I would say the premise is that it is, "anything that everyone would naturally have, as long as the government does not interfere." Thoughts?
At most, I think only 5% of the adult population would need to stop cooperating to have real change.
Natural law is nothing more than the product of the rational attempt to stipulate mutually-binding rules of conduct regarding scarce recources. The term 'scarce' specifically means resources whose use by one individual precludes their use by another individual—resources over whose use there can arise conflict. Natural law is called 'natural' in that it is perceived through our intellect, in contrast to 'positive' law, which is nothing more than the dictates of authority.
Natural law is 'libertarian' in that the equal existential status of the participants as free-willed individual is implicit in the qualification that such rules of conduct be mutually binding.
Rights are neither granted by government, nor are they "anything that everyone would naturally have, as long as the government does not interfere." Rights are rationally derived. Libertarians of the minarchist bent argue that the one and only legitimate function of the government is to protect natural rights. Libertarians of the anarchist bent argue that since government is, in practice, a territorial monopoly on the institutionalized use of coercion, government is not, and never can be libertarian.
Well, a more coherent way of formulating it is to not forcefully interfere with the actions of autonomous individuals, i.e. other humans.
-Jon
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
How about, "I would define a "right" as something everyone has that can only be taken away through use of force."?
This might be helpful?
Spideynw: How about, "I would define a "right" as something everyone has that can only be taken away through use of force."?
You can deny someone their rights. You can't take them away. If someone murders you, they have taken away your life. They did not take away your right to life.
On the other hand, rights can be lost. Someone who has murdered or threatens to murder someone else has forefitted their right to life. (This is not to argue for capital punnishment on the part of the state. The state can't be trusted with that kind of authority. This is to argue that if you kill someone who is about to murder you or someone else, it is not murder.)
http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp
You might be interested in checking out Judith Thomson's book, Rights, Restitution & Risk, where she spends a few chapters discussing that sort of thing.
Hmm I'm not sure this sits well with me. I think rights apply all the time. Given that a right is applicable against aggressive force, and not defensive force, I think it's unnecessary to say the criminal lost anything.
Jon, that distinction would forbid coercive enforcement of any sort of justice after the fact. That is, I could try to stop you from attacking me, but if you attacked me, and refused to pay me restitution, my hands would be tied. Are you comfortable with that? Could you see why it wouldn't be uncontroversial?
Why would that be, given that it's a defensive use of force?
Only with an extremely controversial, value-laden, and perhaps question-begging definition of the word "defensive." More accurately, it's a justified use of aggressive force.
I don't see why - it is force used in response to initiatory aggression. Rights to not justify the initiation of aggression, hence only permit defensive uses of force.
Two concerns: First, most people don't think that the initiation of force justifies the use of just any force; it has to be force used in a very certain kind of way (for example, consistent with standards of procedural justice). Second, enforcement of justice is usually done by a third party, who has not had force initiated upon them.
I'm a bit confused here as to how this touches upon my statement that an aggressor's rights do not merely vanish from the picture because they aggressed. Given that rights permit one to use force in defence (whether it must be consonant with certain procedures or not is a separate matter; as for third parties, they're delegated jurisdiction anyway), and not against someone acting in reaction to a rights violation, I don't see what sense it makes to say they vanish out of the picture, in the aggresor's case.
I would say " the ability to do action of one's will, with no interference from arbitrary forces"
Democracy is nothing more than replacing bullets with ballots
If Pro is the opposite of Con. What is the opposite of Progress?
Jon, above you'll find a link to a brief explanation of my own view. If you still don't understand my objection, let me know.
Andrew, that definition makes it very difficult to understand rights I have against other people doing certain things to me. For example, if someone punches me in the face, what action am I being impeded from taking?
Jon Irenicus:my statement that an aggressor's rights do not merely vanish from the picture because they aggressed.
One school of thought is that the aggressor hasn't forfeited anything, has lost anything, etc. But by aggressing against another, the aggressor has denied the existence of rights, and therefore can't claim a "right" to not be harmed by you in defense.
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David Z
"The issue is always the same, the government or the market. There is no third solution."
I don't see why that would need to be true. People commit acts which infringe upon rights all the time without intending to do any harm at all. And further, even if they did understand exactly what they were doing, it's unclear that they would need to be ignoring rights in general; just the particular right against what they were doing. Further, they might think they had a reason that would justify their action, where they would not have done what they did if they didn't have that reason. Accordingly, they would only be denying that the right was so stringent that their reason did not justify their action. But now you're in murkier waters.
Further sharpening our conception of rights, we might therefore say that to have a right to something means to be entitled against deprivation of it by other moral agents, except when the right-holder has somehow “aggressed” against someone else. But once again, counterexamples present themselves.
I don't see the need for the "except" here. A right is a prohibition against aggressive, not defensive, force. One does not have a right against all force, only against the aggressive initiation of force by another. So why should the aggressor's rights disappear, given that the victim is engaging in the use of defensive force, whether this involves bringing them to a trial or direct self-defence?
Well but hold on...what counts as "defensive" force? Is it simply the force necessary to stop your attacks from harming me, if I can manage it? Is it the force necessary to stop you from trying to harm me, or to remove the danger of continued attack? Can I shoot you dead if you're trying to pinch me? And what about property rights? Are you justified in using physical force to defend your property against attack? On what grounds? And what if someone else is being attacked? Can you use force against the attacker? Is there any single objective answer to these questions?
What if I take your property and put it in my house? Can you use force against me or my property in order to get it back? If so, can you use only that force which is strictly necessary, or do you have a blank check on how much damage you can do? What if I take something that's yours and swallow it? Can you cut me open?
If I harm you or your property, and refuse to compensate you for it, what then? Can you take my money or property as you see fit? Can you take it if someone else declares that it's okay? Can someone else take it for you? How much, if any, force would you or your agents be justified in using to extract payment from me? If you could take my stuff, how would that be an act of self-defense?
(Obviously, don't respond to each of those questions if you don't think it's necessary.) I just don't think that the defense criterion is a sufficient account of why some kinds of force are justified in certain situations and not justified in others. We need to spell out what sorts of actions are acceptable responses to infringements of rights, and what actions are not acceptable. The fact of a rights infringment does not justify every use of force; at some point, force becomes excessive or arbitrary. Perhaps you can define "self-defense" in a way that captures all of these nuances, but you do actually need to do that in order for your theory to be plausible.
The other point I'd make is that I don't think self-defense is the only thing that justifies the use of force, as I argued in the article I linked. So you'd have to show why I'm wrong about that.
Except I never said any and all force is justifiable in self-defence. I have already specified proportionality as a component of it. As for emergency situations, where you argue rights violations might be permissible, note that the victim may still demand compensation - why is that? What sort of force may they employ here, again? Defensive force. So when speaking of rights one is always speaking of defensive uses of force, not aggressive, unless you wish to postulate some sort of system under which one may initiate the use of force and have their victims expect no compensation for it.
In advancing such an argument about emergency situations, I think you'd need to resort to some kind of strict liability standard, rather than the duty of care standard used in common law today. And if you use a strict liability standard, you can no longer use the rationale of the duty of care standard, by which any action requiring compensation is deemed objectionable. That is, if the person is acting justly, the duty of care standard would find them not liable for the damage caused. That the way the rules work now. The standard that would allow for the victim to demand compensation would be a strict liability standard. But in a strict liability system, compensation no longer correlates with injustice or wrongdoing.