[extropy-chat] Constitution Restoration Act will effectively transform the United States...

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Adrian Tymes <wingcat at pacbell.net> wrote:
> > > Natural Law starts off recognising that all
> power,
> > > rights, and
> > > responsibility originates in the individual as a
> > > sovereign entity in a
> > > state of nature. There are no societal rights,
> no
> > > group rights of any
> > > kind.
> > 
> > and instead just claim that NL recognizes the
> "rights"
> > of citizens to serve their government (or words to
> > that effect).  Similar perversions of original
> intent
> > fuel many religious neo-Luddites, who see in the
> holy
> > words of their founders only encouragement to hate
> > those who seek to unlock human nature, even if
> their
> > founders (if alive today) might have only nice
> things
> > to say about transhumanity.
> 
> Problem is such an abuse cannot be treated as a
> right. You can't be
> obligated to do anything for anyone which you have
> not specifically
> contracted to do. It is hard enough to draft people
> for national
> defense, you aren't going to do it for anything
> else.

Oh, it's easy enough.  You've contracted to be a
citizen of the US, right?  (Else you're on a visa or
some other special and more explicit contract, or you
risk being deported.)  But they change the nature of
that contract all the time without your direct and
explicit consent, by changing the laws.  (There is an
agent who represents you and many many others in the
committee that drafts and passes the law.  You may or
may not have voted for that agent; it is quite
possible that agent was elected by the 60% of the
people in your group who disagree with you.  And in
any case your agent may be effectively voiceless in
certain situations where most of the other agents are
convinced of the "need" for something yet your agent
sees through the false request.)

> > Our current system of laws is not perfect, but at
> > least it somewhat protects against abuses like
> that.
> > This protection alone is perhaps responsible for
> most
> > of the difference between first world and third
> world
> > countries.  (And note that the second world
> arguably
> > was somewhere between absence of laws and rule of
> law
> > in terms of the protection given to citizens
> against
> > abuse by the powerful, in part because the
> ideology of
> > their government was in conflict with the reality
> of
> > control by a few elites.)
> 
> You are sadly mistaken if you think the current laws
> protect us against
> it.

I'm not saying they do - fully.  I'm just saying that,
even with all the bad things they allow through, they
still do a better job than the system you're
proposing as it would likely be enacted.  (For
example, "fractional slavery" through income tax is
better than absolute slavery through formal slavery.
No slavery would be better, of course - but neither
the current system nor your proposed alternate would
in fact achieve that.  The same argument applies to
most other flaws you can find in the current system.
Good luck finding a system which can not be abused at
all, other than pure anarchy - which tends to get
replaced by rule-by-whim-of-the-strong quickly...)