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["Phillip Rhodes" <motley.crue.fan AT gmail.com>]

On 7/16/07, Cristóbal Palmer <cristobalpalmer AT gmail.com> wrote:

> Why is property a fundamental right? Here's the preamble to our Constitution:

 

I never said the Constitution made property a fundamental right, and I never will.  And that's

because I hold that Constitutions don't grant rights, they simply affirm a subset of them.
Rights, such as the right to property, I personally property ownership hold to be such a fundamental and
inalienable right that it transcends the issue of Constitutions of governments.  I believe
that all individuals are inherently sovereign and own what they own, and that all other rights
extend from property rights (eg, I own my body, so if you kill me you are damaging my property).

-

I challenge you to give an example of a nation of larger than trivial
size that has survived for more than a generation without compulsory
taxation and Eminent Domain.

I don't know that one has, but I also consider it to be a moot point.  For starters, just
because something hasn't been done before doesn't mean it can't be done.  Secondly, I don't
put much value in the idea of nation-states at all.  I'd prefer to see a world without that particular
concept.

Don't get me wrong: I don't think that people or the government should
be able to go around seizing people's stuff for no good reason (that
would conflict with a reasonable person's sense of justice).

But who gets to decide who a "reasonable person" is?  And what if it's
my property but I disagree with the choice of "reasonable person" to arbitrate
this? It might seem like I'm just being contrary for the sake of it, but I believe this
is a legitimate point of dispute: two people, both of whom would probably be
judged "reasonable" can certainly have diametrically opposed views on, well, pretty
much anything.  I just don't think there is an valid way to make an objective
judgment about what is "reasonable."
 

In fact,
our current Supreme Court has gone a bit overboard with Eminent
Domain. When it's okay to take Phil's stuff from him should be an
incredibly short list of circumstances, but our country has recognized
from the beginning that such circumstances do exist.

"Our Country" may recognize it, what what if I don't?  I reject the notion
that "society" has any intrinsic authority to make rules like this.

Let me use something of a metaphor here.  If you're driving in your car, and an
armed gunman comes along and orders you out of your car and takes it, you
would probably call that a car-jacking and insist that it was theft.  If 5 armed
gunmen do the same thing, it's still theft, no?  What about 20? Still theft, right?
50?  What about 300 million?   If the principle is that having your property
taken by force is wrong, why does just changing the numbers change that?

If it makes more sense that way, pretend it's a mugging instead of a car-jacking
the principle is the same.

And I know people will contend that will contend that the money taken
by taxation is used for good causes, and to fund essential service, etc.
I reply by asking this: If you're mugged at gunpoint and a guy takes, say, $500.00
off of you, you'd normally be upset, right?  But what if he then walks across the
street and donates it to a homeless shelter?  Are you still upset, even though
it went for a good cause?   Personally I would be, simply because I was
deprived of what I hold to be my right to choose what to do with my property (money
in this case).  Even if I intended to give all or most of that money to the homeless
shelter in the first place, I'd *still* be upset, just as a matter of principle.

Simply put, I believe that the right of an individual to own their property, and to
choose what to do with it, trumps everything else.  And I believe we can
construct a system of society and "governance" that is functional, that does
not depend on depriving people of these fundamental rights.



TTYL,


Phil