[kenberg]

blackshoe, on 2013-April-28, 22:51, said:

if you define it to mean "let anyone do whatever he likes, not matter who it harms" then I suppose you have a point. But that's not the way I would define it, and I'm not alone. Wikipedia says "Laissez-faire (i/ˌlɛseɪˈfɛər-/, French: [lɛsefɛʁ]) (or sometimes laisser-faire) is an economic environment in which transactions between private parties are free from government restrictions, tariffs, and subsidies, with only enough regulations to protect property rights." To me, and I hope to most everyone, that last phrase is vital. The factory collapse in Bangladesh undoubtedly harmed a number of people in one way or another. The factory owner should be required to repair that harm, as best he can. So no, I can't buy "no repercussions other than bad publicity" at least not in a properly run society.

You say that the last phrase, I assume you mean "only enough regulation to protect property rights", is vital. I am far from sure I know what the last phrase means. You seem to think that it would require a factory owner to "repair the harm, as best he can". I am not seeing the syllogism here. The factory was his property, he did with it as he saw fit, it collapsed and killed some people. His property rights are protected by saying tough luck to those who were killed. I am not at all saying such an approach is desirable, but it seems to be the way to protect his property rights.The pepole that got killed? They were on his property. Tough.

I am not very ideologically oriented, neither left, right nor otherwise. Mostly I find ideological statements are pretty much like Biblical statements. They mean whatever the speaker wishes them to mean and when circumstances change the meaning will change as well. The result is that the ideology is always correct, with maybe just an adjustment or two or three in the meaning. Who can be against property rights? What am I, a commie or something? But what does the phrase mean? There's the rub.

[barmar]

Laissez-faire refers to business transactions. If we legalized selling drugs, it still wouldn't be legal to shoot a competitor. And allowing market forces to set the price of factory work doesn't mean you can build unsafe factories to keep your costs down.

[blackshoe]

PassedOut, on 2013-April-29, 06:20, said:

Many people were killed. How does the factory owner "repair that harm?"

With great difficulty, I imagine.

No system is perfect. No system I can think of can adequately deal with homicide.

[kenberg]

barmar, on 2013-April-29, 08:52, said:

Laissez-faire refers to business transactions. If we legalized selling drugs, it still wouldn't be legal to shoot a competitor. And allowing market forces to set the price of factory work doesn't mean you can build unsafe factories to keep your costs down.

Surely the laws about workplace safety have varied greatly over time and place. Ask the coal miners. And usually the battle is over regulation. Some of the jobs I had when young posed modest danger and probably would be illegal now. For that matter, when I was under 18 I was quite indignant that I was not allowed to work at some jobs because safety regulations forbade it. It simply is not the case and never has been that jobs are required to be safe. They are not even required to be as safe as they can be. If someone violates whatever laws there happen to be, he goes to jail of course. Well, in theory he does.

At any rate, I think "protecting property rights" means different things to different people. Most all of us believe in protecting property rights, as long as we get to say what it means. Certainly I want my right to my property protected. But who doesn't?

[Winstonm]

The property I am most interested in protecting is my person. I am sure that is the case with everyone. In that case I can agree that minimum regulation is best, but then we get into deciding what that entails. We seem to have found out what happens when we allow banks to totally run their own businesses - a near collapse of the banking system because of interwoven risk and a massive bailout.

Again, Adam Smith did not advocate mega-corporations free to do as they wish. The "invisible hand" was competition, and it was meant to be localized competition. The world has outgrown the ideas of Adam Smith.

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2013-April-29, 18:56, said:

If someone violates whatever laws there happen to be, he goes to jail of course.

I gotta wonder: why is "he goes to jail" an "of course"? Why do people immediately think of that, and only that, as a solution? It's not, you know. Guy does harm, physical or economic or whatever, to a bunch of people, and we put him in jail, or fine him, or both. Essentially we tell the people who were harmed "sorry about that, you lose". No. The guy who did the harm should be required to repair that harm.

Guy commits murder, and the government puts him in prison and makes the taxpayers pay for his food, shelter and medical care for the duration of his sentence (the rest of his life?) Whyinhell should we taxpayers pay to support this bum? That makes no sense. Find another way.

[mike777]

I understand the cops said don't enter


thousands said I don't care what the cops say

you guys seem to miss the greater point.

think about it.....

think about the gross bribes....ok I stop with my silly one lines.

think about airline crash...many die.....but billions gain....from failure.

[kenberg]

blackshoe, on 2013-April-29, 22:48, said:

I gotta wonder: why is "he goes to jail" an "of course"?

Yes, I agree, at least sort of. I really meant it more as saying that if a person breaks the law then there are ways to deal with that. We were speaking of work place safety and I was saying that this is a work in progress, but acknowledging that there are laws. I didn't mean to imply that jail is the only possible response to law breaking.


However, on the topic of undoing the damage, I would say good luck. Probably the vast majority of crimes are committed by people who are too incompetent to be self-supporting. You can't get restitution out of someone who has nothing. Other crimes are committed by people who are quite clever. Think Bernie Madoff. It would be great if everyone could get full restitution. Won't happen.

A friend worked for a while on a project called Restorative Justice.He has always been an idealist. Mostly, I think, they worked with young people who had done something stupid and instead of incarcerating them the kids had to do something restorative. Rarely was it really possible to do so fully. I imagine that the real purpose was to set them on a better path. Sometimes it works, I guess.


I am all for requiring criminals to make things right, but I think it is rarely possible and it also may not, by itself, be enough. Saying that if a criminal gets caught stealing he has to give the money back while if he doesn't get caught he gets to keep it is playing heads you win, tails we call it a tie. That has it's limitations as a deterrent. But mostly, from what I have seen, full restitution rarely happens or even could happen.

[WellSpyder]

kenberg, on 2013-April-30, 05:27, said:

Saying that if a criminal gets caught stealing he has to give the money back while if he doesn't get caught he gets to keep it is playing heads you win, tails we call it a tie. That has it's limitations as a deterrent.

I know this is the Water Cooler, but I can't help thinking this is all too often exactly what happens at the bridge table with respect to those who (knowingly) use Unauthorised Information....

[Winstonm]

mike777, on 2013-April-30, 00:22, said:

I understand the cops said don't enter


thousands said I don't care what the cops say

you guys seem to miss the greater point.

think about it.....

think about the gross bribes....ok I stop with my silly one lines.

think about airline crash...many die.....but billions gain....from failure.

Mike,

Air travel is a highly regulated industry. Billions gain from the rare failure because it is considered mandatory by the regulatory body to find the cause and fix it so it is less likely to repeat.

[onoway]

According to the interviews I've heard about this, generally not much changes after each of these disasters. After the one before this where people were trapped in a burning building apparently the only change was a law saying you couldn't lock people in the workplace. Apparently the incidence of child labour has gone slightly down but otherwise conditions are generally still appalling and every time something is done to correct things the business owners find a way around it. There also isn't any compensation for families either as even if anything is designated they seldom if ever get it.

Apparently some western businesses have been inspecting the business locations of the companies they do business with directly, but then those businesses subcontracted the orders out and THOSE businesses are NOT inspected as the western companies don't even know about them.

Mike: as far as I know, the day before the building collapsed, the workers were ordered out of the building but the next day the owner told them the building was safe and they had to go back to work. Since even with working up to 16 hours a day, many of them are barely able to feed their families, they really had no choice.

This is the sort of thing unbridled free enterprise spawns with the ethically challenged.

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2013-April-30, 05:27, said:

Yes, I agree, at least sort of. I really meant it more as saying that if a person breaks the law then there are ways to deal with that. We were speaking of work place safety and I was saying that this is a work in progress, but acknowledging that there are laws. I didn't mean to imply that jail is the only possible response to law breaking.


However, on the topic of undoing the damage, I would say good luck. Probably the vast majority of crimes are committed by people who are too incompetent to be self-supporting. You can't get restitution out of someone who has nothing. Other crimes are committed by people who are quite clever. Think Bernie Madoff. It would be great if everyone could get full restitution. Won't happen.

A friend worked for a while on a project called Restorative Justice.He has always been an idealist. Mostly, I think, they worked with young people who had done something stupid and instead of incarcerating them the kids had to do something restorative. Rarely was it really possible to do so fully. I imagine that the real purpose was to set them on a better path. Sometimes it works, I guess.


I am all for requiring criminals to make things right, but I think it is rarely possible and it also may not, by itself, be enough. Saying that if a criminal gets caught stealing he has to give the money back while if he doesn't get caught he gets to keep it is playing heads you win, tails we call it a tie. That has it's limitations as a deterrent. But mostly, from what I have seen, full restitution rarely happens or even could happen.

If the theif doesn't get caught, he gets to keep the money whatever society has decided to do with those who do get caught.

Full restitution rarely happens because our legal system isn't designed on that principle. It's designed on the principle that crimes are "against the state" and the state gets to recover or confiscate whatever property the criminal has when caught, and to incarcerate or kill (in some cases) him whether anything is recovered or not.

To me, there's a simple syllogism. Rights belong to individuals. Groups, being merely collections of individuals, do not accrue rights that the individual does not have. Individuals do not have the right to incarcerate other individuals, or execute them. Therefore neither do groups. Government is a group, therefore government does not have those rights either. That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo) doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

[kenberg]

Agreed that if a thief is not caught you can't recover anything from him. I was in no way addressing what to do about the thief who isn't caught.

Fortunately my direct experience with victimization has been infrequent and, when it does occur, mild. When I was fifteen, someone stole my athletic supporter from my locker. I coped. but from the modest experience that I have had, there is no realistic chance of getting restitution from a thief who has been caught. Surely you have know people who have no money, have no job, have no plans to get a job. You get restitution from them how? This is, I understand, a major problem in the case of men who do not pay child support to help with the children they have had a role in producing. Perhaps you catch him. Then what? Tell him to pay up? He doesn't have it. Tell him to get a job? Maybe no one will hire him, at any rate he doesn't. Put him in jail? As you say earlier, then we get to feed him.

So not being able to catch the thief is, I think, only part of the problem. And really, not everything that goes wrong is the government's fault.


With regard to the philosophy:
Your syllogism rests, as all syllogisms do, on assumptions. It's easy enough to draw the conclusion I want if I get to stipulate the assumptions. I have mentioned before that a life in mathematics has given me great respect not only for the power of logic but also its limitations.

[hrothgar]

blackshoe, on 2013-April-30, 22:13, said:

To me, there's a simple syllogism. Rights belong to individuals. Groups, being merely collections of individuals, do not accrue rights that the individual does not have. Individuals do not have the right to incarcerate other individuals, or execute them. Therefore neither do groups. Government is a group, therefore government does not have those rights either. That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo) doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

Nonsense on stilts

This claim would come as a great surprise to Hobbes and Rousseau (not to mention Rawls if you want a more modern take on the social contract).

[barmar]

blackshoe, on 2013-April-30, 22:13, said:

To me, there's a simple syllogism. Rights belong to individuals. Groups, being merely collections of individuals, do not accrue rights that the individual does not have. Individuals do not have the right to incarcerate other individuals, or execute them. Therefore neither do groups. Government is a group, therefore government does not have those rights either. That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo) doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

That is so not the right way to think about it.

When there are no laws, we have "vigilante justice", as in the Old West -- people exacted revenge on their own, and there was more violence due to rash, emotional responses. To curb this activity, society sets up laws. There's a social contract that we'll all abide by these laws. If you do, you get to keep your individual rights. But we empower the government to remove rights (to their property and/or liberty) from those who violate the contract (aka criminals). In other words, the alternative to giving the government the right to incarcerate criminals is one in which people will take the law into their own hands (after all, if the government can't punish the original perpetrator, it presumably can't punish the person taking revenge, either); this leads to a cycle of violence (like feuds or gang wars). Basically, we give the government rights to prevent a worse situation.

Read in "The Better Angels of Our Nature" about how violence has declined in societies that have adopted the rule of law.

[Winstonm]

blackshoe, on 2013-April-30, 22:13, said:

If the theif doesn't get caught, he gets to keep the money whatever society has decided to do with those who do get caught.

Full restitution rarely happens because our legal system isn't designed on that principle. It's designed on the principle that crimes are "against the state" and the state gets to recover or confiscate whatever property the criminal has when caught, and to incarcerate or kill (in some cases) him whether anything is recovered or not.

To me, there's a simple syllogism. Rights belong to individuals. Groups, being merely collections of individuals, do not accrue rights that the individual does not have. Individuals do not have the right to incarcerate other individuals, or execute them. Therefore neither do groups. Government is a group, therefore government does not have those rights either. That governments claim those rights is a consequence of the (failed, and morally wrong imo) doctrine called "the divine right of kings".

To me, this type thinking expresses a self-centered worldview that is inconsistent with reality. I believe it expresses not a belief in individual rights but instead a fear of lost control.

[blackshoe]

kenberg, on 2013-May-01, 05:50, said:

Agreed that if a thief is not caught you can't recover anything from him. I was in no way addressing what to do about the thief who isn't caught.

Fortunately my direct experience with victimization has been infrequent and, when it does occur, mild. When I was fifteen, someone stole my athletic supporter from my locker. I coped. but from the modest experience that I have had, there is no realistic chance of getting restitution from a thief who has been caught. Surely you have know people who have no money, have no job, have no plans to get a job. You get restitution from them how? This is, I understand, a major problem in the case of men who do not pay child support to help with the children they have had a role in producing. Perhaps you catch him. Then what? Tell him to pay up? He doesn't have it. Tell him to get a job? Maybe no one will hire him, at any rate he doesn't. Put him in jail? As you say earlier, then we get to feed him.

So not being able to catch the thief is, I think, only part of the problem. And really, not everything that goes wrong is the government's fault.


With regard to the philosophy:
Your syllogism rests, as all syllogisms do, on assumptions. It's easy enough to draw the conclusion I want if I get to stipulate the assumptions. I have mentioned before that a life in mathematics has given me great respect not only for the power of logic but also its limitations.

You give him a job. Okay, it's not that simple. I understand that. But perhaps it could be, if we as a society could think outside the box for a bit. For example: The Constitution prohibits "indentured servitude". The reason for this is that, at the time, Indentured servitude had become in essence permanent slavery. If instead we put safeguards around it, indentured servitude might be a mechanism for, to use your example, making sure that men who are responsible for the existence of a child pay child support.

No, not everything is the government's fault. But it's close.

[blackshoe]

barmar, on 2013-May-01, 08:43, said:

That is so not the right way to think about it.

When there are no laws, we have "vigilante justice", as in the Old West -- people exacted revenge on their own, and there was more violence due to rash, emotional responses. To curb this activity, society sets up laws. There's a social contract that we'll all abide by these laws. If you do, you get to keep your individual rights. But we empower the government to remove rights (to their property and/or liberty) from those who violate the contract (aka criminals). In other words, the alternative to giving the government the right to incarcerate criminals is one in which people will take the law into their own hands (after all, if the government can't punish the original perpetrator, it presumably can't punish the person taking revenge, either); this leads to a cycle of violence (like feuds or gang wars). Basically, we give the government rights to prevent a worse situation.

Read in "The Better Angels of Our Nature" about how violence has declined in societies that have adopted the rule of law.

I never said there should be no laws, nor that there should be "vigilante justice". Revenge is not a justification for doing violence against others.

There is a difference between "right" and "power". We cannot "give the government rights," particularly rights we don't have ourselves. As for power, remember what Lord Acton said.

[hrothgar]

blackshoe, on 2013-May-01, 10:05, said:

You give him a job. Okay, it's not that simple. I understand that. But perhaps it could be, if we as a society could think outside the box for a bit. For example: The Constitution prohibits "indentured servitude". The reason for this is that, at the time, Indentured servitude had become in essence permanent slavery.

And yet, the same constitution had no problem legalizing actual slavery...

A quick perusal of Wikipedia indicates that indentured servitude in the US remained in use until 1917 and seems to suggest that it was not prohibited by the Constitution, but rather fell out of use through some combination of

1. Decreasing costs for transportation
2. Abolition of debtor's prisons
3. Labor substitution

[hrothgar]

blackshoe, on 2013-May-01, 10:09, said:

We cannot "give the government rights," particularly rights we don't have ourselves.

I believe that God lives on a planet called Kolob.
I believe that Jesus has his own planet as well.
And I believe that the Garden of Eden was in Jackson County, Missouri.