Showing posts with label Property. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Property. Show all posts

Sunday, April 4, 2010

Bastiat

Today's quote comes from the very first Anarcho-Capitalist Frederic Bastiat.

"The state is the great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else"

I think this quote is extremely relevant for today when so many in our society feel entitled to live by the state and when people speak out against the welfare state they are attacked by the state. Bastiat noticed this as well.

"Sometimes the law defends plunder and participates in it. Sometimes the law places the whole apparatus of judges, police, prisons and gendarmes at the service of the plunderers, and treats the victim - when he defends himself - as a criminal."

If I choose not to pay my taxes because I know they will go to provide entitlement to someone else the police will arrest me and a judge will fine me or send me to prison. The state is so readily abused that I question the need for it at all.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Privacy and Civilization

My quote today comes from my favorite philosopher Ayn Rand.

"Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men."

Our country was founded on the idea that man is responsible for his choices, that the government is there to protect a man's life, liberty and property. The government is responsible for making creating an environment where everyone can have those three things.

Man then is responsible for everything else, he is responsible for making his life worthwhile that is not the governments job, they should not provide health care or keep him from hurting himself through use of drugs. Man is responsible for his actions.

He is responsible for making good use of his liberty, he can say what he will, do what he wants, the government should not make sure he is saying the right things or that if he says them on the airwaves that the other side is equally represented. Each man is responsible for what he says and does.

He is responsible and has sole ownership of any property he acquires, government should not ensure that he has of property by taking from one and giving to another they are there just to protect whatever property he owns. If, like is happening now, the government uses tax money to buy banks or bailout the car industry then they are not protecting property they are stealing it and that is legal plunder.

Our society was founded on the idea that each man had privacy and with that privacy came responsibility. Today we are regressing because people no longer have personal responsibility, it is said that it is the responsibility of the rich to provide for those behind them and to give them the same opportunity they had to own property. The government by doing this is intervening in our lives and taking away our privacy, if we want to have a better society we will increase the amount of privacy and return to a time when a person is responsible only for themselves.