SLAVERY REPARATIONS COULD COST UP TO $14 TRILLION

[rainbow]

But how would black Africans who originally enslaved then come up with that kind of money lol.

[mistermack]

As far as property rights go, property applies to living people.
Dead people can't own property. They can't do anything. They're dead.
So to say that you have the right to give your property to someone AFTER you are dead is illogical. You're dead. You can't do anything or own anything.

At the moment, we CHOOSE to carry out the wishes of the departed, as stated in a will.
But there is no inalienable right, or moral obligation to do that.
If you want to do something with your property, do it while you are alive.
And the person who receives it can pay tax on it, just like anyone else, who actually works for their money.

[Seth]

Yeah, it looks more like a post hoc justification for stealing other's property.

One must defend one's rights if one expects them to be respected.

[Seth]

As far as property rights go, property applies to living people.
Dead people can't own property. They can't do anything. They're dead.
So to say that you have the right to give your property to someone AFTER you are dead is illogical. You're dead. You can't do anything or own anything.

Ah, but the point is that in the moment before death one owns property and can direct that that property pass to a designated heir at the moment of death in the same way that one can transfer property to another upon any trigger event. The transfer of title happens simultaneously with the trigger event. The actual transfer of the object might take somewhat longer, but it occurs at the same instant as the trigger event.

At the moment, we CHOOSE to carry out the wishes of the departed, as stated in a will.
But there is no inalienable right, or moral obligation to do that.
If you want to do something with your property, do it while you are alive.
And the person who receives it can pay tax on it, just like anyone else, who actually works for their money.

Actually, it isn't the wishes of the departed, it's the wishes of the living to be executed at the instant of death, so your statement is non sequitur.

As for the "right" or moral obligation involved, we differ in opinion. You seem to think it must be moral for someone other than the designated beneficiary to take title to the property, but you state no moral reasoning in support of this opinion.

And in some states (about a dozen I think) both the estate of the deceased pays a tax AND the beneficiary ALSO pays a tax. How is THAT morally justifiable, pray tell?

Of course the prime question is what is the moral argument for taxing any estate at all, ever?

[laklak]

May not be moral or inalienable, but it's certainly legal in every country I know of. Property goes to the deceased's estate, which is a legal entity. It is then (usually) distributed according to the wishes of the deceased as specified in the will. Unless you're a ancient billionaire who leaves it all to his young, stripper wife, of course. THEN the lawyers get involved. A billion in probate is blood in the water to those dudes.

[Hermit]

Yeah, it looks more like a post hoc justification for stealing other's property.

One must defend one's rights if one expects them to be respected.

That's akin to the law of the jungle rather than a virtue of civilisation.

[Seth]

Yeah, it looks more like a post hoc justification for stealing other's property.

One must defend one's rights if one expects them to be respected.

That's akin to the law of the jungle rather than a virtue of civilisation.

Indeed. It's directly related to the Organic Rights I've mentioned before. Every living organism, as a function of biology and evolution, seeks out and takes possession of those resources necessary for survival. Even bacteria show this behavior and the companion behavior of defending the exclusive possession and use of those resources, be it light for photosynthesis fought over by plants to cheeseburgers fought over by kids.

The right to seek out and take exclusive possession and use of the resources necessary for survival is the First Organic Right, ie: the right to private property.

The Second Organic Right is the right to defend that exclusive possession and use from being taken by another, ie: the right to self defense.

However, "defense" is a broad term that is not exclusively limited to physical force. The system of laws we humans operate under is nothing more than a complex system of resolving disputes over the possession and use of private property without physical force. Courts and lawyers are a (mostly) non-violent battlefield where the arena is the courtroom, the referee is the judge, and the combatants are the lawyers, as a substitute for the ancient practice of trial by combat. But the fundamental Organic Rights (in this case the right to private property and the right to self defense) remain, even if they are vindicated using different "civilized" methods today.

That's what "civilized" means.

[Hermit]

The right to seek out and take exclusive possession and use of the resources necessary for survival is the First Organic Right, ie: the right to private property.

There is nothing organic to the right to private property. It's a social right, and taking possession of someone else's private property via "adverse possession" is a decidedly uncivilised method of acquisition.

I have tried to find an explanation of the concept of "Organic Rights" and discovered that feeding the search criterion, "Organic Rights", into Google returns the rather meagre number of 258 results, some of which are about pharmacology, chemistry, diets or total garblish. This one in particular was the source of much laughter. Looks like someone has copy-pasted some text he / she fed through Google Translate when that facility was having a particularly bad day. The combination of the low number of hits and the atrocious quality of the ones Google did find lead me to regard the concept of "Organic Rights", whatever that may be, as the product of a quite small number of fevered individuals on the very far end of the lunatic fringe.

[JimC]

Hermit wrote:

...the product of a quite small number of fevered individuals on the very far end of the lunatic fringe....

Devotees of Sethism...

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, it looks more like a post hoc justification for stealing other's property.

One must defend one's rights if one expects them to be respected.

That's akin to the law of the jungle rather than a virtue of civilisation.

Indeed. It's directly related to the Organic Rights I've mentioned before. Every living organism, as a function of biology and evolution, seeks out and takes possession of those resources necessary for survival.

So when the Marxists get together collectively and enslave your sorry arse, they are moral according to your own system.

[mistermack]

As for the "right" or moral obligation involved, we differ in opinion. You seem to think it must be moral for someone other than the designated beneficiary to take title to the property, but you state no moral reasoning in support of this opinion.

And in some states (about a dozen I think) both the estate of the deceased pays a tax AND the beneficiary ALSO pays a tax. How is THAT morally justifiable, pray tell?

Of course the prime question is what is the moral argument for taxing any estate at all, ever?

The answer of course, is that the method of taxation is not a moral question.
Taxation yes-or-no, you might possibly make an argument around that. My answer is yes.
Like most of the rest of the world. So you lose.

But once you've decided that taxation is moral, then the method is just the how.
Once you've decided that the government can take your property, whether you like it or not, then what, when and where are just details.

Personally, I prefer to have estates taxed, than worked-for income taxed.
And while people are paying tax on money that they have got up and gone to work for, then tax on estates is more moral, and that's ok.
Not that, as I said, it's a morality question at all.

[pErvinalia]

[Seth]

The right to seek out and take exclusive possession and use of the resources necessary for survival is the First Organic Right, ie: the right to private property.

There is nothing organic to the right to private property.

Sure there is. While "rights" are social constructs, they are not random social constructs, they are firmly based in natural evolutionary pressures and behavior. The reason it's important to recognize this is because all human behavior, including social behavior, is likewise based in "organic" evolution. Acknowledging the natural behavior of all creatures, and especially humans in this context gives us a rational basis upon which to formulate social rules of order that are likely to be successful. When we try to buck the evolutionary behavior of human beings, it usually ends badly, so the rational thing to do is to observe and analyze what humans actually do and why they do it and try to construct social frameworks that build on the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of human nature.

This is why, for example, socialism always fails. It refuses to acknowledge basic human nature and the Organic Laws which drive that behavior. It is the need of the organism to seek out, take possession of, and defend that exclusive possession and use of the resources necessary for survival that allows the organism to survive to pass on it's genes to the next generation. There is no real dispute that this is "natural" behavior for virtually all living organisms is there?

In any advanced species with social behaviors, like wolves, this core need drives both social and individual behavior and when the social behavior fails to meet the basic needs of an individual wolf, that wolf, like any human, will eventually discard the social norms and resort to the norms of individual survival, which calls for the wolf, or the human, to seek out and take exclusive possession and use of the resources necessary for survival even against the competing interests of other members of the social group. Thus, the Alpha wolf eats first and the Omega wolf has to fight for the scraps, but will fight for those scraps, or go off on his own if necessary in order to achieve the First Organic Law's results.

Socialism is based on the premise that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, which is more ant-like than wolf-like, and this premise violates the First Organic Law by violating the individual's First Organic Right, which is the right to make exclusive use of the resources necessary for the individual's survival. Even ants will try to eat to survive.

For this reason socialism is always at odds with natural human behavior and therefore there is always conflict between what the collective wants and what the individual needs that requires a deeply authoritarian social structure with the strength to deny, and enforce, the needs of the individual in the interests of the collective. Such a system is inherently and inexorably coercive and therefore unstable precisely because it ignores basic human nature and behavior. That makes it a deeply flawed and doomed to fail social structure.

It's a social right, and taking possession of someone else's private property via "adverse possession" is a decidedly uncivilised method of acquisition.

And how do you square that with the socialist proposition that there is no such thing as private property in the first place? Do not socialist systems claim the right to simply expropriate whatever property exists to the needs of the many irrespective of the needs of the few?

Further, if you claim ownership of some piece of property, but you neither occupy it nor defend your title to it for fifty years, can you say that your "right" to it is better than the "right" of those who have in your absence and disinterest taken possession of it and defended that possession and put it to some useful purpose? How long, exactly, should one person's claimed title to some property be held valid and enforceable if that person does nothing whatever to defend and enforce it? A year? Twenty five years? A hundred? A thousand? Half a million?

I have tried to find an explanation of the concept of "Organic Rights" and discovered that feeding the search criterion, "Organic Rights", into Google returns the rather meagre number of 258 results, some of which are about pharmacology, chemistry, diets or total garblish. This one in particular was the source of much laughter. Looks like someone has copy-pasted some text he / she fed through Google Translate when that facility was having a particularly bad day. The combination of the low number of hits and the atrocious quality of the ones Google did find lead me to regard the concept of "Organic Rights", whatever that may be, as the product of a quite small number of fevered individuals on the very far end of the lunatic fringe.

Or possibly the concept is on the cutting-edge of philosophical examination of the basis of what we call "rights" and social organization by someone who is an original thinker, but who like many other original thinkers and philosophers throughout history are disparaged and dismissed by those who haven't the native wit to understand the philosophy nor the reservoir of reason to rebut it with other than ad hominem fallacies.

I find the latter to be overwhelmingly the case, particularly in this morass of irrationality.

[Seth]

Yeah, it looks more like a post hoc justification for stealing other's property.

One must defend one's rights if one expects them to be respected.

That's akin to the law of the jungle rather than a virtue of civilisation.

Indeed. It's directly related to the Organic Rights I've mentioned before. Every living organism, as a function of biology and evolution, seeks out and takes possession of those resources necessary for survival.

So when the Marxists get together collectively and enslave your sorry arse, they are moral according to your own system.

Is it? I speak of the individual, not the collective. Collectives have no greater rights and no greater moral justification by virtue of their numbers than the individual does because a collective is made up of individuals, not an ant-like hive-mind where individuality has no purpose and individuals do not really exist at all.

The Marxist collective is an inherently unstable and therefore necessarily coercive authoritarian social system that ignores the biological behavior of human beings as individuals and tries to defy ordinary human organic needs by denying that all individuals, when pressed, will resort to the natural behaviors I describe, regardless of what social structure is being imposed upon the individual. Therefore, Marxism, as is the case with all socialist systems, is doomed to failure when the dearth of resources triggers ordinary human survival instincts and behavior.

[pErvinalia]

Indeed. It's directly related to the Organic Rights I've mentioned before. Every living organism, as a function of biology and evolution, seeks out and takes possession of those resources necessary for survival.

So when the Marxists get together collectively and enslave your sorry arse, they are moral according to your own system.

Is it? I speak of the individual, not the collective. Collectives have no greater rights and no greater moral justification by virtue of their numbers than the individual does because a collective is made up of individuals, not an ant-like hive-mind where individuality has no purpose and individuals do not really exist at all.

Collectives are just individuals exercising their organic rights to seek out and take possession of those resources necessary for survival.