Because we all know a problem with reasoning doesn’t effect the outcome or similar cases.
Call me crazy, but it sounds more like you can’t reconcile the two oppositional beliefs you hold. Unless you can explain to me otherwise I’m fine accepting that that’s the case.
Regardless of whether or not I’m offering an alternative, the answer given by Friedman directly contradicts the implications of self-ownership. People are not in fct responsible for their actions once they sign a contract and have no free will to do as they please. Whether or not I have a solution, that seems like a pretty gaping hole in your philosophy.
Okay. You’re crazy. I hold no oppositional beliefs.
Friedman asked “is it really the responsibility [of those at the electric company]? Should I blame [them for the man dying]?” Your entire argument is rooted in claiming Friedman said the electric company is not responsible for shutting down the electricity. He said no such thing. The only reason the case was brought up was because the man died. Friedman posed the question of who is ultimately to blame for the (supposed) tragedy of the man’s death (of course it is only a supposed tragedy because for all we know the man died of natural causes). Here again, you have absolutely no point unless you assume the fallacious view that “no electricity = death”.
And this fallaciousness aside, one has to really appreciate the irony of a self-proclaimed socialist talking about gaping holes in philosophies.
He went on to a hypothetical where the power company never shuts off the power, to say that the power company is an inhuman entity, and that responsibility would lie completely outside of the power company to prove that it still does not have any responsibility, no matter the case.
Let’s change the senario slightly and see if you still adhere to the same position. You are a vegan. I am an organic farmer. I grow the best most nutritional organic produce and will deliver it to your door. You contract with me to provide you with all the food you need, delivered fresh to your door each week. My time and resources are limited. Six months go by and you have always paid on time. Then one week you do not pay me for the food I delivered. You still eat the food. The next week the same thing happens. Afte you stiff me on the thrid week I refuse to deliver food on the fourth week. You die of starvation three weeks later. Who is to blame?
I reckon it would be wrong if you positively misrepresented to the consumer that it was pasteurised - by advertising it as such, or lying when asked - and if the cause of their sickness or whatever would most likely not have occurred if it had been pasteurised.
For my death, primarily me assuming that I could find other resources and understood your terms, but that’s quite a radical shift from the hypothetical that Friedman and that hippy are going by.
If I didn’t pay once, and we assume that no food = a fairly instant death, then it’s a little closer to the one in the video. And while I would still say blame primarily lies with me, you are not free from taking part in it.
Now if we extend the hypothetical, and say that you have a policy of never stopping food delivery, I would not argue that my neighbors or your other customers are the only ones to blame for your lack of resources or the high cost. You are also to blame for having that policy.
Humans are more than number crunching cyborgs, and given enough thought they can choose to do things that don’t make sense economically. I think that while it is likely that few people would pay a power company that never shuts off the power if that happened tomorrow, it is not impossible to see such a case in the near future.
