wetcw@pyuxa.UUCP (T C Wheeler) (07/26/84)
Official First Line of the Olympics
Below are some laws, rules, and regulations that I would be interested
in having the Libertarians on the net comment on and how they feel
about such laws, rules, etc..
Any one can reply, but I am particularly interested in how a dyed
in the wool Libertarian would feel about them.
1. A regulation which prohibits the use of an unvented kerosene
stove in an apartment or house.
2. A law which requires a home swimming pool to have a locked
fence around it.
3. A law which prohibits you from building and operating a
business in a residentially zoned neighborhood.
4. A regulation which prohibits you from taking clams from designated
waters.
5. A rule which prohibts you from using your front or back yard
to store junk automobiles.
6. A regulation which says you must apply for a buiding permit
in order to make structural changes to your house.
7. A law which prohibits door-to-door salesmen unless they have
a license from the town.
8. A rule that only allows you to fish from one designated side
of a bridge only.
9. A law that prohibits the use of fireworks.
What I would like to see is how a Libertarian feels about these
nine laws, rules, and regulations. Each one seems to only affect
the individual, but does it? Each one has further implications
in its application.
I am not trying to sharpshoot. I want to know how a Libertarian
would approach each of these laws, rules, and regulations. How
does it affect the individual, the neighborhood, and the community?
What would be the consequences of scraping all of them and letting
the individual choose their own course of action in each case?
T. C. Wheelerkeller@uicsl.UUCP (07/30/84)
#R:pyuxa:-91900:uicsl:21700004:000:5089 uicsl!keller Jul 29 17:01:00 1984 And the answer is: 1. Unvented kerosene stove. A law prohibiting the use of such a stove would seem to be a good thing to have if you thought that government should protect people from their own lack of knowledge. I wonder how many such laws it would take to protect people from every possible danger. What we have here is an attempt to create an AI rule-based expert system in the law. It won't work, as most AI researchers know. Anyway, the government expects us all to go to the library to update our knowledge of the law every few weeks so that we know what's illegal. I'm sure that all my friends do this else why aren't they in jail? The libertarian view is obviously that no such law should exist. You have to be responsible for your own actions. Thus if you are alone in your own house and you kill yourself by breathing fumes it's either tough luck or suicide and the government couldn't care less. However, if you manage to injure or kill someone else or just damage their property you are responsible and must pay the penalty. Thus if you survive but your child and wife don't it should be negligent homicide or murder and the courts will determine the penalty. In real life I would expect that the manufacturer would tell you about the dangers in the instruction manual or with a warning label since dead customers seldom make a second purchase. Maybe a case could be made that there is an implicit contract between a purchaser and a seller such that the seller must not deceive the purchaser about the true nature of the product. I know that Libertarians would not approve of deceit, but I'm not sure how the law would deal with that. 2. Fenced swimming pool. Sniff sniff. Is there a abstract thread relating these questions? Is it about laws that cost you but may benefit others? I'll try to go briefly through each question, but I think that you will find that in each case bad things would still be punished but that many more options for life would be available. The problem with thinking about these questions for people not used to thinking in terms of minimal government is that they will assume certain things that probably wouldn't be true in a Libertarian society. Generally this has to do with property rights since essentially nothing would be owned by the government or the added complexity of private contracts covering lots of things that government law covers now. Most people want to live in a civilized society and will work to make one. Anyway back to the fenced swimming pool. No law. If the neighbors kid falls in he's dead and you are not to blame. Maybe your neighbor should put a fence around his yard. Maybe this is covered in the neighborhood associations contract. Next question. 3. Buisness in residential neighborhood. No law. If you have a nightmare of 7-11's popping up all over I will calm you by telling you that there are places in the country without zoning that prevent this kind of thing by having contracts with each other and the builder and banks that effectively zone the neighborhood. The magazine REASON had and article on this not too long ago. BTW, REASON varies greatly in quality from article to article. Zoning is one of the greatest bits of BS ever to be implemented. Local governments love to condem whole blocks so that the local big bank can put up a marble coated box with federal UDAG money. Why we have several lovely banks and parking lots where we used to have a downtown. 4. Clams No law. Who owns the clams? Do they want you taking them. Too easy. Give me something harder. So who owns the ocean floor? I don't know, but I'm sure someone does. Maybe there is such a thing as National Property but I doubt it. Who owns the air? Who owns geosynchronos orbit space? Maybe you should have asked who owns the air. 5. Storing junk. No law. Might want to put up a fence if you live next door. If the odors come over or there's too much noise you have a complaint. If the pile gets so big that it threatens to fall on your house you can take legal action. If the oil starts seeping over to your side you have a valid legal complaint too. This is property rights stuff. If you just don't like the looks of things when you drive by that's too bad. 6. Building permit. No law. Yawn. So you f**k it up. Negligence when it hurts someone is punishable. If it hurts you too bad. When you have a party to celebrate your new deck you have an implicit contract to insure the safety of your guests. What do you think Libertarian ideals are all about? The Democrats and Republicans are the parties of practical jokes. This ain't the Three Stooges. 7. Door-to-door salesmen No license. Trespassing is a crime. Next question. 8. Right hand fish. Is this for safety's sake? Who owns the bridge? Does their insurance company want them to make this a regulation? Sounds like safety survives in a Libertarian environment. Confusion over ownership of property may be behind this question. 9. Fireworks See question number 1. ((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((((T)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))) Did I pass? -Shaun
bprice@bmcg.UUCP (08/14/84)
Newsgroups: net.politics Subject: Re: Attention Libertarians References: <919@pyuxa.UUCP> >Any one can reply, but I am particularly interested in how a dyed >in the wool Libertarian would feel about them. As a dyed-in-the-wool libertarian, and as a registered Libertarian, I'm pleased to give the official Bill Price stand on these issues. My stand my, indeed, accurately represent the Official Libertarian stand, except that there really isn't any such thing. I claim only myself as believing this. Laura Creighton has reviewed a draft of this, and has pointed out some errors in my thinking, but she, too, does not completely agree. That's libertarianism for you. First, some general comments: ---the essence of libertarianism is *personal responsibility*. Perhaps the name was poorly chosen, because the connection between liberty and responsibility is not always obvious. In particular, it is not always obvious what "personal responsibility" really means. It does not mean the willingness to 'take your lumps' as a consequence of your actions: it does mean an obligation to fix anything you have broken, if it's someone else's thing. It means, in the limit, that a murderer should not be executed: he should be put to work, for the rest of his life, "fixing" any and all contractual and personal obligations of his victim. ---most (or all) of the issues that you bring up are attempts to separate the person from his responsibility: either to take away a person's responsibility, or to hide the responsibility of the rulle-maker, by attributing it to some agency or institution. >1. A regulation which prohibits the use of an unvented kerosene > stove in an apartment or house. Depends on who is making the regulation. If the maker is in some contractual relationship with the stove-user--e.g., landlord--then there is no problem. The regulation is part of the contract, entered into willingly. In this case, the reason for the regulation is not interesting--it is proper and acceptable. If, on the other hand, the regulation is made under some "police power"--the government's monopoly on force--then it is wrong. The reason that it is wrong is that it takes away the stove-user's responsibility for his actions, and gives that responsibility to the force monopoly. By taking away that responsibility, such an ordinance takes away any protection that a third party might have (or at least makes it more difficult for a third-party 'victim' to collect damages from the person who should be responsible). For example: if I asphixiate a guest in my home, the responsibility is mine. However, if I do in the tenant of another apartment by my stupid use of the unvented stove, I'm punished by the state in such a way (jail or fines) that my neighbor (or his estate) can't collect anything from me. The state, you see, is much more interested in making me lose than it is in making my neighbor whole, again. In this case, too, the reason for such an ordinance is not relevent: the reason is interesting, in a way, because it reveals a lot about the nature of government and of the people who are "in the government". >2. A law which requires a home swimming pool to have a locked > fence around it. The poolowner has, really, no responsibility for the misbehaviour of the neighbourhood children, unless he wishes to, out of his own good will. The usual reason for such a law as this is to protect neighborhood children from a potentially lethal "attractive nuisance." At least, that is the reason usually given for the law. The "attractive nuisance" doctrine is based on the theory that a child is not able to control his desires well enough to avoid the temptations of trespassing on the pool-owner's property; that the child's parents are not competent, neither to control the child nor to teach him to control himself; and that the parents are right to blame the pool-owner for the parents' problems. The "attractive-nuisance" doctrine absolves neighborhood parents from their responsibilities to teach their kids how to cope with life, shifting the responsibility to the poolowner. Then the law absolves the poolowner of that imaginary responsibility that the "attractive nuisance" theory imputes to him. The law says to the poolowner: you are liable for certain misbehaviour of the neighbour-kids, unless you have a locked fence around your pool. There is a maxim in the politicolegal field: "Any legislated minimum becomes a de-facto maximum." When the law says to build a fence *at least* six feet high, the fences that are built are *no more than* six feet high. The results are, as with most such laws, that the kids have less protection than the libertarian solution provides, all pool-owners have had to pay more for their pools, and all of us have paid the costs of enforcement. We all pay, too, the 'social' costs of law-inspired irresponsibility. The libertarian solution is strict personal responsibility for all parties: the pool-owner, the parents, and the kids. Everyone would be better off by this, too. The pool-owner would be able to build any protection he deems advisable, whether it be none (as is his right), whether it be a fence (because he likes to help his neighbours), whether he chooses to teach all the neighborhood kids to swim (because he likes teaching swimming to kids). If the neighborhood has no kids, he wouldn't have to build a useless fence: if the circumstances are such that a standard six-foot fence would not be adequate, there would not be a law to tell him that the required inadequate fence is good enough. The kids would be more likely to learn to cope with life, and with the attractive nuisances all around them. In the most unlikely event that a parent has neither taught the kid, nor cared enough to watch the kid, nor fenced the kid into his own yard, nor did any of the other things that life demands of each of us, all we can give is our sorrow that the parent was so unloving of his child as to fail the kid so. >3. A law which prohibits you from building and operating a > business in a residentially zoned neighborhood. This is quite simply wrong. If no damage occurs to the residents and/or property owners, the law is obviously not helping anybody. If, on the other hand, putting your business in a residential area does damage someone--someone who was there before the business was known to be there--then you are liable. What could be simpler? What could be more just? What could be more right? The second issue here, by implication, is zoning. In the libertarian view, there is no useful purpose served by zoning, since no proper law or ordinance could make use of the zones. We reject any such improper expenditure of tax collections. A remedy which is akin to zoning, but which has no illicit use of the force monopoly, arises when the owner of land sells it with a 'covenant,' a clause in the contract which makes the sale contigent on use of the property. A covenant is usually defined recursively, and prevents the seller from (e.g.) operating a business on the property, and requires the seller to include the covenant when he sells the property. This is proper, because the covenant arises from a contract with the consent of the contracting parties. Since nobody else *is* involved, nobody else *gets* involved. >4. A regulation which prohibits you from taking clams from designated > waters. As in the first case, this depends on who is making the regulation. If the owner of the waters, or of the clams, is doing it, there is no problem. If anyone but the owner tries to prevent their taking, then it is an illicit use of force. Again, if any damage is done as a result of taking those clams--whereever they're taken from--then the taker is liable for damages to whoever is damaged. If noone is damaged, there is no liability. >5. A rule which prohibts you from using your front or back yard > to store junk automobiles. If the rule is a law, then it is wrong, as discussed in 3, above. If the rule is imposed as a condition of some contract, there is no problem. In this case, in particular (as in many others), the existance of a law prohibiting the behavior would prevent some creative solutions. The case cannot arise under the postulated law--but in a libertarian realm, the junk-storer and his neighbors would be free to agree on "compensatory damages". Under such an agreement, both parties would win. Under such a law, both parties lose. That, by the way, is a common distinction between libertarian solutions and statist solutions--the libertarian solution is generally win-win; the statist solution is usually lose-lose for the parties in dispute, and for most "innocent bystanders." The statist solution usually has exactly one winner--the state. >6. A regulation which says you must apply for a buiding permit > in order to make structural changes to your house. This issue is adequately covered under other items. >7. A law which prohibits door-to-door salesmen unless they have > a license from the town. Wrong, unconditionally. However, you may post a sign--NO TRESPASSING; NO CANVASSERS; NO SOLICITORS; etc.--that informs the door-to-door salesman that you will consider any trespass or disturbance to be damage. He will be liable, and will probably not bother you. >8. A rule that only allows you to fish from one designated side > of a bridge only. Depends, again, on whether the owner of the fish (or bridge) is making the rule, or whether it's another illicit use of the force monopoly. In this country, most highways and their bridges are owned by the government. A government, as the owner of the bridge, can properly make a rule against fishing from it. However, by owning the bridge, the government is abusing its force monopoly--government ownership of such properties as roads and bridges is itself illicit. Before gasping that "it's gotta be that way," consider that government ownership of roads and bridges is a fairly recent idea. >9. A law that prohibits the use of fireworks. Since the user of the fireworks would be strictly liable for any damage he might cause to himself or others, such a law could only hurt more than it would help. >What would be the consequences of scraping all of them and letting >the individual choose their own course of action in each case? If the laws, rules, and regulations were simply to be scrapped, letting the individual have license to do as he will without regard for the results, the libertarians would be even more vehement than we are now. The common misrepresentation of libertarianism is that it proposes such license: in fact, no libertarian that I know is interested in doing that. What the libertarian view proposes is that all those laws, rules, and regulations that are illicit use of the government's monopoly on force be replaced by a strict liability of each person for his own actions. Nothing more, and certainly nothing less. Libertarians are not all united on everything. We are united on one--the idea that there is not much place in your life for government interference with your responsibilities and rights. Since we are individual people, with individual points of view, we have differing opinions on just how much room there is for government. There is a wing of libertarianism, the anarchist wing, which believes that the existence of any (governmental) monopoly on force is wrong. There is another wing which would allow the government to retain its force monopoly, but would not allow it to be used except in response to force or fraud. Some of us would limit it to defense from outside aggression; others would allow a government police force; some would have 'criminal' responsibility resolved by (e.g.) insurance companies; others would keep 'criminal justice' within the government. >T. C. Wheeler I hope that you find this response to be as helpful to you as the writing of it has been to me. I also hope that the tone of my other response doesn't create any ill-feeling. To you, and to each reader who's made it through my sometimes turgid prose, the Libertarian Party and I extend an invitation to find out more are libertarianism and the Libertarian Party. Look in your phone book--the Libertarian Party may be listed. Call them. If not, mail me your address, and I'll pass it on. Whether you agree or are just curious, we'd like to help you find out. What you'll find are people--some of them interesting--with a outlook on life that you may find fascinating. -- --Bill Price uucp: {decvax!ucbvax philabs}!sdcsvax!bmcg!bprice arpa:? sdcsvax!bmcg!bprice@nosc
mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (08/17/84)
******************** >4. A regulation which prohibits you from taking clams from designated > waters. As in the first case, this depends on who is making the regulation. If the owner of the waters, or of the clams, is doing it, there is no problem. If anyone but the owner tries to prevent their taking, then it is an illicit use of force. Again, if any damage is done as a result of taking those clams--whereever they're taken from--then the taker is liable for damages to whoever is damaged. If noone is damaged, there is no liability. ******************** None of the libertarian answers to this one have covered what I originally took to be its point: that the clams are likely to be poisoned by temporary pollution (the case in the Delaware some time back and maybe still). The taker of the clams may sell them and poison large numbers of people, for which he would be unable to make recompense in his lifetime, if indeed he was in a position to try. It surely must be better that taking the clams be prohibited than that a sign be put up saying "Clams here possibly poisoned" and hoping that no-one will take advantage of the probably rich harvest and quick profits to be made. It is quite likely that the perpetrator would not even be discovered when the people fell ill, especially if the clams were mixed from several sources and diggers. I have always felt myself to be a libertarian (unofficially) and (equally unofficially) a socialist, but it appears that my notions of what constitutes unwarranted state interference differ from the notions of the "official" libertarians. It seems to me unlikely that anyone could make recompense either to heavily damaged (perhaps killed) individuals or to a large number of slightly damaged people; such recompense is the solution offered by Bill Price. My preference is to try to prevent the damage in the first place, and this is legitimately accomplished by laws backed up by force. The question to me is not whether coercive laws should exist, but when they are appropriate. We seem at present to have far too many for my taste. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsrgv!dciem!mmt