[673] in libertarians
Re: questions
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Travis Corcoran)
Mon Feb 13 21:45:37 1995
Date: Mon, 13 Feb 95 13:38:51 EST
From: tjic@ICD.teradyne.com (Travis Corcoran)
To: tpiatt@vangogh.helios.nd.edu
Cc: libertarians@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: <199502131730.MAA01597@vangogh.helios.nd.edu> (message from teri piatt on Mon, 13 Feb 1995 12:30:28 -0500)
> Date: Mon, 13 Feb 1995 12:30:28 -0500
> From: teri piatt <tpiatt@vangogh.helios.nd.edu>
>
> Hi. I'm a senior at Notre Dame and currently taking a philosophy
> class in which we have been discussing libertarianism, social
> welfarism, and socialism. To me, the libertarian arguments are
> the most reasonable and logical, but there has repeatedly been
> an argument from the socialists that I can't answer. Can you help?
>
> 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.
(1) I can't imagine any cases (outside of an actual, not metaphorical,
lifeboat) in which someone needs a certain piece of property to
survive and can get that piece of property only by forced imposition
on another. If someone needs food to survive, under 99+% of all
situations, that person can beg, borrow, or work for that food instead
of stealing it from someone. I would argue that the microscopic
fraction of cases where this is not the case occur only during the
worst emergencies: perhaps war zones, and ship wrecks. Even the
merely serious types of disasters such as the hurricane in Florida a
few years back left a surplus of food and supplied that was
distributable by the actions of the free market...until the state
and town governments stepped in and put price caps and other
regulations in place.
(2) Very few resources are fixed; most are manmade, and can be
extended - for all practical purposes - infinately. To return to the
food example, there is not a fixed amount of food in the word that is
just sufficient for everyone to survive on (in which case hoarding
would necessarilly prevent others from getting food). New food can be
created, either directly, by planting a garden, or indirectly, by
bidding up the price of it in the supermarket, in which case farmers
will see the potential for increased profit and respond by increasing
their acreage under cultivation.
(3) Many "needs" are not true needs at all, but are "wants" -
luxuries. Rent control in the Boston area was instituted because
people "needed" a place to live. Closer analysis shows that they
could have lived elsewhere, but they wanted lots of space per person,
and prime locations. With out rent control, those same individuals
would have been able to relocate further from the center of the
action, or packed themselves more tightly into existing apts (perhaps
as dense as 2 per apt...imagine the horror! ;)
(4) Property is equivilant to life. If I work and save for years in
order to purchase { a building | food reserves | a car | etc. } and
then this property is taken from me by a party backed up with threat
of force ( be it a gang, or a government), I have been deprived of any
benefit from having lived those years. This seems to me to be
equivilant to being jailed for those years...
(5) Pragmatically, if we insitute a socialist system for that
miniscule fraction of 1% of the times when a person needs something
that is not legitimately obtainable, we end up in a situation where
production drops (why should anyone produce, if the fruits of their
labors immediately fall into the public pool) and consumption
increases (why not stop by the Dr. once a week, if its free?), which
results in rationing, lines, and shortages.
--
TJIC (Travis J.I. Corcoran) TJIC@icd.teradyne.com
opinions(TJIC) != opinions(employer(TJIC))
"Buy a rifle, encrypt your data, and wait for the Revolution!"
