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What is a "Right"???

Does anybody have a response that isn't mathematically indistinguishable from "I don't wanna recognize property rights because I want to be able to take that which does not belong to me and use it for my purposes, at my whim, or the whim of my tribal group."?

I.e. assert your own property right over it?
 
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Beerina said:
And before that it was just violence.

...snip...
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No it wasn't there were laws, legal systems and so on all long before societies created the right of everyone to own property.

Beerina said:
Hence the recognition of rights is a magnificent philosophical development.
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Seems to be something that arises simply from humans interacting with one another i.e. an emergent property of society.


Beerina said:
I'm not going to argue timestamps of when various nations got around to it,
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How else could one refute your erroneous assertion that "People who claim there is no right to own property mean nothing more than they want the right to take your stuff."?

Beerina said:
What you said is like, "People murdered each other so the right to life is just a gift from those people." Really?
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You seem to be thinking there is an isolated set of "them" and "us", what we are talking about is the interactions of people and yes the "universal right to life" is just as much a construction as the "universal right for everyone to own property" - and this is easily illustrated by looking at the history of such rights.
Beerina said:
Civilization is the process of thwarting the hunter-gatherer impulse so people can make nice things without fear of it being taken.
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That's your definition and not one I or the majority of people subscribe to.

Beerina said:
...snip...

It's "government" itself entrencing itself as a hunter-gatherer extraordinaire.
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In countries like the UK and the USA "government" is us.
 
Rights are things society has agreed on has to be protected by society/government/law.
 
Beerina said:
Rights are a convention, but are not a gift from others deigning to stay their hand. Many of you are confused on this. This includes it being a gift from a group of people calling themselves "government", and wielding weapons.
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Actually, in modern social contracts, the government derives its authority only from the people. That's why I've been arguing that most rights are best thought of as limitations on the authority of the government (or, if you prefer, individual "authority" reserved to the people exclusive of government authority).

Seeing the government as something outside is old-style--as in authority given by God (the divine right of kings, for example). In modern terms, seeing rights as gifts from the government back to the people makes no sense.
 
Darat said:
You seem to be thinking there is an isolated set of "them" and "us",
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Amen.

I think that thinking goes back to long-outdated theories of government--such as might makes right or the divine right of kings.

I suppose what Beerina is talking about is closer to might makes right, since he thinks government's authority derives from the threat of violence.
 
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Does it matter (for this discussion about 'natural rights') whether effective authority happens to lie with all of the people (with their elected government acting as their representative) or with some autocratic despot?

The original claim seems to be that a list of axiomatic rights exists irrespective of whether they can be enforced or not (and the OP thinks he knows what they are). I'd like to see how that list is derived.
 
Sigh...I never tire of this debate.

Will someone who believes in natural rights please explain to me how they are different than legal rights. I do not what to hear "They cannot be taken away." because that is obviously untrue.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
Actually, in modern social contracts, the government derives its authority only from the people. That's why I've been arguing that most rights are best thought of as limitations on the authority of the government (or, if you prefer, individual "authority" reserved to the people exclusive of government authority).
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Hmmm. I’m not sure I completely agree with that. Certainly it’s a good description for some rights but in other cases your rights are granted because government is limiting what other people can do. In a very real sense many of your rights arise from government telling other people what they CAN’T do.

JoeTheJuggler said:
Seeing the government as something outside is old-style--as in authority given by God (the divine right of kings, for example). In modern terms, seeing rights as gifts from the government back to the people makes no sense.
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Worth repeating.
 
TjW said:
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?
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Because an asserted right to infringe upon another's right negates the right.
 
JoeTheJuggler said:
You are obviously equivocating. This type of "right" is not at all the same thing that was raised in the OP by the union.

Again, I think what you mean by "natural rights" which can't be removed (even if they're violated) is a sense of what ought be.

As someone else said, that's what is part of human nature. (Although even that part is debatable, unless you think human nature changed drastically just a few hundred years ago.)

At any rate, clearly what the union was talking about was recognition by society (indeed, legally) of new "rights".

Equivocation is when you use an ambiguous word as if it weren't ambiguous.

Clearly, what the union meant by "rights" and what you mean by "natural rights" are not the same thing at all.
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Correct. The Union's demand for more of my property is not an exercise of of any natural right but a trespass sought to be enforced by an agency of coercion-- government. Trumka's "2nd Bill of Rights" is simply a Bill of Tyranny.
 
BenBurch said:
Property rights do not seem to exist in the "state of nature" Beerina, so where do they arise?
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a) Ever try to take a bone from a dog? Property rights do exist in nature. While rights are often violated, defenders normally have a slight advantage over aggressors, for reasons Dawkins outlined smewhere: If aggressors normally had the advantage, a defender could gain the advantage by surrendering the defensive position.
b) Morality (all behavior, really) evolves.
 
Malcolm Kirkpatrick said:
a) Ever try to take a bone from a dog? Property rights do exist in nature. While rights are often violated, defenders normally have a slight advantage over aggressors, for reasons Dawkins outlined smewhere: If aggressors normally had the advantage, a defender could gain the advantage by surrendering the defensive position.
b) Morality (all behavior, really) evolves.
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Yeah, I have tried to take bones from dogs. The fact that I can do so successfully means that there exists no natural right to property.
 
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