Imagine A owns a toll road, which is now suddenly open to whites but not to blacks because A has decided he is a racist, and the road is the only way for B --who is black–to get home. It is obvious that this–in a racist, arbitrary way–interferes with B’s peaceful seeking of happiness. It is a different matter if A refuses passage because B won’t pay the toll, because the toll is a legitimate–non-racist–consent condition for B’s passage through A’s property. This is a legitimate constraint on B because B must respect A as one who should actively seek happiness.
I definitely believe in self-defense, and that it is compatible with what i’ve said thus far. Non-distorted interaction is preferable to the confusion the applies once intervention in another’s property, body, or authority take place. Nevertheless, I believe that one can defend one’s body, property, and authority against interventions that are against one’s consent where one is defending respect for oneself as one who should actively seek happiness (in a way that respects others as one’s who should seek happiness). The principle of collective individuation is recursive: one should respect every person as one who should actively seek happiness (in a way that respects others as ones who should seek happiness (in a way that respects others . . . At the same time, I think it’s impossible to defend oneself on the basis of this principle where one is being a racist with regard to providing public accommodations.
it is against homesteading principle for someone to block someone elses property, especially if B was there first. second, if B bought property knowing that A has a road that surrounds the property, well then B must be stupid to have bought the property
It’s perfectly possible for all surrounding landowners to refuse passage, regardless of the homesteading principle. B may well be stupid, but need not be; one of the owners may have a radical change of mind or may have transferred ownership to somone with differing views.
Why should a citizen be required to provide what you call “public accommodations” when perhaps he prefers to provide a service to only a limited and select group of people? Do you think Women’s Workout World and Curves should be required by law to accommodate men?
A citizen should not be forced into making his property any more “public” than he wants it to be. I should have the freedom to serve only Japanese midgets, if I notice that particular market is under served. Japanese midgets will benefit, I might benefit, and nobody else be worse off than before I opened my business.
well, real estate would be different in a free society. Because not only must agree with the contract for his/her property, but he/she must take in consideration the surrounding roads. As I said before, it would be really dumb for A to buy a piece of property if A knew that the surrounding roads would not allow A to the property. So an agreement should be made between A and the people owning the private roads . So to take your first point here, the owner randomly just changes his mind about A, then he/she would be breaching a contract or agreement. Even if he/she transfers ownership to someone else, the company as a whole would still be the same and the contract would still stand.
But then lets say that the private road company got bought out buy another company that refuses to provide services to A. Well, nevertheless, an agreement has to be made because A would be has to access his/her property.
This explanation is pretty vague but here are a few pages that you should look at that deals with this “blockade” problem:
I would say prejudice still exists. I f-ing hate driving behind women; any woman! Especially older, Asian women because I really feel they are the worst drivers. What can I say? It’s a heuristic from experience. Can’t argue with that, right?
I have racial stances to a degree and I’m really hard on stupid sheep that don’t have a freaking clue in life when it comes to having a reasonable discussion. I suppose there I discriminate b/c I do treat them with less respect than someone who actually thinks for himself. However, I’m not racist. All these Jesse Jackson a$$holes make you think that if you even think a bad thought about some black dude who cut you off in traffic for one second you’re a racist and owe him $$$. To hell with that!I don’t owe him $hit.
Without racism, prejudice, hardship, obstacles, et cetera, life would be so boring. I believe that racism as I define it is bad; basically, treating someone negatively based on his race without giving him a fair chance to prove himself. In my driving scenario, I don’t treat the old, Asian lady any differently than any other driver, but I might be absolutely annoyed, judgmental and skeptical as to how well she can drive. I might go around her rather than bothering to give her a chance to go faster than 5 below the speed limit, but I’m not mistreating her at all.
So many people are so afraid to have opinions of anyone other than white people. It’s getting to be so pathetic because generation after generation gets more and more “let’s walk on eggshells” about it. If some black guy pisses me off, guess what: I’m pissed off at a black guy. Does that make me racist? Hell no. It makes me pissed off at a black guy!
Now let’s say I met some black guy and treated him negatively based on his race by talking down to him, being rude, not giving him a job he’s the best candidate for, et cetera…then that’s certainly racist behavior. Something a lot of people don’t know is that when you have friends of all races, you realize how natural it is to bring up other people’s races. I can talk about black people with my black friends, spanish people with my spanish friends and so forth, and it’s nowhere near being tense, certainly not tense like Reverand Jesse Jackass or Al Not-So-Sharpton would have you believe.
In answer to your question, I think it helped more than it hurt. I think it’s unfortunate that the people who call themselves “the black community” are different than the real black community and take things wayyyyy too far, wanting reparations and other socialist endeavors. But the movement itself seems to me to have started with a pure intention: to give equal rights to everyone. Can’t say I disagree with that there.
Now the offshoot of wanting things handed to people left and right due to their “hardships” (a.k.a., being born any race other than white) is the most pathetic, laughable thing I’ve had a chance to witness in my years.
When addressing an issue like the privatization of roads, I can’t help feeling that common law–and much of current law that emerged from it, does a decent job in most cases of handling “implicit” contracts–that is, of addressing the background assumptions that enter into any contract. I know that many libertarians want to make these rules rational and explicit in a practical way, but then there is the issue of transaction costs and perfect foresight. It seems that a purely envisioned anarcho-capitalist world without a well-developed system of law would involve such elaborate contracts as to exceed the forsight of the average legal “reasonable” person; it is in that respect, a practical absurdity. It seems natural to me that some of this foresight has been and would be absorbed by the courts and underlying legal framework in a sort of efficient sorting out of transaction costs. To the degree that a legal system gains autonomy, it will necessarily depart from explicit rationalization. This is my Hayekian bias, I guess, at least with respect to common law, although Hayek himself wouldn’t likely have made the point in terms of transaction costs.
In short, common law would grant B, the victim of the blockade, some sort of easement, and that would be the end of it; naturally, this presupposes that B would somehow gain access to the courts. Though I am far from advocating the status quo, the lack of problems along these lines does give me some respect for the existing order of things.
First off, I have to question your assertion that the road is the only way for B to get home. If you mean that’s the only way for B to get home using his car, that’s fine, but who says he has to use his car? He can walk, can’t he? (Please don’t change the scenario to make B a paraplegic.)
Second, the distinction between racist consent conditions as illegitimate and non-racist consent conditions as legitimate seems completely arbitrary to me. What if B is white but too poor to pay the toll? B’s peaceful seeking of happiness would then appear to be interfered with just as much as in your example.
Your statements here still make no distinction between my would-be murderer’s seeking of happiness (which for him means killing me) and my own seeking of happiness (which for me means keeping him from killing me and thus staying alive). By your reasoning, as far as I can tell, if I kill or even injure my would-be murderer in self-defense, I have interfered with his seeking of happiness and have thus acted morally wrong.
Do you make any consideration for which interference happened first?
One should actively seek happiness only because every person should be respected as one who should seek happiness, therefore one should neither define nor bring about one’s happiness in a way that does not respect other people as ones who should also actively seek happiness.
I say if a guy owns a road, he is not mandated to give anyone priority to use it. He can discriminate all he wants. He could certainly prevent black people from using it simply because he doesn’t like the color of his skin. I don’t see the big issue.
I wasn’t allowed to get a minority scholarship in college because I’m white, and I wouldn’t have been admitted into Bethune Cookman College. Do I care? No, b/c they can discriminate all they want.
Revin Jesse Jackass and Al not-so-Sharpton would hate a true capitalist society. Those damn idiots need their own Civil Rights island as far as I’m concerned. I say drop them in the Middle East and see how quickly they are assimilated into the “open, welcoming culture” that has “contributed” so much to America.
Do you mean one should neither define nor bring about his own happiness in such a way? However, you don’t say anything about what you think is morally right to do when a person violates this directive. Also, I don’t see how this actually addresses situations where two or more people have done so, albeit at different points in time with respect to one another.
I see these issues broadly in terms of justice, defense, and forgiveness.
The sense of justice consistent with the principle of collective individuation is forward-looking and restorative. When someone suffers an illegitimate disturbance, justice involves providing reparations for damage done. Where Crusoe has destroyed Friday’s shelter, it is only just that Crusoe rebuild Friday’s shelter or provide the means to do so. The matter becomes more difficult when addressing rape or murder. Here any attempt at reparation will seem inherently deficient, though nevertheless necessary.
This points to another role of justice, which is defensive. Because one should respect oneself as one who should actively seek happiness, one can justly defend oneself against interventions within one’s body, property, or authority that are against one’s consent. Where someone has demonstrated behavior that threatens or brings about disturbance of another’s body, property, and authority against this other’s consent, or where persons have reason to expect that this someone may demonstrate such behavior again, then such persons can justly restrict the person from demonstrating such behavior.
Forgiveness is an alternative way of addressing interventions within one’s authority, body, and property that are against one’s consent. One may forgive another for such interventions, however, others may wish to incarcerate or otherwise hinder the perpetrator from making further transgressions.
On a practical level, I’m fond of common law and the ways in which it has addressed many of these problems. I believe that a system of judge-made law with an elaborate set of precedents will emerge where a society upholds the principle of liberalization.
I appreciate your elaboration here, but with all due respect, I still don’t think you’ve addressed my point. In my hypothetical example of defending myself from my would-be murderer, both people involved are (by your reasoning) intervening with each other’s body, property, or authority against his consent. So by your reasoning, the murderer is morally justified in defending himself from me once I start to defend myself from him. Again, the issue of whose rights take precedence - whose non-consensual intervention is justified - is left unresolved. From what you’ve presented so far, the only logically consistent application of your philosophy would be complete pacifism.
Well I understand the concern and solutions from privatization is just speculation, no one is saying that is what is going to happen but thats how the markets works, one can only speculate the market. Hayek, himself, thought that there needed to be a state in certain situations but his framework can imply otherwise, ever heard of the term Hayekian anarchist? I would suggest looking up Steve Horwitz, if you are interested in that topic.
To me, the privatization of roads is not a radical idea if one truly believes in the market. Why is it consistent to say the market is efficient, except in some cases ( such as roads)? The main thing that Capitalism has taught me is that free market solutions are far more productive and efficient than statist/socialist solutions. The main difference between the mainstream ‘free marketeer’ and free marketeers that call for privatization is that the former picks and chooses on which services the market can provide and feel that there needs to be some anti-market institution in deal with services that they feel cant be provided by the market, while the latter does not even pick and choose which services because they advocate that all services may be provided via market. In one form or another, the mainstream ‘free marketeer’ comes in contradiction when he/she calls for free market solutions and bashes socialist solution and then advocates anti-market solutions, such as socialized roads, schools, court, etc.
I’m not sure where the disconnect is. The murderer is not respecting you as one who should actively seek happiness, therefore he is not actively seeking happiness in a way that respects another as one who should seek happiness, and his “happiness” cannot be defined in a non-distorted or uncompromised way. Also, since you respect yourself as one who should actively seek happiness, you can defend and secure your property, body, and authority from interventions which are against your consent. One of the goals of justice, defense, and forgiveness is to restore clarity in our relations of body, property, and authority. The ideal social-systemic condition involves collective individuation free from illegitimate disturbance.
I think what you’re getting at in a way, in everyday language, is that even the criminal has certain rights, that it’s wrong to use excessive force, etc.