| Mr Khan said: The inalienability of the right to property (or the definition of what is property which you have rights over) does seem to be at the root of the debate. A side rant of mine has been for a significant revision of intellectual property definitions as well as what a corporate entity can and can't directly own. If we truly desire a better world, however, somewhere, at some point, the government has to step in. If we value a free market system, such a system first needs to work in a way that is humane, and this can only occur if all of the actors have the right values instilled in them, which would require State action on education towards righteousness and humanity. If we were to make the rights for individuals to retain their property absolute, this would lead to infringements on other rights in the ensuing anarchy. |
In this case, I don't think we're talking about wanting anarchy vs. the belief in the need for government. I'm not an anarchist because anarchy simply can't work. If nature hates a vacuum, it hates a power vacuum even more, so anarchy will almost immediately become some sort of totalitarian system as those most capable of applying force come into power. I'm specifically objecting to the Keynesian idea that a guy who earned his money has too much of it and is just going to stick it under the mattress, so the government should confiscate it and give it to some indolent soul because he'll immediately spend it and inject it back into the economy. Even if that were correct, it's still abhorrent to me.
More generally, I don't like the assumption that the government spending the people's money is just the way things should be. I really wish that those in government felt there was some sort of sacred trust that they dare not break by spending recklessly and that they actually felt a little bad about spending it at all. Taxation may or may not be theft on its own merits, but there's a point when government spending becomes so institutionally and maliciously wanton that it becomes so. That's what drives me up a wall about the Krugmans of the world. Here's a guy who railed against Bush every day because he was going to take us over a cliff, and ooh, the big debt is scary, and shit, I'd better get a fixed-rate mortgage because interest rates are gonna be sky high, etc. Now that the debt is even larger and there's no end in sight to trillion dollar deficits, he's as unbothered as he can be because Blue Team is in the White House and all we need to set this economy right is for the government to drop money on people from helicopters or maybe a good old fashioned alien invasion, and by the way, wasn't 9/11 a wonderful stimulus? All those broken windows! And this guy is supposed to be an intellectual, not a mindless and increasingly demented partisan hack who thinks that government can best decide who can more efficiently use money regardless of who earned to to begin with.
It seems to me that this practice is also hugely corrupting, and when politicians figure out they can bribe the people with public money, and people figure out they can get politicians to lavish other people's money on them, that's when democracies generally die. If we're not there yet, I think we're getting damned close. You can't have a successful society when you demonize success.
Assuming you're talking about a loosening of IP laws (you're against SOPA and PIPA, IIRC), then I agree.
