Happiness is Your Responsibility & The Sense of Entitlement

Think I misspoke a couple times, but you're smart enough to figure it out.

The best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9J1b3MqiX8

Bottled Water:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfPAjUvvnIc

Category:

People & Blogs

Tags:

• Happiness
• is
• Your
• Responsibility
• The
• Sense
• of
• Entitlement

[MotionFur]

Well, I don't think pragmatism is really a nebulous concept, but you may consider the "If---then" statement to be pragmatic. And I didn't say I supported that arguement, I mearly used it as an example, as I've heard it before. I'm just saying, this statement about rights can be made without a sense of entitlement.

And you're right about the word "right." Sometimes it's easier to avoid words that have so much baggage, but so many words are like that. Market, Capitalism, Corporatism, Government

[PanzerDivisionBOM]

The very word "right" is so mired in double-think, that people believe that two people can hold separate, contradictory and individually valid claims to rights:

"Well, as your duly elected representative, I will of course take your rights to your life and property into account. But there are also other people in the world, who have rights to their lives and to their happiness. So if they need some of your property for pensions, subsidies, health care or welfare, then I have to give it to them."

[PanzerDivisionBOM]

But now, you've already attached such nebulous concepts as society, pragmatism and a distinction between different sizes of aggregates to your concept of rights, all of which can and have in the past been hijacked by social metaphysicists and demagogues.

I'm right there with you on the issue of property ownership, but I don't think that the way in which you establish it as valid holds much merit.

-

[MotionFur]

This arguement may be true or false, but either way, I think a person could make this type of statement without a sense of entitlement underlining it.

[MotionFur]

Well, it depends what is ment by the word "rights." I have, in the past heard claims similar to:

"Historical evidence shows that when a society of people over X size and doesn't respect private property rights, that society struggles to produce the requires goods and services for survival and procreation of the individuals in that society. Therefor: if we want to survive, we should respect private property rights."

[PanzerDivisionBOM]

I agree about claims to "freedom of speech" on YouTube (i.e. the right to free bandwidth) amounting to no more than whining about personal prejudice.

In fact, it seems to me that claims to "rights" usually follow that pattern.

"I want this, and therefore, you are evil if you do not render it unto me."

or,

"That person over there has said that you must render this unto me, so if you do not, then you are evil."

But you say that some claims to rights are not based on such prejudice?

[MotionFur]

When someone makes a claim to a "right" to something, it can often flow from a sense of entitlement. People have been talking about the "right to free speech" lately on YT, but if you listen to them, they're really just talking about the right to have people listen to them, or the right to have YT be their megaphone. That's a sense of entitlement, also many times when people claim a "right to health care" it's a sense of entitlement. But it's not every claim about rights come from entitlement.

[PanzerDivisionBOM]

I think I agree with you. Making false claims regarding the product you're selling is fraudulent.

Regarding that sense of entitlement, would you, in your own use of terminology, regard such things as "rights", as being subject to irrational feelings of entitlement?

[MotionFur]

Well, as far as what the bottled water companies are doing, they're pretty legit. If you read the label on bottled water they state the source, even if it's from a municipal source [tap water.]

But as far someone actually misrepresenting an good or service, it is definitely fraud. It's essentially a bait and switch that leads your customers into a situation they didn't actually consent to. It's a round-about way of committing an act of aggression/using force.

[PanzerDivisionBOM]

A question comes to mind, regarding justice and advertising.

If I sell hose water and canned food expensively, claiming that it came from exotic locales, and my customers bought it, had it and loved it... Am I committing an injustice?

On the face of it, my conduct is fraudulent, since I am in fact not selling what I claim to be selling. But my customers' enjoyment - the end against which they weigh the cost of my product - is still genuine.