From: Rafal Smigrodzki (rms2g@virginia.edu)
Date: Tue Nov 26 2002 - 10:12:44 MST
Lee wrote:
>
> Interesting: "social compact". I wonder if that's what I've
> been defending when I defend private property. Private property
> is a *social compact*, I guess, that has shown itself to be
> utterly necessary for the evolution and progress of civilization.
> Its lynchpin, if you will.
>
> But to ask just who is bound by it is to ask a very good
> question. The usual situation with regard to private property
> seems to apply easily to the case where you are running your
> own simulations inside your own castle, and we are on the
> outside wondering what you are doing. But from the inside, well,
> this is something quite new evolutionarily. Trying to draw on
> tradition, we note that God gave dominion of the Earth to Man,
> and by analogy, I get dominion of as much of the hardware inside
> the simulation as I can get hold of. Hmm. Quite interesting.
> I'm not at all sure that I have achieved consistency here.
### You might get closer to consistency if you think about "private
property" strictly as a tool to promote sentient well-being. It tends to
promote well-being by allowing to build a civilization from deceptive,
cantankerous, selfish creatures we are, but at times it reduces the
well-being of some sentients, as when they are extended to the ownership of
the sentients themselves. In certain select situations, property rights have
to yield to the more important goal, freedom from physical pain.
Rafal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jan 15 2003 - 17:58:24 MST