Rothbard states in most of his books that all human rights are derived from the basic property right, which in turn is the primary natural right of man qua man. Now, I get the derivation he makes from the property right and the logic there seems to be airtight. However, I am a little confused on how to scientifically (without introducing the God, please) establish the property right as a natural right. Could anyone direct me to some works that address this issue? Thank you.
Morality, From a Societal Perspective
As human beings, we have needs, which we like to satisfy. Some of those needs can be satisfied through resources, or ‘goods’.
If you couldn’t grab those resources from your neighbor, how would you satisfy your needs? You can either make all your own things, or you trade with others. But to sell something you must first use your brain and your body to transform some things from something less valuable into something more valuable. And you can only sell those things that people actually desire.
Productive people are constantly trading. In order to satisfy their own needs they will trade essentially every day of their lives. They trade in other things besides goods and services as well. They trade information with others to better understand the world. They trade in companionship, in support, and in love. Every extra peaceful person also adds to our security.
Peaceful people are very beneficial. Peaceful people who have accrued large amounts of wealth have been, and generally are still, particularly beneficial to other people.
Contrast this with an unpeaceful person. Someone who steals, or rapes, or murders. These actions are harmful to people who are beneficial to us. Secondly, we ourselves or someone close to us could be the next victim.
An unpeaceful person shows through his actions that he doesn’t know what society is about; he regards other people and their property as his own, and he tries to live at the expense of others. This has no place in society.
Morality is that set of principles of action that state that you cannot hurt other agents, or their property, who participate in society; for doing so must be detrimental to society.
What agents can participate in society?
Agents that can participate in society are so-called ‘moral agents’. An agent is a being that can act. The second quality is that the agent should be able to understand the consequences of its actions. Finally, and most importantly, it should be capable to act in such a way as to not hurt other moral agents (other participants of society), or their property.
Aliens
If an intelligent species were to arrive on earth, they would most likely be peaceful. It is hard to imagine how an unpeaceful group of individuals would ever develop the technology required for such a journey. Secondly, technological advances make the spread of information easy so that good ideas beat bad ideas; and so peaceful and productive ideas would have long beaten unpeaceful and destructive ideas.
In that case there would be no reason to regard such individuals as anything less than human societal participants; and so inter-species societal integration is entirely possible.
Sleep and coma
If someone is asleep they are, for all intents and purposes, still a productive member of society. Hurting someone who is asleep (or taking their property) is just as detrimental to society as hurting someone who is awake. The same is true for someone who is in a coma, if it can be reasonably assumed that they will wake up.
Children
Children are beings who gain moral agency capacity as they grow and learn. As such, they should not be hurt. It is moral agency capacity that allows one to live in society. Children are also the next generation.
Proto-children
Proto-children are beings who haven’t started their journey of gaining moral agency. At that point it is generally up to the mother to decide what the best future for her and her child is.
One element that gives insight into the development of a fetus are the establishment of thalamocortical connections in the brain, which processes and relays sensory information and plays a major role in regulating awareness and activity. Before these connections are established, the fetus cannot be consciously aware of things in its environment. And so it doesn’t quality for the first part of moral agency (the agency part). One source states that sensory impulses cannot be reliably detected in the cortex at 29 weeks of gestation.1
From a societal view you could say that after that age, and if someone is willing to raise the child, and there are no particular risks to the mother, that she should carry it through.
Separate societies
It is possible that a group of moral agents live separately from another group of moral agents. The best way to go about would be to have the insight and to stress the insight that both would be better off engaging in trade. This would also be the strongest way to avoid conflict, because if no trading occurs then the two groups will view each other as an opponents fighting for scarce resources.
http://www.vforvoluntary.com/wiki/MoralityFromASocietalPerspective
Not exactly what I am looking for. I am looking for an answer to the following question “why is the property right a right natural to human beings”. Say, we consider monkeys. They always have an alpha male who gains control of the population, and essentially, makes all the property and food distributions. How are humans different? What makes it unnatural for certain person to be in power over others and command their property.
Homo sapiens are a cooperative species. That is what made them succesful and what was selected for. The trait that allows them to cooperate is their capacity for rational thought.
Self-interested cooperation is a thousand times more productive than self-interested fighting.
YAHA,
It all centers around what is meant by “natural”. That term corresponds to another term: aprior.
It’s a complicated subject, and depends on how much you are willing to spend on discovering what that further means. The simple definition of what ‘natural’ or ‘nature’ means in the Aristotelian tradition that Rothbard was kin to is this: what is intellectually comprehended of reality
Check this out (url: https://forum.freecapitalists.org/groups/natural_rights/blog/archive/2010/04/10/tom-woods-on-natural-rights.aspx). Other items of interest could include this and this.
There are a number of ways that society can be organized:
- Nobody owns anything (nihilism).
- Everybody owns everything (communism).
- Everyone owns their own body (capitalism).
- Some own others (slavery/fascism).
The nihilist method of organizing society is impossible, because if nobody owned anything, then nobody would be able to act, since they would not have ownership over their own bodies. The communist method of organizing society is impossible, because if everyone owned everything, then an individual would need permission from everyone else in order to act, but in order to grant that permission, others would have to seek permission in order to act. Thus, nobody would be able to initiate action in a communist society, so this method of organizing society is impossible. The capitalist method of organizing society, self-ownership, is clearly possible, because everyone owns themself, making the initiation of action possible. The slave/fascist method of organizing society is also possible, but it falls by the wayside since it is not a universal ethic that can be adopted by all of mankind. Thus, we are left with the capitalist ethic of self-ownership.
Rights over property outside of one’s own body (e.g. rights over land-use) come from self-ownership. If A owns hiself, then A owns his labor. By mixing his labor with land or other property (e.g. by farming some land or by building a house), A comes to own that property. From this starting point we can derive more complicated forms of property ownership (e.g. the ownership of stocks).
Note 1: Please notice that I’m not using terms such as “communism” properly in this context. Many political communists would agree with self-ownership, but then they fail to take the next logical step and extend self-ownership to the ownership of property outside the body. By “communism” I mean “communism of bodies,” not political or ideological communism.
Note 2: I believe that utilitarianism also falls within category three, or the capitalist ethic of self-ownership. This is because the impossibility of interpersonal utility comparisons dictates that the most utilitarian society is one in which the force is never used. Thus, I believe that utilitarianism and natural rights can go hand in hand.
That’s an awesome categorization.
Why thank you. I remember first reading it in Rothbard’s Ethics of Liberty. You can find this in a footnote on one of the first few pages. Tom Woods brought this up in a lecture presented to a C4L conference. You can watch Woods’ lecture here.
That’s new for you?
In that case, here is the full explanation:
No. That’s not new to me. I was simply saying it was awesome.
There was a nice article by Wirkman Virkkala recently I think you guys should read here.
Attempts to summarize all morality into a simple principle are ancient. Long before Kant’s categorical imperative we were blessed with the Silver and Golden Rules. Indeed, there is a sort of progress in the development of these rules:
Silver: Do not do unto others that which you do not want done to yourself.
Golden: Do unto others that which you want done unto you.
Cat. Imp.: Act only in such a manner that you can at the same time will that your act should become a universal law.
But the progress may be illusory. The Silver standard may be best. The negative formulation does not entail perversities that can develop from very particular values. Under the Golden Rule, my preferences could be so “out there” as to cause disharmony, not increase it. For example, I might prefer to greet strangers with impromptu opera arias. After all, I would prefer it if everyone sung to me. So, taking my strange preference for improvised singing, I inflict upon society a mad barrage of baritone assaults…
…
@ Kaju: I’m not sure how nihilism equates to “nobody owns anything”, as I know plenty of nihilists who believe in property.
Could you elaborate further on whether you are targetting a specific strain or interpretation of nihilism, or generalizing nihilism as a whole?
The fallacy of Rothbard is that if all our rights derive from property rights, then humans only have rights to the extent that they own property. In practice, this creates a society where some people have unimaginably expansive rights (often unearned) while others have effectively almost no rights. Such an unequal society is repulsive to decent people.
Rothbardians like to talk about “self-ownership,” but a man or woman with no property has no means of supporting themselves other than to “rent” their self ownership out to others for wages. Rothbardians would insist that even a person who has to rent themselves full-time to obtain subsistence is “free,” but almost no one who is actually in this situation agrees.
Our rights don’t stem fundamentally from property rights. All rights stem from the condition of life; only living beings have rights. Ask yourself, how in Rothbard’s system would the initial acquisition of “ourselves” originate? We have rights because we are ourselves, not primarily because we “own” ourselves. We “own” ourselves as a consequence of being free, but owning ourselves does not wholly encompass
The right to liberty follows from the right to life, because liberty is required to make life worthwhile. If human life is to be worthwhile, humans have to be “at liberty” to do the things that we consider as making life worthwhile,( to the extent that this doesn’t interfere with this same right for others).
The right to property follows from our right to liberty. Doing the things that make life worthwhile usually require the use or acquisition of property, and an economic system based on the voluntary exchange of property is the most efficient way to produce desired goods. We have a right to trade, exchange and own property so that we can actually accomplish the things that we consider as making life worthwhile, Our right to property, however, is not valid if it interferes with the life, liberty or property of others.
The right to liberty can justifiably be infringed upon to preserve life: a person with plague can be temporarily involuntarily quarantined, for example, and the right to property can be justifiably infringed upon to preserve either life or liberty; bribery which interferes with the liberty of others can rightly be outlawed for example.
This is simply the a formulation which will lead to the most possible happiness for the most possible individuals. We “are different” than the monkeys you cite because we can make social systems with concious forethought and with considerations of the wider conseqences of our actions, while the monkeys are mostly acting with consideration to their present impulses. I’d say it’s not true that we “are” different, only that we’re capable of being different.
That’s what property means also. Learn what Rothbard means before you reach the level of being able to critique him.
Rothbard was a praxeologist. We own ourselves because we are (being) ourselves.
That’s why property rights mean by definition, right of life, meaning we exist, right of liberty, meaning our original nature is peaceful (life doesn’t exist in pure destruction).
It’s not philosophically prudent and conductive as to what philosophy means, ie. truth-finding, lover of wisdom; when strawmen are erected which only leads into red herrings, i.e. unwarranted tangents. Just some advice.
Before learning what the theory of natural rights are it is important to know what scarcity means.
That’s why property rights mean by definition, right of life, meaning we exist, right of liberty, meaning our original nature is peaceful (life doesn’t exist in pure destruction).
But they’re not rightfully in the same category on a co-equal basis.
And what I find really interesting about scarcity is how it’s an evolving and malleable social condition.
I don’t know what ‘equal’ has to do with this. Law of marginal utility comes to mind. It’s a declarative proposition, meaning, it’s semantics. It’s what the word means and has meant for hundreds of years at least. I know Locke wrote that property includes in ones own person.
The universe is finite. The earth is round with distinct boundaries that end. Etc…
anything else?
Benjamin thinks that in a free society all people who didn’t own land would literally not be able to speak and constantly forced from one place to another by the landed class.
This forum needs a real rolleyes smiley.
anything else?
Do you believe that all humans have limitless material wants and needs?
Needs seem to me to be very finite, while wants are subjective and thus changeable (in extent, for example).
I think on my better days my material wants are not infinite…
How would I know? I mean I’ve heard of monks who supposedly live on minimal material possessions. I don’t understand the question.
ok, but seeing that the universe is scarce those wants have finite boundaries.
ok