That just makes things all to easy and simple, and then the insults of egoism, individualism, selfishness, petit bourgeoisie capitalism and whatever else pop up. It shows that rights are a double edged sword, anyone can lay claim they have a right to something or from something, and hence it (the “right” or the service) must be protected or provided, by someone or something, and it’s probably for the “common good” that we have some institution to do so, so there’s no corruption on behalf of greedy and selfish individuals.
@Bert: That Stirner quote crystallizes the essence of the problem of the adversarial relationship. When two people stand in an adversarial disposition, the only “rule” or “law” or “right” is might, who can do what to whom and get away with it. The Hobbesian exaggeration of human aggression is obviously false because, as Hoppe points out, we are here; humanity would have long ago self-extinguished if we were solely regulated by aggressive instincts. And neither are the majority of human interactions adversarial - almost all interactions are cooperative, only a few are (even indirectly) adversarial.
The conception of rights as magical incantations that freeze your adversary from following through on aggressive threats is silly and childish. Nevertheless, rights definitely do exist. The problem is that rights are a posteriori, not a priori. This is why natural rights theory fails. We know what our rights are as a result of the settlement of disputes (the operation of law).
Natural rights proponents argue that reason is a higher standard even than the common law because the common law can cognize as lawful behaviors which clearly ought to be unlawful and vice-versa. However, this misses the point that the common law is based on actual human behavior; unlike statutes, common law is not a body of thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots… it’s simply a body of legal decisions, some better, some worse but all of which inform our idea of what the law really is on the basis of the one thing that a priori argumentation cannot give us: actual experience.
Most of the really stupid common laws you can identify were cloistered to a very tiny community, or the result of some tradition that arose under political influence, or imitation of some brain-dead statute in another place, and so on. For the most part, wherever there has been common law, there is little distinction between what is in fact lawful/unlawful and what common sense and reason say should be lawful/unlawful.
Rights emerge in a “game-theoretic” sense… from the unboundedly complex and intricate game of uncertainty surrounding credible threats in the context of what the law is understood to be. If you dent my car and I threaten to kill you on the spot, that is not a very credible threat in most cases. Most of the threats which people involved in a legal dispute are likely to make to one another (such as, refusing to participate in a legal case at all or taking retribution into one’s own hands) are empty threats and will not actually be carried out because of the high degree of uncertainty about the long-run consequences of extra-legal behavior.
For the individual and his might is what he wills for himself, but that of might would not have to be aggression or violence in that sense. I think it enters the realm of praxeology if anything, and looking at it through a utilitarian lense. The government collectivised both will and might, and it’s a challenge to the individual. It would be experience that violence does not bring the best outcome, and certain level of knowledge and understanding of more intricate matters (economics, for example) helps usher in a more smooth and peaceful working of individuals in union with one another.
In the sense of law itself I can understand rights as being so, that there is a legal dispute the concept of “rights” comes into play (violation of contracts, property, etc.)
The problem would be people claiming rights and entitlements that are more of just abstract notions of what ought to be, they don’t really exist, and if they cannot make a physical claim then neither is what they believe they are entitled to.
WASHINGTON – As college courses go, the name — “Reflections on the Federal Reserve and Its Place in Today’s Economy” — sounds perfectly ordinary. Then there’s the name of the lecturer. Not exactly ordinary: Ben Bernanke, the sitting chairman of the Federal Reserve.
Republican presidential candidate and staunch libertarian Ron Paul says he has rejected protection from the Secret Service because he believes charging taxpayers for his personal security is a “form of welfare.”
“You know, you’re having the taxpayers pay to take care of somebody,” Paul told late night talk show host Jay Leno on Tuesday. “And I’m an ordinary citizen and I would think I should pay for my own protection, and it costs, I think, more than $50,000 a day to protect those individuals.”
That alone should grab whoever was watching the show’s interest. A presidential candidate willing to pay for his own expenses. He indirectly smacked every president in the face who’s used the SS.
