From: davidb@zeus.ce.washington.edu (David W. Barts)
Newsgroups: pnw.general
Subject: Re: government still at large (was Re: FDA still at large)
Date: 18 Aug 92 04:37:51 GMT
Article-I.D.: u.1992Aug18.043751.14045
Organization: University of Washington

In article <900@nazgul.UUCP>, bright@nazgul.UUCP (Walter Bright) writes:
> In article <davidb.713772212@atlas> davidb@ce.washington.edu (David W. Barts) writes:
> /First of all, the issue of force being applied against corporations:
> /1.  Rights against force apply to human individuals, not social
> /fabrications like corporations and governments.
> 	If you apply force against a corporation, you apply force against
> 	the shareholders. The same as if you apply force against a family,
> 	you apply force against the family members.
> 	I, as a shareholder of corporation X, will feel it if you confiscate
> 	my shares.

Likewise, the Romanian uprising applied force against Nicolae Ceausescu
and his family, and they felt it.

> /2.  Property rights are normally defended by their proponents as
> /being valid because they derive from some initial voluntary social
> /contract.  Trouble is, there is not a nation on the face of the
> /planet where this is the case.  Property ultimately derives from
> /theft, confiscation, tyranny, and subterfuge.  As an example, in
> /the new world, most property can be traced to the conquest, swindling,
> /or outright theft (in most cases by coercive state power) of land
> /from native peoples.
> 
> 	True enough. It's true to the point of absurdity. The Indians
> 	that the white man confiscated the land from were not the
> 	original owners either. The Indians were here a very long time,
> 	and had their own wars of conquest and genocide.
> 
> 	As a more well-known example, take the Aztecs of Mexico. Sure,
> 	the Spanish stomped all over them. Just like the Aztecs had
> 	stomped and killed the Mayans before them, who had stomped and
> 	killed the Incas before them (or was it the Incas who exterminated
> 	the Mayans, I forget).
> 
> 	Originally, yes, raw property was obtained through conquest. But
> 	that is irrelevant to property rights today. None of the conquered
> 	individuals are alive today to assert any rights. (For an interesting
> 	aside, look at the awful troubles east Germany is having attempting
> 	to return the communists' confiscated property back to the 'original'
> 	owners.)

Exactly.  So what makes capitalism "natural" or morally right?  The
fact that it was instituted by force, and that people have lived with
it so long they think it is "natural?"

Really, the same arguments could easily be applied to slavery.  First
of all slaves were considered to be the property of their owners, thus
abolishing slavery was attacked because it was anti-property-rights.

Secondly, the supporters of slavery made all sorts of fancy-sounding
arguments of how every great civilization (the Egyptians, the Greeks,
the Romans, etc.) had slaves) and that attacking slavery meant attacking
civilization itself.  This is an almost perfact analogue to the little
tidbit of conventional wisdom that every democratic society is
capitalist, thus attacking capitalism means attacking democracy and
freedom.

Thirdly, slavery was the status quo and most people (certainly most
people in the South, including many slaves themselves) thought it
was completely "natural" (after all, it was the system they had grown
up with since birth).

> /3.  As far as workplace democracy getting in the way of the property
> /rights of stockholders, I don't have much sympathy for that argument.
> /I view rights as a concept by which to _prevent_ one person from
> /being able to manipulate and control other people, not as a way to
> /legitimize said manipulation and control.  One might as well whine
> /and moan about how the Romanian uprising interfered with Ceausescu's
> /"right" to rule "his" nation as he saw fit.
> 
> 	The "rule" of a corporation is by consent. None of the workers
> 	in a corporation are there by force. *ALL* of them agreed to
> 	work there, and typically signed an employment contract. Do
> 	you think it is unreasonable for someone to be expected to
> 	abide by the terms of their agreements signed of their own
> 	free will?

Oh come on, certainly you aren't suggesting that a contract between
two entities where:

a) One entity that has millions of dollars to devote to a legal department
in drawing up and maintaining contracts and which will survive perfectly
well if the second entity does not work for them

and

b) One entity that does _not_ have millions of dollars to spend
drawing up and maintaining contracts, and that likely _will_ be
adversly affected if s/he doesn't get the job

... can possibly, even remotely, be considered to be a fair contract
drawn up under non-coercive circumstances, are you?  One might as
well call a wrestling match between an elephant and a shrew "evenly
matched."

> 	I don't recall Ceausescu's citizens ever being given any kind
> 	of choice of dictator. Even if they voted him in, that isn't good
> 	enough because the nay voters didn't agree. By contrast, all
> 	employees of a corporation agreed. And they can leave anytime.

Sure they had a choice.  They could leave the country.  It wasn't easy,
but a fair number of them managed to.

What?  You say this argument is invalid?  Most certainly it _is_.  Just
like the following argument is invalid:  Those who grow up in poverty
are not doomed to stay in poverty because some of them manage to
escape.  Therefore the current level of equality of opportunity is more
than sufficient.

> /I'd much rather see emphasis placed on making individuals free and
> /ensuring they have the ability to control their surroundings, secure
> /in one's possessions), and to take whatever "property rights" derive
> /from this exercise.  And no, I do _not_ think the current system
> /of property rights accurately does this.
> 
> 	I agree with you totally about property rights. I also suggest
> 	that property rights includes the right to own shares, something
> 	with which you appear to strongly disagree.

I do disagree.  The "right to own shares" is a "right" to manipulate,
coerce, and dominate other human beings.  Such "rights" are a peversion
of the concept of rights.  The sole legitimate concept of rights is to
act as social benchmarks to _minimize_ such coercion.

Yes, it is indeed a lower level of manipulation, domination, and
corecion than exists in a totalitarian state, but it is nonetheless
manipulation, domination, and coercion.  And simply being a lesser
level of the same does not establish it as morally just, any more than
the fact that Franco killed less people than Hitler would make
Falangist Spain a morally just government.

--
David Barts  N5JRN                      UW Civil Engineering, FX-10
davidb@ce.washington.edu                Seattle, WA  98195
Newsgroups: pnw.general