Topic: Freedom Of Association? - page 5. (Read 11878 times)

See previous refutation of predatory business practices. True, you can't stockpile a road, but you can easily project out past those first few years.

...and while the road is being built why not economically sabotage it?  As soon as these folk break ground they have investors, a budget, a board of directors and profitability projections.  Which could take years to get lined up I might add.  Especially since there's no right to annex.  So you are now negotiating with every two-bit landowner.

As for the racist (or whatever restrictive) landowner I would assume they can still be clever about things.  Why can't I start getting everyone on my road with reduced rates and a contract which just happens to overlap within the first few operating years of the new road?  Profitability projections would have to be altered.  Could easily get the board to cancel the project and the racist doesn't have to let people of ethnicity X back on their road once their contract is up.  They might even be able to buy the unfinished new road cheap.  If the board does go through with the project they will be running at a disadvantage.

If they do quit next time you try to build a competing road, you have less land and your investors are more reluctant.

This also doesn't include some of the "dirty" but probably legal things I could do in that world.

All of these things are questions asked by the new owners of the road before they make these changes, I'm sure...

If not, then Perhaps they shouldn't be making these sorts of silly decisions? They know that restrictions create competition. They know that they are only going to enrich their neighbors (Who will either sell to, or become, the new road) at the expense of themselves, not to mention generate tons of ill will and bad press. Companies, at least, we can be sure will act relatively rational, if for no other reason, their greater inertia.

Where does the competitor get the land to make the alternative road? Why do you think this alternative road magically appears within a day of the rule changes enacted by ABC company? Even if alternative roads are built, what happens in the interim? Furthermore, there's already a road going from A to B. Why do we want three more roads right next to it or nearly next to it also going from A to B?

What you're talking about still isn't very clear. Given some dataset X and some group of models M.  P(X|M) will absolutely NOT award the highest posterior probability to the simplest model in any and all cases.  What you're talking about sounds sort of like the bias-variance dilemma which I generally assume you don't worry about when you're taking a Bayesian approach.

Edit:Perhaps a clearer way of putting this is that the marginal likelihood penalizes complex models however that's not the same as saying that the simpliest solution is the most likely (by which I assume you mean has the highest posterior probability) not to mention that who was it...Murray? States that the relationship between complexity and number of parameters isn't exactly as simple as you seem to imply.

And what stops a competitor, exactly? What is it about the width or length of a road that makes competing impossible?

I guess the key point you missed (which is your debating style) is the phrase 'major road'.

Each restriction will create a competitor.

First, BLK company, them MEX, then AZN, each with their own roads, open to the affected group, and everyone else. Pretty soon, the restricted road gets no business, while it's competitors are booming. Or much more likely, the first split creates a competitor, which the original road drives business to by restricting it's customers, eventually starving itself out, or finding a mid ground, which will still be lower than the wide open road.

Consider a neighborhood composed of various races. There is one majority and a few minorities. The major road in and out is owned by XYZ company. All seems well. ABC company buys the road from XYZ company. Then, over the course of the next year or so, ABC company begins to change the rules of access, based on skin color.

Ok then what you said earlier needs some clarification or you need to define some terms.


For example oppression is defined as the unjust use of power.  If the wealthy landowner is unjust in segregating his community then how is he not also oppressing people?  Is it okay to force him to stop?  If it isn't then how are people not reasonable in responding violently? 

Personally I think the whole thing is a weak argument.  As a person I'm willing to bet that the oppressed cares very,very,very little if the person oppressing them is 'free' to do so or not.  So the many/few argument doesn't wash.


You mean if 60% of your country believes that washrooms should be ethnically segregated.   Then laws can and will be passed to demand it?   That seems unlikely.  However if 60% of your country's land is owned by people who believe that.  Isn't that de facto segregation?

I did already, you quoted them, I assumed you read them. I guess I was wrong. Go back and read them now. I'll wait...


Done? Good. So now you should have seen that no, not all conflicts can be solved by negotiations.

If you insist that your right to swing your fist does not end at my face, well, I'm just going to have to defend myself, aren't I? Let me list the things you have lumped together up there into their proper categories:
Not conflict:
Race hate, religious rivalry. (these only become conflict when violence is attempted)

Conflict:
domestic violence, pagan ritual sacrifice.

Conflict occurs when violence happens. Anything less is a disagreement, and people are allowed to disagree.

Can you please state your three methods. These are the key to your entire argument.

We may soon reach or final point of opinion. Yours being the opinion that all conflicts can be resolved by negotiation.

COnflicts such as Race hate, religious rivalry, domestic violence, pagan ritual sacrifice etc.

In a Bayesian context, Occam's razor corresponds to the selection of the minimal marginal likelihood of a set of models over their parameters. In a complex model, lower likelihood due to
the integration over more parameters will be offset by higher likelihood due to lower variance. This quantifies Occam's Razor, giving the most probable model
to be the simplest (that still fits the data).

As I mentioned, my original comparison was only casual.

Those are not the three methods I suggested, Go back and read all three wikipedia links. Note that the third one isn't so much a method, but a demonstration of how it's enacted today.

And though it may be difficult for such a conflict-driven mind such as yourself, Yes, I do believe that most situations can indeed be solved by talking to the other person.

No, not at all. But I draw a distinction between those unjust acts that justify a response with force and those that don't. That doesn't mean I don't despise those acts and consider them just as unjust as you do. That doesn't mean I wouldn't fully accept other actions aimed at punishing the injustice -- just not the use of force. Not every injustice justifies the use of force to correct it.

If the majority of people want to be bigots, then we definitely don't want force available, because they'll use force to do things like segregate society and oppress minorities. If the majority of people don't want to be bigots, we don't need to use force against the minority. We can simply ostracize them and punish them in non-coercive ways. If they want to form their own minority enclave in which they are bigots, I see no reason not to let them. We can continue to consider them unjust and deserving of our hate. But we can also live and let live.

It is unjust if done by anyone.

Freedom includes the freedom to be unjust with what is yours.

The nature of government is such that everything it does is unjust, even its good acts. Any benefit government gives to someone, comes at the cost of harm to someone else.

So to you is justice defined as having little meaning outside of respecting property rights?   So something like racial segregation - the act of allowing people of one ethnicity or ancestry access to some areas of land and not others is not intrinsically unjust if it's done by a landowner.  However it is unjust if it's done by a government.  Right?

You don't think people are capable of being free. You think that if people are free, some people will get so unhappy at what other people choose to do that they'll riot. And yet our society has most of these same freedoms and we don't have many riots at all. People say things every day that anger other people. But there's no blood in the streets. You must be completely mystified as to how this can be.

And the answer really is simple -- the majority of people understand that if they want to have freedom, they have to similarly extend freedom to other people. This will mean that other people will be free to do things that they really and truly despise. And they're perfectly willing to get over it. For the minority of people who can't over it -- we have police, courts, and jails. If you can't accept that your neighbor wants to pray to Allah or not pray at all, and your only recourse is violence, then you have no place in civil society.

Many people will respond violently to oppression. But only a small number of people will respond violently to other people's freedom. For that small number of people, they should be violently suppressed. They certainly should not ever get what they want.

To avoid any stereotypes, let's invert, and thus possibly subvert, your scenario:

"I propose that a black-only restaurant in the middle of a white district will cause conflict. Do you seriously think that it wouldn't piss people off?

What about when some Panthers walk along the street to go there, perhaps with brass knuckles and shotguns?
Don't you think that would almost certainly cause conflict? "

Hmm. In either situation, the problem can be completely avoided by not selling to the white/black person in the first place, but let's assume that the previous property owner was a moron, and didn't ask what the property was going to be used for.

Assuming that, and the business does indeed get started, remember that all the other property surrounding it, including the road up to it, is private as well. The road can, and indeed should, exclude troublemakers from traveling it. Simple things, like requiring any fires in the vehicle to be extinguished, etc, should do it. Come down to it, the street owner can just shut down access to the restaurant completely, if the place is causing that much trouble for the neighborhood.

But let's assume the road owner is a neutral party, far removed from, and thus uncaring about, the 'conflict' brewing. You're assuming that people have the right to not be offended. You're wrong. A white man, carrying a cross and wearing a hood is harming no one, just as a black man wearing a leather jacket and carrying a lead pipe ain't hurtin' nobody. As long as those things are true, there is no conflict. The minute that black man swings the lead pipe at someone though, or the white guy grabs someone to string up, then there's a conflict. A conflict that can be resolved using one of the three methods I presented in my previous post.

But really, your whole scenario is stupid. Who would go into Harlem and open a Whites-only restaurant? You'd get no business. You need to cater to the clientele most likely to come to your store. In Harlem, that's gonna be blacks. And as for racial tension in general, Talking (ie negotiation) has proved to be the best way to defuse it, every damn time.