[OT] Ameros will clog the tubes - was Re: Network Neutrality
von at fugal.net
Sat Dec 6 09:01:55 MST 2008
<quote name="Levi Pearson" date="Fri, 5 Dec 2008 at 21:46 -0700">
> Charles Curley <charlescurley at charlescurley.com> writes:
> > Here we have profound disagreement: if it's theft when a private
> > individual does it, it's theft when a government does it. Governments
> > are composed of people, and morality doesn't magically change just
> > because one is anointed king or elected senator or whatever. If you or
> > I have no moral right to do a thing, then we cannot delegate the power
> > to do that thing to someone else.
> This depends entirely on the assumption that private property is an
> inalienable right, which is by no means in universal agreement. If
> private property is not a natural right originating with individuals,
> but instead a right created and protected by the government, then it is
> indeed within the rights of the government to place restrictions/caveats
> on it.
Who needs an assumption? We have the constitution.
> Your reasoning certainly does follow from the premise of property as a
> natural right, which, from what I understand, is generally argued from
> Locke's conception that property is formed by individual freedom to act
> upon nature and thus is an extension of that person's liberty. This
> seems to be on very shaky ground compared to the basic rights to life
> and liberty.
How is it shaky? If I'm free to make myself a pie, and yet cannot eat
it, then what availeth my freedom? If I'm free to build a cabin, yet
cannot dwell therein, again, what availeth my freedom? If I'm free to
make a living, but have no just claim to that living, only government
benevolence that "allows" me to keep some of what I do, then that's no
freedom at all. Liberty is the freedom and will to make something of
one's life. If you take from me all I make, then I have not made
anything of my life, I've made something for someone else. I am a slave
and I have no freedom.
The three great rights are so bound together as to be essentially one
right. To give a man his life, but deny him his liberty, is to take
from him all that makes his life worth living. To give him his liberty,
but take from him the property which is the fruit and badge of his
liberty, is to still leave him a slave.
-- George Sutherland
Government is a disease that masquerades as its own cure
-- Robert Lefevre
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