| | Mr. Boese: where you quote from Objectivism Online: "Since fish in the ocean are not anyone's property, the relative scarcity or abundance of any particular species is none of the government's business", I would say that OO is a forum for free speech by Objectivists, just like RoR, and people will have their disagreements.
When is a disagreement NOT un-Objectivist? When it does not advocate that one man's rights may interfere with another's. So long as both sides of a disagreement stick to that premise that one man's rights do not abrogate the rights of others, then all disagreements are Objectivist, though they may be in opposition to each other.
Rand wrote:
Any material element or resource which, in order to become of use or value to men, requires the application of human knowledge and effort, should be private property—by the right of those who apply the knowledge and effort. But we can't have fishermen fighting with each other on the high seas to determine who was there first, or who has prior rights, etc. About this subject, as with taxation, she wrote:
how to determine the best means of applying it in practice—is a very complex one and belongs to the field of the philosophy of law. The task of political philosophy is only to establish the nature of the principle and to demonstrate that it is practicable. So I may properly disagree with the above quote from OO. If licenses, for example, are the chosen means of determining who gets to fish where and for what species, then governments indeed must be concerned about how much is taken. This is done every year in every State over how many deer are to be culled, and in some states concerning other animals that are predatory or have become too numerous to maintain an ecology among the rest of the natural world.
Objectivists may disagree with each other so long as they do not advocate ideas that abrogate the sovereignty of any individual, except where it has been decided that all individuals must relinquish a part of it to the "common sovereignty" of which I spoke last week. The common sovereignty is composed of the rights relinquished by individuals so that the government may do its job as it is supposed to do it.
So far, everything you have advocated has been an abrogation of sovereignty where it does not belong. So your arguments are not Objectivist; and so long as we don't advocate such abrogations, we can disagree with each other all we like and all day long.
That principle is the means by which your "No True Scotsman" fallacy may be solved. How can you determine whether any particular self-professed Objectivist author is really an Objectivist, or just someone who says they are? By whether or not they advocate the right of one man at the expense of another.
The concept of a “right” pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. [ ] As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights. [ ] Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. AR So where a natural resource like fish or trees or oil are not owned until action has been taken to take it, or to produce from those resources, rules must be implemented by governments whose sole aim is the protection of sovereign rights, not the abrogation of them.
Please concern your arguments in this forum to ideas of your own that do not abrogate my sovereign individual rights, and you will earn the title of Objectivist.
By the way, on a "True Scotsman" Objectivist website, ARI, I found this concerning one means of dealing with how to determine the means by which to distribute rights.
Because nature requires us to be productive in order to live, the businessman's pursuit of profit is properly regarded as a virtue, not a vice indebting him to a hungry planet.
Legally, this viewpoint is embodied in the American ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, secured by private property rights. A historical example of the proper principle in action is the Homestead Act of 1862. Farmers acquired property rights, i.e., private deeds, to 270 million acres of fertile Midwest prairie land by the productive act of farming it, parcel by parcel. link
Fish are not parcels of land. They must be dealt with differently. But it still comes down to rules that must be implemented by governments whose sole aim is the protection of sovereign rights, not the abrogation of them, and that belongs to the field of the philosophy of law.
(Edited by Curtis Edward Clark on 1/01, 6:12am)
(Edited by Curtis Edward Clark on 1/01, 7:31am)
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