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What is a "Right"???

Robert Prey said:
Life, Liberty, Property.
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Life - You can be shot, for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or legally executed for something you did do- guess that one's not inalienable.

Liberty - until 1833 in the British Commonwealth and 1865 in the US you may have had the legal status of slave, restricting your movements etc quite severely. Even after in the US there were rather strict legal restrictions on the formerly servile population. In both Canada and the US there were rather restrictive conditions attached to being First Nations. Guess that whole "liberty" thing depends as well.

Property - lots of restrictions here. Hell, in 1865 lots of property was taken from its lawful owners with no compensation. Property rights aren't absolute either.

The point is that rights aren't absolute. That they are set and agreed upon by society. And that they change over time.
 
Border Reiver said:
Life - You can be shot, for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or legally executed for something you did do- guess that one's not inalienable.

Liberty - until 1833 in the British Commonwealth and 1865 in the US you may have had the legal status of slave, restricting your movements etc quite severely. Even after in the US there were rather strict legal restrictions on the formerly servile population. In both Canada and the US there were rather restrictive conditions attached to being First Nations. Guess that whole "liberty" thing depends as well.

Property - lots of restrictions here. Hell, in 1865 lots of property was taken from its lawful owners with no compensation. Property rights aren't absolute either.

The point is that rights aren't absolute. That they are set and agreed upon by society. And that they change over time.
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Indeed, the existence of prisons in the US is proof enough that the right to liberty isn't "inalienable". Tom J. writes real good, but "inspiring" ain't the same thing as "true".
 
Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
The problem with "right" so defined, as access to the products of other people's time and talent applied to resources is that such a conception turns those other people into slaves. There is no sense in enunciating a "right" of individual A to a resource X unless the State, the guarantor of this right, places on some other individual B an obligation to supply X. In the US, the ratio of private sector workers (employees + business owners) to welfare recipients + government employees is pretty close to 1:1.
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Robert Prey said:
Access to Healthcare, Food and Housing -- these are not rights but are a trespass. A "right" cannot be a right if it is a trespass on another person's rights.
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So the two of you refuse to accept rights that depends on other people to function?

Robert Prey said:
Life, Liberty, Property.
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And somehow these make more sense to you?
Can't you see how they also depend on other people to function?
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
So people who have no property or who are in prison have somehow lost their inalienable natural rights? (I'll cede life, but that's trivial. It makes no sense to talk about the "rights" of anyone who has no life. Or if you try, it's obvious that the majority of people who ever lived on the Earth have had that particular "inalienable" right stripped from them.)
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Yet many people do and many people are dead set against the idea that only the living can have rights e.g. that's what inheritance is based on.
 
Rolfe said:
A right is nothing but a privilege which is guaranteed to you by the society you are a part of.

The concept of being born with "inalienable rights" is so much woo.

Rolfe.
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You have to have the concept of inalienable rights -- otherwise you will eternally have jackassery encroaching on it.

You will, anyway, but at least you won't be ceding the philosophical high ground by default.
 
Taarkin said:
Your "right" to property trespasses on my "right" to take your stuff.
It seems were at at loggerheads.
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People who claim there is no right to own property mean nothing more than they want the right to take your stuff. There is nothing else.

The right to property is not a slip of paper in a cabinet somewhere. It's the right to use things. As you must use things to survive, you must have a right of property.

How did these other people get the magical power to take away things from you so you can no longer survive?

And the fact that they take it away means they are asserting their own property rights over it.


Again, people fail by ceding the philosophical high ground.
 
Beerina said:
People who claim there is no right to own property mean nothing more than they want the right to take your stuff. There is nothing else. ...snip....
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Yet the "right to own property" (in the USA) came about as an excuse and a veneer of respectably to take the property of other people by force....

So your initial statment is simply wrong.

The "right to own property" in many countries was created (as in the case of the USA) to take the property of others without their consent, and often the right was only extended to certain classes of people. So in the UK we've only really had the right to property ownership for everyone for about a hundred years (and in the USA about 50 years).

The history of the creation of the "right to own property" by societies presents one of the clearest examples of how rights are created by a society, and do not exist unless the society creates the right.
 
Border Reiver said:
Life - You can be shot, for no reason other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time, or legally executed for something you did do- guess that one's not inalienable.

Liberty - until 1833 in the British Commonwealth and 1865 in the US you may have had the legal status of slave, restricting your movements etc quite severely. Even after in the US there were rather strict legal restrictions on the formerly servile population. In both Canada and the US there were rather restrictive conditions attached to being First Nations. Guess that whole "liberty" thing depends as well.

Property - lots of restrictions here. Hell, in 1865 lots of property was taken from its lawful owners with no compensation. Property rights aren't absolute either.

The point is that rights aren't absolute. That they are set and agreed upon by society. And that they change over time.
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Way off base. Natural rights exist whether governments respect them or not.
 
Toke said:
So the two of you refuse to accept rights that depends on other people to function?



And somehow these make more sense to you?
Can't you see how they also depend on other people to function?
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Doesn't matter if other people "function" or not. The right still exists.
 
angrysoba said:
What are we going to do about old age which constantly infringes on the rights of people across the world?

Some people have property and some people don't. Would you be in favour of redistributing the property of those who own a lot to those who have none in order to restore their natural rights?

Liberty is somewhat vague don't you think? It makes a good slogan such as in the American and French Revolutions but no one has absolute liberty and almost no one has absolutely no liberty, so it is fairly useless to list it as a right unless you can quantify the type and amount of liberty that each person must be granted by right. Of course, you may end up with something that looks a little too arbitrary to convince everyone that this is some cosmic right.
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Liberty is only limited to the extent of infringing on another's.
 
Legal rights don't exist in a vacuum, they are established by society, and the limits on them are set by society.

Property rights are a good example. In general western society works on the principle that what you own is yours, society (via the elected government) sets up some restrictions on it (ie. you have no right to own certain classes of drugs, etc) and also requires your share for the agreed upon services provided by the state. There are also limits on what you can do with your own property based on the rights of others to enjoy their own or the common property (environmental damage laws fall in here).

Liberty is another one where society places limits. You do not get to drive at whatever speed you like down public roads. Speed limits are there as a general safety rule, etc and if society intends to restrict liberty it does so after getting the judiciary involved (retroactively) or the legislative branch (proactively).

Rights are a legal construct they do not exist outside of a legal framework. Rights are inherent only to the society that recognizes them and enforces them.
 
Border Reiver said:
Legal rights don't exist in a vacuum, they are established by society, and the limits on them are set by society.

Property rights are a good example. In general western society works on the principle that what you own is yours, society (via the elected government) sets up some restrictions on it (ie. you have no right to own certain classes of drugs, etc) and also requires your share for the agreed upon services provided by the state. There are also limits on what you can do with your own property based on the rights of others to enjoy their own or the common property (environmental damage laws fall in here).

Liberty is another one where society places limits. You do not get to drive at whatever speed you like down public roads. Speed limits are there as a general safety rule, etc and if society intends to restrict liberty it does so after getting the judiciary involved (retroactively) or the legislative branch (proactively).

Rights are a legal construct they do not exist outside of a legal framework. Rights are inherent only to the society that recognizes them and enforces them.
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Natural Rights are inherent whether society recognizes them or not.
 
Robert Prey said:
Access to Healthcare, Food and Housing -- these are not rights but are a trespass. A "right" cannot be a right if it is a trespass on another person's rights.
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What about private property? My land is private which means I have the right to deprive anyone else from having access to it. In what way is that not a similar tresspass upon their freedom?
 
Robert Prey said:
Natural Rights are inherent whether society recognizes them or not.
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You have asserted that you have a right to own your stuff.
Taarkin has asserted that this interferes with his liberty to take your stuff.

Both are assertions. How does one objectively identify which is an inherent right?
 
Beerina said:
People who claim there is no right to own property mean nothing more than they want the right to take your stuff. There is nothing else.
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People who claim there is no right to free health care mean nothing more than they want the right to watch you die of cancer.:rolleyes:
 
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