Is Money A Right?

[Occluded Sun]

Don't pay too much attention to the thread title alone. Look at the context given in the OP.

Well, IS giving money to political candidates/parties a form of speech? To answer that, let's consider a hypothetical case: people aren't permitted to give money to politicians or parties at all. They can't even donate goods or services that money could otherwise buy, since you could get around the restriction against giving money by making the purchases yourself and donating the result. What would happen?

The ability of people to actually run a political campaign would be crippled to the point of eliminating it, and the ability of people to increase awareness on specific political issues would be limited to word-of-mouth. Not eliminated entirely, granted, but severely impaired.

So yeah, the ability to donate money to spread a message and/or support people with political messages follows necessarily from a protected right to organize around political concerns. You can't have the latter without the former.

This only results in money determining electoral results because people are stupid - and democracy is no protection against the stupidity of the electorate.

[Laertes]

Presumably we are talking about rights as set down by the preamble of the constitution, things that can be taken a priori to be things all people should have for a healthy society to exist. For instance the right to not be murdered in the street by the government for no reason, and, indeed the right to not be murdered by the government without due process.

See, this doesn't hold up. By definition, any right which is set down in the constitution is purely a right granted to you by the government, which can be taken away by the government, and which is meaningless if that government ceases to exist. It's not a "right" in any immutable sense, it's just a privilege that you currently have which can be taken away without your consent. If that's what you mean by "right", then sure, we can discuss those.

On the other hand, some people believe in "natural rights" or "god given rights", which supersede anything granted in any constitution and indeed cannot be granted or taken away by any constitution. However, discussion about such rights tends to get very handwavey and poorly thought-through very quickly, and thus answers to questions can differ wildly depending on people's emotional response to the word "right."

All of which is why I asked Ancient History what his view on the word "right" is, for the purposes of this discussion.

[Occluded Sun]

See, this doesn't hold up. By definition, any right which is set down in the constitution is purely a right granted to you by the government,

Actually, in the US system the people (that is, "The People") are considered to be the authors of the constitution, and the rights guaranteed within are given in the forms of restrictions on what the government can do. (In theory. The practice is considerably more complex than that and is slowly reverting to the global average.)

[darkmaster]

In the united states, however, at least in theory the government is run by the people via intermediaries they appoint to the position. The rights spoken of in the constitution are rights given to the people by themselves. And while people will always try to make their voice count for more in one way or another that's not a terrible premise to base a system of government on, and in my opinion is certainly a position worth defending.

Now, you can argue left right and sideways about what the second amendment means, but given the context of the constitution's writing, it isn't an unreasonable to argue that the intent was to protect the people's ability to rise up in violent rebellion to protect the rights they give themselves if the government should try to threaten them. See that one document that precipitated that one war.

[Laertes]

Actually, in the US system the people (that is, "The People") are considered to be the authors of the constitution, and the rights guaranteed within are given in the forms of restrictions on what the government can do. (In theory. The practice is considerably more complex than that and is slowly reverting to the global average.)

"The government" consists of the President, Congress, the Supreme Court and the people working for them. Those groups can, without holding a referendum or otherwise consulting the people in any way, change the constitution to be literally whatever they want. If the President, Congress and Supreme Court get together and agree that I have the right to force you to eat grass and moo like a cow, then that's now a constitutional right I have and your name will now be Daisy.

I get that the US has the legitimacy of the government coming from the consent of the governed. That's a good idea, and it's something I entirely support. But by RAW, the government has the power to change your rights without consulting or indeed informing you. You may feel that this is an abuse of power, and you might be right. But your feelings on the matter do not change the system as it stands.

Can you understand why I differentiate between rights that are granted in this nature and rights that are granted by some innate human characteristic or some higher power?

[Kaelik]

Don't pay too much attention to the thread title alone. Look at the context given in the OP.

Well, IS giving money to political candidates/parties a form of speech? To answer that, let's consider a hypothetical case: people aren't permitted to give money to politicians or parties at all. They can't even donate goods or services that money could otherwise buy, since you could get around the restriction against giving money by making the purchases yourself and donating the result. What would happen?

The ability of people to actually run a political campaign would be crippled to the point of eliminating it, and the ability of people to increase awareness on specific political issues would be limited to word-of-mouth. Not eliminated entirely, granted, but severely impaired.

So yeah, the ability to donate money to spread a message and/or support people with political messages follows necessarily from a protected right to organize around political concerns. You can't have the latter without the former.

This only results in money determining electoral results because people are stupid - and democracy is no protection against the stupidity of the electorate.

The FDA regulates the kinds of food that people can sell. If no one could sell any food at all, everyone would starve. It does not follow that the FDA may not regulate food in any way.

Likewise, the inability to run a political campaign with no funding does not preclude reasonable regulations of donations and expenditures.

[darkmaster]

Firstly, as a citizen of the united states I play a part in deciding who is allowed to make those decisions, secondly changing the constitution was, by design, made almost impossible to help ensure the power to do so wouldn't be abused, thirdly the people can, at any time, make their own proposals for changes to the constitution and exert political pressure on congress to get those changes made. All of these points put your argument on shaky ground, at best.

I can see where your argument is coming from, but you are actually having a different argument from me therefore making your points as they pertain to what I'm saying far from salient.

[Occluded Sun]

"The government" consists of the President, Congress, the Supreme Court and the people working for them. Those groups can, without holding a referendum or otherwise consulting the people in any way, change the constitution to be literally whatever they want.

Well, they can change the 'interpretation' to be whatever they want.

Which many people are unhappy about, wasn't the original intention of the system, and arguably should be changed. By 'having a rational discussion' with large numbers of politicians.

[Laertes]

Firstly, as a citizen of the united states I play a part in deciding who is allowed to make those decisions, secondly changing the constitution was, by design, made almost impossible to help ensure the power to do so wouldn't be abused, thirdly the people can, at any time, make their own proposals for changes to the constitution and exert political pressure on congress to get those changes made. All of these points put your argument on shaky ground, at best.

I can see where your argument is coming from, but you are actually having a different argument from me therefore making your points as they pertain to what I'm saying far from salient.

I think we're talking past one another to an extent. However, I also think we agree on the basic premise of what my point was.

A constitutional right comes from the consent of your fellow citizens, and ceases to exist when your fellow citizens choose to repeal that consent. You only have that right under their suffrance. You and I seem to agree on this point. It may be difficult for them to repeal it, but it's possible under the constitution. And if they repeal it then that is their right to do so. Your rights aren't being violated in any way.

Therefore, is being able to own as much money as you like a constitutional right? Possibly; you could probably make a fair stab at it being implicit. But then other people being allowed to elect a government which takes it away from you is also their right, so quit bitching.

A natural right exists despite the consent of your fellow citizens. If you believe that humans have the natural right to a free ballot, for example, then nobody can repeal that, and all those monarchies that existed back in the day were carrying on in violation of this right.

If you believe that natural rights exist, and if you believe that accumulation of money is a natural right, then other people would not be allowed to elect a government, or take any other action, which would deprive you of it.

See the difference?

[DSMatticus]

If you shout "Fire!" in a crowded theatre, that is dangerous, and that can also get you prosecuted.

Why can't people ever get this right? This is a classic example of a misused argument, and yet it's still made. Over and over again.

...

3) If there ISN'T a fire, you can be held liable for any losses or injuries sustained because you said there was. But there's no prior restraint on your making the claim.

And it is simply factually true that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater in order to provoke a panic is a thing you can get prosecuted for criminally. It's called endangerment, and it's a criminal offense. In every fucking country on Earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangerment

Ah, the good ol' Bait-and-Switch. You take a statement which is entirely correct, pretend that a key part of it is actually something totally different, then condemn the altered statement.

So, recap:
1) Occluded Sun decides to be a pedantic twat, and get pissy because someone left off the "falsely" that literally every person who has ever heard of the crowded theater hypothetical already knows goes there. This is not the least bit helpful, but really goes to show you that Occluded Sun is not above being deliberately retarded in order to make fake a point. Remember this. This will show up again later.

2) More relevantly, Occluded Sun also claims there is no prior legal restraint on falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater, and instead penalty is only in the form of liability for harms caused.

3) Frank points out that endangerment is an actual category of crimes which actually exists and for which prior restraint does exist.

4) Occluded Sun, realizing that he has once again completely fucked up everything because he is quite possibly the most incompetent person to grace our boards (including the poorly translated spambot rambling about corpuscle phones, which is both more competent and likely a better person to boot), decides to pretend there was unaddressed ambiguity on the matter of intent. Remember when I told you to remember that Occluded Sun is not above "I am fucking retarded, you should have been clearer, I win" as an argument? Well, here we are.

Well, IS giving money to political candidates/parties a form of speech? To answer that, let's consider a hypothetical case: people aren't permitted to give money to politicians or parties at all. They can't even donate goods or services that money could otherwise buy, since you could get around the restriction against giving money by making the purchases yourself and donating the result. What would happen?

The ability of people to actually run a political campaign would be crippled to the point of eliminating it, and the ability of people to increase awareness on specific political issues would be limited to word-of-mouth. Not eliminated entirely, granted, but severely impaired.

tl;dr an embarrassingly obvious false dichotomy

Occluded Sun, you're not being crazy enough. Word-of-mouth is, abstractly, also a service with a value. The logical consequence of regulating the ability of New York billionaires to spend millions of dollar on Wisconsin state elections is that we must necessarily criminalize all discussion of politics. Wait, no. Votes, while illegal to buy or sell (except senatorial votes lol), also likely have some value. The logical consequence of any campaign finance reform is actually the criminalization of elections.

I guess you're right. We can't actually have elections if we tell the Koch brothers (neither of whom is a resident of Wisconsin) that they can't spend more money in Wisconsin elections than the entire state of Wisconsin does. Those are the only two options. Man, that sucks.

[darkmaster]

"The government" consists of the President, Congress, the Supreme Court and the people working for them. Those groups can, without holding a referendum or otherwise consulting the people in any way, change the constitution to be literally whatever they want.

Well, they can change the 'interpretation' to be whatever they want.

Which many people are unhappy about, wasn't the original intention of the system, and arguably should be changed. By 'having a rational discussion' with large numbers of politicians.

Okay, I have been ignoring you up until now but would you please stop fucking talking? Or like, join the other side, you're not helping. The government explicitly has the right to do anything necessary to carry out its duties as outlined in the constitution which isn't forbidden elsewhere in the document because governments need to be able to do that in order to be. Now, sometimes the arguments the fed makes are dumb, especially the ones that involve interstate trade, which is almost all of them but they do have the right to make those arguments and see if they hold up.

That wasn't what Lartes was actually talking about though, he was talking about adding new amendments to the constitution so not only are you wrong and an idiot who has no idea what's being talked about.

Laertes I'm not sure why we're still talking about this because I already told you we're having different conversations but let me spell it out for you. You are asking whether or not I believe rights are, in fact, inalienable when I am talking about rights as set down by the constitution which is based on the idea of the social contract and begins with the words we the people and therefore implicitly stipulates a source of rights that is neither god, nor nature, nor time immemorial but the people, who in turn form the basis of the government.

So you continue to have a conversation about where I believe rights come from and I continue to have a conversation about how I already gave you my answer in my thesis statement.

[Occluded Sun]

Okay, I have been ignoring you up until now but would you please stop fucking talking? Or like, join the other side, you're not helping. The government explicitly has the right to do anything necessary to carry out its duties as outlined in the constitution which isn't forbidden elsewhere in the document because governments need to be able to do that in order to be.

And yet, according to the Constitution itself, neither the President nor the Supreme Court can alter the Constitution. With Congress, it takes a two-thirds vote just to propose one, and a 3/4th majority of the States to ratify it.

In practice, the Constitution is 'interpreted' increasingly freely, somewhat subverting the immense difficulties of actually proposing and ratifying an amendment. But was Laertes' statement correct?

"The government" consists of the President, Congress, the Supreme Court and the people working for them. Those groups can, without holding a referendum or otherwise consulting the people in any way, change the constitution to be literally whatever they want.

No, not really. Even permitting a very broad interpretation of their interpretations, Laertes is wrong. Only Congress can change the Constitution, 'those groups', plural, cannot.

[Occluded Sun]

Ahem: Shouting fire in a crowded theater:

"The paraphrasing does not generally include the word "falsely", i.e., "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater", which was the original wording used in Holmes's opinion and highlights that speech which is dangerous and false is not protected, as opposed to speech which is truthful but also dangerous.

It can't be left out. Not without changing the meaning of the phrase. I can't expect people who aren't capable of communicating fluently in English to appreciate that, though.

[darkmaster]

You are an idiot, the US government has a lot of problems but existing aint one of them.

[Occluded Sun]

Read Article V, darkmaster. It very clearly specifies how the Constitution can be amended, and the neither the President nor the Supreme Court have anything to do with it.

The government is not empowered to do anything merely to continue to exist.

[Kaelik]

Ahem: Shouting fire in a crowded theater:

"The paraphrasing does not generally include the word "falsely", i.e., "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater", which was the original wording used in Holmes's opinion and highlights that speech which is dangerous and false is not protected, as opposed to speech which is truthful but also dangerous.

It can't be left out. Not without changing the meaning of the phrase. I can't expect people who aren't capable of communicating fluently in English to appreciate that, though.

From the very first sentence of your link:

"'Shouting fire in a crowded theater' is a popular metaphor for speech or actions made for the principal purpose of creating unnecessary panic."

Since actual fire creates necessary panic, it follows, as any fucking idiot could tell you, that the idiomatic phrase specifically refers to false claims. Literally anyone in the fucking universe who speaks English, you could ask them if their actually is a fire in the metaphorical shouting, and they would always and without fail respond that of course their isn't.

[DSMatticus]

Ahem: Shouting fire in a crowded theater:

"The paraphrasing does not generally include the word "falsely", i.e., "falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater", which was the original wording used in Holmes's opinion and highlights that speech which is dangerous and false is not protected, as opposed to speech which is truthful but also dangerous.

It can't be left out. Not without changing the meaning of the phrase. I can't expect people who aren't capable of communicating fluently in English to appreciate that, though.

"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular metaphor for speech or actions made for the principal purpose of creating unnecessary panic.

Swing and a miss! Are you really sure you want to keep this going? Because you just shat all over your own argument, and that is kind of fucking embarrassing.

[Occluded Sun]

My complaint about the use of that phrase is that everyone who does so gets it wrong. What part of the things you've quoted contradicts that? (Hint: nothing does.)

You'd have to grasp my point before you could determine the relationship between it and my arguments.

[DSMatticus]

My complaint about the use of that phrase is that everyone who does so gets it wrong. What part of the things you've quoted contradicts that? (Hint: nothing does.)

You'd have to grasp my point before you could determine the relationship between it and my arguments.

Aaand fail. If the specific and commonly used metaphor establishes within its own definition the element of "intent to cause unnecessary panic," then failure to reduntantly specify "intent" and "unnecessary panic" when referring to that specific and commonly used metaphor is in fact not getting it wrong.

For example: trying to explain to you what a dumbass you are is like beating a dead horse. And if you contested the correctness of my usage of that idiom on the basis that I did not say "is like beating a dead horse to try and get it to move," and therefore did not accurately capture the idiom's meaning (to express the futility of attempting to achieve a goal), you would not actually have a point, because that's the fucking definition of the idiom and anyone saying the idiom already means exactly that you stupid twat!

[Occluded Sun]

Man oh man, you're missing the point. If the idiomatic phrase were "you're beating a horse", it would be a silly idiom, because people beat horses productively all the time. The phrase includes the word 'dead' because it's incorrect, otherwise. Leaving it out would be stupid and wrong.

"Yelling 'fire!' in a crowded theater" is a bad idiom. And as used, quite incorrect, because actually yelling 'fire' in a crowd ISN'T a crime and is quite appropriate in many circumstances. It's popular, and it's completely wrong. And stupid.

[John Magnum]

Occluded Sun, unless you specify what you're trying to produce, you can't tell in advance whether beating a dead horse is unproductive. You need to apply your standards to idioms consistently.

[DSMatticus]

And as used, quite incorrect, because actually yelling 'fire' in a crowd ISN'T a crime and is quite appropriate in many circumstances.

"Shouting fire in a crowded theater" is a popular metaphor for speech or actions made for the principal purpose of creating unnecessary panic.

Again, it's seriously right fucking there. When people refer to shouting fire in a crowded theater, they are referring to a specific metaphor in common usage in which "purpose" and "unnecessary panic" are established as elements of the metaphor.

Your argument that people who reference shouting fire in a crowded theater without mentioning "falsely" are failing to establish the element of "unnecessary panic" is bullshit, because shouting fire in a crowded theater "is a popular metaphor for speech or actions made for the principal purpose of creating unnecessary panic."

Your argument that people who reference shouting fire in a crowded theater without mentioning "intent" are failing to establish the element of "purpose" is bullshit, because shouting fire in a crowded theater "is a popular metaphor for speech or actions made for the principal purpose of creating unnecessary panic."

You are currently arguing that the various people who have referenced this metaphor did not actually intend to reference the metaphor, and instead were speaking completely 100% literally and all of the "omissions" were meaningful, and then going on to argue that because of those omissions they are wrong. Essentially: you are attacking strawmen and claiming that they are valid representations of your opponents because of your own deliberate refusal to understand how things like "idioms" and "context" and "language" work. But no one here is stupid enough to be suckered by that: we know you're being a dishonest twat, we've called you on it, and you have lost the ensuing argument badly. There does exist a common usage metaphor which contains all the elements you claimed people failed to address, and people were very obviously referencing and invoking that metaphor, and now all you've got is a bunch of petulant fucking whining that you get to declare when people are being literal and when they aren't because... I don't know, you need a handicap for being such a total dumbass?

But we're done. Declaring your own victory and smugfacing off into the distance is usually just childish, but fucking seriously. I could not win any harder than this unless I was also banging seven-gram rocks and had tiger blood. At this point there's nothing left for me to do but dance at the lip of the ridiculous hole you have dug for yourself, and my feet are still tired from all the others times I already did that. Stop saying stupid shit for once in your life - my vicious disdain is getting tired.

[Chamomile]

And if you contested the correctness of my usage of that idiom on the basis that I did not say "is like beating a dead horse to try and get it to move,"

You know, I always thought the literal interpretation of that idiom was that the goal was to kill horses, and beating the dead horse was futile because this horse, being already dead, could not be killed by further beating. It always seemed like not quite an apt metaphor, though, since in the literal sense you weren't getting anywhere because you had already succeeded, which is rarely the case when it's used as an idiom. I also always wondered why the default goal to be achieved was horse murder.

Which kind of goes to reinforce the point: I understood and correctly used the metaphor for like fifteen years without having any idea how I could even use the phrase literally.

[Maj]

Who the fuck tries to interpret idioms literally?! No my god. That is fucking insane because an idiom literally is "an expression that cannot be understood from the meanings of its separate words but that has a separate meaning of its own." (Definition courtesy of Merriam-Webster.)

[DSMatticus]

That idiom was originally coined as 'flogging a dead horse,' and somewhere along the line flogging became beating because reasons. It always made me think of some furious carriage driver kicking his horse's corpse in rage that it had had the nerve to die on him while he had places to go, like the 1800's equivalent of a dude broken down on the side of the road and taking it out on his tires. That didn't make a whole lot of sense, but I still don't even understand why 'piece of cake' means easy so fuck it.

Eventually I realized, "oh, they mean with a riding crop," and that made it painfully obvious. It probably should have just stayed 'flogging,' because that is a lot clearer. Maybe in ye olde days beating didn't have the connotation of violence for violence's sake and was a much closer substitute for flogging? I dunno.