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Modern Philosopher's Stone limits property rights

Posted by $ jlc 10 years, 1 month ago to Philosophy
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Charles Battig MD notes: "It is able to limit personal freedoms, diminish private property rights, destroy the useful products of civilization and their means of production, deprive humanity of natural resources and their access, and impose hardship on the least prosperous members of humanity. I term it “The Progressives’ Stone,” as it can do all this and more. Regrettably, it is real and not mythical. It permeates all levels of our government."
SOURCE URL: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/29/chemistry-parable-sustainability-the-universal-solvent-of-private-property-rights/


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  • Posted by j_IR1776wg 10 years, 1 month ago
    The question of. who owns what has been around forever. Our cave-dwelling ancestors enforced their claims with clubs and rocks. Modern neanderthals do so with a poisonous mix of pseudo-science and words with no clear definition. They are no less evil and no less deadly.
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    • Posted by $ allosaur 10 years, 1 month ago
      I never thought of the present oligarchy I like to call our "Animal Farm more than equal elite betters" as being "modern neanderthals." Until now.
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      • Posted by j_IR1776wg 10 years, 1 month ago
        Thanks allosaur. How did we ever allow ourselves to sleepwalk our way into slavery? Or why?
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        • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 1 month ago
          That's very simple. Those who believe in liberty do not seek to impose their will on others, and thus generally do not seek elective office. Those who do want to impose their will on others will do nearly anything to gain elective office in order to do so. Thus, we end up with those who wish to enslave us in positions of power that allows them to do so. All as a simple result of the inherent inclinations of the populace.
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          • Posted by $ 10 years, 1 month ago
            Robbie -

            You are a poo-poo head. An accurate and succinct poo-poo head, but nonetheless...

            Sigh. Why does this have to be the shape of reality? I so fear you have caught the gist of the situation.

            Jan, behaving idiosyncratically
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            • Posted by Robbie53024 10 years, 1 month ago
              Jan: I've been called much worse, especially here.

              While I don't disagree that your comment was done in an idiosyncratic manner, did you really mean ironically?
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              • Posted by $ 10 years, 1 month ago
                Nope. When I am poo-poo-ing someone because I AGREE with them (and do not like the shape of reality) then I consider this idiosyncratic behavior. Which is both allowable and fun, but must needs be labeled clearly as such in email communications.

                Jan
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                • Posted by PeterAsher 10 years, 1 month ago
                  In the spirit of Francisco’s “Someday my friend, you will learn that words have exact meanings.”

                  adjective
                  1.
                  pertaining to the nature of idiosyncrasy, or something peculiar to an individual:

                  "The best minds are idiosyncratic and unpredictable as they follow the course of scientific discovery."
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    • Posted by PeterAsher 10 years, 1 month ago
      When that space traveler came down and, using his laser on a rock, wrote some rules of conduct for the natives, he didn't have room to add “and property” after "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”
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      • Posted by j_IR1776wg 10 years, 1 month ago
        Even the 8th, Thou shalt not steal, can only refer to property. Or do I have some screws that need tightening?
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        • Posted by PeterAsher 10 years, 1 month ago
          Covet was referring to the opening line of "The question of. who owns what has been around forever.”

          And Jan; that would have read wife AND property, thereby delineating the difference; Possibly more than actually existed in that time.
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      • Posted by $ blarman 10 years, 1 month ago
        Uh, the actual scripture is quite extensive and extends to "anything that is thy neighbor's".

        It should also be noted that in those times, womens' protection was in being married, as then her husband's responsibility was her bodily protection. It's a different world now - for better or worse.
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  • Posted by dbhalling 10 years, 1 month ago
    The defining moral issue of our time is property rights, starting with self ownership. It encompasses, taxes, regulations, gun control, environmentalism, political correctness.
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    • Posted by $ 10 years, 1 month ago
      It is amazing the degree to which this cause is serving as a 'hook' for socialism...pretty much across the board (as you point out).

      So effective. So dismaying.

      Jan
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  • Posted by sfdi1947 10 years, 1 month ago
    John Locke defined Property Rights in the 1590's and Adam Smith codified their value in 1776.
    Excessive governance, any extravagance beyond Thomas Jefferson's "Who governs best, governs least." is the absolute antithesis of Locke and Smith's standards. Our Constitution supported those standards, however our Founding Fathers and Mothers, failed in their consideration of their progeny. They thought, mistakenly, that our government would always be run by patriots who took literally the meaning of Kennedy's words on January 20th 1961. The "Torch was [not] passed to a new generation," it was passed to a new generation of crooks: witness what the Kennedy's did for themselves in the dissolution of the natural monopoly that was the American Telephone & Telegraph Company and how much money RFK wasted in his prosecutions of Hoffa and the Teamsters at the behest of the commercial banking industry. Hoffa and the Teamsters were not ethically correct, doing business with Sam Giancarna and the Cosa Nostra, but the 11 percent interest paid on pension fund loans was 10.975 percent better than what was being paid by the Bankers.
    Our government first went off course when Andrew Jackson favored some rich business interests who rewarded him in a princely fashion for using Federal Authority and Military Power to vacate 1.5 billion acres of legally held Native American Land.
    Virtually everything since, except the 13th, 14th and 19th Amendments have been similar miscarriages of Human Rights, and are violations of the sacred trust given us by our forefathers.
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    • Posted by j_IR1776wg 10 years, 1 month ago
      I should be commenting when I'm sober but you raise a truly interesting concept that has bedeviled me for decades. I wrote in a comment that "who owns what" is, perhaps, the most important question that can be asked concerning human relations.You note that Jackson who used the Indian Removal Act to drive the Indians to what is now Oklahoma off of their 1.5 billion acres. I agree with Any Rand that he who initiates physical force is wrong. According to Wiki, 100,000 Indians were driven off of their land, which when divided into 1.5 billion acres comes to 15,000 acres per Indian. So my dilemma lies in the question - how much property can any individual, race, or nation claim to be legitimately theirs? according to Yahoo "Total land area of North America (including Central America and the Caribbean): 24,486,305 km² (6,050,697,738 acres)
      Total population of North America: 514,144,046
      Average population density of North America: 21.0 persons per square kilometer (11.77 acres per person)" In North America, we have 11.77 acres per person. That seems to make the Indians look like land grabbers. I wish I had a cogent answer, alas, I have only questions.
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      • Posted by sfdi1947 10 years, 1 month ago
        One must realize that Native Americans did not 'own' land in the sense accepted by persons of other cultures, they controlled an 'area' often of arbitrary size. At one time the Sioux controlled an area stretching from the Missouri River into the Dakotas, Wyoming and Kansas, using it for the tribe's and personal needs. They even reached into western Minnesota and Iowa. This was why the areas controlled were so vast by European standards. Ayn was right violence is never an answer, except as a last resort to protect what is owned. jlc posting above is correct, her anthropologic view is on the money.
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      • Posted by ewv 10 years, 1 month ago
        The Indians were tribalists with no concept of property rights. Races, nations and tribes do not have property rights. There are no group rights, only rights of the individual. The Indians did not own land, they held tribalist political control. Anyone had a right to settle unowned land and defy the tribalist rule.
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      • Posted by $ 10 years, 1 month ago
        Add to that the fact that the Indians were not the original landowners either. They took it from someone who took it from someone who took...etc. So what is our responsibility to protect the property someone else stole?

        The Indians were not being greedy, however: the area it takes to support a Mesolithic or Paleolithic hunter/gatherer is similar to 'the area it takes to support a predator'. When we became agricultural, our settlement model changed to that of a herd of herbivores - much smaller area per person.

        Jan
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        • Posted by j_IR1776wg 10 years, 1 month ago
          Ergo much less need to be nomadic. Have the American Indians ever switched over to farming?
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          • Posted by $ 10 years, 1 month ago
            Pre-Columbian, the SW Indians were Neolithic, as were some of the Mississippi Valley Indians. The latter - and some up by Portland - may have been starting to smelt copper. Most of the rest were Mesolithic herders who did scratch farming at long stopovers...except the coastal California Indians who were Paleolithic, I think.

            Post Columbian: The Indians up by Portland were reputed to have tamed elk for riding and invented their own written script...from rumors they had heard of these things in the Europeans. (There is one other society that invented its own writing after having seen a sample once - the Easter Islanders rongo-rongo script.)

            Jan
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      • Posted by $ blarman 10 years, 1 month ago
        One minor problem that was delineated quite clearly in Dinesh D'Souza's America was that the American Indians didn't "own" the land either! They were constantly fighting other tribes for hunting grounds, etc. They weren't owning the land (ie improving it) as much as they were exploiting it.
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        • Posted by j_IR1776wg 10 years, 1 month ago
          Jan pointed this out in her comment above. We need to define or re-define what it means to "own something" that would be acceptable to the other 7 billion residents of planet Earth. The lack of an acceptable definition shows up in the incredible amount of time our species has spent at war in recorded history.
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          • Posted by $ 10 years, 1 month ago
            I agree. Thank you for pointing out that this philosophical loophole is a major fault in our ability to behave with integrity in a functional sense. How does one respect a right when one cannot define it?

            This has bearing on our current problem with Federal claims against 'the pond in your back yard' and has been touched on by fracking and aerospace regulations (so that you do not own your land 'down to the center of the earth' and 'up to the farthest reaches of the heavens'.

            I think this merits further discussion.

            Jan
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            • Posted by j_IR1776wg 10 years, 1 month ago
              I also believe that further discussion is greatly warranted. I believe we should limit the debate to the question of "owning land" since land preceded our species appearance on Earth and was not a product proven to be created by a conscious mind. Also we would need to contrast "owning land" with "controlling land". Come to think of it Jan, we're considering covering quite a bit of territory (no pun intended). Any thoughts as to how we could keep such a post on the rails?
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              • Posted by $ 10 years, 1 month ago
                Probably splitting off a new thread is the first step. And this crew does not stay on the rails - it is not like watching a train toddling down the track, but more like someone in a Jeep, zooming all over the landscape.

                This is not necessarily bad.

                Would you like to start the new thread, or shall I?

                Jan
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  • Posted by $ blarman 10 years, 1 month ago
    "Sustainability' is just another progressive excuse for the control of your life by an "expert" opinion, with the elites getting to determine who the "experts" are! It's a rigged game from the beginning.

    I never let anyone else define for me what things mean. That's why most logical arguments go off in the weeds in the first place: they start with a bad definition.
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    • Posted by $ winterwind 10 years, 1 month ago
      you know, blarman, my first philosophy teacher, this kind of strict Russian lady, always said to begin every conversation with defining your terms, so that we all know what we're talking about.
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  • Posted by $ Stormi 10 years, 1 month ago
    The goal is for government to control land, and where the people live on it. It has nothing to do with science, just about control. Our oxymoronic Prez tells his black voters they deserve mortgages, and he will stand up for their getting homes. With the other hand, he is signing on to the UN sustainable idea of Agenda 21, which will then strip them of that home ownership. They lose, government wins. The whole idea is to get people herded into urban high rises, no cars, no A/C, no refrigeration, and no red meat. That makes them beholden to government for their existence, slaves of sort. It will destroy the economy, but that also is a goal. Read the Earth Charter or the content of Agenda 21.
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    • Posted by $ 10 years, 1 month ago
      I think we all see this pattern, Stormi. If the government tried to forcibly herd us into blocks of housing right now, there would be a new revolution. But if they incrementally make us want to move into those blocks of housing (because 'its the right thing to do') and make it difficult/expensive/illegal for us to live outside of the housing blocks - well then, people will just queue up to move in!

      'Sustainability' is one of the levers they are using to inch this process along. The fact that Dr Battig is calling this for what it is on WUWT (which ads that it is the worlds most accessed Climate site) is a good sign...but not enough to keep this change from creeping along.

      I expect that then next goal in the process will be to offer elegant dense housing 'for free' to and aging population. Kinda like food stamps for homes. This, perhaps in lieu of Social Security payments.

      Jan
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      • Posted by $ Stormi 10 years, 1 month ago
        You are absolutely right. The sad thing is, the majority of the population have not idea what is coming at them. When a friend tried to refinance at a lower rate, she got the EPA in her yard unannounced, to check a well that the county had already checked - at a hefty fee! Farmers are doing constant battle with restrictions. I wish the national media just once would admit the UN states private property ownership is "unsustainable", along with red meat, A/C and refrigeration - and that the president agrees to work toward eliminating those pesky rights. Cubicle homes for seniors, just what we need, then we will all die from lack of exercise. "Anthem" would have been sci-fi, if Rand had not understood so well what was coming at us.
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        • Posted by khalling 10 years, 1 month ago
          wow stormi.. what state was that in? it used to be that was against the law-one agency sharing information on an individual with another agency. they are getting around that...
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  • Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 1 month ago
    so, Jan, "sustainability" plus eminent domain equals
    the death of physical property rights ... as though
    the progressives needed another excuse. -- j

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    • Posted by $ 10 years, 1 month ago
      I think that the progressives always need another excuse. It is how they erode the naturally conservative and (appropriately) self-concerned nature of humankind. "You want the air to be clean, don't you?" "You mean you _want_ there to be beggars on every street corner?" "The world your grandchildren will live in will be barren and lifeless unless you give all of your rights to the ubergov."

      They are on a roll.

      Jan
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      • Posted by johnpe1 10 years, 1 month ago
        and "you want your tap water to catch on fire?" --
        like the neighbor's, where they drilled into a
        natural gas well on the adjoining property.

        fracking gets them to lying about as fast
        as anything, it seems. -- j

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  • Posted by Herb7734 10 years, 1 month ago
    The genius of the progressive's stone is that it masquerades as doing good for humanity even as it enslaves it. Everyone is willing to say sure I want clean air -- or whatever other cause is put forth. But hidden just below the surface is the price that must be paid whenever the state takes on the task, no matter how seemingly beneficial. The price is always a loss of freedom, no matter whether it manifests itself via property, money, or speech as in political correctness.
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