The journey of a 1,000 miles
The previous post (3.5) addressed the first two constraints on private property: (1) Foregone opportunities and (2) externalized costs (externalized negatives). This post addresses (3) The “Tragedy of the Commons”. I’ll cover (4) the...
Returning to Hobbes’ “war of all against all” emphasizes a basic point. Private property is a social invention. Without a community to support and defend private property, everything would belong to whomever is strong...
I’m easing back into the writing after the Holidays with chapter ten of the Tao Te Ching. For Lao Tsu, life had a natural flow, just as water flows downhill. Accepting water’s nature lets...
We are captives of American ideas about private property. With land we think of property as ownership rather than as exclusive right of use. Land is not the product of our labor. Nonetheless, by...
“Do people have a right to live?” People ask that question only when they have their answer, usually wrapped in fancy justifications. The blunt conservative answer is, “No!” Filmer and de Maistre demanded obedience...
A question about the Magna Carta exposed sloppiness on my part. The substance of my post ,“3.2 Do People Hold a Right to Exist? Part 2”, is correct. Certain details are not. I will...
With Pope Alexander III’s blessing, William, Duke of Normandy, invaded England defeating King Harold Godwinsom at the Battle of Hastings October 14, 1066. On December 25, 1066 William was crowned King of England. The...
In Grants Pass v. Johnson, 603 U,S,____(2024) the Leonard Leo branch of the United States Supreme Court held that people may be fined or imprisoned for sleeping on public land. Their justification was that...
Why create these posts? Give candidates ten pages of information, their response: “Too Long, Didn’t Read”. People defend their common knowledge answers. “The Puritans came to the new world for religious freedom.” Unless we...
Joseph Marie, comte de Maistre (1754-1821) Dynamic Equilibrium: Why Tradition Fails Rather than evaluate policies, Burke’s conservatism blamed the public’s abandoning traditional values for the American and French Revolutions. For centuries gradual adjustments to...
