They probably couldn’t have been originally. But unless you believe that the current generation should pay for the crimes of past generations, you can’t really redistribute anything.
Granting privilege necessarily includes violation of other’s rights. If it granted privileges to one group in exchange for some other privilege to another that each group agrees to, it would be a voluntary market transaction. Then privilege would not be granted, it would be traded, and a state-like entity might enforce the contract, but would not be the thing that initiated it.
In my opinion, the problem with defining a state as anything other than a monopoly on force is problematic. Without a monopoly, the state could not exploit its populace. With a monopoly, the state would have no reason to do anything like Nock’s proper governance unless it increased their own power by doing so (which I think is why states allow any freedom).
But if you define society as a collection of individuals who voluntarily associate (or don’t) with each other in various ways, I think anything which interferes with the process (or externalizes the costs of) spontaneous ordering is destructive.
The reason why a monopoly on force is legitimate (in this case requiring an obligation for exclusive use) is because exclusive use forces costs in the form of negative externalities upon those in proximity (a territory) to the exclusive use of a location which violates the excluded’s absolute right to self-ownership.
WmBGreene: “The ones [such that] you do not infringe on the equal rights of an other individual to the same.”
This is the definition of what should be called a liberty.
Then the question (Inquisitor): “From whence does such a right arise?” has no meaning. A right must be obtained somehow (through the market, we would hope); a liberty does not to be.
In civic republicanism, individual liberty could only be achieved by practicing virtuous behavior within small-scale, face-to-face, deliberative bodies.
Brett_McS could you expand on what you mean a little? I’m not sure if your in agreement with me or not, or if you have some entirely different point to make.
I’m trying to make the distinction between a right and a liberty. We often buy (in one way or another) rights. Typically I buy a right to property. We can distinguish this from a liberty - something that I do not need to buy, since, as WmBGreene says, it doesn’t diminish anyone elses “supply”.
Thus, rights are seen as something that can be set purely within a market system. All rights can (and ideally, should) be bought and sold. Liberties are, on the other hand, self-evidently and logically non-saleable.
Does that make sense to you? It seems a useful distinction to me.
When you buy property, you don’t diminish anyone else “supply” you exchange your property (the money) for the property you are buying. The worst mistake is to think that you diminish someone property by buying it, it is nothing but an exchange of properties, and the money is just a “middleman”. And of course you both are better off (if the exchange is voluntary), because you value the property you are buying more than the property you are “selling” (the money), and the seller value the property he are buying (your money) more than the property he are selling. You can’t sell your right therefore nobody can buy rights, rights are not property, rights are the condition which can lead you to have property, without rights you can’t have property.
Also there is a distinction between rights to have property and property, you have the rights even if you don’t have a property… property is the materialization of your rights. Now the problem is that the state changed the meaning of the word “rights” the state tell us that rights are what the state granting to us, but the Declaration of Independence & the US Constitution actually said that we have those rights at the beginning and that actually we give the power to the state (enumerable limited powers) and not the other way around. Of course this is the case in the , in other countries the sovereignty belong to the state, in the the sovereignty belong to the individual, to the people.
I think you’re making a distinction between alienable and inalienable rights. The right to property is a bundle of rights - the right to appropriate cannot be exchanged; the right to a title of appropriated resources, on the other hand, can be. One’s will is not alienable too, and thus slavery contracts are ruled out on a libertarian view. Rothbard is instructive in this regard.
Don’t like it personally. I believe we are born with rights that don’t have to be purchased or gifted. They are human constructs to help us avoid conflicts.
I think that if you list “the rights that we are born with” you will find that they fit the definition of a liberty that I gave (using your words).
The advantage of that distinction (between two types of “rights”) is that it avoids confusion in discussion. Are we talking about rights that can be obtained on the market or are we talking about “innate rights”. Some (actually, a lot of) people fall into the trap of using the two concepts interchangeably. But they are very different, and should have different words to describe them. Fortunately there already is an appropriate word.
In fact when you buy property you increase both your and the sellers “supply”, if you want to use that term standing on its own.
With respect, your second paragraph illustrates the reason why the word liberty should be used instead of some adjectival form (innate, inalienable) of “rights”. People tend to drop the adjective and then confuse two very different things.
But that is a good point about the inversion that has occured. We the people, should be listing the rights we deign to bestow on the governmen, not the other way around.
Yes, that was in my first post: I can buy a right to property. I can reserve a right to use a picnic table at a certain time.
I’m suggesting that it would be clearer to use a distinct word (not just a different adjective) to distinguish this “mundane” concept from what is a totally different category: The liberty to write a book; the liberty to hold and express a point of view; the liberty to do anything which does not diminish the liberty of others.
Then we can go on to consider what rights we wish to grant to (or with hold from) government, while insisting that it not diminish the liberties of the citizens etc, etc.
I don’t think so… you have the right to property, what you are actually buying is the property, not the right for property. When you reserve a picnic table, you don’t buy a right, you rent a table for a period of time, and you buy a table for a limited period of time. If you don’t have rights to property you wouldn’t be able to buy any property or to reserve a picnic table at all. Slaves throughout the history were deprived from right to property, they couldn’t buy a property and they couldn’t reserve a picnic table. We should make a distinction between right to property and property itself, it is a huge difference. The first told us if we working and make property it is ours to keep. The second is a socialist (leftist) idea that everyone should be entitled with house, education, etc. this is actually because they don’t understand the difference between property and property rights. You don’t have to produce property rights it is there naturally – given by the Creator if you wish, but someone has to produce property it isn’t come from the heaven.
See, now I’ve got you using two completely different words for the two completely different concepts: you used “title” for one and “inalienable rights” for the other. That’s good. (I used “rights” and “liberties” respectively)
But then you dropped the adjective when discussing rights and spoilt the clarity. Something that is commonly done, as I noted before.
I don’t think there is any real disagreement. Let me put it this way:
In a free country I am at liberty to buy property. In fact I am at liberty to do anything else, so long as I don’t destroy the liberties of others in the process.
In a non-free country, some people (slaves most particularly) are not at liberty to do many such things. The authorities specifically supress their liberties.
If we then adopt Inquisitor’s term “title” to describe what we get when we buy property, we can say that renting is buying a time limited useage title, for example. In this way we can leave the rather over-used term “rights” out of it.
