Can property rights exist without government?
Yes. In fact there are numerous examples of property rights that were enforced by private mechanisms in situations where the government was unable or unwilling to enforce them. For example, medieval kings saw interest as usury, against biblical doctrine, and would not enforce loan contracts that involved interest. But merchants agreed among themselves to hold such contracts as binding, and held their own courts, and blacklisted anyone who did not uphold their contracts. More modern examples include NYC diamond merchants, who trade millions of dollars on a handshake alone. As a practical matter, theft of diamonds is an untraceable crime, where government protections would be entirely ineffective. So trust-based private mechanisms dominate. The same might be said of eBay, where fraud involving $20 interstate purchases is too small for the government to effectively police, so trust-based systems dominate.As far as the origin of property goes, almost everyone today either gains property via voluntary exchanges with others, or as outright gifts from others. If you possess property, and no one else can assert a greater claim to it, then your possession stands. The right is that no one without a greater claim may do violence to you or the property. If there are competing claims then some dispute resolution mechanism can be used. This could be a government court, or it could be some private organization. Note that neither the sale, gift or purchase of property, nor the resolution of disputes necessarily involves the government. So it is rather difficult to argue that government is intrinsic to property. Where it is involved today is more in the nature of a parasite, e.g., land sales require government registration, in order that they may collect a tax.
When may is used to mean permission, can subjects be he, she and they? Don't they sound kind of weird?
I can understand where this intuition comes from: language-use. In real life, one hears the word “may” (in the sense of permission rather than possibility) usually with singular pronouns and usually in the first person. How often do the circumstances arise for “May they be excused?” (emphasis mine, not linguistic).Now imagine you’re outside of the classroom and in fact, outside of your familiar power structure. Imagine you are in government.Aid: “Sir, they’re organizing a march to protest how we [= meaning you] silenced all the scientists on climate change!”Trump: “They may protest till the cows come come.”Made up example for context, but all in all, while the distribution of different pronouns is different for different words, all are grammatically possible depending on context.
Is it legal to video tape people in public without their consent in India?
In India and in many other countries, photography is allowed to a huge extent.If a person records video (with his/her smartphone or any other video recorder) in public places in India, is it legal to do so, even if the field of view may capture certain people who were not intentionally picked by the person recording the scene?If you are standing at your own property, say your rooftop, it is totally legal to film whatever and whoever you can and may.If you are standing on public property say a road, you can film, but it depends on the request of others. If some shopkeeper comes out and asks you to delete the film involving him, you have to. You might have to blur faces of unintentionally video graphed people.There are some crimes which are cognisable, in that matter, you don't have to take any permission to film it.If you are standing on others' property or the government property, you need full licence and/or permission. For e.g.: Railways, Subways, etc.Recently the GOI has allowed filming inside railways and airports for private purposes.Filming Policy at Rajiv Gandhi Hyderabad International Airport allows private photography, for commercial you need to apply. Also, if the people (in public place) request not to video-record them, can the person (who is recording) decline their request (legally speaking)?You cannot decline their request if they are not committing any crime. If there is crime you can decline. As pointed earlier, crime has to be cognisable, not a mere fistfight.To clarify, you have the right to film public servants outside their private offices. In all common law countries, police cannot say no to being filmed when they are on duty outside the police station.I don't have much to cite, I have done research earlier on this, when I bought my first DSLR.Another legal principle, which comes into play is: Expectation of Privacy. In public places, or in places where you can be seen to do something, the expectation of privacy is very low. To claim the fundamental right to privacy one has to prove that s/he was not in a publicly viewable place.This comes into play when you photograph celebrities and VIPs, they have the least expectation of privacy. :)Salman Khan at the most needs to stretch his pectoral muscles from his balcony to make a news headline.
Is disorderly conduct a charge that can stop your future employment?
I was arrested for disorderly conduct. Now I am worried about the impact it might have on job search. I am a student now at the University of Texas and will soon graduate with a degree in Economics. Here how it happened; I was going home was pulled over for failing to signal left. The officer apprached me and cited me for seat belt. Another officer in another patrol car stopped and ordered me out of the car and statred searching me. I said:" This is a violation of my moterf....g right. You have no f...ing basis for this s@#$%. At that moment, he ordered me to place my hand on the back of the car and took me to jail for Disorderly conduct. How strong is the officer's case against me? Was I wrong by saying these things? I know it is not a crime to use profane language as long as he isn't addresse to the officer. was I wrong?
What do you think about this American History question?
I know that a lot of people immediately assume that the Confederate flag is a sign of racism, and I understand why they say that, though I believe that they are wrong, and I was wondering what your opinion was. Consider the War of Northern Aggression (I don't call it the "Civil" War because it really wasn't, a civil war is when a country as a whole breaks apart and fights itself still as a country, where the Southern states seceded legally but were just "unrecognized" by the Northern government) and what the Southerners were really fighting for. They felt as though they weren't getting enough recognition because they were outnumbered by the Northern states, so they wanted to be able to make their own decisions and do things that would benefit themselves just like anyone would. The main cause of the War of Northern Aggression was not slavery at all. I don't understand why people always say that it's a war about slavery when it really was very little about slavery. The South really had slaves not much longer after the North did, in fact, there was still slavery going on in some places in the North and segregation lasted in both the North and the South long after the war, so this obviously wasn't a war fought about the Northerners seeing that black people were not inferior to white and the Southerners just hating the black people so much. I'm not going to deny that there was hate with some people, but there could be and were feeling that were just the same to the people in the North. The Confederate Flag represents the war that many Southerners, like myself, had ancestors fight and die in and honoring them and the idea of a government that will give us the things we need. I know that this isn't terribly well written and I apologize for that, I'm only 15, but this is a topic that I'm very passionate about. I'm a Christian and I am in no way racist towards anyone, I don't believe that you can be a really Christian and be racist because it goes against God's commands. I'm also not trying to offend anyone by this article, I just want to see if there is anyone out there who agrees with me or has an educated answer to counter mine with. I would love to hear it. Also, please keep in mind that there is so much more information that I could give here but I obviously didn't want to make this too unbearably long. If you would like to hear more please email me, though. Thank you so much! Clair
Why were the Russian artists in Moscow arrested for giving out political leaflets? Isn't it a violation of their constitutional right for freedom of speech and information?
I think you are confusing Russia with modern liberal democracies - which have real protections for freedom of speech, freedom of the press, independent judiciary, separation of powers and so on and so forth.Russia is an autocratic state with only a thin veneer of democracy. Thousands, probably tens of thousands of people are in prison because of their beliefs or because they have spoken out against the government.True, they have broken laws, but these are not laws that would exist or would not be enforced within a true democracy.“According to a Russian law introduced in 2014, a fine or detention of up to 15 days may be given for holding a demonstration without the permission of authorities and prison sentences of up to five years may be given for three breaches. Single-person pickets have resulted in fines and a three-year prison sentence.” Freedom of assembly in Russia - WikipediaThe government uses the refusal to give permission to demonstrate as a weapon to control political opposition.Modern liberal democracies vary in how they handle the issue.The police in the UK have a legal obligation to protect the rights of citizens to hold demonstrations. You do not need to apply for permission to demonstrate and the police will only intervene if this is necessary to protect rights of other citizens.You do need to *inform* the police (but not to ask permission) if you are going to hold a march - because this impacts other road users - and the police can impose conditions to protect the rights of other citizens.There are limits to free speech in democracies and holding a demo to promote racial hatred (for example) might get you locked up - but the act of holding the demonstration is itself protected in law.The biggest difference to Russia is that the police in the UK are not acting on behalf of the government. They are acting on behalf of the law which is a separate institution. This makes a big difference - the government is not able, for example, to have a demonstration banned because it is challenging their policies. Yes, we can see examples of where this line was crossed and the police got it wrong (eg. Orgreave, ) but the exceptions are sufficiently rare that they really do prove the rule.In practice the whole Russian judicial system is at the service of Putin and is continuously used to lock up anyone who poses a threat. His is a venal kleptocracy.