At 9:47 PM -0700 5/10/01, Eric Cordian wrote:
>Tim Writes:
>
>> Such lawsuits are inconsistent with a free society. More generally,
>> the whole idea of torts, outside of contract law, is bogus. The
>> belief that one party can sue another based purely on the notion of
>> "damages," when no contract or consideration or concrete property
>> right was present is bogus.
>
>That would imply that only criminal and not civil action could be employed
>when someone is injured or made less wealthy by the actions of another, in
>the absence of contract, consideration, or concrete property right.
Many actions make others less wealthy. When a Borders bookstore opens
in town and business suffers dramatically at the smaller bookstores,
their owners have certainly been made "less wealthy." (I'm not
against Borders in any way, but compelling statistical evidence, and
even direct causal/eyewitness evidence can be found.)
Ditto for price wars. Ditto for when a company switches from buying
from Alice to buying from Bob and Alice goes bankrupt.
Schumpeter called this the process of creative destructionism.
Many cases involve actors becoming less wealthy because of the
actions of other actors. However, in a free society, such actions are
not torts. No expectation, no contract, no consideration was
exchanged. In short, "tough."
Asserting that economic damage was done is not enough.
>
>This would seem to be moving in the wrong direction, in a society where
>too many things are already illegal, and more things are becoming illegal
>with each passing day.
>
>We need to replace silly laws with torts, not the other way around.
Competition is not a tort. Economic losses are not torts--unless the
economic loss came about through some kind of physical trespass,
arson, and related acts of actual aggression.
>
>If Alice puts up a sign on her house that says "Danger to Children Next
>Door" because John reads Playboy, and Alice thinks Playboy exploits Womyn
>and Children because she's a Dworkinista, I think John has every right to
>sue the bitch when he gets fired as a Disney VP, and the sexually
>frustrated Oprah fans on his block start telling everyone that he's a
>NAMBLA member.
Well, your views are counter to everything I believe. I can't speak
for others here, so I won't. But in my view, the above is a crystal
clear case of free speech in the First sense, and an equally clear
case of where the proper remedy for John is _his own speech_.
The courts should not be involved.
There are arguments for private courts, a la Benson, a la Stephenson,
but these don't exist at this time and are not likely to resolve the
above situation.
>
>
>If someone points out that Tim May has 6000 lbs of Ammonium Nitrate and
>Fuel Oil in his garage, owns a veritable arsenal of guns, and wishes to
>water his lawn with the blood of Treasury Agents, some might suggest this
>is a free society at work as well.
>
>Of course, Tim might not see the humor when the tanks roll up. :)
It's already happened, and I didn't try to sue the person who made
the (very similar) claim.
Speech is speech. Sticks and stones and all that. Let people say what
they want.
Deal with it.
--Tim May
--
Timothy C. May [EMAIL PROTECTED] Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns
