--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, new.morning wrote: > --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, "ispiritkin" wrote: > > To me, the central question to determine the virtue > > of a policy is its ratio of voluntary action versus > > mandatory action. Voluntary action means a person > > is their own master. Mandatory action means a > > person is someone else's slave.
> Speeding laws, <snip a list of a couple dozen>, > are all mandatory actions. They may be nuisance in some > instances, but the far larger positive externalities we > collectively share. (sigh) We are poles apart on our philosophy of regulation. I certainly don't hate you, darling, as you suggested in an earlier post, but I can see we have a LONG way to go before we can see each other over the horizon. For starters, I don't consider these to be nuisances. They are infringements sold as mere but necessary nuisances, built on earlier infringements which were sold as practical solutions to non-problems. I wonder how constructive a convo on this topic could be. I suspect my explanation of how those mandates are infringements sounds like a lot of blowhard blather to you. Generality upon generality, and nary a specific in sight (to incite, or to cite ;) The best I can do, I think, is to stick to a single topic and explore that for a while. > > Consider the people who are affected by, say, oil drilling -- > While ownership of natural resources is an interesting > question -- I was thinking about that the other day in > fact, your view seems quite non von Misian, non-Hayekian > -- outside of that tradition or school of thought -- > where property rights and contracts between free parties is > proposed to solve EVEYTHING. Um, funny you should mention it, I was actually going to propose property rights and contracts to solve the problem of ownership of natural resources. Now is that outrageous or what?! :p > > the > > driller acts voluntarily, but none of the rest of us > > have any say about our earth or its oil. The oil is > > just ripped away from our earth without our consent. > > No voluntary action there. > I am not sure I understand your ownership claim. If you > went and picked a bucket of wild blueberries, are those > really my blueberries? > Can I walk in and claim my "stuff"? But how to divide > amongst the other six billion owners? These are the questions that need to be figured out. I think they could be figured out in a fair and reasonable way. And I'm an optimist and an idealist in the extreme. > > But it's a fallacy to trap EVERYONE in the snares of no > > voluntary action by way of lots of regulations. > So you would do away with the above regulations? > That sounds astonishing. Well, uh, yeah. All two dozen-plus of them. > How would you replace the above regulations with > voluntary action? Now there, *that* is a book worth writing. No, a 10-volume set, very well worth the writing. Hans-Hermann Hoppe has a good start on it, along with some other Austrians. > So campus PC is over regulated. Is all regulation bad? > Are the above examples all bad? I feel like I need to pat your hand or hum you something soothing. This is how I would say it: the regulations you listed are not as useful or beneficial, nor as moral or as spiritual, as the alternatives that would support the freedom and development of interdependent individuals. I also think that all of these things can be improved step by step, just like they were degraded step by step. Whew. I got to the bottom in one piece. How 'bout you?
