@mcbry: "Think of all that money that is wasted by the defense department, they overpay for EVERYTHING. A little competition could really clean up their acts. Just contract it out to Blackwater and Bam!"

HAHHAAHAHA thankyou mcbry, i needed a laugh :)

"taxation is a violation of the property right". *asking innocently* What's a property right?

Property is just what you normally think in means, namely stuff that you own, including your own body. Property rights are the rights not to have these things taken from you without your consent and the right to choose what you do with them (under the condition that you don't infringe on other people's property right by, say, damaging their property)

who or what confers upon us this property right?

The fact that we are sentient, rational, moral agents implies it.

Not really. There are plenty of cultures in world history that don't have a concept of private property rights the way that we do.

Therefore, its not universal, and its just what we find useful to our society. So there is no "inherent" rights, but only rights established by our law, common or statute (or Constitution, but you Brit's never bothered to write yours down... :P )

"Not really. There are plenty of cultures in world history that don't have a concept of private property rights the way that we do."

Just because some people didn't respect a right at some point in history means that it doesn't exist?

see also: blacks, Louisiana, 1900

If you're making the case that its a right because we're sentient, rational moral creatures(by implication) then if it is a universal right, then it would be universally applied by all cultures that are sentient, moral, or rational.

All human cultures are sentient. Fact.

All human cultures are rational (by their own estimation... if you want to get into that, one can say that we think they are irrational, but they'd say the same... no objective definition would exist)

Same for moral as above.


If its universal, then everybody knows about it and acknowledges it. Which is far from the case.

Back my example up a hundred years. Is the right not to be enslaved not a universal right? Or was the South circa 1800 not rational/moral?

"The fact that we are sentient, rational, moral agents implies it." Now that is poppycock. You'll have to do better than that. What's the connection between sentience, rationality, morality and property? "Just because some people didn't respect a right at some point in history means that it doesn't exist?" Exist? Like floating around in space somewhere? You're in over your head boy. A right doesn't "exist" unless it is conferred from power. Just like good positivist Jack already said.

@Jack: care to name some of these cultures that don't consider their own bodys to be their own property? Or is someone being pedantic?

"You're in over your head boy." - another classic from mcbry. You might just be the most appalling idiot, ever.

Ummm.... any culture that has had the institution of slavery has considered it proper for some individuals to have no personal rights whatsoever. That includes rights to their bodies... under Roman law, for example, it was legal for the owner of the slave to do whatever they liked to the slave, including sexual favors, and up to and including killing the slave (I use killing instead of murder because it literally was not murder)

I mean, do you really want me to list all of them, because its quite a list.

"If its universal, then everybody knows about it and acknowledges it."

That doesn't follow. The law of gravity is universal but not everyone knows about it and acknowledges it.

"Is the right not to be enslaved not a universal right?" It is, and its a property right: ownership of your own body.

""The fact that we are sentient, rational, moral agents implies it." Now that is poppycock. You'll have to do better than that. What's the connection between sentience, rationality, morality and property? "Just because some people didn't respect a right at some point in history means that it doesn't exist?" Exist? Like floating around in space somewhere? You're in over your head boy. A right doesn't "exist" unless it is conferred from power. Just like good positivist Jack already said."

Unless you are going to be a nihilist, individual property rights are necessary if we are to have any rights at all. I cannot have a right to something without a right to myself. Further, having a right to myself means I may not be enslaved which implies that no-one else can take the product of my labour without my volition, for that is the essence of slavery.

Er... I can think of quite a few schools of thought that would disagree with the positivist definition of rights...

""Just because some people didn't respect a right at some point in history means that it doesn't exist?" Exist? Like floating around in space somewhere? You're in over your head boy. A right doesn't "exist" unless it is conferred from power."

Don't tell the architects of the US government that. They believed that we have certain inalienable rights: specifically the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Oh, and that those rights were bestowed upon us by the creator.

Gravity is universal. Even if you don't like it, or rail against it, gravity is going to win, because its universal. No matter if you acknowledge it or not, its there, yanking you around.

However, you claim to have a universal right to your own body as your personal property.

If I were to dump you in Ancient Rome amongst a bunch of Gauls about to be captured by Caesar, and you were enslaved (and since you likely don't speak a local language, you'd end up at best a menial laborer), you would no longer have that right to your person.

They can take that so-called "universal" right away from you. Beat you, break you, or kill you. Your right doesn't act to trump their ability, therefore its not a universal right that always exists. Mcbry is correct: There are no rights except those enforced by power, be that direct power, cultural power(that would be why we don't have slavery now... its literally unthinkable for the great mass of people in Western Civilization), or the like. Property rights are given by society in some form, they don't exist outside of it.

For somebody who seems to be a fairly solid realist, you're wandering off into happy fuzzy bunny land a bit here, Ghost. :)

@Jack - just because someone can take your right awy through force doesn't mean you don't still have the right. Rights exist whether others recognize them or not. A serial killer can take your life, but that only means he has violated your right to life, not that the right never existed.

Draugnar: Don't mistake "oughts" with "is'es".

We ought to have life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness. I think very few individuals on earth would disagree with that (provided it was couched in terms they would understand... how a radical Islamist would define life liberty and pursuit of happiness would likely differ from ours).

But we don't have that unless we establish that right through some means. Despite being a bleeding heart liberal, I like to keep my political theory firmly in the real, because fuzzy bunny feelings don't work when you're dealing with assholes who don't agree.(and by don't agree, they don't think you have those rights, and they don't mind killing you or oppressing you to prove the point)

Then we must be disagreeing on what a right is. A right, undefended, is violated, but still a right. rights aren't granted ro taken away. They exist and, should someone violate them, we most hope that someone else will come to our defense. All the rest are priviledges which come with power and can be revoked.

Now, what some people call a right, I call a priviledge.

If a right is inherent to the world (all people have X), then it would be literally impossible to take that away (much like gravity is inherent to the world... you can't violate gravity... although I understand the physicists are working on that).

But rights can be violated, and they are on a regular basis. All I'm saying is rights are created by people, enforced by people, and can be removed by people. (people being effectively synonymous with society or civilization). Rights are a construct of the creature we call humanity. :)

You can't say certain rights always apply to all people at all times, because they didn't. We fought and established certain rights, but they didn't really exist until then.

Rights are *not* created by people. You are confusing enforcement and recognition with creation. And I can say that as the right to life has existed since the beginning of time. It just was (and is) violated on a regular basis. But it still existed. You attribute the creation of rights to mankind (humanism) where as I attribute the creation of rights to our creator (deism). Mind, I'm not specifying who the Creator is any more than the founding fathers did. I'm just saying there is a Creator andhe has endowed upon us certain inalienable rights.

itt: positivists and natural rightists bash foreheads against brick wall incessantly over definition of rights

.. and will then go and watch TV, buy groceries, drive their cars and go to work, and be completely indistinguishable from each other in their day to day lives

Rights are by definition "oughts". It is very possible to deny people their rights. I can deny you your right to life by pulling the trigger on a shotgun, but that doesn't mean that you didn't have that right. All it means is that I am morally in the wrong.

Jack, if you want to distinguish between your conception of rights and mine, (between rights as ought and rights as is) then do go ahead. I will call mine "Natural Rights" for the purposes of discussion. My claim is that for any natural rights to exist, you need the property natural right. Furthermore, because humans have or give purpose to their lives, they necessarily have "oughts". This gives us a concept of morality as unavoidable, since we are sentient and rational (and so can make informed decisions). This means that we cannot avoid the presence of natural rights, implying that the property natural right exists.

@Maniac, at least its no longer about tuition fees :P