Yes! That is all a right is, a claim. In other words, rights do not exist. They are just ideas.
Jackson, this has been my main argument for viewing power (force) as an extra-market phenomenon – one simply more powerful then them. Societies inevitably seem to converge to monopoly power (force) providers with enough power to overwhelm any individual market agent, thus evening out the playing field and encouraging cooperation. So market agents submit themselves to this power (limitation of freedom) and receive conflict avoidance in return. There seem to be no free lunches, after all.
Exactly - some level of parity between disputants is a prerequisite for the existence of rights.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. And I think it is something that is obviously true, I mean, I think it can be taken as a “praxeological” axiom.
Well, there is certainly a positive-feedback effect involved where centralization of legitimized coercion leads to greater centralization of legitimized coercion. But the “legitimized” is key to the positive feedback effect. Without legitimacy, the positive feedback breaks down. Imagine a fictional organization of men conscientiously dedicated to propagating their genes at any expense over non-members of their organization. They will rape, cuckold, dupe, drug, steal, war, anything to win. Such an organization would obviously be genetically formidable (it mimics the real nature of genes within a species vis-a-vis genes in all other species) but no such thing has ever emerged. Why not? Because nobody has ever accepted rape and cuckoldry as legitimate behavior or successfully concocted a legitimizing myth for it (perhaps there are pathological exceptions that I’m not aware of but my point stands in any case).
Nothing. Human nature is not under anyone’s control and I think it is human nature which is the primary culprit in the existence of governments throughout human history.
Well, I think that the historical progression of property rights (discounting their recent regression over the last century or so, in the West) has been to make governing (i.e. conquering) harder and harder. If you think of organized expropriation (government) as a disease of human society (it is literally parasitic), it’s like we are building up a greater and greater immune resistance over time.
Governing has only gotten harder, not easier. There was a time when the king just had to publicly decapitate the head rebel and bribe the priest to tell the people that god was displeased with them for their great rebellion to get the people back in line and paying their tribute (taxes). Today, the king has to write welfare checks, pave the roads, manage health care, print fake money, run up phony debts which he has no intention of paying, and a million other gags, tricks, cons and hustles to keep the juggernaut rolling. We tend to look at modern power-grabbing as the end of government but that’s an obvious mistake, from a praxeological point of view. Omnipotent control of the economy is not an end, it is a means to an end: parasitic subsistence. That governments are exercising greater and greater control of the economy is not a sign of their strength it is a symptom of the ever-greater hurdles which the prince must leap in order to keep his grip on power and keep the hands of his competitors (potential rebel leaders) off the reins of power.
I don’t know. I think we are in a long, evolutionary arc away from absolute government but we’re still a long ways from the end of that arc, judging from the attitudes of people I talk to on the street. Most everybody still uncritically accepts that there ought to be a dual law/morality and so long as this is the case, government is a permanent feature of human society.
Clayton -
I think this is the standard view of force but I actually think it is mistaken. I think when you analyze human dispute-resolution properly, you can apply the concept of revealed preference in exchange to the resolutions of disputes and end up with an “economics-ish” theory of law! That is, we can talk about how we know people are better off after resolving their disputes through legal means than they would have been had they resolved the dispute through martial means and we can then talk about how legal norms emerge as a result of these expressed preferences. This whole line of thought is still embryonic but I’m working on it on the side.
Clayton -
I posted my answer to this excellent question on my blog. I quote it here in full:
What is a Right?
All rights are property rights, or rights of ownership. That is, the word ‘right’ does not make any sense except in terms of property and ownership. So, first of all: what is property?
Property
Property is the word given to scarce objects which are under human control, claimed, and given boundaries. Property rules are rules establishing what individuals can and cannot do with the scarce objects around them. They are rules used for resolving conflicts peacefully.
Now I will deconstruct this definition of property.
A scarce object is one over which a conflict may arise, where two individuals both want to use the object, but they cannot. Scarcity is context-dependent. Usually, oxygen in the air is not a scarce resource, because my use of the oxygen in the air does not prevent you from also using the oxygen in the air. Water is usually scarce, because only one individual can use a given piece of water; my drinking the water prevents you from drinking it.
A scarce object is under human control if one individual possesses the ability to use the object as some means in action. The sun is not under human control, since no one has the power to control it.
A scarce object is claimed if one individual expresses his will to use the object and to exclude others from using it.
The scarce object being claimed must have definite boundaries, delimiting the extent of the control asserted in the claim.
The first step to resolving a conflict (a property dispute) is to ask the question: has a legitimate property boundary been violated? Aggression is the term given to a violation of a legitimate property boundary.
Ownership
The owner of a property is the individual who has expressed a claim to it; the individual claiming ultimate decision-making power over how the property is used. When two or more individuals claim to be the owner of some property, a conflict arises.
Let us suppose the conflict relates to an apple. A has eaten the apple, but B claims that he was the owner of the apple, and hence A has violated his legitimate property boundary, i.e. B claims A has aggressed against him. A retorts that in fact he had ownership of the apple, and therefore did not violate any property boundary. Both men are claiming ownership of the apple. Both men are claiming the right to be able to use the apple: the right to ultimate decision-making jurisdiction over it.
We can now elaborate three different senses of ownership:
De facto ownership. A de facto owner of some property is the individual who, in fact, has ultimate decision-making power over how a property is used.
Legal ownership. A legal owner of some property is the individual who, were a dispute to arise over the property, a given court (dispute resolution service) will award ownership to.
Normative ownership. A normative owner of some property is the individual who should have ownership of the property, according to some particular legal philosophy.
To continue with the example, who is the owner of the apple? Well, suppose that, for some reason, B backs down and accepts that A was the owner of the apple. Then, it is the case that A is the de facto owner of the apple. His will prevailed.
Let us suppose instead that A and B both stand firm, and decide to approach C to try and resolve the conflict through peaceful means. C decides that B was the owner, so A did violate a legitimate property boundary. In this case, B is the legal owner of the apple, according to the property rules as pronounced by C.
All legal philosophies relate to who should have ownership of a given property. They make assertions about who the rightful (proper, just, normative) owner of a given property is. They are based on some principle of assigning property rights.
For example, consider a philosophy which asserts that the normative owner of all apples is A. According to this philosophy, A is therefore the rightful owner of the disputed apple. If the case is taken to C, and C uses property rules based on this philosophy, he will award legal ownership to A.
Libertarianism is a philosophy which asserts that the rightful first owner of any property is the homesteader (the individual who has established an intersubjectively ascertainable link between himself and the object, by bringing that property into existence). Subsequent owners are only considered legitimate if they have all acquired the property through voluntary exchanges.
Let us suppose that it was B that picked the apple from an unowned tree. According to the libertarian philosophy then, B is the rightful owner. A libertarian court, pronouncing property rules based on the libertarian philosophy, would award legal ownership of the apple to B.
Rights
I will now return to the original question: what is a right?
There are three senses of rights. De facto rights are those rights that are actually in place in a given situation. If it is the case that A eats the apple, and B accepts this, then A has a de facto right to eat the apple. He is the de facto owner of the apple. Legal rights are those rights which are recognized by a given court. Normative rights are the rights that are regarded as just by some particular legal philosophy.
Much confusion arises due to confusing these different senses of rights. Consider the following example: the right to possess heroin. A legal scholar may turn to a set of laws and discover that no one (except the government) has the right to possess heroin. He is referring to legal rights.
A socialist philosopher may argue that no one (except the government) has the right to possess heroin. A libertarian philosopher may argue that all individuals have the right to possess heroin. They are both talking about normative rights; they disagree because they have different ideals and principles for how property (and therefore rights) should be assigned.
It may be the case that some heroin is not in fact owned by the government, but non-government individuals actually have full control of some of it. The government has expressed a claim to be the only ones with the right to possess heroin, but they are unable to enforce their claim. The heroin possessors have de facto rights to their heroin, but no legal rights, according to the government-run courts. Anyone who has a view about whether heroin should be legal or not is making a normative assertion about rights, based on their ethical values.
The Existence of Rights
Confusion over the definition of rights leads some people to proclaim that “rights do not exist”. Given the definitions above, it is clear that de facto rights always exist, and legal rights always exist, so this statement is incorrect. It may be claimed that what is meant by this statement is that normative rights do not exist. However, this is also incorrect. Everyone who has a view about what justice is, about what actions are aggression, about what constitutes ethical and unethical behaviour, is making a judgment about how property rights should be assigned.
The sentiment behind this statement could be better stated as “objective normative rights do not exist”. That is, there are no objective rules about ethics, about how property rights should be assigned.
That rights exist is undeniable. It is up for debate what constitutes just property rights, and legal philosophers of all kinds attempt to answer this question – libertarians and socialists alike.
Try waltzing into the vault at your bank and tell the armed guard that the bank’s property rights are just ideas. Good luck.
Clayton -
trulib, you rock!
Clayton -
Great stuff. I have some things to say about it, but I don’t want to derail this thread. Can you link the thread you started where you introduced us to this theory?
trulib, that was a great disambiguation. Objective normative rights are nonsense, but not all uses of the term “right” are nonsense. You’ve accounted for probably all the useful senses of the term “right” while snipping out the incoherent ones.
There are two definitions of rights that have become blurred such that nearly all use of the word is equivocation.
One is suggested by the etymology of the word. Right is the opposite of wrong. It is acceptable to something. You have a right to do x ; it is acceptable for you to do x.
The other is the communist version. Communist right to x means that someone else must render service x unto you.
I think we can be a little more precise than this, a right is a behavior which is acceptable* in the social context in which the action is occurring.
Clayton -
*Actually, it is more than merely “acceptable”, it is not opposable. That is, it cannot rightly be opposed except, of course, by the State which may oppose any action it pleases. The average person does not seriously include the State within the limitations of rights constructs.
Or we can go with the non-bogus, non-moral version of the word. A right is the opposite of a duty established by a covenant. No magic-sauce or cosmological entities involved; just basic legal meaning. All other uses of the word ‘right’ are hollow nonsense.
Rights can be created by contract or by the command of a coercive authority (usually the state). We can verify if a right exists by appealing to evidence.
Rights are perfectly sensible things. Utilitarianism (which Bentham did believe in), and the interperonal utility calculus that it requires, is truly nonsense upon stilts.
You are confusing rights with liberties.
Wow, I always wondered what it would feel like to be one of those people who use blockquotes to fill 90% of their post. It was actually quite…time efficient.
You seem to think that morality is nonsense. It is obviously false that morality is nonsense. Am I misunderstanding you?
Clayton -
I can promise you, in the very literal sense, ethics is nonsense
Rights appear to the rules of conduct and social action between individuals-- the formation of these rights depending on how power and knowledge is organized within the general territory/language center.
I can promise you, in the very literal sense, ethics is nonsense
Ditto.
It seems to me that your are confusing rights with conventions or legislation. They are related, but not the same. See my above post.
In ordinary language, we reserve the word “nonsense” to refer to a sub-class which is distinct from things that are sensible or rational or at least not frivolous and vain. But the only sense in which I can understand ethics to be nonsense is in the rather childish sense of nihilism that everything is nonsense. Only if everything is nonsense can it be true that ethics is nonsense since we certainly mean something by the word “ethics” that is not at all insensible, irrational, frivolous or vain.
I’m going to start a new thread on this since I want to argue this out with smart people like yourself and others on this forum who take the opposite position and see where it goes.
Clayton -
I don’t see how it’s mistaken. Your concept still fails to address the situations with overwhelming power difference between the parties where martial contest is also avoided through mere submission and conflict avoidance by the weaker party. The power differential affects the very subjective valuations and preferences of the parties involved. “Voluntary” is in the eye of the power-holder.