Rights and regulation

At the GNU Public Dictatorship we are nothing if not practical, which is why when we see debates about rights and restrictions on those rights couched in terms of absolutes we become a bit disappointed.  While we know that most people who are not our supporters aren't so enlightened as we are, we still expected more from the general populace.  In order to aid those who are trying to explain to their non-supporter neighbors, we have decided to take some time to post in this forum about what it means to have rights and restrictions on those rights.

Fundamentally, the GNU Public Dictatorship believes that people have the right to do what they want to do, to acquire the things they want to acquire, and to associate with the people with whom they want to acquire.  When it comes down to particulars, however, the GPD has decided that certain behaviors, objects, and associations are detrimental to society in that one person's exercise of his or her "right" infringes upon others' exercise of their rights.  The field of artificial intelligence proposes to solve this dilemma by ranking individuals  and the "utility" of the exercise of their rights, and by restricting individuals' rights to choose when their choices would cause more harm to society than benefit.  The GPD, however, is not confident that we could create such a utility function, and instead has decided to follow a more traditional approach where certain behaviors are proscribed, not because they are detrimental to society, but because in most cases they probably are detrimental to society.  Unfortunately, this approach is rather imprecise and so a new and better approach is needed.  The recent debates about gun control provide a useful framework to discuss the merits of our new approach.

Some argue that guns are evil and should be entirely outlawed.  The US government is currently not at liberty to entertain this notion as they are tied to a bothersome "Constitution" with a "Bill of Rights."  The GPD doesn't have this restriction, but we aren't saying we would outlaw weapons, just that we don't have a reason we can't consider it.  Regardless of whether this position is tenable, however, the fact that the US cannot take this position renders it moot.

On the other end of the spectrum, some argue that arms should be distributed to all who want them without regulation or restriction, and that, on the balance, it would discourage crime and violence more than it would encourage it.  The problem with this argument is that not everyone chooses to exercise their right to have weapons, and that this more pacifist group would become easy targets for the extremists, who would clearly be happy to exercise their rights to kill people.  Even if there is a group of law-abiding and justice-minded individuals to deter such violence, local disputes would likely deteriorate into warfare before such individuals arrived to clean up the town.

The only tenable position, then, is to assume that some people will want to exercise their rights, and that others will not, and to simply ensure that it is not likely for those who want to exercise their rights for the wrong reasons (such as killing people) to be able to achieve their goal.  The trick is to keep people from exercising this right incorrectly.

Anyway, the GPD, as always, has a solution for this.  Any world citizen can own firearms, but if they are ever deemed to be dangerous, the firearms will be taken away.  Normal governments couldn't accomplish this effectively, but due to our high level of involvement in citizens' personal lives and our vast network of spies and other operatives, we believe we can proactively remove threats before they materialize.  Assuming, of course, that we get fully in power.  Here's hoping that it will happen soon!