Mom Confessions

Aletheia wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 9:52 am

Mr.Smile wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:06 am "Just wondering if anyone sees any issues with our next generation reading Marxist propaganda in popular teen magazines...?"

I'd far rather teenagers get exposed to arguments from all sides of the political spectrum, and reasoned discussion between those viewpoints, than they be restricted to only "approved safe" points of view.

SallyMae wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 11:39 am

Frau Holle wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:40 am What a sad way to be reminded how much blood has been shed in the pursuit of property ownership.


You can’t change the nature of life itself because you don’t like it.

I would disagree. Some things can't be changed, like gravity, but others can, like human behavior. I think the whole experiment of civilization has been an attempt to change human behavior, to make humans able to cooperate in large groups to accomplish more than we can manage as warring tribes.

Particularly when the 'nature' in question is human nature, we have already changed a lot, and for the undeniable better. There is still a lot not to like, though, so here's to changing it for the better still.

Frau Holle wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 12:48 pm

SallyMae wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 11:39 am

Frau Holle wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 10:40 am What a sad way to be reminded how much blood has been shed in the pursuit of property ownership.


You can’t change the nature of life itself because you don’t like it.

I would disagree. Some things can't be changed, like gravity, but others can, like human behavior. I think the whole experiment of civilization has been an attempt to change human behavior, to make humans able to cooperate in large groups to accomplish more than we can manage as warring tribes.

Particularly when the 'nature' in question is human nature, we have already changed a lot, and for the undeniable better. There is still a lot not to like, though, so here's to changing it for the better still.

This isn't just human nature, it's nature.

Whether you're talking about Humans, Bears, Bees, Lions or Squirrles... Everyone defends their home and has a sense of their home being theirs to defend.

Aletheia wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 9:52 am

Mr.Smile wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:06 am "Just wondering if anyone sees any issues with our next generation reading Marxist propaganda in popular teen magazines...?"

I'd far rather teenagers get exposed to arguments from all sides of the political spectrum, and reasoned discussion between those viewpoints, than they be restricted to only "approved safe" points of view.

Aletheia wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 9:49 am

Mr.Smile wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:06 am the idea of the ownership of land

"We don't own land - we borrow it from future generations."

pinkbutterfly66 wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 11:06 am The problem is not property rights but the inequality of wealth caused by the 1%ers not paying enough taxes. Housing is becoming unaffordable across the nation because of it. The Reagan era 'tax reform' needs to be tossed out the window. We have had more than 40 years of this so-called 'trickle down economics' experiment and it does not work.

Mr.Smile wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 2:10 pm

Aletheia wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 9:52 am

Mr.Smile wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 4:06 am "Just wondering if anyone sees any issues with our next generation reading Marxist propaganda in popular teen magazines...?"

I'd far rather teenagers get exposed to arguments from all sides of the political spectrum, and reasoned discussion between those viewpoints, than they be restricted to only "approved safe" points of view.

the abolishment of private property rights goes against the founding principles of liberty

Mr.Smile wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 2:12 pm

Aletheia wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 9:49 am "We don't own land - we borrow it from future generations."

dumb
you wanna live under a communist regime?

What about the ownership relation itself? Is there any inherent philosophical interest in the nature of a person’s relation to material resources? When someone says ‘X is mine’ and X is an action, we see interesting questions about intentionality, free-will, and responsibility, which philosophers will want to pursue. Or when someone says ‘X belongs to person P,’ and X is an event, memory, or experience, there are interesting questions about personal identity. But when X is an apple or a piece of land or an automobile, there does not appear to be any question of an inherent relation between X and P which might arouse our interest.

This was one of David Hume’s conclusions. There is nothing natural about private property, wrote Hume. The ‘contrariety’ of our passions and the ‘looseness and easy transition [of material objects] from one person to another’ mean that any situation in which I hold or use a resource is always vulnerable to disruption (Hume 1978 [1739], p. 488). Until possession is stabilized by social rules, there is no secure relation between person and thing. We may think that there ought to be: we may think, for example, that a person has a moral right to something that he has made and that society has an obligation to give legal backing to this moral right. But according to Hume, we have to ask what it is in general for society to set up and enforce rules of this kind, before we can reach any conclusions about the normative significance of the relation between any particular person and any particular thing.

Our property is nothing but those goods, whose constant possession is establish’d by the laws of society; that is, by the laws of justice. Those, therefore, who make use of the words property, or right, or obligation, before they have explain’d the origin of justice, or even make use of them in that explication, are guilty of a very gross fallacy, and can never reason upon any solid foundation. A man’s property is some object related to him. This relation is not natural, but moral, and founded on justice. Tis very preposterous, therefore, to imagine, that we can have any idea of property, without fully comprehending the nature of justice, and shewing its origin in the artifice and contrivance of man. The origin of justice explains that of property. The same artifice gives rise to both. (ibid., p. 491)
The Humean view of property as a convention has been taken up by Murphy and Nagel (2004) as a basis for resisting the view, associated with Nozick 1974, that property rights can pose any moral obstacle to programs of tax and transfer or other forms of redistribution and social control. But the fact that something is conventional doesn’t mean it can safely be treated as malleable or as something that can be overridden without cost. There is always a further question about the moral reasons that there are for holding conventions steady; and these reasons may actually echo other themes in the property debate.

Aletheia wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 6:00 pm

Mr.Smile wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 2:12 pm

Aletheia wrote: ↑Sat Aug 08, 2020 9:49 am "We don't own land - we borrow it from future generations."

dumb
you wanna live under a communist regime?

The quote derives from something Wendell Berry wrote in the Audubon Society's magazine, back in 1971. The attitude has been described as the hallmark of a true conservationist.

As to it being "dumb" or "communist", here is what professional philosophers have to say upon the matter:

What about the ownership relation itself? Is there any inherent philosophical interest in the nature of a person’s relation to material resources? When someone says ‘X is mine’ and X is an action, we see interesting questions about intentionality, free-will, and responsibility, which philosophers will want to pursue. Or when someone says ‘X belongs to person P,’ and X is an event, memory, or experience, there are interesting questions about personal identity. But when X is an apple or a piece of land or an automobile, there does not appear to be any question of an inherent relation between X and P which might arouse our interest.

This was one of David Hume’s conclusions. There is nothing natural about private property, wrote Hume. The ‘contrariety’ of our passions and the ‘looseness and easy transition [of material objects] from one person to another’ mean that any situation in which I hold or use a resource is always vulnerable to disruption (Hume 1978 [1739], p. 488). Until possession is stabilized by social rules, there is no secure relation between person and thing. We may think that there ought to be: we may think, for example, that a person has a moral right to something that he has made and that society has an obligation to give legal backing to this moral right. But according to Hume, we have to ask what it is in general for society to set up and enforce rules of this kind, before we can reach any conclusions about the normative significance of the relation between any particular person and any particular thing.

Our property is nothing but those goods, whose constant possession is establish’d by the laws of society; that is, by the laws of justice. Those, therefore, who make use of the words property, or right, or obligation, before they have explain’d the origin of justice, or even make use of them in that explication, are guilty of a very gross fallacy, and can never reason upon any solid foundation. A man’s property is some object related to him. This relation is not natural, but moral, and founded on justice. Tis very preposterous, therefore, to imagine, that we can have any idea of property, without fully comprehending the nature of justice, and shewing its origin in the artifice and contrivance of man. The origin of justice explains that of property. The same artifice gives rise to both. (ibid., p. 491)
The Humean view of property as a convention has been taken up by Murphy and Nagel (2004) as a basis for resisting the view, associated with Nozick 1974, that property rights can pose any moral obstacle to programs of tax and transfer or other forms of redistribution and social control. But the fact that something is conventional doesn’t mean it can safely be treated as malleable or as something that can be overridden without cost. There is always a further question about the moral reasons that there are for holding conventions steady; and these reasons may actually echo other themes in the property debate.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/property/