No government should be allowed to possess any weapons it prohibits the people from possessing.
No, that doesn't mean you and I should own nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. It means governments shouldn't be allowed to have them.
They've demonstrated quite clearly that they can't be trusted with them.
Governments have no rights, because rights are individual and governments are collectives. This means governments can't have the right to keep and bear arms. Nor to decide what arms others own and carry.
Carpenter Tom, plumber Dick and electrician Harry agree to form themselves into TDH Construction Co and offer its services in construction and remodeling. Is that a "collective"? Does it have rights, equal to (but certainly not exceeding) those of Tom, Dick and Harry individually?
ReplyDeleteI would say each person in that collective has equal and identical rights, but the collective doesn't have rights independent of those of the individuals. It has no rights, but it doesn't matter because of the rights each individual has. I'm unconvinced the collective has a right to own and carry weapons, or a right to speak its mind because it doesn't have a physical body to own or carry anything or a mind to speak. As long as the individuals are only doing things they have a right to do, even if they are claiming they are doing those things on behalf of their collective, I'm not going to argue with them.
DeleteGovernment is always trying to do things no individual has a right to do, including owning and using weapons it's impossible to use defensively, paid for with counterfeited or stolen money.
Good answer! Would that mean that if at some point the TDH Co made an apparent error in its work, the party damaged could not sue it. Yes?
DeleteI'm thinking that one useful purpose of forming a company is to limit its liability (a fact that would be openly declared.) So if a TDH building collapsed and injured the occupants, they could collect damages only up to that limit, and not take the shirts off Tom, Dick and Harry. But if the entity has no rights, what then?
This is why basing society on legalism is a bad idea.
DeleteYes, the individuals could be sued for bad or negligent work. And, they are accountable for the entire cost of the damage, but "pain and suffering" are subjective, so maybe they couldn't be sued for that.
It's hard to see exactly how things would play out in a free society, since we've never lived in one.
The collective entity has no rights, but the individuals in it do. Maybe there's something besides rights that would apply to a collective. Is there already such a thing, and does it have a name? Maybe a "contractual privilege", based on a contract made with the individuals involved.