Quote from: bitcoin2cash on August 31, 2011, 08:27:01 PM

All property will be either owned or unowned. If it's owned then it's owned by one or more people. If it's owned by more than one person it is settled by vote.

So then... some group of people, somehow sharing ownership of some property, get together and collectively decide the rules that all owners of any part of that property should follow. What if you don't agree? Are you somehow restricted from using your property as you wish so? I'll leave you to complete the thought.

Suppose, let's continue with the lake analogy, that you don't dump your toxic chemicals in the lake, because you don't agree with the vote. You just dump at the edge of your land, close to the edge of the lake. Rain, of course, washes it into the soil, and it leeches into the lake. Now what?

And what if it's unowned? You didn't say what happens then. If property can be unowned, who decides the rules for appropriate behaviour thereon? Vote again? By who, the whole world? What about the drunk driver example, but on an unowned road.

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There could be several competing versions of the FDA. Each one with different costs and different standards. There could be super-expensive and super-safe food for paranoid people. There could be average-cost food with safety comparable to current standards. There could be low-safety standards for people that don't care or don't value safety that highly. It would ultimately be up to market forces and each person to decide what's right for them rather than "one size fits all".

You keep just pushing the boat out. Health issues like this can take *years* to come to light, long after the damage has been done, and long after any hope of recourse has vanished. Same problem now, I agree, but libertarianism is not an improvement.

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Quote from: fergalish on August 31, 2011, 07:47:00 PM

Suppose the pedestrians are walking through the town square. Is that also private property in your world? Do you have to read the Terms & Conditions of the town square, and sign your acceptance, before entering it?

Yes, you would have to agree to the terms and conditions and buy a ticket signifying your acceptance much like any other private park, Disney World, etc. By the way, where would you rather meet me after dark openly holding a hundred dollar bill, in Disney World or Times Square?

So, while I walk into town to do my shopping, I'll have to stop every few hundred yards along the road to pay a toll, carefully read the terms & conditions, then enter each shop one after the other, again reading the terms and conditions of each shop.... a never ending stream of terms and conditions... Huh

?? Dude, have you *ever* read the ENTIRE terms & conditions of a website you signed up to? The schools in this libertarian world are gonna be so damn rich, 'cos everyone's gonna have to be a lawyer to wade their way through all the paperwork involved with just doing the damn shopping. Never mind if you actually wanna *do* something. Shiiiiit, that's just so far beyond ridiculous that I find it hard to believe you're not just debating for the fun of it. See FirstAscent's latest posts.

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I would hope business owners would consider that when locating their business in the first place. Also, since road owners are trying to attract customers and having business adjacent to their roads will do that, they are going to be very reasonable if they want to make money.

Since right now roads are public property, we could assume the businesses are there first, before the road becomes private.

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That's up to each road owner to decide. Maybe you have to pay a monthly fee. Maybe you have to have an RFID chip on your bumper. Maybe you have to blow into a breathalizer before getting on the road. Maybe you have to agree to be publicly executed if you are caught driving drunk. It will be up to the road owners but since they are trying to attract customers, you can bet it won't be too restrictive or too relaxed. Whoever can provide the safest, cheapest and overall best roads will attract more customers and drive the others out of business.

You mean like a thousand, or a million RFID chips on your bumper - one for each road-owner. And now you also have to walk to some road-owner offices, blow into a breathalyser, then walk back home and you can start driving. And what, are there barriers and breathalysers between each section of road?

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Quote from: fergalish on August 31, 2011, 07:47:00 PM

I just can't see how road safety could possibly be improved in a libertarian world.

You just need to understand market forces. Currently, about 40,000 Americans die on the road each year. Does the road owner go lose money or go out of business because of that? No. So what's the incentive to improve that? Very little. However, if it were privately run, losing money would surely provoke a response.

But all you want is that drivers be punished for their irresponsible behaviour. Road owners still won't be punished. Oh sorry, people will prefer to go *the long way* to work every morning because the rules are more strict and people don't die so much. Yeah, sure, 'cos people have *loads* of time to spare to take the long way when they drive places. And loads of spare time to read terms and conditions too. [/sarcasm]

Quote from: FredericBastiat on August 31, 2011, 09:13:04 PM

If you don't own it, and I don't own it, and nobody owns, then who cares. I know your answer. You do care; so go homestead it, occupy it and claim it for your own, and then complain at me when I provably pollute it (equivalent to trespass).

The people who fish on the sea might care. And the people who eat the fish from the sea might care (do you eat fish?). But then, the same goes for anything that is unowned - see above.

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You were the one wanting to create laws that force a particular type of rule of law. How else do we restore loss or provide restitution to the victims, just say I'm sorry...? How does anything change that might improve safety etc. People do this, government is a fancy name for people with big scary sticks. You make legislation sound like it magically solves problems by mere proclamation.

It's safer because there is one set of rules on road-safety that everyone should follow (though sadly not all do). In case you hadn't read my post, I didn't say current legislation solves the problem - here's the bit, read it again:
"I freely admit that current legislation does not bring people back from the dead, but I can't see how libertarianism will improve road safety, or food safety, nuclear safety, etc."
Problem is, you make it sound as if arbitrary sets of rules, different from place-to-place and from day-to-day, will solve the problem. And in any case, there *is* an established procedure for determining blame, responsibility and even compensation. It's far from perfect, agreed, but better than having to sign a contract every time you need to take a piss. Do you know what that procedure is?

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What if it's a controvertible diminishment in one's Rights?

You'd have to objectify your feelings by identifying and relating them to things that exist in reality. Don't reify.

Oh, man, is this ever going to end? How about: "I can't find any fish anymore, 'cos the fish are all dead!" How's that? Or like, "my fingers are mashed up and I can't draw pictures anymore". Or, "I can't have kids anymore 'cos the hormones you used caused my testicles to shrink to the size of a speck of dust". USE YOUR IMAGINATION - try to conceive of a situation where one party feels his rights have been infringed while the other party disagrees, AND where there is no contractual clause covering those precise circumstances.

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bitcoin2cash, for a while I thought that libertarianism could somehow be a noble enterprise, with grand possibilities for improving the human condition. As you paint it, it's a goddamn hell, full of uncertainties where anyone, anywhere, anytime, can just change the rules as they see fit because it's their property. You (or maybe it was Frederic) wanted to be sure society can't suddenly, arbitrarily, declare blue-eyed people to be slaves. Well, in your libertarian shit-hole, it seems anyone can do just exactly that, and you'd probably agree to it too, because the 100th time you crossed the town square to get to the supermarket, you decided not the re-read the small print at the end of the terms & conditions.

Frederic, you're full of crap too. "right" and "wrong" are abstract concepts, as are many if not all the other terms you wrote. Wikipedia says: "Reification (fallacy), fallacy of treating an abstraction as if it were a real thing" (thanks, that's a new word for me). Might as well ask me to prove 1+1=3.

You two are *by far* the worst proponents of libertarianism I've ever come across, either on this forum or elsewhere. I'm done here.