trc@hou5a.UUCP (10/11/84)
>>It isn't the "status quo" I want protect - its my life and means of >>supporting it! Paul Torek: >If that's really true, then more power to you. I ask only the same >enthusiasm for other people's lives and the means they need to support it. >I have nothing against [legal] property rights; they are necessary. I >just am not an absolutist about them. My "enthusiasm" stems from recognition that a legal property right (or any proper legal right) is based upon a *moral* right in a social context. I *am* an absolute proponent of this - though I call it a "principle", since I hold it as absolutely true *in a social context*. But *you* claim (see below) that the constraint on force, as in protecting property, is "tact", or democratic consensus (based on the majorities' whim or "tact"?). >>If I paint a wonderful picture on the side of my house, may I stop passing >>admirers, point a gun at them, and demand that they pay for the paint? >No, but only because doing so would shake them up and humiliate them. >...The govt (hopefully) is more tactful >about using force. It is known to all, familiar, and (generally!) accepted. >It operates (hopefully) by a democratic process that has at least a good >probability of reflecting and protecting the people's vital interests. OK - so I just present them with a bill and take down their names and addresses - and let them glimpse the gun bulging in my coat, so they know that they'd better pay up or else... Seriously - do you *really* think that the harm of coercion arises primarily from humiliation and "shaking up"? Those are side effects of violence, which our government does try to avoid. But is that the only basis for your (partial) opposition to coercion!? If so, we need to go back and discuss morality. I say that coercion is wrong because it violates an individual's moral rights as a human being. Coercion is an attempt to prevent a person from following a choice of moral action - and so short-circuits the human faculty - reason - by which humans live (as well as merely "survive".) Coercion is the initiation of force, not just any use of force. Nor is it necessarily physcially violent. >>The solution to this problem [public goods - trc] is simply to not let >>the government provide such goods as research, education, etc. Then the >>primary benefits accrue to those who are willing to pay for them (and do >>so) [...] >But it doesn't work that way! The benefits can not be "internalized" so >easily (check your economics text). I understand you to mean "kept to the creator" by "internalized". As I pointed out, in the "[...]" part of my quote that you chose to leave off, "if side benefits accrue to others, they [the benefit's creators] wont mind". I say they wont mind, because the creators of the values will have *already gotten* the value that they feel is sufficient to justify their creating the value. They wouldnt create the value otherwise! In fact, any time someone creates something and sells it, the person who buys it is implicitly saying that he is getting something worth more than the money he is paying. EG in paying a toll for a bridge, "society" is saying that the bridge is more valuable to them than the primary benefit (the tolls) gotten by the creators of the bridge. By primary benefits I mean no more than "those benefits that were sought in undertaking the action" - whether it be monetary gain, pleasure at seeing the benefits to society, or whatever. >>You need to show that there is a need for a govt to provide those "goods". >That has already been done quite adequately by many economists. You know as well as I do that an economist can be found to support almost any position. You want economists? How about Milton and Rose Friedman? They quite explicitly deal with the issue, as opposed to "many" other economists. I repeat - *you* need to show that there is a need for a govt to provide those "goods". I say you cant do it, because if there are enough people who want something badly enough for them to support the government forcing *them* as well as others to support it, they will be equally or more willing to voluntarily support the effort, in a free market. Maybe not by a for-profit business - maybe through a non-profit foundation - but still it would be voluntarily accomplished. Tom Craver hou5a!trc