pldennison: If you can be told how you can and cannot use property which you supposedly own in concert with 349,999,999 other people, then you can be told how you can and cannot user property you own by yourself, even when you are not hurting anyone else.
Not true. There’s a genuine difference between private property and shared property, in that your use of shared property is necessarily restricted by the needs of other people to use it too. For example, if I own a book of my own, I can rip the pages out one by one as I finish reading them if I like (once knew a guy who did that, what a mess…). If you and your wife own a book that you both care about reading, you can’t do such a thing to it without her say-so. (Okay, I’m not talking about legal rights to the damn book or who would be granted custody of it in case of a Godforbid divorce, I’m just trying to get across the idea of the way sharing property naturally limits its use.) Similarly, it is perfectly reasonable to put limitations on the individual use of property that’s shared with 349,999,999 other people. As I said, the nature and extent of the limitations can be debated, but the mere fact that there are limitations (or even that the limitations are sometimes too draconian, or that their imposition is sometimes excessively influenced by the more powerful people) doesn’t mean that there aren’t still some real advantages for me, and for all of us, in possessing that shared property.
That has nothing to do with my use of the property that is solely mine. If I own that book all by myself, I really can do whatever I want to it (as long as I’m not endangering others or misusing property that is shared: I’m probably not allowed to burn the book on the public sidewalk, for example). I don’t have to make any allowances for the fact that other people may want to read it, because they have no right to read it—it’s mine mine MINE ALL MINE!! (pant pant…whew, I wonder if that’s how libertarians feel all the time. ;)) So no, I don’t think you’ve succeeded in making the case that the existence of public property somehow invidiously undermines rights to private property. Some things are shared, and some things are not.
But I don’t feel it’s a point worth debating anymore.
Ack!! What, after all that?! Okay, I should have read more thoroughly before picking up the tirade, so if you want to drop it I won’t bring it up again.
- I tire of defending my ethics to people that are interested only in mocking them. *
Aw c’mon Phil, you know I have great respect for your ethics and integrity, and you can always count on me to back you up on moral issues like responsibility and tolerance and ethical treatment of animals and such. I just think you are way prone to exaggerate the dangers and unfreedom of a non-libertarian society. And yes, I do tend to tease people when I think they’re exaggerating, but I apologize and I will try to cool it a little. (I know that “it might be worse” is a pretty feeble defense, but honestly, if you think I pick on you, my old college buddy jshore will tell you you ain’t seen nothing! :))
As an aside, I surely do miss my yearly trips to Providence for the National Association of College Broadcasters convention, when I could spend several hours and several dozen dollars at Buck a Book. Is that still around?
The downtown one in Kennedy Plaza? Noper, they replaced it with a drugstore, but there are others down in Cranston and such, I think. This being Rhode Island, though, folks will still give you directions downtown based on “where the Buck a Book used to be”… 
