Hong Kong

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

As much as a French Aristocrat had over his 6000 serfs when the revolution came.

A family estate is the product of many, many years of hard work, private sacrifices and savings, expropriating it all is just cruel and inhumane in the extreme and destroys a person's capacity for autonomy and self-determination free from the State's unlimited capacity to erase your property rights unilaterally at its untrammelled discretion.

So slavery and serfdom is fine. Because after all they were also somebody's property "rights". Got it.

[Purgatio]

What right do you have to a family's properties and possessions that they or their ancestors acquired through contracts, transactions, gifts and sales?

You already have vast advantages accrued to you by mere luck of birth, and now you want even more.

As I said before, Christ on a stick..

Its lucky for a family portfolio to decline in value because people in Hong Kong decided to go on a riot for months? In a system without checks and balances, people's property rights and ability to accrue wealth will always remain vulnerable and at the mercy of the mob. That's not lucky, in my book. That's vulnerability and fragility.

[Telconi]

A family estate is the product of many, many years of hard work, private sacrifices and savings, expropriating it all is just cruel and inhumane in the extreme and destroys a person's capacity for autonomy and self-determination free from the State's unlimited capacity to erase your property rights unilaterally at its untrammelled discretion.

So slavery and serfdom is fine. Because after all they were also somebody's property "rights". Got it.

People are categorically different from inanimate objects.

[Purgatio]

The blood sucker advocate accuses the rest of us of being thieves. Lol.

aCtuAlLy, tHe riCh mAdE thIeR mOneY faIrLy, sO yoU'Re thE TheiVes bEcaUse tAxEs arE a Sin

It is thieving though, its using the coercive force of the State to take another's possessions and throw them off their land without mercy or reprieve. Individual autonomy rests on our ability to buy things, acquire properties and use them for our own benefit and to craft our own future. If the State can just take that all away, there's no autonomy left to speak of.

[Purgatio]

A family estate is the product of many, many years of hard work, private sacrifices and savings, expropriating it all is just cruel and inhumane in the extreme and destroys a person's capacity for autonomy and self-determination free from the State's unlimited capacity to erase your property rights unilaterally at its untrammelled discretion.

So slavery and serfdom is fine. Because after all they were also somebody's property "rights". Got it.

Slavery was wrong because being a slave abrogated your own individual self-determination in a total and complete way. The point of my argument is your personhood and autonomy rests on an ability to have stable and secure property rights - that very principle would repudiate slavery because slavery is the most total and absolute removal of a person's right to autonomy and self-determination.

[Bombadil]

..electoral system that does not account for the reality that the minority who own more are at risk of being skewered at the ballot by the majority who own less..

Right.. as opposed to the majority who own less being skewered by the minority who own more.. your position is frankly odious but also, to be fair, worth another thread because this is getting a little far from the issues in HK.

In HK we just want what's promised to us, and espoused in near every constitution in the world including China's actually, free speech, free media, fair and transparent judiciary, universal suffrage and basic rights. Why should we be subsumed into a state that, in practice, is categorically opposed to those.

[Makdon]

It is thieving though, its using the coercive force of the State to take another's possessions and throw them off their land without mercy or reprieve. Individual autonomy rests on our ability to buy things, acquire properties and use them for our own benefit and to craft our own future. If the State can just take that all away, there's no autonomy left to speak of.

But can't corporations do the same thing? There's nothing holding them back from that power besides the state, and at least the state is controlled democratically, to some extent, so you know it has your interests in mind at least a bit more than a corporation that's only goal is to shovel more money over to it's shareholders

[Samadhi]

It is thieving though, its using the coercive force of the State to take another's possessions and throw them off their land without mercy or reprieve. Individual autonomy rests on our ability to buy things, acquire properties and use them for our own benefit and to craft our own future. If the State can just take that all away, there's no autonomy left to speak of.

But can't corporations do the same thing? There's nothing holding them back from that power besides the state, and at least the state is controlled democratically, to some extent, so you know it has your interests in mind at least a bit more than a corporation that's only goal is to shovel more money over to it's shareholders

The state is a corporation.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

So slavery and serfdom is fine. Because after all they were also somebody's property "rights". Got it.

Slavery was wrong because being a slave abrogated your own individual self-determination in a total and complete way. The point of my argument is your personhood and autonomy rests on an ability to have stable and secure property rights - that very principle would repudiate slavery because slavery is the most total and absolute removal of a person's right to autonomy and self-determination.

And the French Aristocracy who built their family estates on the backs of generations of serfs?

[Purgatio]

..electoral system that does not account for the reality that the minority who own more are at risk of being skewered at the ballot by the majority who own less..

Right.. as opposed to the majority who own less being skewered by the minority who own more.. your position is frankly odious but also, to be fair, worth another thread because this is getting a little far from the issues in HK.

In HK we just want what's promised to us, and espoused in near every constitution in the world including China's actually, free speech, free media, fair and transparent judiciary, universal suffrage and basic rights. Why should we be subsumed into a state that, in practice, is categorically opposed to those.

I think a lot of that is fair - free speech, independent judiciary. I'm okay with that. I just think its immoral to destroy property and commit vandalism and throw Molotov cocktails in the open air in front of the general public to get that. Civilisation rests on an orderly society where respect for the law and those who enforce the law is paramount.

[Purgatio]

Slavery was wrong because being a slave abrogated your own individual self-determination in a total and complete way. The point of my argument is your personhood and autonomy rests on an ability to have stable and secure property rights - that very principle would repudiate slavery because slavery is the most total and absolute removal of a person's right to autonomy and self-determination.

And the French Aristocracy who built their family estates on the backs of generations of serfs?

Weren't serfs basically slaves?

[Makdon]

The state is a corporation.

If so, it's at controlled by it's citizens, at least to a larger extent than a corporation is controlled by it's employees. But I get the feeling you don't like either

[Purgatio]

It is thieving though, its using the coercive force of the State to take another's possessions and throw them off their land without mercy or reprieve. Individual autonomy rests on our ability to buy things, acquire properties and use them for our own benefit and to craft our own future. If the State can just take that all away, there's no autonomy left to speak of.

But can't corporations do the same thing? There's nothing holding them back from that power besides the state, and at least the state is controlled democratically, to some extent, so you know it has your interests in mind at least a bit more than a corporation that's only goal is to shovel more money over to it's shareholders

Only if you sign a contract. When a bank evicts you from your home its because you signed a contract mortgaging the home, something you weren't forced to do at all. Its not theft to negotiate and strike a voluntary bargain and ask the other party to follow through. It is theft to just take things without consent, though.

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

And the French Aristocracy who built their family estates on the backs of generations of serfs?

Weren't serfs basically slaves?

So you are saying some people's property rights can be wrong? What if your ideal utopia is built on the backs of millions of nominally free serfs?

[Purgatio]

Weren't serfs basically slaves?

So you are saying some people's property rights can be wrong? What if your ideal utopia is built on the backs of millions of nominally free serfs?

Its not though. We don't live in an aristocracy and inherited wealth is not the Ancien Regime

[Novus America]

It is thieving though, its using the coercive force of the State to take another's possessions and throw them off their land without mercy or reprieve. Individual autonomy rests on our ability to buy things, acquire properties and use them for our own benefit and to craft our own future. If the State can just take that all away, there's no autonomy left to speak of.

But can't corporations do the same thing? There's nothing holding them back from that power besides the state, and at least the state is controlled democratically, to some extent, so you know it has your interests in mind at least a bit more than a corporation that's only goal is to shovel more money over to it's shareholders

He does not care about the interests of the common man, just his family’s stock portfolio though.

[Makdon]

Only if you sign a contract. When a bank evicts you from your home its because you signed a contract mortgaging the home, something you weren't forced to do at all. Its not theft to negotiate and strike a voluntary bargain and ask the other party to follow through. It is theft to just take things without consent, though.

who's there to make sure corporations only do things by contract without the state, though? They have enough money and power to do whatever they want

[Austria-Bohemia-Hungary]

So you are saying some people's property rights can be wrong? What if your ideal utopia is built on the backs of millions of nominally free serfs?

Its not though. We don't live in an aristocracy and inherited wealth is not the Ancien Regime

Lol.

[Purgatio]

But can't corporations do the same thing? There's nothing holding them back from that power besides the state, and at least the state is controlled democratically, to some extent, so you know it has your interests in mind at least a bit more than a corporation that's only goal is to shovel more money over to it's shareholders

He does not care about the interests of the common man, just his family’s stock portfolio though.

I care about everyone's stock portfolio and family estate, actually. I want everyone's portfolio and estate to do well. Is that so wrong?

[Purgatio]

Only if you sign a contract. When a bank evicts you from your home its because you signed a contract mortgaging the home, something you weren't forced to do at all. Its not theft to negotiate and strike a voluntary bargain and ask the other party to follow through. It is theft to just take things without consent, though.

who's there to make sure corporations only do things by contract without the state, though? They have enough money and power to do whatever they want

The rule of law, which is being undermined by the rampant protests and riots going on in HK (I'm gonna try and keep linking my replies back to the main point of the thread to avoid a threadjack here)

[Novus America]

But can't corporations do the same thing? There's nothing holding them back from that power besides the state, and at least the state is controlled democratically, to some extent, so you know it has your interests in mind at least a bit more than a corporation that's only goal is to shovel more money over to it's shareholders

The state is a corporation.

A non stock non profit corporation though.
So it works quite differently than a for profit stock based one.

[Novus America]

who's there to make sure corporations only do things by contract without the state, though? They have enough money and power to do whatever they want

The rule of law, which is being undermined by the rampant protests and riots going on in HK (I'm gonna try and keep linking my replies back to the main point of the thread to avoid a threadjack here)

Police brutality is not the rule of law. Neither is a regime only accountable to itself like the PRC.

[Purgatio]

Its not though. We don't live in an aristocracy and inherited wealth is not the Ancien Regime

Lol.

Did I say something funny?

[Makdon]

The rule of law, which is being undermined by the rampant protests and riots going on in HK (I'm gonna try and keep linking my replies back to the main point of the thread to avoid a threadjack here)

Yes, but without the state the rule of law isn't enforced. Also, to tie back to the protests, despite how much I've supporting the state here, all that rests on the assumption that the state is democratic, which it isn't in HK. That's why it's well within the protesters freedoms to do this, the govt. isn't giving them the freedoms they're due. For such a die hard lover of freedom, you seem pretty happy to see it quashed

[Purgatio]

The rule of law, which is being undermined by the rampant protests and riots going on in HK (I'm gonna try and keep linking my replies back to the main point of the thread to avoid a threadjack here)

Police brutality is not the rule of law. Neither is a regime only accountable to itself like the PRC.

Hong Kong is one of the wealthiest financial hubs in the world, and like I said pretty much every Asian HNWI family has some wealth parked in HK, at least based on personal information I know Citigold Private Client in Singapore invests a lot of their clients' capital in HK too. None of this would be possible if HK were not governed by the rule of law and a stable regime of property rights where business can thrive. Not to mention the functional constituencies and the current make-up of the 1,200-person Election Committee who vote for the Chief Executive help ensure that this remains the case. So yeah, I'd say the rule of law is pretty well respected in Hong Kong, putting aside the police brutality for the moment.