From: cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca (Christopher Browne)
Subject: Re: Taxation as Theft (was Re: Negative Income Tax)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, University of Ottawa
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 93 04:20:07 GMT

In article <93007.141438SPRAGGEJ@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> John G. Spragge <SPRAGGEJ@QUCDN.QueensU.CA> writes:
>In article <1993Jan7.065013.19631@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca>,
>golchowy@alchemy.chem.utoronto.ca (Gerald Olchowy) says:
>
>>Governments don't invent or create property...the right to property exists
>>as a right of the individual independent of the state...because
>
>I thought you might take this line.
>
>Your argument boils down to a "Platonic" view of property; just as an
>ideal table exists, so does an ideal form of property. I don't really
>disagree with you there, particularly if you substitute "relationship
>with the physical world" for the word "property".

At the risk of appearing to disagree gratuitously, how about this next
paragraph:

Your argument boils down to a "Platonic" view of government.  Just as
an ideal table exists, so does an ideal form of property...

There ain't no perfect individuals, and there ain't no perfect
governments.  (Was, and shall be, are different tenses.)

>>The source of property is the individual, but I will concede that
>>it is a complex matter of advocacy via legislatures and courts to
>>define what is legitimate property.  However, a simple tyranny of
>>the majority 
>>decision that something is not property, doesn't not mean something
>>is not, in essence, property.
>
>I think we actually agree here, although we would use different words.
>As individuals, we have the relationships with the things around us
>that form the basis of the notion of property. But legislatures and
>courts-- these constitute the state. Of course, the citizens of a
>democracy have the right and obligation to advocate for positive
>changes to state policy. But defining "property" as a sensible,
>productive ideological/legal tool of the state differs from defining it
>as a fundamental right of the individual.

It also requires a tremendously consistent basis for the definition of
the "state."

>>I am sort of interested what your response is to a "9th amendment"
>>position on property as an individual right.
>
>Individual rights arise out of the characteristics of humanity. We all
>have independently working brains: hence free thought and free speech.
>We all distinguish between pain and pleasure; hence the right to
>pursue happiness. We function (as far as we know) only when alive;
>hence the right to life.
>
>But we don't have the individual "right" to have the state implement a
>particular policy towards our relation to the physical world, any more
>than we have the "right" to demand the state recognise and license our
>skills, as it now does for Doctors, Engineers, etc.. Of course, we do
>have the right to implement policies which make sense, and I think most
>of the current welfare state policies make sense; although a negative
>income tax would make more.

If there's no individual "right", then it's going to be rather
difficult to determinine a way of having a state's "right," isn't it?

If there are rights that by some moral basis individuals ought not to
have, then isn't it likely that a state, which represents, at some
level, an aggregation of individuals, should correspondingly also not
have such rights on the same or a similar basis?

In order to give the State rights that do not apply to individuals
requires that they have fundamentally different moral bases.  Whether
this be based on religious authority (i.e. "God has created this
state."), or whether it be based on some utilitarian set of morals
(i.e. The State is powerful, and individuals are individually weak),
it introduces a SECOND moral basis.

-- 
Christopher Browne                |     PGP 2.0 key available
cbbrowne@csi.uottawa.ca           |======================================
University of Ottawa              | Genius may have its limitations, but
Master of System Science Program  | stupidity is not thus handicapped.
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