What are rights? Where do they come from? How do governments relate to them? Let's take a quick look at the framework behind the concept of negative rights. This is the concept that no one has a right to X, rather than, I claim a right to X. Instead of seeking a grant of authority from some outside source defining that to which you have a right, it defines the sphere of authority where anyone may act without committing an infringement against the inherent rights of others.
This post is necessarily a cursory overview of these ideas instead of an in-depth treatise. My goal is to foster discussion and spark thought so you can take these ideas, deconstruct them, challenge them, reinforce them, and build a dialogue for progress. Comments are not only welcome, but encouraged.
You Are A Rational Being
You have the power to reason. It may not be honed and developed for rigorous philosophy, and you may suffer from brain trauma or live with a congenital mental disability, but unrealized or diminished capacity is not the absence of capacity. Even if you apply perfect logical reasoning, erroneous premises will reach a false result. None of this invalidates your nature as a rational being.
You Are An Acting Being
You apply your capacity of reason to choose between alternatives and select a course of action in order to achieve your desired ends. As with your power to reason, you may err. The ends toward which you act may fail to satisfy your wants should those ends be realized. You may not have the same talent, training, and practice of others. You may have physical handicaps. Nonetheless, you act in order to achieve ends you desire.
Responsibility
I treat these premises as axiomatic. Your power to reason, choose, and act means you are responsible for the consequences of your reason, choices, and actions. I know this has been a question of philosophy and theology for millennia, but unless it can somehow be shown that choice is truly an illusion, this is an inescapable conclusion. Of course, if we have no power to reason, choose, or act, my conclusion is irrelevant, and yet still inescapable because the random interactions of the universe have forced me to inescapably reach it nonetheless. Philosophy is weird.
Equality
If my argument for the power to reason and act acknowledges implicitly that people are different, how can they also be equal? We know people enter life with different racial, cultural, economic, and physical advantages. I'll even say some people are simply better human beings than others, whether due to nature or nurture. Yet I still say people have equality on one fundamental level: Authority.
Authority
If you have the power to reason, choose, and act; and if you are therefore responsible for the consequences which result; now do we determine your sphere of authority to act? I argue no one has the authority to trespass against another individual. It is only when the spheres of authority collide that the question of rights arises. But how do we define this sphere of authority and ensure it applies equally to all individuals?
Life
The most fundamental right is life. No one has a right to murder you, and you do not have the right to murder anyone else. However, if someone is presenting a clear and present danger to your life, you have the right to defend yourself, even with lethal force, if necessary.
Liberty
Life is essential to the ability to reason, choose, and act. Liberty means only that no one else has the authority to interfere with your choices and actions unless you infringe upon someone else's reciprocal sphere of authority. Legitimate human interaction requires mutual voluntary consen tif equal liberty is to be respected. It sounds simple, but this is the root of most conflicts, and why we have concepts like property and government.
Society
I define "society" as the aggregate of all voluntary human interactions and exchanges which strive to respect the mutual and reciprocal spheres of life and liberty. Cultures and individuals differ on many aspects, but respect for life and liberty are essential for peace and progress.
I know the ideas of property and markets are divisive, but my position is that such principles and exchanges do not violate life or liberty, and in fact provide the best framework for protecting them. Your mileage may vary, of course, but if we agree to respect those spheres of life and liberty despite these differences, we can coexist. Show me I am wrong by living a better life.
Property
Actions affect the material world around us. Who has the right to use given raw materials? Who has the right to consume products? I ascribe to something fundamentally similar to Lockean property rights. Nature is un-owned. If you transform something out of its state of nature, you have the right to determine its use. If you plow a field, cut a tree, or pull a gold nugget out of a river, no one else has a higher claim unless they have a prior claim. This is the basis of any sound property right.
Value and Exchange
Value is a subjective ordinal preference in the mind of the individual making the valuation, not an intrinsic property of any good or service. Labor does not create value. Instead, people labor because they are speculating the outcome of their actions will be either directly valuable to themselves or as an exchange for something else they value more. When two individuals agree to an exchange, it does mean an equivalence in value has been discovered. This only demonstrates that both parties value what they receive in exchange more than they value what they give up in return. This exchange of title by mutual voluntary consent is the foundation of all market action.
The Pursuit of Happiness
Vices are not crimes, because consuming mind-altering substances, gambling away your property, engaging in promiscuous activity, or otherwise doing things which might indeed be immoral do not trespass against anyone if all participants consent.
Crime and Government
instead of peaceful production and consenting exchange, some people prefer violence, plunder, and coercion Such actions are crimes because they violate the principles of rights discussed previously. One of the chief justifications for government is protection from such predation. However, governments as we know them today invariably exhibit the very uncivilized aspects from which they claim to defend us. Governments are people who claim a territorial monopoly in violence and the right to initiate coercive force despite the impossibility for any of us to delegate such authority. They are funded by extortion, violating the property rights they claim to protect. They enforce laws against vice in the name of protecting us from ourselves, asserting that we are criminals if we pursue happiness in unapproved ways.
I also contend that they faults most find in the "free market economy" stem from political intervention in the economy. Licenses and regulations are less about consumer safety than they are about protecting established interests by stifling competition. Corporations are a government-granted legal status. Subsidies and price controls directly subvert the price signals which otherwise organize a decentralized incentive system for market actors. The monetary system has been entirely monopolized by governments, resulting in money supply inflation and interest rate manipualtion further interfering with prices and planning. Where there are shortages, ballooning prices, declining quality, and other "market failures," you will invariably find government intervention preventing innovation.
Conclusion
None of this is meant to imply that humans are perfect, and anarchism will produce a Utopia. Even those of us who desire peace and virtue are prone to error and trespass against others. There will always be people who prefer plunder over production. I reject any concept of rights which somehow authorize trespass or impose obligations upon others without their consent, and I contend that the power structure of governments as we know them will only corrupt good people and empower the corrupt further. Only by understanding the principles of individual rights and rejecting the structures handed down to us if they fail to measure up can we achieve our potential as individuals, and consequently as a society built on a better foundation.
I'm going to link back to this. I have a draft saved for an article titled "what is 'right'" and I wanted to touch on how rights mean different things in different philosophical frameworks. You've done half my work for me!
We have rights because they are inherent to us. You alone can will your heavy hand to your weary brow to wipe the dripping sweat of your hard labors. You cannot transfer that ability. You alone are availed that authority over you. This means you are not property, not even your own property, because property can be transferred, and you cannot transfer this sovereign authority to act to another. You cannot sell it, give it away, or have it stolen from you.
You are sovereign, and this is why.
You have a right to life, and this right has been fulfilled. You do not have a right to live. You, in fact, will die. You have a right to die, and that will eventually be fulfilled too. You have a right to pursue life, but you, sooner or later, will fail to achieve it, and will die. Your right to life has been fulfilled, and your right to die will be, someday, but you do not have a right to live.
It is wise for us to keep that in mind as we face the rigors of living in a dangerous world.
Thanks!
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