Israel Proves the Desalination Era Is Here

Re:Israel Proves the Desalination Era Is Here by pron on Sunday July 31, 2016 @12:17AM (#12195714)

Justification for restricting individual actions should be based on empirical study of whether or not they harm others, not on an a priori creed that appeals some simplistic logic. What constitutes a free decision cannot be decided by the decree of a mid-20th-century fringe think-tank. For example (although this example, too, is very simplistic), capturing a bird and putting it in a cage restricts its individual freedom. But if it is discovered empirically that 98% of birds of that kind are unable to resist the draw to some sound at a particular frequency, then playing that sound is also a restriction of their freedom. In other words, "free" is not defined by math, but by the actual study of the behavior of actual people in actual societies. I'm not claiming that careful studies are always or even usually, conducted, but nor is it the case that freedom is defined arbitrarily.

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Re:Israel Proves the Desalination Era Is Here by aminok on Monday August 01, 2016 @06:05PM (#12206424)

>Justification for restricting individual actions should be based on empirical study of whether or not they harm others, not on an a priori creed that appeals some simplistic logic.

Harm others or harm themselves? Or are you referring to the restrictions themselves, and whether they harm others? I don't think the threat of imprisonment should be used to restrict human action that is nonviolent. This is not just libertarianism. This is common sense and basic decency.

As for private property rights and their scientific justification: they are the manifestation of the first possession principle that is found in game theory experiments to be an emergent behavior that maximizes social welfare, and which even other animals exhibit.

Violating property rights, by prohibiting financial transactions outside of state licensed banks, or demanding a percentage of all earnings made in private trade be transferred to politically appointed authorities, is often a great contributor to the concentration of wealth, and maintains the status quo, so your intuition that anti-authoritarianism and private property rights serves the rich is wrong.

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Re:Israel Proves the Desalination Era Is Here by pron on Sunday July 31, 2016 @09:28AM (#12196886)

Just to give concrete examples from humans, it is not clear to me why private property is an a priori untouchable liberty, while economic pressure is declared to be kosher and categorically different from physical pressure. Both require actual empirical study of their interaction with human behavior to determine which is an essential freedom and which isn't. In fact, there seems to be no logical justification at all for the categorization done in this Mont Pelerin tradition. Rather it seems like arbitrary choices that miraculously happen to justify the status quo, and ensure that the power of the rich (economic) is deemed ethical, while the power of the poor (numbers) is deemed an encroachment on freedom. This system of ethics is transparently self-serving.

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