Ideas Cafe on individual versus group rights

We had our discussion on individual versus group rights tonight.  The discussion moved over a number of different areas, covering various perspectives.

Dan started with the position of individual rights and how an individual should have the right to make mistakes and even do silly things so long as it is not hurtful to others. Dan moved on to the concept of property rights where a property owner should have the right to do what they want within their property.

This extends to the argument that if logging should be stopped in order to preserve the habitat for an endangered animal species, that the group interested in preserving the animals should either buy the land to be logged or have the government buy the land instead of trying to stop the existing land owner from logging on their own land.

From this concept, a restaurant owner has the right to refuse any customer even if it is on the basis of gender, race, and physical attributes which is not acceptable to the rest of society.

Shula felt that a home owner may exercise those rights of refusing visitors of any type to the private home.  However, restaurants and other businesses by applying for a business license had turned their establishment into a semi-public space and must therefore meet obligations of social equality in the society they operate in.

Mano felt the bigger issue is the lingering power of sunset industries such as the tobacco industry.  This industry can see that they are set to decline but have been fighting successfully to stay on in spite of huge efforts by the medical circles to rid society of tobacco.  Just like bureaucracies in governments and other systems,  a self preservation mode kicks in to lobby the decision makers to slow the decline of the industry.

This is unfair as the rest of the population is opposing these forces at the bottom level of democracy while the industry lobby groups are operating at the top policy maker's level.

The same applies to oil companies trying to maintain their position in our economy and blocking us from moving to newer forms of energy.

While Mano pointed to the longevity of the tobacco industry as evidence for this,  I felt that the causality is not so easily linked and maybe due to several factors, one of which may be the addictive nature of tobacco.  After all, there are other sunset industries such as the music industry, photographic film industry (Kodak), yellow pages directories which were not as successful as the tobacco industry in delaying the sunset.

Rafi pointed out that all the oil companies are involved in other forms of energy and will switch the moment that these other energy forms are cost competitive.  They have all morphed into energy companies rather than just oil companies.

Rafi's objection was that at least with the tobacco company,  he as a consumer can choose to stop or continue to smoke.  However, with projects such as pipelines, nuclear power plants,  the decisions are made outside of the consumer level and he has no influence as a consumer and must leave it to the political process.

As to where we draw the line when one individual's rights clash with others.  Most in the group detest government legislation as they felt that it actually takes away the two individual's option to negotiate with each other to reach a mutually agreeable compromise.  I worry though, that in the real world, negotiations may come down to "might is right" and social anarchy. Compromise may not always be agreeable, especially to the strong and powerful.

No discussion about compromise can avoid the question of fairness. Mano and Bruce did not think it fair for corporation and other interest groups with enough resources to be lobbying the government while the citizens are only operating at the bottom democratic level. To me, the corporations and property development companies also represent their customer that they sell their products to.  When existing residents oppose a development company from building new condominiums, they are objecting to future owners of the new condominiums who have no say in the matter. These future condominium owners, just like future generations who have no say in the pollution that we cause today, have no say in the matter but they are stakeholders.

Mano's concept of fairness is that it is the process we started with and that we are not starting a new process from scratch. Rafi also felt that a good government is a consistent government, no matter where it stands.  Much better to have a consistent government that we may not agree with than a government that changes all the time and unpredictable.

There were other various tangents that we got into, from the legality of stopping hate speech on the internet to the consumer having too much debt, the possibility of charging a higher health premium for smokers, and the wisdom of charging less auto insurance premium to older drivers.  I leave it to the rest of you at the meeting to comment as you wish!

Another interesting roaring meeting.