From: Mark Steven Heyman (markheyman@infoproconsulting.com)
Date: Tue Jul 05 2005 - 18:34:45 BST
On 1 Jul 2005 at 16:59, Platt Holden wrote:
Freedom to me means the rights outlined in the Bill of Rights of the
U.S. Constitution, cited by Pirsig as intellect vs.society issues,
i.e., the individual vs. government. Freedom doesn't mean the right
to medical care provided at somebody else's expense nor freedom from
the risks of driving an automobile. Criminal neglect that causes
injury to others can be redressed in courts of tort law.
msh:
For the purpose of this discussion, let's forget that none of the
"founding fathers" walked like they talked, including Jefferson whose
elegant thought I greatly admire. Being human and immersed in the
culture of their times, they owned slaves and condoned if not
encouraged the slaughter of Native Americans, and evidently did not
regard women and people without property as their equals in any
significant way.
Nevertheless, as you may remember from grammar school, the
Declaration of Independence, one of the most important papers
expressing the collective opinion of our "founding fathers," makes
clear the inalienable nature of every human's right to life, among
others.
Although the Constitution and its amendments (sometimes referred to
as the Bill of Rights ) does not specifically state that we have the
right not to die just because we cannot afford a pacemaker or
dialysis, it's pretty easy to argue that anyone who dies under such
conditions is being deprived of life without the due process of law,
as required by the Fifth Amendment. Besides, the Ninth Amendment
makes it quite clear that the Constitution does not enumerate every
right retained by the people, therefore any insistence that the only
rights we have must be contained therein is itself a violation of The
Bill of Rights.
For anyone interested, here are links to the American Declaration of
Independence and The Bill of Rights:
http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.billofrights.html
Now, on to the next subject. Here's the reply to my example of a car
manufacturer's decision to allow expected injury and death to occur
because it would be more cost effective to do so:
"Freedom doesn't mean ... freedom from the risks of driving an
automobile. Criminal neglect that causes injury to others can be
redressed in courts of tort law."
My example shows deliberate action resulting in a dramatic increase
in the risk of driving an automobile, and then more action to conceal
the heightened risk from consumers. This is certainly criminal, but
way more than simple neglect. The idea that death and injury and
general familial misery resulting from this activity can be
compensated through law suits after the fact is obscene. Anyone
promoting such an idea is operating at the same moral level as the
executive who made the decision in the first place.
But this just raises the question of what preventive action should be
taken BEFORE the fact. One suggestion is to rescind laws that grant
to corporations the rights of individuals, and to allow public
oversight of internal corporate activity and documents. I'll be
happy to pursue this idea with anyone who's interested.
Next topic:
platt before:
By owning things I don't deny others the right to own the same
things.
msh in response:
This is simply false. If you own the water or mineral rights to all
the land in your community, how can others in the community own
those rights?
platt:
You got me there. What I had in mind is what most people have in mind
when they think of property -- houses, cars, furniture, clothes, lawn
mowers and such -- the artifacts of intellect.
msh:
Well, I'd say that mineral rights, as well as copyrights, patents,
etc., are the artifacts of intellect. What I'm trying to explore
here is the moral limitation of private ownership. Is there a point
at which the accumulation of individual wealth becomes a threat to
society and is therefore immoral, in accordance with the Metaphysics
of Quality?
Let me paste in, for general consumption and response, the series of
questions I asked someone earlier, in a different thread:
"Can you imagine any point in the accumulation of personal wealth at
which such an accumulation threatens the existence of society? What
if, due to highly concentrated real estate holdings, only 1% of us
were able to afford homes and the rest were required to pay whatever
rent the market will bear, or to live on the street? Would this be
acceptable to you? If not, what percentage would be acceptable? And
what would you propose to do about it if combinations of extant
wealth and power drove the percentage below your acceptable amount?"
And...
"According to research done by Gilmer and Kronick of UC San Diego,
nearly 25% of US workers under the age of 65 are or will soon be
uninsured for health care because they are unable to pay the high
cost of coverage. Is this an acceptable percentage in your view of
a moral society? If so, what would be unacceptable to you, 30, 50,
75 percent? Or just the percentage that would include you? "
I think getting responses to these questions would go a long way
toward establishing some common ground for discussion.
platt before:
The question I would pose is: Who decides when ownership becomes low
quality?
msh responded:
If one truly embraces the Metaphysics of Quality, the decision is
made by examining the moral hierarchy. Low-quality ownership is
that which leads to the destabilization of society. See my
examples above.
If a society's ownership arrangements are such that large numbers of
people are unable to afford basic services and products-- food,
water, clothing, shelter, life-saving drugs-- then the society may
be destabilized to the point of its own destruction. History is
full of examples of such self-destruction.
platt:
If you're talking about revolutions, they have many causes. Our own
had nothing to do with basic services and products. It had to do with
over taxation by an oppressive government.
msh:
As you suggest, revolutions occur for a variety of sometimes complex
and interconnected reasons. But I think it's safe to say that the
ROOT cause of any popular rebellion is a mass dissatisfaction with a
society's current distribution of wealth, power, and privilege, in
conjunction with the realization that the system will allow no
peaceful redress of such grievances. This applies even to the
American Revolution, though, for clarity, I think we should make a
distinction between colonial rebellions, such as ours, and domestic
revolutions such as in France (1789), Mexico (1910), Russia (1917),
Spain (1939?), Cuba (1959), as well as the Central American armed
struggles of the 1970s and 1980s, right up to the current situation
in Chiapas, Mexico, not to mention what's going on in Afghanistan and
Iraq.
Even in America, in the 1930's and later in the 60s, we have come
very close to insurrection. In the 30's the unrest was directly
attributable to the disparity between rich and poor. Massive
violence was averted by the domestic policies of the New Deal,
followed by the really huge economic injections of state cash
required by US involvement in WWII.
platt before:
Numbers killed by smoking pale in comparison to numbers killed by
governments.
msh replied:
Your insistence on playing the "numbers killed" game is off-point
and obstructive of honest discussion. Not to mention obscene. And,
in this case, your numbers are simply wrong:
"Tobacco is the second major cause of death in the world. It is
currently responsible for the death of one in ten adults worldwide
(about 5 million deaths each year). If current smoking patterns
continue, it will cause some 10 million deaths each year by 2020.
Half the people that smoke today -that is about 650 million people-
will eventually be killed by tobacco."
http://www.who.int/tobacco/en/
platt:
I hardly think the Tobacco Free Institute is a reliable source for
such overblown statistics.
msh:
The numbers come from studies done by the World Health Organization,
through their own Tobacco Free INITIATIVE. The same proportions are
reported for the US by the CDC and The American Cancer Society.
platt before:
Finally, there are a lot of people around who want to be admired for
their selflessness, especially politicians who pride themselves on
their "public service." It's not hard to detect the contradiction
and hypocrisy in their "selfless" pose.
msh responded:
The only pose here is yours in pretending to know the motives of
everyone who works for the public good. Besides, what matters is
what people do, not why they do it. Ad hominem attacks on motives
rather than analysis of results is just another way of derailing
meaningful discussion.
platt:
That we can agree on. So from now on I know you will desist from ad
hominem attacks on your fellow MD contributors.
msh:
I give what I get, or what I perceive to be given to other thinkers
who are not here to defend themselves. Personally, I'm not bothered
by insults, unless they are offered IN LIEU of analysis, argument,
and evidence in attacking my own or anyone else's ideas. In fact,
I'm always complimented by insults spat from benighted corners; it's
a clear indication that I'm moving toward the light.
Mark Steven Heyman (msh)
-- InfoPro Consulting - The Professional Information Processors Custom Software Solutions for Windows, PDAs, and the Web Since 1983 Web Site: http://www.infoproconsulting.com "If you call yourself an American that means that you have embraced the constitution, because that is what an American is. A citizen of the United States of America is someone who has sworn an oath of allegiance to that document, to the words, to the ideals of that document. Right now we have citizens who don't even understand what that document is." Scott Ritter - June 23, 2005, Scott Ritter Traprock Peace Center at the Woolman Hill Meeting House MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org Mail Archives: Aug '98 - Oct '02 - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Nov '02 Onward - http://www.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/summary.html MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at: http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
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