Monday, November 5, 2007

SELF OWNERSHIP

Since civilization began two great opposing forces have played havoc with mankind. The first is self-ownership, the second is government. For hundreds of years philosophers and jurists have recognized that there is something called natural justice, which I would describe as that interpersonal treatment between human beings that is fair and equal to all; it is universal. This treatment allows each individual several spheres in which he is supreme to act as he sees fit; we call these spheres RIGHTS. The first to mention is the right of self-ownership, the claim to which I established in an earlier blog as:

Without my life, I would not exist, therefore my life is the most important thing that I possess; in a way, it is me. It is more important to me than to anyone else. I am the only one who best knows my needs, my fears, my desires and my dreams; therefore I am the best judge of how to live my life to its fullest. This gives me the strongest claim to ownership of my life

As we all have equal rights to ownership of our lives; none of us can infringe upon others’ lives without their permission. This condemns the use of force on others. Any interaction between individuals can only be acceptable if all parties agree. Blog 03/11/2007

Flowing from this is the right to property that has been lawfully acquired. No one can have self-ownership if he is not allowed to sustain and enrich his life and to do so requires that he has discretion over the resources necessary to do so; ergo has the right to acquire property.

The 2nd force is government, which has no claim to being natural or just. It is an institution, organized and controlled by a small group of people that asserts powers to rule over defined tracts of the earth and all it contains. It claims to have sovereign power to do so and will enforce this with an army, police-force and courts. Subjects obey at the fear of their lives.

The first force depends on cooperation, the second on coercion.

Libertarians have adopted the natural-justice philosophy and in New Zealand Libertarianz is the only political party to do so.

Fast forward to the recent raids by a squad of armed offenders, backed by hundreds of police, against alleged trainee terrorists, bears out the havoc mentioned earlier. These ‘aspiring terrorists‘ allegedly planned acts of terrorism across the country to overwhelm the police-forces. It will be months before those charged appear before the courts and little is known about the charges laid thus far. Of course governments can pass any law to make any action illegal but if natural justice is to prevail, and that is the function of the courts, then we will see the whole affair quietly disappear, just like untold other dire events that were supposed to make our lives perilous and governments necessary.

Saturday, November 3, 2007

DIRE EVENTS



Politics: the art of keeping the population alarmed by predicting imaginary dire events, so they beg to be kept safe by the government.

Think of: The coming ice-age in the ‘70s.
The HIV/AIDS SCARE IN THE 1980s
The Y2k scare in 1999.
SARS in the early 2000s.
Bird flue in the early 2000s.
Global warming, at present.
Tuhoe terrorists.
Spurious dietary- supplements warnings.
Running out of oil, ongoing.

And others.

NATURAL RIGHTS

Nanny, a word heard more and more to describe a government that has lost sight of its essential function: to honour and protect our natural rights. A simple definition of a natural right is that right that can be enjoyed by each one of us without using force on others. Thus the right to paint my house pink is a natural right, while receiving a state-benefit forces someone else to provide it, so is not a natural right but called a human right. I simplified the explanation for this essay, but it is clear that human rights can never be universal, which would mean that everyone else would have an obligation; a bit like each of us doing our neighbour’s washing.

There are about four million New Zealanders, all individuals with their own outlook on life, no two exactly alike. It would be hard to think of any action that would not find one or more people disagreeing with. But we couldn’t outlaw them all and so developed the concept of natural rights, which allows all acts that don’t breach the natural rights of others. This requires tolerance, but is easy to understand and follow. It is time to send Nanny back to minding children
.