From: Peter Passaro (ocsrazor@cablecomm-pa.com)
Date: Sat May 22 1999 - 12:22:50 MDT
David,
Why you being vilified is because you are taking up a discussion which
has already been debated on the list many times before. The arguments you
are using are extremely thin and don't make much sense in terms of the real
world.
The concept of property rights extends all the way to your very person.
Without property rights you create a very slippery slope which leads the way
to communism (i.e. all your possesions including yourself belong to the
collective) All of our concepts of physical being are tied to the right to
possess things. The concept of physical reality may indeed be an illusion
("There is no spoon") but it is the only set of rules which we currently
have to operate by. Using another set of rules to operate by is often
referred to as insanity or mysticism.
In the modern world we operate on material goods (matter) and
information. We act as individuals or organizations on that matter and
information. If you take away the right of individuals or organizations to
act on that matter indepently and for their own benefit, you seriously
impede technolgical progress (making all matter available to everybody at
the same time would be chaos). As we progress through the nanotech
revolution there will be less emphasis on matter and more on information,
but you can't do away with property rights completely until you have
technolgies such as nucleonic scale engineering and matter-energy-matter
conversion, and the value of a specific piece of matter becomes negligible.
The concept of natural law is well established in modern philosophy and
referrences can be found quite easily through the web.
Peter Passaro
ocsrazor@cablecomm-pa.com
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