Re: Basis of property, was capitalist character values

From: Russell Blackford (rblackford@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Jul 24 2001 - 22:11:55 MDT


Jerry said

>I know that I some of my emails might seem to come off as a rant, sorry if
>it seems that way. Im not trying to glue my feet on a soapbox, its just
>really hard for me to divorce myself from these concepts and not have them
>affect me on a very primal level. I will say I am still refining my views
>and still have a lot of work to do on them, so I dont have answers to some
>of the questions your stating quiet yet. They do point me into good
>directions to explore and get tied down and I thank you for that.

Thank you for those kind words.

>I do think law and morality are 2 different things. Law "should" embody
>morality perfectly (in a perfect world), but that people still would have a
>right to choose to do immoral things as long as it didnt violate others
>rights (perfect definition to be defined some time in the future as well).
>The science of law has the burden to uncover the structure that the law
>should take, but they cant very well do their job until the framework for
>an
>objective morality is fleshed out. I think HUGE strides have been made in
>objective philosophy, but the prerequisites for building it wasnt availible
>till Rand nailed down some basic issues here recently. Now that some basics
>can be discerned, the field will march forward and the proofs and answers
>will come.
>
>Im man enough to admit that I cant lay out the entire argument in detail,
>Im
>not a philosophy major, but I can spot where philosophy crosses a few lines
>in the sand that I have worked out. I can say with my present level of
>knowledge that one principle that has yet to be proven wrong is: "No force
>is to be initiated on another person". Keep in mind the context, force can
>be used for defence. Fraud does count as an indirect use of force. This
>sounds to me like a wonderful concept. I can imagine such a world where
>force is banished. This is why taxes are wrong, and may be a very good
>boundary to put on a government.

Look, Jerry, my head is spinning from reading from Daniel's posts... which
is *good*. I've asked some deliberately hard questions and he's made a
mighty effort at answering them. I also appreciate *your* efforts above. I'm
tempted to come out with a whole new batch of questions such as about how
moral properties can be "objective". However, I'll stop here for now. I hope
I've said enough to make the point that there are difficult issues
underlying some of these Randian principles, etc, and more issues come up as
you delve - and that the answers may not be obvious.

For my own part, if people like you and Daniel are giving me their answers
in good faith I'll naturally think about them, even if I think (as I do)
that I can see some problems.

Best wishes

Russell

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