[668] in libertarians
Re: questions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kevin THEOBALD)
Mon Feb 13 13:29:46 1995
From: theobald@duke.cs.mcgill.ca (Kevin THEOBALD)
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 13:24:30 -0500
In-Reply-To: "Paul D. Eccles"'s message [Re: questions] as of Feb 13, 9:55
To: "Paul D. Eccles" <pde@sd.inri.com>,
tpiatt@vangogh.helios.nd.edu (teri piatt)
Cc: libertarians@MIT.EDU
In your message [Re: questions]
+------------------------------
| > Their claim is that my right to property interferes with their right
| > to life and property, since I have a surpluss and I refuse to distribute
| > it, I am keeping them from being able to obtain what they need to live.
| > The standard scenario is one of a life boat. If I own a life boat, and
| > some people come floating up wanting on my boat, I have the right to refuse
| > them. I can let them die. If they climb aboard against my wishes, I can
| > then throw them overboard, thus killing them. But this killing is justified
| > since they violated my right to property. But the big question is --
| > was the killing justified, or have I violated their right to life, since
| > the right to life clearly supercedes the right to property.
|
| The right to life and right to property are not 2 separate rights. You
| own yourself, hence your life. You can think of it as 1 right, the right to
| property. Their right to property (their life) does not supercede your
| right to your property.
You can also think of right-to-property as subsidiary to right-to-life.
We are not ghosts; we require material things to survive, and almost
all of these material things require some kind of effort in their
creation. If you can't keep the fruits of your labor, then you are
being deprived of the means of survival.
BTW, "lifeboat" scenarios are not a good way to derive a system of
ethics or politics, because they are, for the most part, contrived.
The normal human condition is not to be lost at sea looking for lifeboats.
A system of political principles should be based on the normal cases, with
the borderline or extreme cases considered as special instances.
Kevin Theobald
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