Conclusion: Government should protect and enhance the personal liberties of humans, without infringing upon them.
1. The government and its people have a limited right to infringe upon other's personal liberties
- The individual person cannot be held responsible for their actions if they are pursuing a personal liberty (3).
- The one exception is if the pursuit of the personal liberty is detrimental to another's personal liberties (6).
- We generally accept people as good, and should be proven otherwise instead of making assumptions (5).
- Can only express dislike towards conduct of another person pursuing liberty if the expressed believes it to be for their own good (2).
- Own good can refer to the stopping of a crime (5).
- Can advise when the protection of another person's rights are in danger (5).
- Can warm someone of the instability of bridge (5).
- Can tell someone that slavery will relinquish all their liberties (11).
- Trade cannot be regulated by the government, its a social act (4).
- Benefits the people, should be run by the beneficiaries (4).
- People who know trade the best should be the ones in charge (4).
- Government can step in if people are being taken advantage of (4).
2. The government can hold you accountable for the infringement of your own and other's personal liberties.
- If you have a child and cannot support the child, provide it with a good life, then you should be held responsible for not giving the child that right, and providing that burden to the community (6).
- Giving advice for one's own compensation is wrong and can be punishable by government (8).
- Helping one is okay as long as its for one's own good, but one's own good doesn't mean money (8).
- If you get drunk and hurt someone, invading their personal right, you can be held responsible (8).
- People have the right to drink, but if you show signs of repeated infringement of personal liberty, you can be properly punished (8).
- Poisons and Stimulants are okay for society, government must use regulation to ensure proper use (5).
- Cannot be completely abolished if they can be used for good, but are sometimes abused
- Taxation is a good way to regulate the use and/or consumption of poisons/stimulants (9).
- Cannot limit the amount of venues for getting a stimulant (bar, liquor store) (9).
- That will hurt entire community for small % of wrongdoing
- All citizens should be able to go to school, government uses taxes to subsidize those who need it (13).
- All schools should be private, unless the private schooling is insufficient for citizens (13).
- If insufficient, government should supply the schooling (13).
- Government testing for proper academia is necessary to ensure everyone receives liberty of good education (14).
- Only to a certain age (14).
This post was done very nicely, how you present the individual premises is easy to follow and understand, which is not the case in many of the other posts. One small problem I have is in your conclusion you argue that the government cannot enforce any rights or liberties when the infringement is strictly on a personal level and does not affect the individual. I don't know if I am misunderstanding that, but if that is true then I don't see how in premise 2 the government can hold you accountable for the infringement of your own liberties. The second part of it is definitely true; you aren’t allowed to infringe upon others’ rights and liberties. Maybe I am misunderstanding the way you use “hold accountable” because I understood that as some sort of penalty or sanction. Please clarify.
ReplyDeletethank you for bringing this to my attention. I believe what I was trying to say in premise 2 was that the government can infringe upon your liberties if the actions you are taken are detrimental to the greater good of society. Therefore, in my conclusion I probably should have been clearer and said, Government protects and enhances our rights and liberties, but can only enforce their power on another's rights and liberties if that person's actions are detrimental to society in a whole and are infringing upon the rights of other citizens. He wanted everyone to be able to live freely, without restriction from the government. However, if your actions didnt allow everyone else to live freely, you paid the consequences. On a basic level, I believe our government does this. Fr example, We are allowed the right to a gun, until we use it to take away the right for another to live or feel safe.
ReplyDeleteVery nice post, but a question I would like to ask is does the government have the responsibiliy to enact laws to help people because people may not be able to help themselves? Government should not infringe on people's liberties or rights but what if the government can place in laws that help people but it may cause them to lose a little freedom. Is that ok?
ReplyDeleteThats a very interesting question and I believe it is what we see in our society. We give up some rights in order to feel more protected. Its the idea of common law, so that we do not have a Hobbesian state of nature where it becomes survival of the fittest. I believe that on a basic level, Mill's idea would work, however, populations are so large that it becomes tough to regulate on a person to person basis. I believe that Mill would be hard pressed to agree with the idea, but then again he didn't live in today's day in age where everything is much faster and on a higher scale making it more necessary for general guidelines
ReplyDeleteThanks for the outline. I believe it was very well detailed and specific about what the government should be able to do, and where the limitations should be set. The boundary to me, however, seems extremely thin and easy to cross depending upon how you would define liberty. Is it the right to do whatever you want, or is it the right to make the correct choices and stay free from unhealthy addictions, such as those the government sometimes attempts to ban? An example that comes to my mind is cigarettes. They seem to have more harm than good, (actually I cant think of one good thing tobacco does). Those who buy it are unfortunately addicted to it. Thus, they are a slave to their addiction, and is that really pursuing liberty? Or would the government banning it be allowing us to have liberty?
ReplyDeleteI find this interesting because often I wonder to what extent the law should consider an individual's own pursuit of their "personal liberties" a possible infringement on the rights of others. In particular, with the idea of substance abuse,I have wondered why the government does not more actively take steps to fund rehabilitation and prevention for addicts.Someone who is handicapped, hospitalized and disenfranchised as a result of substance abuse surely drains tax payer money (emergency room fees, welfare) at a sharper rate than an increase in funding for preventative programs. Many people say preventative government programs for substance abuse, or even health care, for a related example over cross government boundaries, but if in the long run they give the average ta payer greater liberty-less of their taxes going towards supporting individuals that become unable to function in society, isn't this protecting the liberties of many others through increased regulation and interference in the lives of a lesser number of individuals?
ReplyDelete