This may seem like a silly question, but I have a minor ethical dilemna that showed up during a holiday party. My second daughter went to go eat the GORP (a mix of nuts, raisins, and M&Ms). Then I noticed that she started mining the gorp for the M&Ms. My instinct was to say "Hey, don't mine those!" It's from years of leading hiking trips and telling the freaking campers to not do that, but now I'm wondering what's the common libertarian/anarchist method for dealing with mining gorp, and if you're ready for it let's make it bigger.
Limited Communal Resources
What this has turned into within my head is trying to figure out what the range of answers are for figuring out how to allocate limited physical resources. This isn't a debate about are you allowed to own your pot smoking, heroine injecting, recreational nukes... I'm trying to limit it to something where there are simply limited resources and it's not really a trade/value thing.
Should I have told my daughter don't mine those? I'm telling her what to do... that's not terribly libertarian, but I'm also trying to stay somewhat within social norms. Where's the balance to that?
Who gets to determine how the resources are allocated? Is it just the first person to start mining them? Do they then have mining rights to them? Should I be able to come in and mine in the exact same way? How's this work?
What about something like water?
There's a finite amount of fresh water in the world. There are lots of people that want it. How does a libertarian allocate it? Simply price? Who gets to handle the faucet? Is anyone guaranteed water? Does life necessity factor in to this? How does voluntarysm impact something like life necessities.
IDK, forgive me and my first world Christmas party existential thoughts, but if you have any answers I'd like to know.
image from Wikipedia
Who gets to determine how the resources are allocated? Everyone does, thanks to their actions in the free market.
How does a libertarian allocate it? By respecting property rights, so the owner of said resource is the one who would decide how to allocate, based on the market.
Simply price? Yep, price and demand.
Who gets to handle the faucet? The owner/owners
Is anyone guaranteed water? No, well at least if we are seeing this thought a libertarian point of view, no, nothing can be guaranteed, anything can be earned.
Are you a libertarian? Have you read Ayn Rand?
Because I believe this is an interesting ideology and I have learn a ton from Ayn Rand.
Isnt there another libertarian principle that is not allowed to harm other people?
If so, not allowing people to have acesso to the water is breaking that law. If you dont drinks water, you die.
The same happens with food and health for example.
About harming other people, I interpret this as doing active damage like assaulting someone.
In a libertarian place everyone would have access to water (for example) through the market.
This looks ideal, only if there is fair competition. How there can be a fair competition if there is no regulations to avoid things like monopoly, price dumping, cartel, and all other practices that hurt a fair market?
That is one thing that libertarians still didnt gave me a acceptable answer.
Saying that the market regulates itself is to ignore all the monopolies, dumping, and cartel created on the past that were held by market regulation laws.
Like in this case of water, someone monopolize the water supply of a big enough region he puts very high price that only very rich people can pay it. No one else can enter the competition to bring prices down because de monopoly already owns all water sources on a big area.
All he have to do is have a price low enough that it makes not profitable to anyone to bring water from places outside the region.
To ilustrate:
The fair price (costs+acceptable profit) of extracting water on a big region would be $10,00 per gallon.
The price to bring water from outside this region (extraction+transport costs+profit) would be $200,00
The owner of the water monopoly only need to set the price to $199,00 so that no one outside the area would have interest in selling there.
Is if a fair market? Meanwhile, people start doing horrible things and breaking the no damage rule only to survive.
BTW, is the No damage rule applied if the damage was done in name of basic survival, like having water to drink?
What keeps the people from voting with their feet and leaving? Assuming the monopolist is profit oriented, he leaves the people with enough money to survive after water costs.
What keeps these people from collecting rainwater? What keeps other businesses on the periphery of the region to bring in water cheaply. In your example I assume this would not be possible, maybe the people live on an island or on a different planet?
It seems to me that fixing the price at 199,99 creates incredible incentive for competing businesses to find efficient ways of transporting water to that region.
Lastly, Libertarian theory does not claim that an anarcho-capitalist society would be a utopia where terrible situations do not exist. It merely claims that society would be more just. Is it morally okay to let someone die if you could save their life by giving them half your money? Is it morally okay to force someone to give up half their money in order to save someone's life? Definitely both situations are morally questionable, but the former is perfectly just while the latter is not.
How can it be just if if the market can be put in a state of unfairness?
How can people "vote with their feet" when they have no resources and are dying?
How can you be sure that the monopolist wouldn't only exploit the resources, leave the land dry and dead, then leave to another place to do the same thing, without leaving anything just and fair behind?
So, someone finds a way to provide water lower costs at the region, why wouldnt the monopolist just buy all this new water supply than what people could afford on the market for a higher price only to avoid other product than his to reach the market?
How is letting someone die more just than creating a mechanism that allow people to survive?
All the arguments i hear so far about libertarianism seems that creating unjust and unfair situations doesnt matter as long as everyone can do whatever the hell they want.
Well Cubans have been doing it for decades, and us Venezuelans started doing it recently.
This doesn’t sound as a sustainable business model. Don’t you agree?
People survive and reach prosperity in countries that respect freedom and the free market. That’s why the migration is always towards countries with a lot of economic freedom, not to countries with totalitarianism-socialism-communism
Libertarianism is about creating a rights respecting society, when your rights are your life and the result of your work. How can that be not just?
Another subject is the possibility of achieving and sustaining a society like that, which I think isn’t possible, for now. But crypto can help with this in the long term
Please note that "just" and "fair" are not synonyms. What's fair to you may not be fair to me. In the words of Bastiat: justice is the lack og injustice. Some action or inaction is just if no one's rights were violated. If you violate someone's property rights to safe a life, this is not justice but injustice. Undertake this action at your own peril.
To be clear, a right to water can certainly not exist, as it would be in conflict with another's right to property. It is important that a system of rights contain no contradictions, and therefore a law can only rise to the status of right if it is universal. Similarly a right to healthcare entitles you to a docto's labour which violates his rights.
Let it be clear that I find your sketched situation a very bad one and I pity the people, but also the situation is highly unrealistic
It is much more profitable for the monopolist to leave the area alive. In that way he does not need to move.
If the monopolist buys all this water his profits dwindle, and the market mechanism does its job. The demand for water is still not satisfied and more capitalists can come in and do the same.
Why should people tolerate the seizure of their water by the water magnate?
Why should they leave, just because he seizes the water?
By what mechanism is it just he does so?
Seizure of natural resources, such as water, or by logging, has either to be modulated to make it just, and not monopolizable, or recognized as criminal corruption.
If the resources were not in use by anyone, then it is just for him to appropriate it. For example, if there was a flowing river that people drank from, it would not be just for him to claim this resource. If the river was polluted and he built a plant that purified the water, it would definitely be just for him to be the sole owner of that purified water. How could it not be? If he digs a well and draws water from it, who else is owner of that water?
Now if people rely on the water from his well as there is no other source of water there, then they still do not have the right to steal from him this water if they otherwise die. It is his water by right of appropriation and no one else's. He mixed his labor with nature and created value that he owns, and it is his to distribute.
you need to have in mind things like monopolies, and cartels are usually related to government interventions with things like patents and permissions. In a real free market, having a monopoly would be almost impossible.
I think you are implying something that makes no sense, why would someone want to have dying and miserable customers? Why would I want to hurt my customers? If I were selling something, I want my customers to be happy, healthy and prosperous. Otherwise I will end up bankrupting my business because I won’t have any customers.
about the no damage rule, I think in a libertarian place there would be enough voluntarily supported charity organizations and I am sure every needed person would find support.
Ps: I still wonder why would someone want to make water so expensive decreasing the prosperity of the community? That makes no sense to me. I want everyone to thrive.
The artificial oligarchical hoarding of Steem is a marked example of doing so, even causing Steemit to retain less than 10% of accounts that were created in 2016, including bots and multiples.
It makes no sense - unless you're the one with the resource, and maximizing your wealth is your only concern. Cash is king.
Who gets to determine how the resources are allocated? This is the centuries old question. Who owns the earth? Who owns the right to resources? Not can we, but should we mine finite resources at the risk of endangering future generations?
Depending on what culture you belong to, the answer varies. Native American tradition teaches that we should honor the earth for providing us with the resources to sustain life. They valued not taking more than was needed to survive. This is a sound ecological perspective.
Western culture focuses on resources as something to be exploited in order to boost the economy and prosperity of nations. However we have gone beyond national support into personal wealth. Exploiting resources for personal gain at the expense of not only other citizens, but the infrastructure of the earth itself is greedy and foolish.
Environmental stability and sustainability should be of prime importance to all citizens on a planet, because what happens on one side of the planet affects people elsewhere.
History is peppered with examples of what happens when we try to take too much from the land. Clear-cutting leads to desertification and lack of biodiversity. Mining increases erosion, sinkholes, pollution of groundwater. While taking these resources allows us to build more and become a superior culture, we do it at a risk.
The way it is done is also contentious. Mining resources is seldom done for the whole community. Mostly it is done for profit, by a few industrious or possibly selfish persons who wish to profit. Plus, without regulation by a benevolent government, mining resources leads to pollution and degradation with sometimes severe injury or harm done to others.
There are ethical several levels here. First, is it right for the few to profit on a resource that does not belong to them? Is it right for these people to then sell the resource to us at a profit? (think bottled water folks). Is it right for a nation to own the land, and if so should they be allowed to mine resources at a profit, or lease the rights to others without accounting for the true cost of a resource to future generations?
My opinion is that no one should have the right to deplete or endanger a resource beyond what is sustainable.
Getting back to the question of the underage miner. Evidently she was mining a finite resource shared by a larger crowd for personal profit. Granted, the other people might not have wanted this resource, but she did not attempt to ask before liberating. Was she harming anyone? Doubtful. Those M& Ms have toxic shit in them- colorings and flavorings, sugar, etc. So she might have been saving people from themselves. But she could also have been pissing off others who wanted the resource. She did not try to hoard and sell however. Brownie point for that.
Summation: Ethically, she should have considered others. However, it is doubtful if she was doing any real injury to anyone but herself.
Note: mining gorp does not equate with mining a true finite resource. more M&Ms can be bought at the store and are easily obtained. Their true value is negligible and does not directly impact the well being of others on a global scale.
Your arguments are quite sound, in almost their entirety.
I don't believe in bogeymen, Sasquatch, or benevolent government.
My experience - not my theorizing - has shown me that government is typically utterly corrupt, and generally malicious, usually in order to financially benefit government servants.
Thanks!
yep, the benevolent govt was just that... a theory. but it is christmas, miracles could happen :)
That would indeed, be a Merry Christmas!
=D
And that is way the check And balances we have in true democratic systems still Works. Lot better than Free for all libertarian system.
That is utter and complete fantasy. Name one example.
In every example of true democratic systems I have been told of, I see that they are not truly democratic, and are corrupt. Further, the checks and balances are, also. Not one of them actually works as they were claimed to by their founders.
From the village I was raised in to the big cities I have lived in, I have never seen one exception to this.
I was talking in theory, forgot to add that.
But yeah, in the real world things aren't pretty, because human greed always take a part on the equation.
But comparing the true democratic system with the libertarian ideas, so far, i still choose the democracy system.
While it is still flawed, the power is more dilluted between more people, and can change hands fastest than it seems to me in a full libertarian state.
In democracy, smaller parties still have voice, and can still pass bills that benefits a minority.
Also, the people and the press can apply some influence if it gets big enough, because there is legal mechanisms to change the ones in power.
What i can see from libertarian way, these legal mechanisms wouldnt exist, so i dont see a feasible way for the small people to fight the big ones.
The big ones have the possibility to amass a huge amount of power, and there is nothing stoping them to do so.
I still want to know a better way, but so far, haven't found it yet.
You aren't well versed in LIberty, I see. Various mechanisms are proposed by a myriad of authors to subject corrupting influence and oppression to checks. Neither the press nor the people themselves have ever been supposed by even one libertarian I am familiar with to be eliminated.
I am new to the libertarian ideas, and i always question something i want to understand better. And i find the libertarian ideas pretty interesting, but i am not yet convinced.
I learned that because when i was young, i really liked the idea of communism, wich in theory is a perfect egalitarian system, but as i started to acquire more knowledge i started to see the holes in it, especially because human nature is never factored on most of the theories.
So far, i have been presented that only two rules would apply (right to property and no physical harm allowed), and they seem paradoxical, a lot of issues come from having these rules that could create the exact opposite of a free market/state.
But could you rephrase the last sentence? i didnt understand it...
Also, could you recommend me some authors and books?
Merry Christmas @aggroed!! 🎁 🎁 🎁🎄🎉🎊🎈🎈🎀🎀
wow...interesting to see so many commenters that didnt even bother to read the post
limited resources is very much a "who gets there first" concept, *so your daughter is just fine mining M&M's.
Is it nice? No. Can it create blowback? Of course.
The answer is to create more resources. Fresh water is not as limited as people think. Water reclamation should be the first priority of any self-supporting individual and community.
What about governments that impose restrictions on such methods?
We've seen fines and legal attacks on people who put water collection barrels on their own property.
This is "mining" done by the community at large on the individual, and it is blatant theft.
This kind of theft is supported by individuals that choose to have children w/o being able to support them...the problem isn't states, as much as it is people who think that other people should support them w/o any responsibility for themselves
So when we talk about taking care of each other, we also have to put the rent-seekers and leeches on the spot.
Of course, the logic then moves into controlling other's behavior, and that is decidedly anti-libertarian ;>
In any case, Merry Christmas!
I cannot agree, as @aggroed owns the M&Ms. While he can allow her to use his resources however he sees fit, he sees it as not proper to mine the Gorp, and should.
Were the M&Ms a natural resource, and essential to survival, mining them such that others died for their lack isn't only wrong, it's criminal.
salient point
three points here:
I don't think the moral issues are cut and dried, and the example of the monopolists slapping water bottles out of dehydrated baby's hands is certainly an extreme, but over all, I value property rights over the riot of humanity.
Otherwise, you simply have the takers stealing from the makers at every opportunity. We need to teach humanity to be makers as a moral priority.
Well, property rights are merely one of the rights 'the riot of humanity', each and every one, hold. Valuing their properties more highly than them is exactly how monopolists slapping water bottles out of dying babies hands has become potential.
It is exactly why the poor have so many children. Some of them might get lucky, and live, while most do not.
It's also a tautology, and breaks logic.
Isn't this exactly the problem, and why you post? The monopolists don't get destroyed by starving mobs. The starving mobs are dashed against the defenses of the monopolists.
The takers demonstrably prosper. The makers are prey.
It is clear from history that what stops the poor from having 15 kids is prosperity - in other words, fix their poverty, and the reason for large families is removed. Additionally, the enjoyment of prosperity is decreased by such large families, and this is the conscious reason for adoption of contraception by those who have been born into large families that transitioned from dire poverty, as my father's generation did, into the middle class.
My father was one of 14 siblings. I was one of three. I have three sons.
He was raised in the Great Depression. Subsequent generations of my line have not been. This is the pattern we see around the world, wherever affluence has been potentiated.
The statement that "fresh water os not as limited as people think" is Just wrong.
Fresh water IS a limited resource. You Mat not think It is only because its easy to Just open a faucet and let the water flow.
There is lots and lots of proper scientific studies (UNESCO,
Populationinstitute.org, pacific Institute, conservativo.org, and so many more) that points that the world water supply is Constant or decreasing while the population grows.
There is a lot of places where there is shortage of fresh water. To aquire water on these places is not as simples as Just build a Wheel, or go to the closest river. There is limited resources.
Lets say that in one of these places there is only one Wheel drilled by the First person that found It. This Wheel drains the hole underwater resource from a region, so Any other New Wheels Will run dry, or at least exponentialy cost more.
Deny, or require an absurd high fee acess to fresh water to these people is Just plain evil.
And that kind of thing is allowed by libertarian, as far as i know.
Libertarianism looks like a good idea, but to me, It generates humanitarian faults.
There is no balance in libertarianism. Its Just let the most greedy ones to thrive. Doesnt allow Fair competition.
Like i said elsewhere, too many regulations kill the competition, too little regulations kill the consumer.
To me the idea that one very big criminal organization is gonna prevent the formation of many small ones and that this is something to be happy about is absurd. Let's aim for no criminal organizations instead.
Is not about be happy about It. Is to allow It, and what i have seen about libertarianism It allowes that.
Small people Very rarely have enough Power fight the powerful, and when that happen, a lot of damage has already been done.
Catchy! I like it. However it leaves the correct amount of regulation unspecified, so it's no more than criticism. It'd be nice to have some universal truth we could agree on.
We won't all agree, for various reasons.
That is the hard part. How much is enough regulation? And How de we reach that agreement?
To me, enough regulations would have to have this objectives:
Allow a Fair market
Prohibit actions that do enviromental damage
Allow people to have acess to Basic needs at minimum possible price (food, water, education, housing)
Criminal laws that cover damage to others(self damaging people May need help, but It is their choice to do whatever they want with their body)
If there is no fairness in the game It cant be Just.
I disagree that regulations should take the form you posit.
I am more inclined to craft intrapersonal agreements, which can be employed to create broad alliances of persons based on aligned principles. This potentiates communities of purely voluntary integrants that can act per those principles to counter their enemies.
Specifying laws which impose tyrannical control on hapless sheep isn't the way to attain justice.
Further, we see that the USA publishes about ~700 new regulations EVERY DAY. It is physically impossible for such regulations to specify every particular variable, and far more impossible for individuals to even be aware of these regulations, much less be capable of conforming to them.
Since the law specifies that ignorance of the law is no defense, then the system is creating of every single person subject to them criminals, and the penal industrial complex can simply pick those it seeks to prey upon from the total population arbitrarily - in fact, it cannot justly and fairly enforce these regulations.
It is physically impossible.
What is possible, and just, is for autonomous people to craft interpersonal agreements based on their principles, and to defend their interests against those that oppose them.
Nothing will be perfect, but freedom is better than despotism.
You do have a point, and you are talking about contracts, wich is a good way to establish rules between two or more parts.
But still, some rules cant be put in contract or agreement form. Especially when some agreement affect people that arent directly involved in them.
But yeah, no doubt there is to many regulations with personal agendas involved.
What is needed is to reduce them to a minimum. The big question is How.
I actually agree with this statement, but point out I did not propose rules be specified, but principles by which alliances could form. Clearly those alliances would propose means of supporting their principles, and opposing their enemies, and these could be considered rules.
I submit that my proposal does reduce regulations and the corruption they potentiate to a minimum, in fact eliminating them.
Do please provide examples of how this would not work, for my edification. I can learn nothing unless others teach me what they know, and I do not.
I actually wrote a whole paper on the topic of water and if it should be free or not. I came to the conclusion that it should not be free because people like me in the first world would take it for granted. Like washing a car or taking an extra long shower. If it was free, there would be no part of your mind telling you that you are wasting. When you attach a value to something like water, it makes people not want to use it in excess because it is costing them. Of course people still do waste it but it is far less than it would be.
But on the other hand, people who needs water dont have access to it and putting a price tag on it allows for these people to be marginalized and not recieve water. Fresh water is limited and its supply is growing smaller and smaller.
But a solution to this is what Israel has done. They have created desalination plants to take salt water and turn it into drinkable water. I believe most of their water, if not all of it,comes from these plants. While this isn’t economically feasible in all countries, like many in Africa, eventually better technology will allow the processs to become more efficient. It will happen eventually. As for other natural resources, I’m not sure.
You dont pay for the water. You pay for the service of bringing water to your house.
Water is Free. Anyone can Go to a river and take water from it. There is no law against It, unless It is in a enviroment protected area.
You could drill a Wheel and extract the water, but you would have to pay for the drilling, and have a permitir that have purpouse to avoid that too many wheels in a single region lower the level of underground water, thus limiting extraction to avoid a shortage of water by having too many people extracting tio many water at the same time.
What you pay is for the structure built to deliver it to your faucet.
And water is an essencial life resource. It must be free.
Well. Just to counter your point, water is not free and shouldn’t be. If you dont have FREE access to water then the water is not free. If you can easily access water then it is not free. That is like saying that a family who pays for 2 gallons of water a day is receiving free water because they are paying for the service. If getting water is not free, then water is not free. Water is clearly a commodity. I implore you to look into the coke company and at Pepsi products. Look where they are taking water from. Water is certainly not free. Americans have easy access to water. Turn on the sink and it is there. We aren’t paying for the service, because the service is there. We are paying for the water that we use. Check you bills. It will show water usage. You are paying for how much you used, not for the service.
Water can't be created. It is avaiable in the natural state. It can be transformed, but science so far haven't found a way to create water. So there is no costs in water by itself.
But to drive a water from a river to you house, there is a cost to build pumps, pipes, valves, and everything else involved on the system, so there is a cost, that is charged on your water bill. You pay for how much water you use because the cost is caculated based on how much it cost to move 1 unit of water from one place to another.
Is there a river/lake near where you live that is not enviroment protected? Have you tried to drink water from there? if so, did you had to pay?
There is still a lot of places in the world were people walk to rivers and lakes, get their water, then walk back home. They dont pay for that water.
Water is free. Processing/transport water is not free.
Respectfully. Water can be created. I have done it in the lab many times. Chemical reactions can form water. That is simple science. Also. The infrastructure is already in place. I’m not paying for the infrastructure as you suggested. It is already there. It is low maintenance. You are wrong. I am paying for the water. I am paying for bottled water when i buy it. Water is not free. I dont have access to water from a lake. So i have to buy my water. This water has a price. Stop arguing the same point that I’m making which is that we have to pay for water. Is your argument that governments should allocate water for free? Not charge anything for this water?
No, im saying that things that have a cost can be sold. So, the cost If creating an infrastructure to transport the can be charged. Not the water itself.
For you to have that bottled water you are paying the cost If transport and filtering that water, plus the bottled costs, plus the comercial costs, plus the profit.
Water still remaing Free. The way the water gets to your hands os what create the cost and price.
Also, Basic chemical law: nothing is created, enverything is transformed.
If possible to transform particles in water in large scale there would be a cost and effort in doing so, therefore, It wouldnt be free.
Water in natural state remains Free.
No sir. That law is for energy or matter. Chemicals are most definitely created through reactions. But you are over complicating things. Water simply is not free. Maybe i should have specified clean water is not free. Because sure you can go down to the river and drink some water. But you’ll get sick. Ill revise my argument and say “CLEAN water is not free”
This tells on you. You can only feel this way if the only value you have is monetary. I don't think you really believe that. Water has more than monetary value, and thus can be appreciated other than as simply an expense.
Also, water in Venezuela isn't water in Utah, or Mongolia. Water is variably locally common and scarce, and hour long showers in British Columbia don't deprive Yemenis of water.
Merry Christmas!
You are being unrealistic.of course people worry about the expense of water. You dont want to spend too much on it or you wont be able to afford your other bills. Of course this is true. It is not that the only value i have is monetary. That is actually far from the truth if you actually knew me. Yes water has more than a monetary value. But I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about it isn’t free. So the value i am focusing on IS the monetary value.
You’re also correct again that the water in California doesn’t affect the water in India. That’s correct. But it doesn’t mean excesssive use doesn’t deplete the resource in those areas. There is a GLOBAL water shortage. This doesn’t mean all areas are scarce of water. But the overall amount of fresh water is being threatened.
Merry Christmas to you too! And happy HODLdays lol :)
Very nice experience!
I seen you on steemd.com that you are a good witness so voted you. Keep performing better and give me any suggestions to come in trending.
Merry Christmas!
It is very good to see these kind of handmade productions nowadays. People are mostly loosing their patience to produce something. It is more easy to buy it on a shop with a price but without a value.
I love to wear or use handmade stuff. It is more cheap and valuable :) hope to see more ...
Delicious!
hi bro....
can i get your facebook id
Healthy dry fruit
Dry fruits is good for health and i love dry fruite so much
Very good food...
really nice....
happy chistmas...
MERRY CHRISTMAS......... @aggroed.
It is a issue I have struggled with as well... Does it come down to "Spokism" the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few or the one.
I didn't understand what you mean by "she started mining the gorp"
There are things that are limited, like the water you mention.
For example, in my country, the public was educated to consume water in a controlled manner and not to waste water for nothing.
I think it all starts with education.
Mine chicken nuggets, and eggs perhaps.
As for water, there is plenty around. It is owned by everyone and no-one for profit. Only when ownership is unlawfully claimed, it becomes scarce.
It's like saying: There is only a finite amount of air around. Hence, let's buy t off, and make a buck, else people gonna sufficate. Their problem if they don't wanna cough up - pun intended.
Let's mine nuggets, or M&Ms, no harm done coz we don't need those... unless you're a nugget addict.
Happy Christmas.
Pingin untuk merasKan itu snek
I'm sharing food. You can look at it :)
Nice post
Hi - regarding your daughter - I don't really know about libertarian thought - but I am a post modern thinker, and my view is that regarding children - the parents have to educate their kids in a clear pathway but to allow them freedom of mind whenever available so they will keep their mind open and will not stick to ideologies that they did not think about - the final goal of this way of education is to shape a whole person, but one with criticism and open mind, so that when the kid gets to an age adequate for self decisions and deep thoughts - he will think over what he was used to until now - and decide whether he want to continue living according to them, or his opinion is now different and he want to go in his own way.
now, regarding to your girl eating all of the m&m's - I think that's actually a good thing :) letting her decide what fits her and what not in a topic no disaster can emerge of.