4 ms·

Employment is at-will on both sides. In the case of the state, you could also renounce your citizenship and try to get one with a more suitable country: so far

Employment is at-will on both sides. In the case of the state, you could also renounce your citizenship and try to get one with a more suitable country: so far as there's a wide range of choices and it's realistic to do that, you're not owned. One of these cases is dramatically more realistic than the other. Cost/benefit thinking has value. But realize you're taking one form of coercion (a state forcing others to pay for my medical costs whether or not I would choose to insure myself) to justify another (forbidding you to do something a bit risky to yourself). You might conclude the ownership is worth it, but it doesn't negate WalterBright's point. There's a cost in individual freedom.

joshuamorton 5y ago
I don't disagree with anything you've said! I take issue specifically with the idea that coercion implies ownership, which, well, it doesn't
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Ownership is the power to coerce someone to do your bidding. It's not a piece of paper.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    > Ownership is the power to coerce someone to do your bidding I could maybe agree with this. But I find the gap between "helmet laws" and "you're forced to do the government's bidding" rather wide. Like as far as I can tell this reduces to "any reduction in rights is ownership", so the government limiting your right to murder people means that the government owns you already.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      > so the government limiting your right to murder people means that the government owns you already. You have no right to hurt other people. Having the government prevent you from murdering people is not owning you and is not infringing on your rights. Actually, the government should not be preventing you from murdering others - it is there to mete out justice if you do.
      - Apocryphon 5y ago
        Meting out "justice" sounds like imposing government ownership.
        abecedarius 5y ago
        Only if you can't see any difference between law and power.
        joshuamorton 5y ago
        Given that the argument being made here is that some laws formed by legitimate democratic institutions impose ownership (and are therefore unjust) no, you can't draw a distinction between laws and power here.
        abecedarius 5y ago
        The Athenian assembly voted to massacre all the men on Melos, and sell the women and children into slavery. If you believe democracy is the source of all legitimacy, you need to debug your beliefs. Edit: it's unclear whether that atrocity came to a vote, though it certainly happened. To pick a clear case of unjust and unlawful democratic legislation in the same war, there was the time they voted to execute six of eight generals, rather than subject each to a trial.
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        > Having the government prevent you from murdering people is not owning you and is not infringing on your rights. Of course it is! You just don't believe my exercise of those rights is legitimate, but there's no intrinsically different about the act of shooting someone and the act of riding a bike without a helmet, from a Hobbesian point of view. You can argue that the government/society has a more legitimate interest in limiting exercise of one of those rights, and I'd agree. But when we're talking about what rights should be, you can't use a legal definition of rights. That's circular. > Actually, the government should not be preventing you from murdering others - it is there to mete out justice if you do. And see, this is I think an interesting argument. But it leads to a really perverse system. You can't engage in any form of harm reduction policy, which means the only lever you have to reduce criminal/harmful activity is to have really cruel punishments for the few directly harmful acts. Like take speeding or drinking and driving as obvious examples. Under the "only mete justice if you harm others" approach, you can't criminalize drunk driving or speeding, only vehicular manslaughter, so you either live with more death due to dangerous driving, or you have to like make the punishment for drunk/dangerous driving so terrible that it dissuades people from even engaging in the risky behavior. But in practice, avoiding the circumstances that lead to harm is better for everyone (the victim, the potential perpetrator, society at large) than punishing people after the fact, and there are lots of situations where punishments simply don't work.

joshuamorton 5y ago

I don't disagree with anything you've said! I take issue specifically with the idea that coercion implies ownership, which, well, it doesn't

WalterBright 5y ago
Ownership is the power to coerce someone to do your bidding. It's not a piece of paper.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  > Ownership is the power to coerce someone to do your bidding I could maybe agree with this. But I find the gap between "helmet laws" and "you're forced to do the government's bidding" rather wide. Like as far as I can tell this reduces to "any reduction in rights is ownership", so the government limiting your right to murder people means that the government owns you already.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > so the government limiting your right to murder people means that the government owns you already. You have no right to hurt other people. Having the government prevent you from murdering people is not owning you and is not infringing on your rights. Actually, the government should not be preventing you from murdering others - it is there to mete out justice if you do.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      Meting out "justice" sounds like imposing government ownership.
      - abecedarius 5y ago
        Only if you can't see any difference between law and power.
        joshuamorton 5y ago
        Given that the argument being made here is that some laws formed by legitimate democratic institutions impose ownership (and are therefore unjust) no, you can't draw a distinction between laws and power here.
        abecedarius 5y ago
        The Athenian assembly voted to massacre all the men on Melos, and sell the women and children into slavery. If you believe democracy is the source of all legitimacy, you need to debug your beliefs. Edit: it's unclear whether that atrocity came to a vote, though it certainly happened. To pick a clear case of unjust and unlawful democratic legislation in the same war, there was the time they voted to execute six of eight generals, rather than subject each to a trial.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      > Having the government prevent you from murdering people is not owning you and is not infringing on your rights. Of course it is! You just don't believe my exercise of those rights is legitimate, but there's no intrinsically different about the act of shooting someone and the act of riding a bike without a helmet, from a Hobbesian point of view. You can argue that the government/society has a more legitimate interest in limiting exercise of one of those rights, and I'd agree. But when we're talking about what rights should be, you can't use a legal definition of rights. That's circular. > Actually, the government should not be preventing you from murdering others - it is there to mete out justice if you do. And see, this is I think an interesting argument. But it leads to a really perverse system. You can't engage in any form of harm reduction policy, which means the only lever you have to reduce criminal/harmful activity is to have really cruel punishments for the few directly harmful acts. Like take speeding or drinking and driving as obvious examples. Under the "only mete justice if you harm others" approach, you can't criminalize drunk driving or speeding, only vehicular manslaughter, so you either live with more death due to dangerous driving, or you have to like make the punishment for drunk/dangerous driving so terrible that it dissuades people from even engaging in the risky behavior. But in practice, avoiding the circumstances that lead to harm is better for everyone (the victim, the potential perpetrator, society at large) than punishing people after the fact, and there are lots of situations where punishments simply don't work.