Political Theory

Re: What is a right?

Spideynw — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 22:43:46 GMT

Clayton:

Yes! That is all a right is, a claim. In other words, rights do not exist. They are just ideas.

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 -

They are just ideas. But if they are not smart enough to understand that, so what? It does not change the fact that rights do not exist, except in people's heads.

Try telling most people that the government has no legitimate authority.

Re: What is a right?

onebornfree — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 16:23:38 GMT

In choosing your own actions, you are far better off carefully considering the consequences to yourself, rather than acting in accordance with your "rights."

As Max Stirner said, "Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for "one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right."

Regards, onebornfree

Re: What is a right?

z1235 — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 13:33:46 GMT

Clayton:
I think this is the standard view of force but I actually think it is mistaken....

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.

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.

Re: What is a right?

Clayton — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 09:25:35 GMT

I can promise you, in the very literal sense, ethics is nonsense

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 -

Re: What is a right?

Solid_Choke — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:02:11 GMT

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.

It seems to me that your are confusing rights with conventions or legislation. They are related, but not the same. See my above post.

Re: What is a right?

Vichy Army — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:52:29 GMT

I can promise you, in the very literal sense, ethics is nonsense

Ditto.

Re: What is a right?

Beefheart — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:50:39 GMT

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.

Re: What is a right?

William — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:50:10 GMT

I can promise you, in the very literal sense, ethics is nonsense

Re: What is a right?

Clayton — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:46:24 GMT

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.

You seem to think that morality is nonsense. It is obviously false that morality is nonsense. Am I misunderstanding you?

Clayton -

Re: What is a right?

Solid_Choke — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:08:04 GMT

I think a lot of the issues on this forum boil down to not agreeing as to what a "right" is. So, what is a "right"? -Spideynw

...rights are part of a relation between two persons and an act which one person, the obligor, must perform if so required by the other person, the rightholder. A right without the matching obligation would be only one half of the relation and could not be exercised; and a "right" that cannot be exercised is no more a right than an empty water glass is a glass of water. -Anthony de Jasay

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.

Contrary to empty claims, genuine rights can (at least in principle) be supported by evidence. Hugh may say that he has a right to some of John's money because John owes it to him, and that he has a right to inhabit Jane's house because she has rented it to him. John is obliged to pay his debt, and Jane is obliged to make kier house available to Hugh, and these obligations can be verified by John's acknowledgment of the debt and the rental contract agreed to by Jane. The right does not exist without the matching obligation, and vice versa. Each part of this two-part interaction is a necessary condition for the other part. Likewise, Hugh may say that he has a right to a free or subsidized place at a university, and this right exists if the taxpayer is under an obligation to build and maintain institutions of higher learning ample enough for Hugh to find a place. There is, in principle, evidence of this obligation in the budgetary and other legislation in force.
Note that the interaction between rightholder and obligoris not symmetrical. Generally, it is in the interest of the rightholder to affirm that he has the right, and not in the interest of the obligor to admit that he has the obligation. In addition, the existence of the obligation is usually verifiable but not falsifiable, hence the burden of proof is on the rightholder, i.e. there is a presumption against the obligation's existence, which must be overcome by evidence. -Anthony de Jasay

Nonsense on stilts. -Neoclassical

Rights are perfectly sensible things. Utilitarianism (which Bentham did believe in), and the interperonal utility calculus that it requires, is truly nonsense upon stilts.

A "right" is the preclusion of the need to gain consent from others before one can embark on a given course of action without losing their moral credibility. -James

You are confusing rights with liberties.

...liberties are relations between one person and an act, rights are part of a relation between two persons and an act which one person, the obligor, must perform if so required by the other person, the rightholder. -Anthony de Jasay

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.

Re: What is a right?

Vichy Army — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:55:54 GMT

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.

Re: What is a right?

Clayton — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:23:31 GMT

Right is the opposite of wrong. It is acceptable to something.

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.

Re: What is a right?

Caley McKibbin — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 06:16:19 GMT

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.

Re: What is a right?

AJ — Fri, 27 Aug 2010 05:33:03 GMT

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.

Re: What is a right?

Graham Wright — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 22:45:31 GMT

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.

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?