Re: We are ALL guests (except Eric)

[jamesd@netcom.com (James A. Donald)]

Timothy C. May writes
> > > I rarely argue in terms of
> > > justice and fairness, so please don't imply that I have done so.

James A. Donald wrote:
> > Look at the title of this thread.  If what you say is true,
> > you would not have responded to this thread.  The title
> > would be meaningless or irrelevant to you.

Timothy C. May writes
> Huh?

The title of this thread makes an argument based on rights
and obligation.  It claims that Eric has the right to act
without consensus.

If you were merely making the argument that Eric is unwise
to act, you would not have bothered to reply to this thread,
since it does not address the issue of whether Eric is wise
or unwise, but only the issue of who is entitled to decide.

You were making the argument that Eric does not have
the right, the authority to act without consensus, that he
is improperly usurping the authority or rights of other 
founding cypherpunks.

In other words you are responding to a moral argument with
a moral argument.  It is just that you use double talk and I speak
plainly.

Your argument is based on labor mingling theory, even though
you seem to be unfamiliar with these concepts, (or perhaps
you are familiar but simply refuse to the language of
ethics.)

While labor mingling theory has great moral authority, long
usage on the internet has consistently gone the other way,
and with the passage of time, this counts.

The nature of the underlying protocols leads to collective
ownership of newsgroups and private ownership of lists,
and attempts to get away from this natural arrangement to 
something more useful and more just have not worked
very well.



-- 
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
We have the right to defend ourselves and our
property, because of the kind of animals that we        James A. Donald
are.  True law derives from this right, not from
the arbitrary power of the omnipotent state.            jamesd@acm.org