, who cares if the first tenet is or is not axiomatic? It's still an entirely consistent belief. In fact, I happen to think your core tenet, self-ownership, is absolutely worthless without some kind of societal framework to base it on (namely, if you are born into a dirt-poor family with no education system available, does you owning your labor *mean* anything? Can a Russian serf just after emancipation be said to be enjoying the fruits of his labor in any meaningful sense of the word?)...but I don't go around calling your beliefs illogical. They plainly do make sense given the core principles you operate under. I mean, I think the entire belief system is a giant externality hamster wheel and pretty much as bad as a utopian thought experiment has ever gotten, but it's not "illogical".

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As long as it requires (vast amounts of!) outside enforcement to make it work, it's a positive right.

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Then who is obligated to do what? (Hint: No one is obligated to do anything.) What do you mean by "outside?"

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Unencumbered by any societal obligations whatsoever, it should be self-evident that the right to property is defined by the number of guns on your side vs. the number of guns on the other guy's. Unlike self-ownership, which you can kinda get away with almost anywhere with the right skin color and possibly language, property requires vast amount of outside help to maintain, whether through government/private security/whatever. It's a negative right until it meets the real world, where various 20'th century governments were the first to actually provide it to *everyone*.

[AlexM]

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Do you really consider yourself a slave?

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Absolutely. I might be given far more "privileges" than even the best kept house slave of 200 years ago, but I'm still a slave.

[valenzuela]

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B: No, because to fund that program you need to force others to pay for it
Person B is giving more importance to absolute property rights than to a natural state problem

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How about this?

Question: Should we allow slavery because we need cotton to prevent people from having cold winters due to not having coats?

B: No, because to fund that program you need to force others to pay for it

Person B is giving more importance to absolute property rights than to a natural state problem

Same damn thing as what you said.

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Wow, how can you actually oppose schoolchildren getting hot meals? You are a terrible person obviously.

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AlexM is a slave because he has to pay taxes , obv.

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[valenzuela]

AlexM who do you consider to be more of a slave, Bill Gates or a poor kid with neglecting parents that is born in AC land?

[AlexM]

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AlexM who do you consider to be more of a slave, Bill Gates or a poor kid with neglecting parents that is born in AC land?

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Uhm, Bill Gates is one of the masters in our society... When I own a giant corporation whose profits are based mostly on government tyranny, you can compare me to Bill Gates.

As for the child, to some extent all children are slaves, but with neglected parents, it's the same in AC land as in government land. Either people will notice and take the children away from them or people won't notice.

So... what do either of these people have to do with anything?

[BluffTHIS!]

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Either people will notice and take the children away from them or people won't notice

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You left out the 3rd option of people noticing but not caring enough to take them away.

[AlexM]

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Either people will notice and take the children away from them or people won't notice

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You left out the 3rd option of people noticing but not caring enough to take them away.

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True, but I was only including the options that are equally likely, not the ones that are more likely under government than AC. [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[valenzuela]

AlexM, perhaps my example was way too far-fetched, anyway the point I want to make is that youre definiton of slavery is inadequate. The fact that you think that someone that lives on spacious house, a confortable car and a 9-5 job he enjoys is a slave just because he has to pay income tax says a lot about your worldview.

[bills217]

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but I don't go around calling your beliefs illogical.

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If you think I was attacking you with the comment about logically consistent belief systems, I wasn't, unless you are actually some staunch party line Dem and I didn't know it (which I seriously doubt). Frankly, I have no idea what you believe. I know you're not an ACist or a neo-con - but that's about it. You really don't spend much time arguing in support of anything - mostly just detracting from things you oppose, and even then you sometimes hint you are playing devil's advocate. Not that that's necessarily bad.

So, yeah - if you accept all those positive rights as axiomatic, you can be logically consistent I suppose. I happen to think it's a disgusting set of axioms, but logical? I guess it could be.

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20'th century governments were the first to actually provide it to *everyone*.

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Absurd. Having a government undermines property rights in the first place. That said, some gov't somewhere might have done something vaguely resembling this - I don't know, I'm not a history expert - but Kelo was a nail in the coffin for property rights in America. (How bout that! I worked in a Supreme Court case reference in a reply to Adanthar! *braces for 2500-word legal critique*)

Sure, my house hasn't been condemned, but basically what any of us have is only what the gov't lets us keep, which is basically true when any one group has a monopoly on the use of force. I don't call that providing property rights to anyone, much less everyone. Pretty sure the people who've had their homes seized for the sake of gov't/corporate profiteering wouldn't think so, either.

[AlexM]

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AlexM, perhaps my example was way too far-fetched, anyway the point I want to make is that youre definiton of slavery is inadequate. The fact that you think that someone that lives on spacious house, a confortable car and a 9-5 job he enjoys is a slave just because he has to pay income tax says a lot about your worldview.

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What it says about my worldview isn't terribly relevant. Stop enslaving me.

Also, few people enjoy their jobs...