What If...

[henry quirk]

...concoct some devilish, convoluted scenario and let's see how subjective I have to get to make 'mind your own business, keep your hands to yourself, or else' work.

I'm thinkin' you can't.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

...concoct some devilish, convoluted scenario and let's see how subjective I have to get to make 'mind your own business, keep your hands to yourself, or else' work.

I'm thinkin' you can't.

OR ELSE what?


Purely objectively, please.

[henry quirk]

"Say they aren't poisoning, they're just irrigating their land, but the river only has so much and now it's run dry for folks downstream."

Who is irrigating? Why are they irrigating? The folks downstream, were they aware of the irrigating operations upstream when they located where they did? who settled the area first. And, on and on, etc. etc.

I asked for scenarios: you give me a fill in the blank exercise.

In court (even the court of last resort you'd find in my minarchy) you'd have to do a damn sight better in presenting the facts.

#

"Or say they poisoned it entirely by accident. And they really, truly didn't mean to, and now that they know, they've stopped immediately, but the damage is done. And it turns out there was someone else in town who knew that these two harmless chemicals made poison, and had maybe talked to a few people about it before, so it wasn't totally obscure knowledge, but the guy who made the mistake didn't happen to know. SHOULD he have known? Should he receive the same heaping of "or else" as the guy who poisons on purpose? What if 50% of the town says he deserves X amount of "or else," but 50% feels very strongly that he deserves at least three times that?"

Joe fires his gun into the air on July 4th. The falling bullet strikes someone two miles away. Joe didn't mean to hurt someone. He had no intent to harm someone. But he did, he's responsible. The penalty, the 'or else', is mebbe the only 'interpretable' part of the equation.

In your scenario (piss poor, but slightly better than the first): the inadvertent poisoners shoulda known better. Even today, ignorance is no excuse (and that's with 100,000 regs on the fed level). In my minarchy with one clear principle and a handful of regs extendin' out from it, ignorance is defintely no excuse.

However, while the principle (mind your business, keep your hands to yourself) is plain & unambiguous, the consequence (the 'or else') is subject to interpretation, so...

I submit to havin' to kiss tw's keister (c'mere, you hunka man and let's get this over with).

[henry quirk]

"OR ELSE what?"

Depends on the particular circumstances of someone 'not' minding their own business, of someone 'not' keeping their hands to themselves.

As I say, while the principle is sound, the penality is subject to some interpretation (that is, every circumstance is individual [there'd be no formal precedents in the night-watchman's court of last resort), so...

Again: I'm ready to plant one on tw's butt (bring that big sexy thang over, guy, and let's get 'er done).