RoR: Forum

Thanks for the housing Ted. Give ya a lever you will tell me where to stand huh? If one had a STOP sign that stood for Stop Tryannical Oppressors Presumptions would you walk thru it because you had the desire to display your free will ?

Post 41

Sunday, January 3, 2010 - 4:04pm

A law and there can not be that many of them.you suckle you walk then you crawl . Every thing else is just selfish.

Post 42

Sunday, January 3, 2010 - 6:22pm

Congratulations, Harley, you are the 2010 winner of the James Joyce Opacity in Posting Award.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
- by James Joyce

Chapter I

ONCE UPON A TIME and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo�

His father told him that story: his father looked at him through a glass: he had a hairy face.

He was baby tuckoo. The moocow came down the road where Betty Byrne lived: she sold lemon platt.

O, the wild rose blossoms
On the little green place.

He sang that song. That was his song.

O, the green wothe botheth.

When you wet the bed, first it is warm then it gets cold. . . .

(Edited by Ted Keer on 1/03, 6:27pm)

Post 43

Sunday, January 3, 2010 - 7:04pm

I voted false. Example: A government says they are going to steal all the property of a certain ethnic group because the government wants to finance an extensive war machine. This is an objectively true statement. The enforcement of this law is strictly observed, and horrendously severe.

Now, if you define "objective law" as "laws based on Objectivist principles", as several people are assuming here, we might have grounds for an interesting discussion. I would submit, though, that in common useage "objective" law is a vague word subject to various interpretation, and so as written this wording could mean several things, some good, some not so much.

But, even if we stipulate for the sake of argument that "objective law" is being used as noted in the posts above, again, using common useage, "strict" and "severe have negative connotations that would incline me to vote false.

For example, the problem with virtually every law is that words on a piece of paper can't capture all the intricacy of reality for every person in every situation. Say a certain road has had a speed limit that dates from the 40s, when cars were much less sophisticated and handled worse, the roads were in worse shape, and safety equipment like seat belts didn't even exist. And, that speed limit was deliberately set so some of the worst drivers on the road in some of the worse weather would still be safe at that speed.

Now, 60+ years later, that obsolete speed limit is laughably low for modern high performance cars, especially with a skilled driver in good weather, so if it is strictly enforced without any leeway at all, it will result in massive injustice and inefficiency.

And, as noted above, "severe" implies an overreaction, an inability to mete out consequences in proportion to the offense or harm caused.

So, for me, this question is a fail on at least two, and possibly three, different issues.

Final observation: as someone who has spent many years working at the legislature, it seems painfully evident to me that any law that isn't based on the NIOF principle will cause harm and injustice, and even then the devil is in the details. Even an Objectivist legislature could screw things up, though not as badly as the current crop of statists. So, the best government is at most extremely minarchist, if not anarcho-capitalist -- the fewer and the simpler the laws, the harder it is to screw them up.
(Edited by Jim Henshaw on 1/03, 7:26pm)

Post 44

Sunday, January 3, 2010 - 7:11pm

Ted,

You said, "Creating the ad hoc distinction moral crime and legal crime for the sake of argument is absurd."

Your presumption that I create that distinction rather than it existing in reality, and that I did so just for the sake of argument is what is absurd.

If you can't grasp the difference between something that is considered a crime, regardless of what statutes exist or don't... and an act as defined as criminal by a criminal statute than there is no use continuing this discussion.

Do you have no concept of the need to craft legislative language to meet an understanding of moral crime? How do you ever understand a gap between the two or a failure to achieve an even close approximation of the legal definition with the intended protection of individual rights?
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You said, "The concept of law in the fundamental sense is genetically dependent upon and hence properly defined in relation to the concept of crime in the fundamental sense."

That is what I have been saying! A concept of moral crime gives rise to the need for a criminal law. The criminal law creates a legal crime. What in the hell makes that so hard to understand!

For the lack of a proper law an action that constitutes a moral crime will not be addressed by government. Or, because of bad law, an act that is not a moral crime is treated by the government as an action defined as criminal under the law.
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You said, "A minarchist does not start with the totalitarian notion of a government by its nature able to pass any "law" it likes, and then argue that it would be a good idea for the state to limit its power to outlawing only those crimes which violate rights. All this is a very, very high price to pay in order to deny, based merely on the false and "progressive" notion that strict means cruel, that one cannot have tyranny without non-objective law."

I haven't a clue as to who you are addressing - certainly not me, since nothing I've written even remotely requires that lecture.
----------------------

You said, "A strict and severe objective legal system is a prerequisite for full personal liberty and one of the highest and most valuable achievements of mankind."

I agree completely even though we might disagree with whether 'objective' will also guarantee that the law you are describing is strictly and severely based upon individual rights. It is clearly a prerequisite - but it must also be based upon individual rights. The protection of individual rights is the purpose, 'objective' is a standard, and strict and severe are measures.

Post 45

Sunday, January 3, 2010 - 8:01pm

Deleted

Sunday, January 3, 2010 - 8:58pm

I'm tired of being misread. If you want to pretend there is no difference between an action that is a crime by moral standards, and an action that is a crime under the a law... Well, go ahead - nothing I can do about it.

You said, "I define crime based on the more concrete notion of intentional harm and law based on the more concrete notion of rule to redress crime." Yes, and you are the one who choses to see crime as somehow unrelated to individual rights which makes your "intentional harm" a floating abstraction. Harm by what standard? Blank out.

Referring to me, you said, "You treat laws as creating crimes. That is the priority of consciousness." Total crap! I treat laws as creating legal crimes. I've been very specific about that which make your remarks downright slimy by ignoring that distinction. How low will you go in twisting my words and to what gain? Everyone that reads this will see who is playing cheap word games.

I said that law is something that is passed by legislature - if you think it grows on trees you can make that assertion as well. I didn't claim to be presenting a polished definition of law, or stating what law should be. I was disputing your absurd notion that a passed law isn't a law if it doesn't meet your idea of crimes based upon "harm" that has no standard to be judged by - since you chose to toss out individual rights in this area.

(Edited by Teresa Summerlee Isanhart on 1/22, 3:18am)

(Edited by Teresa Summerlee Isanhart on 1/22, 3:19am)

Post 47

Sunday, January 3, 2010 - 10:07pm

Deleted

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 3:59am

I don't understand Steve's emphasis on the legislature, either. It seems beehive and relativistic to me. As if anything that comes out of a legislature is due the respect of defining it's product as "law."

People shouldn't be expected to endure whatever the legislature hands down, but Steve's definition seems to say they should.

Ted can be sharp, but that doesn't make him mean spirited. He'll be the first to give any poster the benefit of the doubt, and often is.

Post 49

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 5:32am

Ted & Steve: You two seem to be talking past each other about two entirely different things: "Natural law" versus "laws enacted by a legislature".

Natural laws are the rights that flow from a moral code, such as the NIOF principle and the principle of self-ownership.

Laws enacted by a legislature are the result of generally unprincipled scoundrels elected to office seeking to benefit themselves and their allies at the expense of the broader public while maintaining the fiction of being servants of those they exploit.

The two rarely are the same -- a Venn diagram of the two shows little overlap.

Post 50

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 5:39am

I agree that this is somewhat of a trick question, but I went ahead and voted True for the following reason. The terms "severe" and "strict" are clearly fairly subjective. It can be a subjective call as to whether or not the punishment for a given crime is too "severe," or whether or not the criminalization of a given active is too "strict." The rationale for my vote of true is that objective principles will enable the right answers (e.g. is the death penalty appropriate for certain crimes, and is prostitution, or possesion of a handgun, a crime at all?).

Post 51

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 6:02am

Ted, re these assertions:

"Tyranny requires non-objective laws. No matter how severe a form of government you might have, if its laws and edicts are objective, it is not a tyranny."

(To forestall Jim's objection, where we simply assume that the government is criminal, I suppose you have to stipulate that the government follows its own laws.)

Paragraph one: Again, this depends on how you define the phrase "objective law". Ted appears to be working off a definition where any law that is tyrannical is by definition not "objective law". However, the reality is that ANY code of law enacted by human beings is going to reflect the underlying nature of those human beings. If you're talking about an ethereal, unwritten ideal conception of laws that isn't tyrannical in the sense that they must conform to natural law based on the NIOF principle, then fine. But actual human interactions based on these principles is going to reflect actual human nature. Codes of law are passed by people, not angelic beings.

Paragraph two: Technically, I don't assume the government is criminal, in the sense that "the government" is an abstract conception, whereas in reality what happens is that a bunch of elected individuals in the legislative branch get together / conspire (pick one) to do things to other individuals, and then yet other individuals in the executive branch riff off those instructions to do the actual helping / exploiting (pick one) of individuals who generally didn't actually consent to any of this.

The actual members I've observed in the legislative branch are generally worse people than the general public they purport to represent. Some are fucking evil, period, full stop. Some are well-intentioned, but pass laws that have evil outcomes. These legislators aren't technically criminals while enacting laws, since they invariably previously have passed laws specifying that no matter what laws they pass, they cannot be held criminally liable for their work product.

And if all this seems really, really cynical to you: in about 4.5 hours I will be back at the state capitol after a two year hiatus, working for one of the 2 out of 76 individuals composing the Hawaii legislative branch who, generally, seems to try not to be particularly evil. So I feel I'm entitled to be just a wee bit feisty about the notion that there is such a thing as enacted laws that conform to the sort of natural laws that Ted appears to be writing about, or that any government that I've ever observed can be "strict" or "severe" without doing a buttload of harm (to use the phrase apparently current among teenagers).

Oh, and as any regular reader of Reason.com's Hit N Run, or in particular the posts of Radley Balko, can attest, the individuals working for the government frequently violate those laws, both on and off duty. The first person I worked for at the legislature got his job because the incumbent went to prison for using his legislative office to shake down his constituents. And, at least in Hawaii, a startlingly high percentage of the former members have in fact lost their jobs because of felony convictions for which they ended up serving time.

I suppose you have to stipulate that the government follows its own laws

So, no, the "government" (i.e. individual agents employed by the state, acting under the color of authority granted to them by this oftentimes criminal enterprise) often does not follow its own laws. I won't so stipulate, because the objective evidence in terms of criminal convictions and videotaped and otherwise documented abuses says otherwise.
(Edited by Jim Henshaw on 1/04, 6:13am)

Post 52

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 9:30am

You object to what you call this "assertion":

"Tyranny requires non-objective laws. No matter how severe a form of government you might have, if its laws and edicts are objective, it is not a tyranny."

Just whose assertion is it, Jim?

You have the same problem as Steve, you define a law as "whatever a legislature says it is." But that definition is both formally and historically invalid. "Something passed by a legislature" is not a proper definition, it doesn't have the genus and species form. That is a game stopper right there. Objectivism doesn't allow discussions based on invalid premises. And again, this "definition" is also historically invalid. Legislatures didn't exist for centuries going around passing "laws" which were "whatever" and then one day realize that, hey, we should pass a law preventing people from committing crimes.

Just as Objectivism denies that "something on a canvas" is a valid definition of painting, or "doing whatever you want" is a valid definition of selfishness, Objectivism denies that "something passed by a legislature" is a valid definition of law.

And finally, Jim, you simply beg the question. You are actually angry that I expect the question that has actually been asked to be answered. The question is whether a government which strictly enforces objective laws, objective rules for redressing crimes, can be tyrannical. You insist on answering a different question. You say that a government which strictly enforces laws won't strictly enforce laws. You want to answer the question whether a strict government that does whatever it wants could be tyrannical. But being strict and doing whatever you want is a contradiction that a four year old could identify.

Post 53

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 9:35am

Upon reading this

"Modern Art"

Man�s need of precise definitions rests on the Law of Identity: A is A, a thing is itself. A work of art is a specific entity which possesses a specific nature. If it does not, it is not a work of art. If it is merely a material object, it belongs to some category of material objects�and if it does not belong to any particular category, it belongs to the one reserved for such phenomena: junk.

�Something made by an artist� is not a definition of art. A beard and a vacant stare are not the defining characteristics of an artist.

�Something in a frame hung on a wall� is not a definition of painting.

�Something with a number of pages in a binding� is not a definition of literature.

�Something piled together� is not a definition of sculpture.

�Something made of sounds produced by anything� is not a definition of music.

�Something glued on a flat surface� is not a definition of any art.There is no art that uses glue as a medium. Blades of grass glued on a sheet of paper to represent grass might be good occupational therapy for retarded children�though I doubt it�but it is not art.

�Because I felt like it� is not a definition or validation of anything.

do you think "something passed by a legislature" is a valid definition of law?

Post 54

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 9:48am

Laws are just codified decrees... how those degrees are arrived at varies immensely, from rational discourse based on objective moral assessments to [as so oft seems to be the case today] powerlusting demands of the unearned over the earned.... thus are laws being both moral and immoral, and obeying or disobeying becomes a matter of personal conscience in context...

Post 55

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 10:11am

But what do you mean by "decree"? Something announced? That's back to a law is whatever a legislator says.

You can't treat "a law is a legislative decree" as if it were a fundamental. It begs the question as to what legislators are and why they make decrees. Their existence is not an irreducible primary.

Consider values. Objectivists don't just take the existence of values for granted. Neither should they take the existence of laws for granted. Values came to exist because living beings face the alternative of existence or non-existence. Laws don't just exist. The came into existence as a way to deal with crime. The fact that they are codified statements is incomplete and non-essential. Laws are essentially rules of how governments redress crimes. For what possible reason would legislators exist and why would they make decrees if it weren't at first for the need to address crimes?

I never thought I would see the day that Objectivists would want to argue that the proper definition of law is whatever a legislator decrees. If this poll question (from Rand's own words!) can drive Objectivists to statist relativism then it surely is a "trick question."

Post 56

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 10:58am

Ted I don't have any bone to pick with the issues in this thread per se, as I tend to agree with much of what you said and what Rand said. But could you explain what Rand meant when she spoke of "non-objective" law if such a thing can't be called a law? Why did she use the term then? Shouldn't she have just said "There's no such thing as non-objective law"?

Post 57

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 12:27pm

I suggest you go here to Google Books and read pages 59-61. Rand says the essence of tyrannical power is arbitrary power.

"Why did she use the term then? Shouldn't she have just said "There's no such thing as non-objective law"?"

I noted above that there are many senses to the words law and so forth, but was replied to "wry"ly. My point was valid. The crucial issue is that "act of legislation" is only a very derivative and non-fundamental sense. That sense of the law as "an act of the legislature" is about as valid as defining art as something found hanging on the walls of art museums, and just as circular. You can't start with "something passed by the legislature" as the primary conception of what law is, and then work backwards to an objective and valid fundamental conception of the law. The fundamental concept of law is, again, a rule by which a government identifies and redresses a crime. In that sense law can exist without legal codification, just like common law, yet be quite valid. That is the sense Rand is using.

There is a terrible package deal in modern progressive "thought" about the law. As the state has come to punish more and more acts that are not crimes, from blasphemy and prostitution to drug use and homosexuality through anti-trust and alcohol consumption, those on the left who see a problem with absolutist totalitarianism have not retreated in their support for non-objective legislation. Rather, they have retreated into arbitrary legal laxity. Look at New York City before Giuliani. While the actual statutes were strict, all sorts of behavior like public drinking and turnstyle hopping were allowed. Zoning regulations were technically strict, but you could get a variance if you had the right connections.

One example should make the problem perfectly clear. There is a garbage depot that was built over the FDR highway at about 96th street where garbage from the city is loaded onto barges in the East River. As soon as the depot opened, a body was found in the garbage. The depot was shut down for more than a day while evidence was gathered. Garbage backed up, and almost as soon as the depot was re-opened, another body was found. With 2000 murders a year in NYC, it was quite clear that an expectation that 100 bodies a year might pass through this bottleneck, keeping it permanently closed for criminal investigation. The solution? A doubling of the police force, offers of significant rewards for convictions, decriminalization of drugs, life imprisonment for violent cons, and the death penalty strictly enforced? No, they simply stopped "noticing" the bodies. The answer wasn't a return to strict objective law, it was arbitrary laxity in the name of pragmatism.

(Edited by Ted Keer on 1/04, 12:53pm)

Post 58

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 2:00pm

Ted:

I noted above that there are many senses to the words law

I think I understand what you're saying then. Basically others are equivocating on the term "law"?

The fundamental concept of law is, again, a rule by which a government identifies and redresses a crime.

Could it also be defined as a rule by which the government mandates or prohibits an action? Would this be the other sense to the word you were talking about?

Post 59

Monday, January 4, 2010 - 2:51pm