caliban@gate.net wrote:
>
> Turmadrog, Renegade Balseraph of Technology <wolfkin@freedomspace.net> wrote:
> > On Sat, 09 Jan 1999, Samael tempted me with this question:
> > >The majority of extropians on this list are in favour of perfect human
> > >inviolability (ie people never have the right to affect another person
> > >without their permission - except in self defence).
> >
> > Yes, I'd agree with that.
>
> As would I, of course -- but the Devil is in the details. That is, as
> David Friedman points out, the tricky part is defining what counts
> as "to affect another person." Friedman takes (what I believe is)
> an intuitionistic approach, and suggests that the threshold falls
> somewhere between shining a flashlight at them and shining a
> laser beam, but that's an awful lot of room. I'm not an intutionist,
> although (per Bruce Ackerman's comments in _Social Justice in
> the Liberal State_) I have a lot of sympathy with *libertarian*
> intuitionism; my suggestion is to use the Principle of Reciprocity.
I have a problem with this, rooted in the difference of effect possible between individuals and large corporations. If a factory decides to pump their toxic waste into a waterway or aquifer, is it really either proportional tit-for-tatness or even within the realm of feasibility for all the affected individuals to shit on the factory's land?