The Glade 4.0

No, I honestly don't. Or at least that the laws were designed to protect lawful citizens and this guy happened to also get some advantage from it. I also very much feel that personal rights trump property rights.

Personal rights ARE property rights, property rights ARE personal rights. They are inseperable. I cannot infringe on your property without infringing on your control of your own past present or future.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

There are elements of personal rights within property rights, but they are not the same. To make them the same would be to say that if you have a choice between saving a child or a priceless car from a fire, either choice would be valid.

No it wouldn't ...

And all personal rights stem from the notion of self-ownership. Have you ever read Locke or Smith or Jefferson?

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I have not.

It should be noted I'm not disagreeing that they stem from or contain elements of self-ownership. I'm disagreeing that they are the same or equal.

I'm also finding it amusing that we're seem to be going down the road of another "what does equal mean" thread.

Aizle:

You seem to be going down that road. Whether or not personal property rights are inviolate or not has nothing to do with the moral dilemma you placed before someone.

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They are entwined in a many and varied complex relationship that to violate one would necessitate violating the other Aizle.

If I take away your property I have taken away your past. I have rendered to me all the time you spent obtaining the property in question which makes your past self a slave to me - which makes me your owner of yourself for that time. (you see how property goes to personal goes to property). I also take away your future ability to enjoy or make decisions regarding that property.

If I mandate that something be or not be done with your property in the present I have taken your present control away and have made you, and your property subservient to my desires. As an agent of government using force to get one to comply I have violated your liberty, property, persuit of happiness, and have shown that I am capable and willing to do this anytime in the future which destroys your ability, desire, and faith in having government protect your rights so it weakens your relationship with your neighbors and society (those who combine to lend authority and power to government action).

There must exist an absolute bulwark against the entity whose only just function is the protection of rights to act as an agent of rights infringement - regardless of how well intentioned that infringement is to those who call for it at the time.

We see that government's actions have caused the interment of Japanese Americans in the past because their property rights were not respected (they own themselves and they were seized and their othe property sold off), the forced takeover of private firms (car industries and banks), firearm seizure during Katrina (where those firearms were the only thing protecting people from violence), loss of ownership of the self as laws regarding what can be consumed or bought grow and continue to burden society.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Khross:

I agree, I never indicated they had anything to do with each other.

So what should this "absolute bulwark" be?

Are you sure? Because evening assuming personal rights are a subset of property rights, the dilemma is still spurious and an appeal to emotion.

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Ideally it would be a society that viewed the very act of ifnringing on another's rights as abhorrent and antithetical to the ideals of a civilized society and would never ask a politician to do such.

However that isn't going to happen. So there must be written penalties in the law for a politician who either brings such up for a vote, and/or votes for it.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

How about we just reverse the 17th Amendment?

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Yes, that quote doesn't discuss anything about whether or not any/all rights are inviolate. It comments about the logical conclusion of placing the same weight on the rights of property that you do on the rights of a person. Yes it's an extreme unlikely example. I would hope that anyone would choose the child. However, I've seen enough of humanity to know that there are those who would go for the car. If those rights are the same, then he wouldn't be "wrong" for doing that. And I think that is silly.

That's not true at all. You seem to think that the ethical imperative and the moral imperative are synonymous. They aren't.

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Not at all the same, maybe thats the problem. Its like when I said someone should be legally able to shoot another for trespassing it does not mean I think that is the action that should be done all or even most of the time nor is it the action I will always take myself.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

LOL, yeah good luck with that.

Seriously tho. If everyone has the right to the pursuit of happiness, and the right of self-ownership, how do you reconcile the following examples:

A pig farmer wants to be as efficient and profitable as he can, so he crams a large number of pigs into a small amount of land. The smell is ungodly bad and negatively affects his neighbors to the point of reducing their property values so they they complain and try and force him to change his behavior which will cost him money.

Middle class suburban neighborhood. Most houses and yards are pretty well kept, but not perfect. Mowed semi-regularly and basically clean. One neighbor is trying to start up his own auto repair business. He constantly has different cars in the driveway that he's working on, and often times will have 4-5 cars parked on the street (legally) and sometimes a couple in his front yard. There is often the sound of air tools and the smell of oil. The neighbors all complain about the noise and eyesore.

And this is where you lose me. The problem is that not all people are reasonable like you two are. The reason why it's illegal to shoot someone just for trespassing on your property is because someone has already done that and argued that they should be allowed.

I completely agree that the ethical and moral imperatives are different. However, there absolutely are those out there who believe they are synonymous or at the very least will argue that because they don't want to go to jail.

The question is then, how do you deal with those **** in a just and consistent legal manner?

Law has very little to do with justice. That's a poor notion born of bad policy and bad jurisprudence. As I've said many times before, laws that cannot be uniformly enforced are bad laws. And to answer your question, you let his neighbors take care of the situation.

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This is the core of my disagreements with you guys and with many libertarians generally. I don't believe ownership of self and ownership of property are equivalent concepts or that personal rights are derived from a property right in oneself. Rather, I reverse that order - I think personal rights - control over one's body and mind - are primary and property rights are lesser derivatives thereof. This approach makes conceptual sense, in that an external object has a separate existence from it's "owner", whereas the self does not, so no true equivalency between self and object is possible. A sense of ownership in an object exists only to the extent a person becomes emotionally invested in it. This approach also corresponds to actual human experience in that people generally value themselves more highly than their possessions. Just as any mammal tends to favor self-preservation over territoriality when pressed, humans will generally answer the question, "Your money or your life?" the same way.

The first is handled by laws regulating pollution, if harm is caused by the smell such as inability to utilize one's own property (backyard for example) then he owes restitution and should cease action.

The second can be handled in a similar way depending on sound levels and smell of oil.

If neither are so bad to cause inability to use then they can talk civiliny, picket, start a boycott. One doesn't have a right to not smell bad smells or to have a view that is enjoyable by one's own standards. What if the man who has the "eyesore" believes that all the other properties without cars in their yards are eyesores? Why would the majority get to enforce subjective standards let alone penalties for not meeting them on another citizen?

Neither has anything that should be actionable based on property value. No one has the right to make their neighbors house or yard look like the one complaining wishes it would look or would have it look if they owned the property.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

RD - property is defined as one who has ultimate control over how the property is used.

Would you not consider yourself sovreign over your own self?

Or lets look at it this way - why is control over one's own body and mind primary. What word would you use to convey being the ultimate controller over one's body and mind because it seems the issue here is only really with the word "property" describing that relationship.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Aizle,

You should transplant yourself up here to Western Washington (Seattle specifically). You'd fit right in...

Sorry, I should have said fair. I'm not really looking for justice.



I agree in concept, but all laws must rely on the judgement of those enforcing them, so at some level it's impossible to uniformly enforce any laws.



Interesting, so you'd prefer to have the neighbors who are full of emotion and have personal agendas determine what is "right" or "wrong" in that situation rather than a hopefully neutral judge? I hadn't pegged you as an anarchist.

Eh, too rainy. I have relatives out that way. It's a nice place to visit, etc.

What do you mean by sovereignty and use, though, Elm? What I'm getting at is that the very nature of ownership/control/sovereignty with respect to the self is different than it is with respect to objects. In western property law, ownership of property is generally thought of as a bundle of rights: the right to possess the property, to control and benefit from its use, to exclude others from it, and to dispose of or transfer it, among other things. If I bought you, could I directly control your body's actions? Could I enjoy the benefit of your body becoming healthier? Could I exclude you from using it while retaining its use for myself? Could I control your thoughts and emotions, experience/use them myself, exclude you from having them, transfer them to another?

No, on all counts. That's why "ownership" of self is so fundamentally different than ownership of an object. I cannot be separated from my self, but I am inherently separate from an object. That's why my personal rights are inalienable, but my property rights are not.