--- In LibertarianEnterprise@yahoogroups.com, "Gary F. York" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > When you consider whether someone is or is not better > off as a result of some action, you blind yourself > if you fail to consider relevant issues. > In the case you present, the individuals are better > pleased by the set of goods they now hold subsequent > to theft than they were prior. > But they would almost certainly have been displeased > by the act of theft itself -- the violation of their > person and property. > Does the pleasure of holding a preferred set of > goods offset the displeasure of the theft? > Possible; but uncertain. >
You are ignoring the elegant Symmetry I have built into the example. If we are to consider also the Displeasure of the Theft, then by gosh it turns out that BOTH PARTIES in my example have that Displeasure. So again it all balances out. If you want to claim that one guy is more displeased than the other guy about being robbed, we can also posit that one guy gets more Pleasure from the act of Robbing than the other, too... in which case there is a greater increase in YOUR kind of Total Wealth when that man steals than when the other guy steals. Thus really ardent Thieves would be a great Boon To Society. Now really, we don't want to get all Psychological or Touchy-Feely about which guy "feels" MORE worse off than the other guy feels worse off, do we. BOTH probably feel worse off, and that's our best guess; we can't say that one guy feels MORE worse off can we? We don't want to factor in UNOBSERVABLE MENTAL STATES do we? Since no scientist has ever been able to prove for sure that anyone HAS an Internal Mental State, or ever will be able to prove it. (Yes, I know for a fact that *I* am conscious; but for all I know, scientifically, all you zombies are just robots with no more Internal Mental State than an iPhone.)
