Jun
10
If I tell you that in a Free Market, or a society based on Free Market, killing cute Kittens will not be a crime, and people would be free to slaughter cute kittens and make clothes out of them, make delicious delicacies out of them, and it would be perfectly legal to do so, then I am sure you would be really disgusted by that, and your first reaction would be a knee-jerk reaction of “Oh no, something must be done about that, people must be stopped from killing kittens and cute puppies, how can they allow that, we must need govt to prevent these kinds of things”.
If you are still shaken by the idea of kitten and puppy slaughterhouses, keep on reading. But if you got the point that example makes, then you have found the root of Socialism/Collectivism/Irrationality. You cannot accept the idea that it would be allowed to torture and kill cute kittens and puppies in a free Market Libertarian society. I mean considering the fact that you have no right to imprison a man for using his property in the way he wants, it makes no sense to punish someone when he hasn’t harmed another human being or violated his property rights or his freedom. Despite of this simple rational argument you cannot, simply cannot from the core of your heart accept this line of reasoning. You are simply not programmed to be that cold hearted.
From your childhood its taught to you that you must be compassionate towards other human beings 
and animals, and if youare not then you are shunned by the society, if you throw a stone at a dog, you are instantly shunned, and don’t even think of beating a cat with a stick. And that is perfectly right too, you must not harm an animal, and it must be taught to little kids to not do such things. But this kind of compassion, although it’s perfectly just when applied in doing your own actions, has caused immense amount of suffering in society.
People overstep their boundaries by creating laws to prevent cruelty to animals. Animals and plants are a part of nature; they are there for our consumption. We cannot hope to survive without eating plants and animals. We grow plants to eventually cut them down one day and consume it. Similarly we breed animals and consume their products too. It’s hard to imagine human life without consuming plants and animals.
Make no mistake, I am not supporting cruelty to animals, but I am completely against punishing human beings in case someone chooses to do so.
This is the same compassion which is extended and applied upon human beings, but in a different way. Everybody agrees that one must not harm other human beings, and if someone chooses to harm, then he or she must be punished. But then the question comes in, if somebody is dying because of hunger, should we make a law that other people must feed them (as in Socialism), or if someone is dying because he cannot afford healthcare then should we make a law that other people must provide them healthcare on their own expense (as in UK, Canada and numerous other countries).
Make no mistake, people must be asked to willingly feed the hungry, and take care of the diseased, but that is a voluntary action, if I choose to NOT feed a hungry man, I am not committing a crime against him. Crime would be if I am forced to feed my kids less so that someone else’s kids are fed. Many people do see some sort of logic here (”Oh if someone else’s kids are dying of hunger, and your kids are unable to eat a burger in order to feed the hungry kids, then you should not complain”) but it’s not really a logic, it’s purely an appeal based on emotion.
What people fail to see here is that when I am feeding my kids a McDonald’s burger, I am getting satisfaction that what I worked for is being spent on a right place and that is in the happiness of my family. This not only compels me to work more for their happiness, but that burger was made by some guy who now gets paid for his labour. Because of me feeding my kids, that McDonald’s cashier is able to feed his kids out of the money he rightfully earned by working for it.
That cashier then feeds his kids a cake, again enjoying the satisfaction that more he works, more he will be able to satisfy his kids. This not only helps the cashier in earning the satisfaction, that money he paid to the baker is now being used by the baker to feed his own kids. And this cascade goes on.
So you see, when you unfairly take gourmet food from a hardworking man’s kids to feed an unemployed man’s hungry kids, you bring kids of 100s of hard working deserving men near to hunger. They not only feel that their work is less rewarding to them, now harder they work, lesser their kids get, because you will keep on feeding somebody’s starving kids taking from this man who is trying to feed his kids a burger.
You can see that the root of this widespread problem lies not in traditionally accepted negative values of the society, its not because people are being racist, or bigots or haters or jealous that they are supporting usage of violence to prevent men from giving their kids a good life, its their goodwill nature, its their misguided compassion for the suffering people which is making them support things like these. This is another reason why it’s so difficult to root these things out of the society. The people who are doing these things think that they are on the higher moral ground.
Let me come back to the cute kittens and adorable puppies. So whenever I suggest someone that in a Libertarian society, killing cute puppies will not be a crime, they revolt against the whole idea of Liberty(or at least my idea of Liberty), there is no rationality in seeing things through emotion.
Now this topic is not about killing puppies, its irrelevant issue whether in a Libertarian society cruelty against animals will be a crime or not. This topic is about the general trend of arguments which as a Liberty-loving Objectivist would encounter. For example, in a society of pure Liberty following things will not be a crime but your conscience will find them extremely appalling. I have created a small post for every one of those issues so that this article does not goes out of proportion.
Prostitution: Legal or Illegal?
Pimping: Legal or Illegal?
Drugs: Legal or Illegal?
Pornography: Legal or Illegal?
Blackmailing: Legal or Illegal?
Copyright violation: Legal or Illegal?
written by renegade_division
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Shiva Says:
June 10th, 2008 at 2:37 pmYour posts are always informative and provocative…
i didnt knew until now that clothes are being made from kittens!!!
lovely theme…
blog 2 website
turning professional???
jester Says:
June 10th, 2008 at 2:39 pmgo out, gulp a couple of drinks, appreciate the beatles! just dont think so much!
i think our blogs denote the two ends of the spectrum…
anyway, well written.
Zoe Brain Says:
June 10th, 2008 at 9:23 pmWhat is a person? What is property? Is the right to use property untrammelled and absolute?
For example, with the Kitten Butcher, does the consortium that built the road outside his house have the right to refuse him custom, and to refuse usage to anyone who might deliver him food or water? If so, then the market is not free. If not, then there are bounds to the absoluteness of power over property.
When does property become person? Is an unborn child “property”? How about a born child? Or an Imbecile? Or a wife (continuing the concepts in Roman Law)? Is Slavery allowable, or does that infringe on personal liberties of one party (I think it does)? But how to define a person?
I’m good at questions. The answers… not so much.
renegade_division Says:
June 10th, 2008 at 10:45 pmFu*k PETA, they are the real Nazis. In India people love PETA and they love Indians, but in America, you gotta see the things they do.
Peta has been involved with people who have committed terrorist attacks over other people who are involved with animal torture.
Peta wants all your pets to be put to sleep!
renegade_division Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 1:53 am@shiva
Dude I never said that Kittens are being used to make clothes, read the article man!
renegade_division Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 2:25 am@Zoe
Yes! The right to use your property is untrammeled and absolute provided that usage does not infringes the rights of another person’s property rights.
Yes! They have a right to refuse the kitten slaughterhouse to refuse road access, food or water access(provided kitten factory brought the food and water).
Market is free, but not dumb! There will not be any sales of a property where the neighbors can not allow them from using the property. Basically nobody will buy a property without a contract from the neighbors that they will provide him access to a private road network, the cost of that service will be included the cost of that house. It would be as standard of a deal as it is asking your realtor whether a house has water and electricity supply, and this question is like “Oh our current property rights are really weak, an electricity supply company has a right to cut your electricity, and they can do it anytime or refuse to provide you with electricity” Well its true that no law forces a power company to provide electricity to people, but then such a house is not sold or that never happens.
This is a bit complicated question and quite heated one. An unborn child can be either treated as property or as a person, it will be decided by the private courts in a society of pure liberty. But in either case, the right to abort the baby will be with the mother, if the child is mere property, then mother has a right to use her property in a way she wants including abortion. If the child is treated as a human being, then he is a parasitic creature and no human has a right to enforce itself on feeding on another human being, in which case the baby must leave the property that is his mother’s body. If baby survives the eviction, he becomes a human being not aggressing towards anyone.
Born child is a potential self-owner. So on a future date he will acquire all his human rights. I wanna quote John Locke on this, in his book Two treatise on Government
Coming back to your comment
Imbecile is a human being. He cannot be allowed to aggress towards another human being. He cannot be allowed to do things no other human being is allowed to do just because of his mental condition. He has all the rights of any other human being. In fact in objective terms he is no different than an unemployed guy. If someone wants to charity on him, they are free, but he cannot be imposed on anyone else, his parents, siblings etc against their wish.
A wife is just another human being, no concepts of Roman law which aggress towards an individual are allowed. Slavery is not allowed, voluntary or not. A Man’s will is inalienable to him, a man may sell himself to you as a slave, but the moment he decides to not be a slave to you, he becomes free, so any contract he did with you becomes unenforceable. In fact you won’t be even able to recover your money from him. Slavery is a far fetched scenario, a more day to day scenario would be, that any contract which makes a person works for someone else for a specified period of time, with or without his will are unenforceable. Take for example, if your employer asks you to sign a bond that you will work for him for 3 years, and you walk out of the job in 1, then he cannot claim a violation of contract. That contract is unenforceable, his will is inalienable to him. Even he cannot wish to sell his will to someone else, because then he would be willing again!
funnybun Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 2:28 amOur perception that killing cute kittens or puppies is wrong, is a part of evolution. The only reason all little things seem to be cute, or are cute is because they(we) have to survive. Its just another survival strategy, It definitely need not be out of emotion as you have assumed. We certainly do eat meat and still show compassion, how can that be? I was reminded of the picking of weeds in order to see that the required plants grow as an analogy to most people missing out the “dominoes effect” you described. can you really extend that to humans? can you kill a few to make the rest “better”? so lets kill all those beggars, unemployed ones. Gee, what are we left with. Lets kill a few of those butlers who don’t do it really well,so finally, If I am one of those clever persons who makes it into the High IQ society and I donate my sperm to it(say :P), I have an innate desire to kill dumb people and I’d make a machine and then kill all the other butlers… so we’d be left with the “most deserving”, the best of the lot eh?
Nida Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 3:50 ambut your conscience will find them extremely appalling
Thats the problem with an ideal libertarian system. People arent willing to risk a system in whcih the bottom line rests on that. The idea that ‘morals’ need to be enforced and are not inherently strong enough as a system to govern behaviour runs rampant in society. Will being ‘humane’ stop existing if the fear of legal punishment is taken away?
renegade_division Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 4:03 am@Nida
So since you cannot ensure a consensual sex or that there is always a risk of catching diseases in consensual sex, lets have clean and disease free rape? I hardly think so!
A very common argument given by the people, especially with the brainwashing in India is “OH socialism fails, but Capitalism is bad too, lets have a middle-of-the-ground approach”, but the dilemma posed here is the same as dilemma between consensual sex and rape!
Nidanida Says:
June 11th, 2008 at 4:24 amI didnt pose a dilemma. I just posed a commonly asked question (to which i know my answer). I have no idea what the consensual sex /rape example is supposed to clarify?
Alok Meshram Says:
June 13th, 2008 at 6:29 pmI have a question for all you “Reason for Liberty” people.
I couldn’t find another place to pose it, so it had to be an off-topic comment.
If Capitalism is the best economic system, why is the Open Source system so successful?
How is it that Mozilla Firefox is a better browser (Available for free) than Internet Explorer (Developed by Microsoft, a capitalist corporation)?
Freesoul Says:
June 13th, 2008 at 7:01 pm@Alok Meshram
Why do you think that Mozilla Firefox is Anti-Capitalistic?
The question is same as why Wikipedia is more popular than Microsoft Encarta.
First of all, Wikipedia is not anti-capitalistic. It is basically free, volluntary source provision. It defies none of capitalistic mode.
I wonder why people considers that Capitalism means corporatization.
No, it is not. Capitalism is your free will.
Capitalism never defies volluntary charity or Philanthropy.
Capitalism defies compulsation.
There must not be any compulsory force any obligation on anyone.
Alok Meshram Says:
June 13th, 2008 at 11:20 pmI guess you didn’t understand my question.
Do read it again and answer.
renegade_division Says:
June 13th, 2008 at 11:36 pm@Alok
I am preparing the answer for your question, meanwhile just wondering have you read the 7th part of this series(Legal or Illega: Copyright) fully?
Alok Meshram Says:
June 13th, 2008 at 11:55 pmIt’s completely off.
renegade_division Says:
June 14th, 2008 at 12:31 amAs the author of this article lemme take the Liberty of answering it.
“Capitalism is the best economic system” here you are implying utility based argument of Capitalism. You see there are two major type of Capitalist arguments, Utilitarian and Natural Rights based. All the authors on this site are Natural Rights based Capitalists. We believe that the Capitalism is the best system for the natural rights of man(that is his right to live without aggression initiated towards him).
This does not mean that we do no acknowledge or understand utilitarian arguments, but in fact since the biggest anti-Capitalist arguments come on utilitarian basis(we must redistribute wealth to help the poor), so we have specialize in utilitarian based arguments too.
Now coming back to your point. Lemme ask you, have you read 7th part of this legal-illegal series where I dealt with the issue of Copyright? The other author(Freesoul) and I heavily disagree on this issue just like most of the Capitalists.
Leaving her viewpoint for her, I do not believe that Intellectual Property should be acknowledged as property rights(I know it may sound like I am not dealing with the right issue, but lemme establish the relation). The reason I gave in that article are simple, Intellectual Property is a intangible thing. Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer are intangible products. They can be copied zillion times without diminishing the original product. So artificial monopoly on information should not be created.
Here is a bit more detailed ans:
Tangible products: Tangible products are those like real property, land, house, iphone, computer.
Intangible products: These are the products which are merely information. Like software, a book’s content(not the book itself), an idea, a formula to make coke(coca cola or cocaine). A photograph(not the actual physical paper on which its printed, but the information of a photograph.
Tangible products cannot be recreated, or summoned with the blink of an eye. If I take your lawn mover, you cannot simply blink and summon another one. You will have to go to market and buy another one, or lets say market does not exist, then dig down a iron mine, make steel, make all the components and make the lawn mover.
On the other hand, intangible products can be recreated with little or no effort. If I read your poem, and write it down on a piece of paper, I haven’t devoided you of your effort. You still own the poem. You are still free to enjoy the fruits of that poem. You don’t have to go and write a new poem since old one was taken away from you.
Now since the difference between tangible and intangible products is clear, lemme proceed. Property rights must be established among tangible products because when a person does labor on a tangible product, he will be devoided of it if its taken away from him.
If a person is devoided from the fruits of his labor, he has no incentive to produce more of it. If I grow 100 tonnes of wheat, and you take it and distribute it among other people, against my consent, then there is no incentive for me to produce more of it. I am devoid of my labor. This is the classic reason why in a society of complete redistribution, productivity falls massively.
Since the productivity falls, and the people are left with no incentive to work, to make them really work, you will have to force people to work, so a society of complete redistribution tends to becomes a dictatorship to succeed.
On the other hand property rights must not be established among intangible products such as software, text, ideas, information. A copyright is merely a govt granted monopoly on information.
Your example of Mozilla Firefox and IE is of tangible products. If everybody was Jesus(who could create 100s of breads and fishes out of only a handful of bread and fish) or tangible property could be copied around like a song on youtube, or a software on file sharing network, then Socialism would be the best way to go. If someone made food at the starting of human civilization, that food could be copied around and distributed like nothing, nobody would be left hungry. In fact following Capitalism then would be counter-productive.
Now you may say well how come Firefox programmers don’t run out of incentive to produce? Well for the starters, every line of code a FF programmer writes he can be a direct beneficiary of that code. Even if nobody uses Firefox, he can still use a better browser.
A programmer may not make a software explicitly for Cocoa industry when he himself is not associated with that industry at all, or nobody is paying him to do so. He might still release the code under GPL if someone pays him to write the code, because he is not losing anything by making it opensource. But Firefox, Linux, Gimp, OpenOffice etc are all common utility programs, he programmer who writes them also hope to use them, and they are successfully able to use them.
This is the core reason why the argument about success of Firefox(which is factually incorrect considering the fact that IE is still the most used browser, and both are free, though I would agree that FF is way better than IE) cannot be used to to demonstrate the success of equivalent concept in real tangible property.
Today being a programmer when I start using Linux, I can enjoy the marvel this software is for all the programmers out there, and even considering that I have never contributing anything in development of Linux I also realize that if I just contribute a little, of only what I want from it, say I just want better support for IMs, I can contribute it for my own sake, and unintentionally end up benefiting millions of other individuals. Same thing is simply not true with farming and growing wheat.
Hope that answers your questions.
Freesoul Says:
June 14th, 2008 at 1:00 amOn the other hand property rights must not be established among intangible products such as software, text, ideas, information. A copyright is merely a govt granted monopoly on information.
NO!
Copyright is not government granted monopoly.
Copyright is Individual freedom, An Individual’s right to deny, to refuse to share his personal skill, his medium to make a living.
It is his right.
And this right is followed by contract!
A contract is enforcible. There is no need of government to do so.
Copyrights will be accepted and followed completely in anarchocapitalistic system.
Obviously you can violate a contract. But remember, you will have to pay for the violation of the contract under the anarcho-capitalistic contractual property system.
Alok Meshram Says:
June 14th, 2008 at 1:03 amRenegade Division,
“Well for the starters, every line of code a FF programmer writes he can be a direct beneficiary of that code. Even if nobody uses Firefox, he can still use a better browser.”
Nice. It is obvious that you’ve had some experience in programming. That is surely a developer’s answer.
My question was simple:
If Open Source gives me better results, why should I support Capitalism? Why should I pay for something when I can get something much better for free?
I had the answer while typing the comment here, but posted it anyways. The answer is simple: The software market is not at all a free market. Microsoft, with it’s monopoly and unfair practices, has steered the Software market off the very roots of Capitalism.
The difference is clearly visible when I compare Gimp (A graphics editing software that is Open source, usually provided with Linux) with Adobe Photoshop (which is the product of a competitive and quite capitalistic market).
The problem lies not with Capitalism, the problem lies with the fact that the ideals and values of Capitalism weren’t sufficiently enforced on the Software market, enabling Microsoft to establish a monopoly and hence leading to stagnation in the quality of their products (why should they produce something better if nobody could provide them competition?).
Look at Google, Adobe, Mathworks… their products are top-notch, and Open Source, I believe, can never equal what they have to offer, because of the very reason you’ve given (which I’ve quoted at the beginning). Instead of being User-oriented, the Open source products are developer minded.
renegade_division Says:
June 14th, 2008 at 1:04 amOk Freesoul you are clueless about the question Alok asked, I merely repeated what I said in other article, use that thread to attack my idea of copyright. Because this is definitely a hijacking of a very valid question Alok asked.
“If open source contribution model is more successful than property rights model, then how come you think Property rights based Capitalism is better and more successful than non-Property rights based Socialism”
So please don’t attack Open Source or copyleft here, its not that debate here.
If you really think copyrights must be acknolwedged in intangible property then try answering Alok’s question your way.
Freesoul Says:
June 14th, 2008 at 1:09 amThat is why volluntary Taxation system is prefferred over all other systems.
Volluntary system means, if you want to share/provide freely without obligation, than you are free to do so.
But there can be no force making it compulsory on you to pay for your own inalieanable Individual rights.
Why linux Mozilla etc are more popular than IE or Windows?
first of all, it is highly contradictory that Linux or Mozilla are more profitable.
Because even if it is considered that they are profitable, then for whom they are profitable? You will have no answer for it. Who is making profit of them?
Linux was generated by a software engineer who freely distributed it. It was his free-will his choice.
IS he making profits of it? No he is not.
Now at various stages linux kept improving with various Individual’s individualistic efforts. None was compulsory and all was volluntary.
No-compulsion signifies it that it is simply pro-capitalist.
Freesoul Says:
June 14th, 2008 at 1:14 amSo please don’t attack Open Source or copyleft here, its not that debate here.
If you really think copyrights must be acknolwedged in intangible property then try answering Alok’s question your way.
I answered Alok and you both allready.
And you cannot attack individual liberty anywhere. Neither here, nor at any other place.
I allready said, I am not at all against OpenSource systems.
OpenSource systems are neither anti-copyrigt act, nor are they anti-capitalism.
open Source systems just signifies that In a Capitalistic free-market system, Individual is free to make his effort available as charity.
There is no force against it.
Alok Meshram Says:
June 14th, 2008 at 1:17 amFreesoul,
You’re still off.
I’ve got my answer(s) and I’m satisfied.
Goodnight, Lady and Gentleman!
city of night Says:
September 14th, 2008 at 6:30 pmok. I’d like to advance this argument, with a prediction.
Which disease do you prefer ? Cancer or HIV ? The point is, society accumulates disease and loses its health with time, that is the principle of idealism-based civilization’s downfall. Just like eventual death no matter how healthy you are.
I say, one writes a book when, what has to be said, to oneself or others, is no longer doubtful. ie., a concept comes into tangible being in order to perpetuate, not exist. Perpetuation is an evolutionary essential, a moral on which knowledge rests. But it is also an individual’s choice, to commit suicide. People rationalize that death and suicide vary in morality, yet the result is the same — the benefits derived by the doer are unknown, a matter of speculation by the ones unconcerned with anything except the benefits to be derived by non-doers of the act.
When a body gets HIV, the virus perpetuates far more than the body cells, thus leading to untimely death of the body. This doesn’t kill a virus, bcause it needs a body only to multiply, and can exist unchanged without it, increasing quantitatively. This is obviously great for a virus species but fatal for the human one.
Cancer on the other hand, is insidious. A spontaneous attempt by a single body cell to perpetuate much faster than the rate of multiplication of the rest of the body cells. (This is like cult behaviour). Cancer cells might be simply making heroic efforts to evolve, but they miss the point that quantity doesn’t exist without functional capability.
A cancer and HIV, both kill the body in their own approaches but, they can be avoided, prevented, not negated or eliminated. Every man dies, yet what would he choose to die of, is not what is concerned here. Every man should die naturally, not of a disease.
HIV feeds off the body, focusing not on its evolution, but on its perpetuation and is sucessful. Cancer cell focuses on its own evolution, free of the rest of the body. It has an obstinate bent of mind, focusing on spread of one kind of quality, and meanwhile totally ignoring that its building up suicide.
Cancer cells are hopeful, yet hopeless cells, for the time being. Their basic intention is protection of themselves first, eventually if the body too benefits — they don’t mind. Yet the “benefits” of cancer as a disease, are unknown. Cancer as a phenomena is more interesting.
Phew, this is getting lengthier than i intended.
Copyrights can not be refused, because they prevent the misuse of ideas of “charity”. We are back to square one. Systems are not constructed, they are self-evolving. They can be studied, yet its like trying to make an intelligent computer to govern a body.
renegade_division Says:
September 15th, 2008 at 12:01 am@City of night
Lemme summerize your argument in one single line to save all the trouble.
According to you, copyrights provide more utility to people than not having copyrights, so we must respect copyrights.
Now what is “misuse of ideas of charity”?