Standing naked on my property

[PDS]

There's a primary (and positive) right, the freedom to act. Therefore it is the right to action. "Action" in all senses: e.g. life, choice, ownership, or even inaction too. "Action" subsumes everything.

To avoid all the complication and confusion, I suggest not "individual rights", rather "individual right" -singular.

KISS, remember.

Then dumb governments might better understand their job.

If you're going to re-invent the wheel, I suggest making it round, not square.

--Brant

I may have to plaigiarize this sometime.

[Selene]

There's a primary (and positive) right, the freedom to act. Therefore it is the right to action. "Action" in all senses: e.g. life, choice, ownership, or even inaction too. "Action" subsumes everything.

To avoid all the complication and confusion, I suggest not "individual rights", rather "individual right" -singular.

KISS, remember.

Then dumb governments might better understand their job.

If you're going to re-invent the wheel, I suggest making it round, not square.

--Brant

I may have to plaigiarize this sometime.

He does have a definite Will Rodgers/Mark Twain style,

[Brant Gaede]

[i've posted my review of Wolf DeVoon's The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch on Amazon.]

Coudn't find it, Brant.

Just go to Amazon and search "devoon."

--Brant

[Brant Gaede]

There's a primary (and positive) right, the freedom to act. Therefore it is the right to action. "Action" in all senses: e.g. life, choice, ownership, or even inaction too. "Action" subsumes everything.

To avoid all the complication and confusion, I suggest not "individual rights", rather "individual right" -singular.

KISS, remember.

Then dumb governments might better understand their job.

If you're going to re-invent the wheel, I suggest making it round, not square.

--Brant

I may have to plaigiarize this sometime.

He does have a definite Will Rodgers/Mark Twain style,

It's "Will Twain/Mark Rogers."

If you're going to mix 'em up mix 'em up!

--Brant

if you're going to pull the pin on a grenade pull the damn thing!--stop tugging!

[anthony]

Hmmm.

The wheel isn't squeaking a little over there? It's jamming everywhere else.

[Francisco Ferrer]

There's a primary (and positive) right, the freedom to act. Therefore it is the right to action. "Action" in all senses: e.g. life, choice, ownership, or even inaction too. "Action" subsumes everything.

To avoid all the complication and confusion, I suggest not "individual rights", rather "individual right" -singular.

KISS, remember.

Then dumb governments might better understand their job.

I have used the term "positive rights" in the sense that "positive rights require others to provide you with either a good or service. A negative right, on the other hand, only requires others to abstain from interfering with your actions." See here.

Yes, understood, as all do here. But this is how the tangle and wrangle begins; try explaining it to other fellow citizens and folk at large. It's partly semantical, but "positive" should not ever be the preserve of 'claim rights' and 'entitlement rights'. (The right to human dignity -whatever that means- for one, more commonly heard, lately). Such 'rights' are of course claims on others, and mean wrongs to others.

Rand says it concisely: "The concept of a right pertains only to action--specifically to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a POSITIVE..."

(It's certain you know this well, FF).

So for all purposes (beginning at self-clarity) "negative rights" should fall away in usage, I argue.

I respectfully disagree. As Tibor Machan wrote, "Just as the new 'liberalism' is fake liberalism, so the new 'positive rights' are fake rights. In each case, the heart of a valid principle has been gutted." It is entirely appropriate that negative rights should be the at the heart of law, for equal liberty can only be found when both the individual and the government refrain from intruding on the person and property of others.

[Francisco Ferrer]

Look what was in my daily quote e-mail...

"[E]very Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property."

-- John Locke

(1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist. Considered the ideological progenitor of the American Revolution and who, by far, was the most often non-biblical writer quoted by the Founding Fathers of the USA.

Thanks, but I needed that quote two days ago!

[Selene]

Thanks, but I needed that quote two days ago!

I've been busy working.

I'll do an Avis next time...

corrected

[Brant Gaede]

Thanks, but I needed that quote two days ago!

I've busy working.

I'll do an Avis next time...

Francisco comes in from the cold.

--Brant

[Samson Corwell]

Does a Straw man have kidneys?

Straw kidneys.

[Samson Corwell]

A law guaranteeing someone a "right to life" is not a right in the Lockean tradition. Also, laws don't guarantee rights; they protect rights or not.

--Brant

This seems like nitpicking.

[Samson Corwell]

There's a primary (and positive) right, the freedom to act. Therefore it is the right to action. "Action" in all senses: e.g. life, choice, ownership, or even inaction too. "Action" subsumes everything.

To avoid all the complication and confusion, I suggest not "individual rights", rather "individual right" -singular.

KISS, remember.

Then dumb governments might better understand their job.

I have used the term "positive rights" in the sense that "positive rights require others to provide you with either a good or service. A negative right, on the other hand, only requires others to abstain from interfering with your actions." See here.

Yes, understood, as all do here. But this is how the tangle and wrangle begins; try explaining it to other fellow citizens and folk at large. It's partly semantical, but "positive" should not ever be the preserve of 'claim rights' and 'entitlement rights'. (The right to human dignity -whatever that means- for one, more commonly heard, lately). Such 'rights' are of course claims on others, and mean wrongs to others.

Rand says it concisely: "The concept of a right pertains only to action--specifically to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a POSITIVE..."

(It's certain you know this well, FF).

So for all purposes (beginning at self-clarity) "negative rights" should fall away in usage, I argue.

I respectfully disagree. As Tibor Machan wrote, "Just as the new 'liberalism' is fake liberalism, so the new 'positive rights' are fake rights. In each case, the heart of a valid principle has been gutted." It is entirely appropriate that negative rights should be the at the heart of law, for equal liberty can only be found when both the individual and the government refrain from intruding on the person and property of others.

I disagree with the positive/negative dichotomy. I suggest that there are more distinctions that should be drawn elsewhere. I consider a right to an attorney and a right to a fair trial to be perfectly valid, as well as the rights to confront one's accusor and summon witness testimony. I don't think "positive rights" are necessarily about "goods and services" (there's that economic reductionism again).

[Jules Troy]

Does a Straw man have kidneys?

Straw kidneys.

[Jules Troy]

Perhaps an alfalphalasis machine is in order! ?

[Brant Gaede]

A law guaranteeing someone a "right to life" is not a right in the Lockean tradition. Also, laws don't guarantee rights; they protect rights or not.

--Brant

This seems like nitpicking.

Why?

--Brant

[anthony]

There's a primary (and positive) right, the freedom to act. Therefore it is the right to action. "Action" in all senses: e.g. life, choice, ownership, or even inaction too. "Action" subsumes everything.

To avoid all the complication and confusion, I suggest not "individual rights", rather "individual right" -singular.

KISS, remember.

Then dumb governments might better understand their job.

I have used the term "positive rights" in the sense that "positive rights require others to provide you with either a good or service. A negative right, on the other hand, only requires others to abstain from interfering with your actions." See here.

Yes, understood, as all do here. But this is how the tangle and wrangle begins; try explaining it to other fellow citizens and folk at large. It's partly semantical, but "positive" should not ever be the preserve of 'claim rights' and 'entitlement rights'. (The right to human dignity -whatever that means- for one, more commonly heard, lately). Such 'rights' are of course claims on others, and mean wrongs to others.

Rand says it concisely: "The concept of a right pertains only to action--specifically to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a POSITIVE..."

(It's certain you know this well, FF).

So for all purposes (beginning at self-clarity) "negative rights" should fall away in usage, I argue.

I respectfully disagree. As Tibor Machan wrote, "Just as the new 'liberalism' is fake liberalism, so the new 'positive rights' are fake rights. In each case, the heart of a valid principle has been gutted." It is entirely appropriate that negative rights should be the at the heart of law, for equal liberty can only be found when both the individual and the government refrain from intruding on the person and property of others.

I think Machan is right. The term "positive rights" has been expropriated and that's what I've been getting at. The valid principle he raises is 'freedom to action' -as Rand explained it.

Which comes first, which implicitly contains the other, and which is greater?

The individual right to act--or the moral and legal restraint against one acting contra another person's right to action?

It would take a complete idiot to assume that only he, and no other, has the freedom to act as he pleases, yet while infringing others' freedom (or that government must protect his 'right' alone, as well as not itself interfering in his life).

I believe you're looking at it mainly from the glass half empty viewpoint, which is the negative right. The positive right to action covers everything and everybody, while inherently limiting one. "Equal liberty", as you say, though I believe that term would be surplus to requirement in practice.

[Brant Gaede]

There's a primary (and positive) right, the freedom to act. Therefore it is the right to action. "Action" in all senses: e.g. life, choice, ownership, or even inaction too. "Action" subsumes everything.

To avoid all the complication and confusion, I suggest not "individual rights", rather "individual right" -singular.

KISS, remember.

Then dumb governments might better understand their job.

I have used the term "positive rights" in the sense that "positive rights require others to provide you with either a good or service. A negative right, on the other hand, only requires others to abstain from interfering with your actions." See here.

Yes, understood, as all do here. But this is how the tangle and wrangle begins; try explaining it to other fellow citizens and folk at large. It's partly semantical, but "positive" should not ever be the preserve of 'claim rights' and 'entitlement rights'. (The right to human dignity -whatever that means- for one, more commonly heard, lately). Such 'rights' are of course claims on others, and mean wrongs to others.

Rand says it concisely: "The concept of a right pertains only to action--specifically to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a POSITIVE..."

(It's certain you know this well, FF).

So for all purposes (beginning at self-clarity) "negative rights" should fall away in usage, I argue.

I respectfully disagree. As Tibor Machan wrote, "Just as the new 'liberalism' is fake liberalism, so the new 'positive rights' are fake rights. In each case, the heart of a valid principle has been gutted." It is entirely appropriate that negative rights should be the at the heart of law, for equal liberty can only be found when both the individual and the government refrain from intruding on the person and property of others.

I disagree with the positive/negative dichotomy. I suggest that there are more distinctions that should be drawn elsewhere. I consider a right to an attorney and a right to a fair trial to be perfectly valid, as well as the rights to confront one's accusor and summon witness testimony. I don't think "positive rights" are necessarily about "goods and services" (there's that economic reductionism again).

I'll take this as your answer to my question, "Why?"

--Brant

but I reject "nitpicking"--and but since you said that I won't defend my statement which stands as such for I don't appreciate sophisticated name calling

[Darrell Hougen]

A law guaranteeing someone a "right to life" is not a right in the Lockean tradition. Also, laws don't guarantee rights; they protect rights or not.

--Brant

This seems like nitpicking.

Sometimes precision of word usage is important. I think this is one of those times. I therefore applaud Brant for better word choice. It makes the meaning clearer.

Darrell

[Darrell Hougen]

Look what was in my daily quote e-mail...

"[E]very Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property."

-- John Locke

(1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist. Considered the ideological progenitor of the American Revolution and who, by far, was the most often non-biblical writer quoted by the Founding Fathers of the USA.

Thanks, but I needed that quote two days ago!

You are yourself. You could say that your body belongs to you or even that you have a property in your person, although that has a strange ring to me, but I still don't like the phrase, "self-ownership".

The reason it sounds strange is that it conflates the general with the particular. The right to life is a general right. A person has a right to life as a consequence of his nature as a rational, living being. A person also has a right to own property as a consequence of his nature. However, he may or may not have a property right in a particular thing. For example, he might own a car or he might not. It might be someone-else's car. If he purchased a car, then he owns it. If not, he doesn't.

When you say a person owns himself, it sounds as if he purchased himself at some point in the past. Or, perhaps someone gave him to himself as a gift.

The same thing applies when you say that a person not only owns himself but every part of himself. I suppose a person might have purchased his kidneys from someone else, but once they have been incorporated into his body, they are a part of him, not a possession.

What about a person's mind? Did you just purchase yours last Tuesday? Now, you're looking for a buyer, but no one is interested. That's why you feel frustrated.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Locke generally made a distinction between life, liberty, and property. For example:

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

If a person's life was merely a possession, it wouldn't be necessary to draw a distinction.

The other objection that I have, as I have stated before, is that "self-ownership" is not axiomatic. Property rights derive from man's nature as a rational, living being. Life is logically prior to property rights and the purpose of property rights is to protect a person's ability to live. Property rights are the only method known to effectively protect human life. But, that is something that must be shown, not assumed.

In The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand said:

The right to life is the source of all rightsand the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.

Property rights are the implementation of the right to life. They don't exist prior to the right to life and can't be explained without first acknowledging the right to life.

Darrell

[Wolf DeVoon]

Hard to stay silent with this avalanche of hooey. A right to life when? -- age of consent? birth? third trimester? conception?

You come into the world with a claim on your parents, cops, courts, teachers, power utilities, doctors, grocery stores, and farmers

-- unless you're born female in Bangladesh or Guatemala or the Congo with a congenital defect to make it a fucking slam dunk.

Protest march over. Back on strike.

[Selene]

Hard to stay silent with this avalanche of hooey. A right to life when? -- age of consent? birth? third trimester? conception?

Conception...

[Francisco Ferrer]

Look what was in my daily quote e-mail...

"[E]very Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property."

-- John Locke

(1632-1704) English philosopher and political theorist. Considered the ideological progenitor of the American Revolution and who, by far, was the most often non-biblical writer quoted by the Founding Fathers of the USA.

Thanks, but I needed that quote two days ago!

You are yourself. You could say that your body belongs to you or even that you have a property in your person, although that has a strange ring to me, but I still don't like the phrase, "self-ownership".

The reason it sounds strange is that it conflates the general with the particular. The right to life is a general right. A person has a right to life as a consequence of his nature as a rational, living being. A person also has a right to own property as a consequence of his nature. However, he may or may not have a property right in a particular thing. For example, he might own a car or he might not. It might be someone-else's car. If he purchased a car, then he owns it. If not, he doesn't.

When you say a person owns himself, it sounds as if he purchased himself at some point in the past. Or, perhaps someone gave him to himself as a gift.

The same thing applies when you say that a person not only owns himself but every part of himself. I suppose a person might have purchased his kidneys from someone else, but once they have been incorporated into his body, they are a part of him, not a possession.

What about a person's mind? Did you just purchase yours last Tuesday? Now, you're looking for a buyer, but no one is interested. That's why you feel frustrated.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Locke generally made a distinction between life, liberty, and property. For example:

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.

If a person's life was merely a possession, it wouldn't be necessary to draw a distinction.

The other objection that I have, as I have stated before, is that "self-ownership" is not axiomatic. Property rights derive from man's nature as a rational, living being. Life is logically prior to property rights and the purpose of property rights is to protect a person's ability to live. Property rights are the only method known to effectively protect human life. But, that is something that must be shown, not assumed.

In The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand said:

The right to life is the source of all rightsand the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.

Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.

Property rights are the implementation of the right to life. They don't exist prior to the right to life and can't be explained without first acknowledging the right to life.

Darrell

Life is a process that requires oxygen, nutrition, protection from the elements, and sometimes expert medical attention. Unless we add a rather detailed qualifier, to insist that a person has a "right to life," is perforce to say he has a "right to oxygen, nutrition, protection from the elements, and sometimes expert medical attention."

Elsewhere you have been emphatic that "in a free society all human interactions should be voluntary." The problem is that such a goal is not one and the same as the same as a "right to life." And unless your legal system makes it very clear which goal is paramount, those who favor using police power for wealth transfer will be only too happy to generate costly government schemes for promoting everyone's "right to life."

When we say a person has ownership in something, it does not have to mean the possession of that property came though purchase. Following Locke, we can say a person attains rightful ownership though original use. Person X finds a diamond in the wilderness. He cuts it, polishes it and makes it his. Person Y occupied his body first and still occupies it now; he has not yet abandoned it. Therefore Y has an unimpeachable claim on his body through original use and continued habitation of the property.

You say kidneys are a part of a man, but not a possession. I knew a man who had his gall bladder removed and kept it in alcohol. Was the gall bladder not a possession? What about clippings of his hair and fingernails?

Ownership only makes sense in terms of use, control and disposal. I may sell you my car, but if I don't allow you to drive it or to transfer ownership to someone else, in what real sense are you the owner?

Similarly, while it is conceivable that someone could sell himself into slavery, I do not see how the attributes and contents of one's mind could be transferred to another under present technology.

When we say a person has rights in his body, we are in effect saying he has a right to do with that body as he wishes and, if he can, to keep that body alive without interference. Adding he has a right to life is at best redundant and at worst a potential foot in the door to the welfare state.

If the purpose of property rights is "to protect a person's ability to live," then there could in fact be valid laws against suicide and euthanasia, for such life-ending activities would contradict the presumed "right to life" basis for rights. Furthermore, under such a premise, any other activity that is dangerous could be strictly regulated or banned.

If "property rights are the implementation of the right to life," then, by the same token, the statist could assert that regulation of drugs is also the implementation of the right to life. Fewer dangerous drugs on the street, more lives saved, more "rights to life" protected.

[Jules Troy]

Utter bullshit about the drug policy. It is because drugs are illegal and very profitable due to them BEING illegal that so much harm is done to human life.

[Brant Gaede]

Life is a process that requires oxygen, nutrition, protection from the elements, and sometimes expert medical attention. Unless we add a rather detailed qualifier, to insist that a person has a "right to life," is perforce to say he has a "right to oxygen, nutrition, protection from the elements, and sometimes expert medical attention."

Yes he does have a right to go out and get what he needs for his life. But no right to force others to provide anything.

--Brant

otherwise it ain't Locke

[Wolf DeVoon]

A right to life when? -- age of consent? birth? third trimester? conception?

Conception...

Strike is temporarily suspended, provided that Fisher doesn't show up and get treated like an equal again.

There is no right to life except as a technical aspect of due process: "If you kill someone, he/she can't appear in court to argue his/her side of the controversy" [COGIGG, p.65] and "The courts have to remain open to those in custody. Custody is not a first principle." [pp. 56, 57]

"The right to petition and to be represented by counsel is the first and only explicit constitutional right." [p.56] It pertains without limitation to animal, mineral, vegetable, and abstract relations such as promises, covenants, associations, employment, bequests, debt, wrongful death, injury, trespass, fraud, nuisance, and sanity -- i.e., any cause or controversy that a lawyer wants to argue, including unwanted pregnancy and the potential to conceive hopelessly disabled children in the future.

However (and it's a big however), there is no right to successfully argue, prosecute, or defend anything. Every interest or right you can conceivably claim, there are multiple parties (including the state) whose interests and claims may sharply contradict yours, and/or whose motion to dismiss could put an abrupt end to whatever you hoped to argue in court. Cases proceed at the discretion of a trial judge. Hung juries are not uncommon, and appelate review is not a magic wand.

Please don't quote Locke or NAP or utility. None of it cuts any ice in laissez faire law.