[extropy-chat] Sheiks and sex (was OIL: Albertan tar sands)

[Charlie Stross]

On 18 Sep 2005, at 21:08, Mike Lorrey wrote:
>>>
>>> You also can't complain about taxes taken from those who believe in
>>> taxes. Statists do not enjoy the protection of the non-initiation
>>> principle.
>>
>> Y'know something, I was going to let this slide -- but you had to
>> stick it right up my nose.
>>
>> "X does not enjoy the protection of law Y because they do not believe
>> in law Y" (let's strip it right out of the context of libertarian
>> ideology and generalize it) is a really dangerous principle. Either
>> you're talking about a general law, in which case it applies to
>> everyone, or it's not a law; it's a group agreement among a bunch of
>> insiders, and -- hey! -- you've invented another group who are
>> explicitly outside your law because you pinned a label on them.
>
> That is why it is a principle and not a law, however it is, in fact,
> applied in law quite well in many ways. For instance: you murder
> someone, you've given up your right to live, because by committing
> murder, you've demonstrated that you don't believe in any such  
> thing as
> a right to live.

Er, that's not how the law works. At least, not any theory of law  
that I'm familiar with and that's been implemented at anything above  
the tribal level.

(Note: All murder is killing, but not all killing is murder: the sets  
are not equivalent. Nor do you "give up" rights in yourself by  
failing to observe those rights in others.)

NB: It's not my intention to start a pro/anti libertarian flame-fest  
here -- we've seen enough of 'em that we don't need any more -- so  
I'm going to drop this right now.

But I do wish you'd stop declaring that sets are identical when in  
fact they're not.


-- Charlie