Doesn’t make it not so, either. It is impossible to prove and thus nonsensical to believe every transfer of a possession is unjust. Not all of us are giving each other stolen art, colonial plunder, and blood diamonds.



I’m not transferring you stolen land or highways. The hens laid the eggs just days ago.

I’m not transferring you stolen land or highways. The hens laid the eggs just days ago. — NOS4A2

There's typically a viable and well-counterpoised point and counter-point to any position. (That's where ataraxia comes from.) At the very least, you could acknowledge the complexity.

You also inherited the blueprints for a chicken coop from some unknown innovator. Without whom, no chicken coop. Does that give this unknown innovator a right to a portion of your egg and poultry profits? If not, why not? You wouldn't have your coop without him.

Doesn’t make it not so, either. It is impossible to prove and thus nonsensical to believe every transfer of a possession is unjust. Not all of us are giving each other stolen art, colonial plunder, and blood diamonds. — NOS4A2

Without the possibility to prove it, it is arbitrary and therefor a procedural proposal and procedure has little, if anything, to do with justice, which is why Nozick is not taken seriously by philosophers in Europe. Kind of like a footnote to Rawls if he's discussed at all. It's purely cultural that Nozick is considered an important thinker in the US due to its outsized individualism and Nozick is just an excuse to shore up anti-social laws.

Come to think of it, I fully support everything you propose to be implemented as quickly as possible in the US and watch it crash and burn as a result.

Come to think of it, I fully support everything you propose to be implemented as quickly as possible in the US and watch it crash and burn as a result. — Benkei

We can crash and burn all by ourselves, thank you very much. We don't need no stinking paternalism. :smile:

I’m not transferring you stolen land or highways. — NOS4A2

Assuming the USA for argument's sake.

Your coop is on stolen land so you owe a portion of your profits (a tax) to the indigenous tribe this land belongs to.

Your client traveled to your location via a system of public roads so you owe a portion of your profits (a tax) to the folks who construct and maintain these roads.


etcetcetc

What's more, if you happen to have set up your egg and poultry business in the South, the infrastructure you and your clients utilize was likely built, in part, by slaves. So reparations are in order.

Without the possibility to prove it, it is arbitrary and therefor a procedural proposal and procedure has little, if anything, to do with justice, which is why Nozick is not taken seriously by philosophers in Europe. Kind of like a footnote to Rawls if he's discussed at all. It's purely cultural that Nozick is considered an important thinker in the US due to its outsized individualism and Nozick is just an excuse to shore up anti-social laws.

Come to think of it, I fully support everything you propose to be implemented as quickly as possible in the US and watch it crash and burn as a result.

The fact you cannot prove that all transactions throughout history are just does not entail you cannot prove that some transactions are just. Some can be proved, some cannot. Therefor it’s not arbitrary and not procedural. But I'm disappointed that all we are doing is quibbling about the word "historical". It's so trivial as to be irrelevant.

It's a simple matter; if someone stole a bike and you receive it as a gift, that's not a just exchange. You are not entitled to it and ought to return it to the person it was stolen from. If the bike wasn't stolen and the exchange was voluntary, that's a just exchange. So why is state distribution of wealth just or unjust?

Europe has given us the collectivist and social politics of Communism, Socialism, and Fascism, which have spread worldwide, ruining every country infected by their ideas.

All of that is irrelevant to our exchange of eggs.

All of that is irrelevant to our exchange of eggs. — NOS4A2

I see you don't have an argument. Just bald assertion.

It looks to me like you'll be setting up your coop in the jungle and asking your clients to make their way to your site on foot, providing their own machetes for threshing out the overgrowth and defending themselves against wild beasts. You're going to need an ingenious marketing team.




If you're availing yourself of a single one of the niceties of 6000 years of civilization - in other words, if you're benefiting at all from the public good - you owe a tax to the public good.

The Public Good. Is that the same as the State?

The Public Good. Is that the same as the State? — NOS4A2

Not interested in continuing until you present an argument or rebuttal of substance. Take care.

:smile:

Good riddance.

I appreciate your opinion. — NOS4A2

Good riddance. — NOS4A2

The cognitive dissonance must be painful. — NOS4A2

:grin:

Not interested in continuing until you present an argument or rebuttal of substance. Take care.

A minute later....

:grin: — ZzzoneiroCosm

The fact you cannot prove that all transactions throughout history are just does not entail you cannot prove that some transactions are just. Some can be proved, some cannot. Therefor it’s not arbitrary and not procedural. But I'm disappointed that all we are doing is quibbling about the word "historical". It's so trivial as to be irrelevant. — NOS4A2

Sigh. It's not trivial because it's definitional and goes to the core of why Nozick's theory lacks any internal coherence. What's the likelihood of any transaction not being tainted by unjust transfers? Zero if you know anything about history. The market salesman accepts money from a thief, the daughter inherits money made from slavery, a country stole resources through colonisation. All wealth, especially in Western countries, is tainted if you're stupid enough to think Nozick has anything worthwhile to say about justice. Nozick's idea is as retarded as it is simplistic.

That had me laughing.

This thread is dead. What a shocker that NOS finally put everyone to sleep.

I’m not sure if this is lost in translation or not, but you’re equivocating between two senses of “history”. You might know something of history in the grand sense because you’d read a history book, but you know very little about the history of any given acquisition and transfer. In order to find out whether you are entitled to the object of any transfer—that it was not stolen for example—you’d need to examine what actually happened in the course of the acquisition and transfer of that object. If you know anything about history, you know one cannot know the history of his bike by taking a history class.

If this idea is so simple why is it so hard to grasp?

Looks like Xtrix came back for a read. A glutton for punishment, I guess.

I'm a complete rubbernecker when it comes to your threads.

This thread is dead. — Xtrix

Undead. :lol:

Glad I could give you a tickle.

I'm sorry I haven't paid attention for awhile (although by now it feels a lot like beating a dead horse) but I just remembered something that I read somewhere back right after the end of the Cold War. The article went something along the lines that with the end of the old USSR and the supposed victory of "capitalism" over "socialism" the was the potential for a new kind of problem happening over the end socialism in general called "run away capitalism".

My memory is a little poor and I likely didn't read the entire article but from what I remember of it it mentioned that unbridled capitalism, like any unbridled ideology, could make things even worse than things were between when we had friction between socialized and capitalistic markets. There would likely be more markets going up and down, weaker unions, less regulations, and valuations of any given product or company fluctuating more wildly than before.

(For information on the first record market bubble see the below link)
Tulip mania
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania

It is hard to put a finger on "exactly" what would be the problem with a runaway capitalism type situation other than very little government oversight, a giant rift between the top 5% and everyone else, and all the power centered in the hands of the extreme uber-wealthy elite (which almost the same as it has ever been except even worse than before) but it also suggest probably the worse issue is the close -mindedness it could create for America and the rest of Western world. I believe this part of the issue is about that if there is no contrast between Capitalism and any other ideology then Capitalism is considered in a way the only ideology that is valid and "perfect" in it's own right.

From what little I know of history, ideology, sociology, philosophy, etc. is that when a culture like the one we have in the West becomes closed minded enough to only believe in ideology or one way of looking at the world that ideology more or less becomes merely dogma and those with status and/or power merely want to maintain the status quo. I could be wrong but it is similar to how the US was able to become more powerful than other countries in the last few hundred years. The US was willing to become BOTH industrialized and think and do things in a new way, if doing so had any potential of making things work better then how things where done in the past.

I think in a nutshell what people like NOS4A2 do realize is that the issue isn't about people having a problem with laissez-faire or whatever similar doctrine, it is about the common sense that most people about relying on ANY economic, religious, social, etc. theoretical doctrine or dogma to fix EVERYTHING. The real world is more complicated than any one ideology can example and while one ideology/narrative can be used to either explain and/or fix certain issues it shouldn't be the only tool that one has.

I don't know the ultimate outcome of what will happen to a society that allows a runway-capitalism system to go on, but I doubt that it is pretty.

(1988 Movie - "They Live" - where aliens come to earth and control everyone, which has been often commented as a metaphor for how similar it is to how the uber-rich/powerful and corporations already control everything.)


.

The belief that everything must be “bridled” by an elected group of bureaucrats is ideology in the strictest sense, a superstition far deeper and obsequious than any political ideology that arises from it.

1988 Movie - "They Live" - where aliens come to earth and control everyone, which has been often commented as a metaphor for how similar it is to how the uber-rich/powerful and corporations already control everything. — dclements

The fight scene is a perfect metaphor for this topic, folks fighting with NOS to put the ideology critique glasses on his face.