Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the (fwd)

[Michael Hohensee <mah248@nyu.edu>]

Jim Choate wrote:
> 
> Forwarded message:
> 
> > Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1998 16:17:12 +0100
> > From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
> > Subject: RE: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the (fwd)
> 
> > This is the central disconnect between you and the other side.  You
> > obviously have as a core assumption that people should be /required/
> > to do what is best for their neighbor.
> 
> Not even close junior.

Is that so?

Are you saying, then, that you aren't in favor of the "right to medical
care", you were so big on earlier?  You're saying that you don't support
taxation to pay for this universal medical care?  That's not what you
said before. :)

> > Most anarchists would reject that assumption.
> 
> As would I.
> 
> >  Instead, an anarchist would say "The best thing I
> > can do for my neighbor (and the only thing I 'owe' him) is to leave
> > him alone."  That is, I have no affirmative obligation to do anything
> > for my neighbor to make his life better.
> 
> You also have no right to do anything to make their life worse either.
>
> THAT is my objection to anarchism, it has zero, nada, null, nul, nil,
> none, zipo recognition of others peoples rights and an individuals
> responsibility to respect them.


Since when have we said this?  Just because I'm not *obligated* to help
someone doesn't mean that I'm going to do anything to make his/her life
worse.  The lack of an obligation to help does not necessarily imply the
existance of one to harm.

Furthermore, if you'd bothered to read Anon's next paragraph (and you
must have, you cut it out), you'd have seen an example of why it is in
one's self-interest to help one's neighbors.  We respect others because
doing so increases the odds of their respecting us.  This isn't a
particularly complicated line of reasoning, and just about everyone
understands it (unless, of course, they're anti-social statists, who
imagine that force is the best solution to every interaction).

> It further refuses to recognize that to help others is to help oneself in
> many cases.

You really *do* have a reading disability, don't you?  Here, I'll quote
what you appear to have missed:

Anon wrote:
:All that being said, it may be in my own best interests to do "what is
:best" for my neighbor; then, if my house should catch fire, I have a
:much better chance that my neighbor will help extinguish the fire.

Ok, Jim, here it comes.  The meaning of this paragraph is: to help
others is to help oneself in many cases.

You think we don't recognize this fact?  Hell, we *rely* on it.

> Get your facts straight (but that's probably asking too much).

Read the entirety of someone's post without reading what you *want* the
author to have said into it.  Hell, just try reading *all* of a post
before you say such silly things (but that's probably asking too much).

Michael Hohensee