Natural rights and libertarianism

i was smartass the other day :(

what rights make sense to you watermark? do you believe only in natural rights? enumerated rights?

or was your goal solely to determine why we have property rights?
 
Wickedjews said:
The general libertarian argument against the government goes somewhat like this:

1. Property is a natural right.
2. Taxes compulsory take property.
3. Therefore, taxes are against natural rights.

For practical purposes, of course, most libertarians accept taxation as a necessary evil to allow the government to protect other natural rights because there doesn't seem to be any alternative. The government can take money from the public to provide everyone with free police to protect their property and their lives. However, it is immoral take property to provide you with things that do not protect natural rights. Since things like healthcare and education are not natural rights, it is immoral of the government to take from others to provide people with these things.

But what are natural rights? Where do they come from? It isn't mentioned in any religious texts. I suppose someone will come on here and say that they can be derived from logic, but how? Why is it wrong for me to steal and kill you? And why can't I logically derive a right to healthcare and education?

So, why do we hold property as having any value at all? It is not because of some lofty rights granted by on high. It's because in our evolutionary past the concept of property provided our ancestors with some evolutionary advantage, and so it naturally became built into our conscious to defend our property and to help others defend theirs. I know people don't like it when I put it in that terms.

For some reason, it just seems more intuitively satisfying to think that our morality is some universal law rather than a compilation of evolutionary algorithms. However, I think such nihilistic thinking is in error. Why would our morality be any more valid if it were decreed on high? I can't think of any logical reason. Maybe immutable rights are a good concept that increase human happiness, but it doesn't seem to be natural.

So, what if sometimes defending property at all costs were not what is best for society or the species? Should we just sit here and defend it at all costs and ignore all other parts of our morality because we've dug ourselves into a logical hole? Why is your reflex to defend your property any more valid than simple human compassion for those that are dying without medical care and need it?
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The presumption in the original post is false in the following ways...

1. Individual rights are not necessarily the same thing as "natural rights"... in fact I put "libertarian philosophy" into google and came up with zero links that even say "natural rights"...

2. Minimal government intervention to protect individual rights is not the same thing as zero government, and libertarians recognize that even limited government takes some form of funding.

3. Different forms of libertarian believe in different "property rights" entirely. They disagree quite a bit with the pretensive and presumptive OP quite a bit as well. You may be interested in looking up "left-libertarian" and "right-libertarian" and learning about different libertarian philosophies before you make such assumptions.

According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (link here: http://www.iep.utm.edu/)

Libertarianism has this to say about moral values:

Libertarians are committed to the belief that individuals, and not states or groups of any other kind, are both ontologically and normatively primary; that individuals have rights against certain kinds of forcible interference on the part of others; that liberty, understood as non-interference, is the only thing that can be legitimately demanded of others as a matter of legal or political right; that robust property rights and the economic liberty that follows from their consistent recognition are of central importance in respecting individual liberty; that social order is not at odds with but develops out of individual liberty; that the only proper use of coercion is defensive or to rectify an error; that governments are bound by essentially the same moral principles as individuals; and that most existing and historical governments have acted improperly insofar as they have utilized coercion for plunder, aggression, redistribution, and other purposes beyond the protection of individual liberty.
 
USFREEDOM911 said:
Isn't it also NATURAL to defend what is yours; because in that case, you agree with the killing of those who try to take from others?
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That is also a natural right as long as one does not want to be part of a group. Why help anyone? Would you want to be "friends" or become involved with someone who didn't give a damn about you?

From the earliest of times societies/tribes were based on mutual protection. As for looking after each other food, the "kill", was shared among the members. Just going back to when the country started people got together to help each other.

Because of how society has changed, with people moving, the idea of knowing one's neighbor is not the same. The solution is now taxes. It's the indirect way of helping one's neighbor.

It's not taking from someone anymore than a person helping their neighbor a hundred years ago considered something was being taken from them. The opportunity to help one's neighbor, to contribute to one's community, is not the same today although the difference is still considered helping and contributing.
 
apple0154 said:
That is also a natural right as long as one does not want to be part of a group. Why help anyone? Would you want to be "friends" or become involved with someone who didn't give a damn about you?

From the earliest of times societies/tribes were based on mutual protection. As for looking after each other food, the "kill", was shared among the members. Just going back to when the country started people got together to help each other.

Because of how society has changed, with people moving, the idea of knowing one's neighbor is not the same. The solution is now taxes. It's the indirect way of helping one's neighbor.

It's not taking from someone anymore than a person helping their neighbor a hundred years ago considered something was being taken from them. The opportunity to help one's neighbor, to contribute to one's community, is not the same today although the difference is still considered helping and contributing.
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But that promotes the idea that everyone is friends with everyone else.
You didn't promote the idea that it's OK to kill a friend, if you have to feed your family; so doing so now, is asinine.

You said that if you needed food, that it was OK to take if from somone who had more; even if you had to kill them.

You're trying to wiggle out from under what you said and that shows, by the fact that you're now attempting to dissect the issue.

If you promote the idea that it's OK to steal and even kill somone, because they have what you "need"; then you're going to see a lot of people die and it won't be on the side that it appears that you think it will be.
 
USFREEDOM911 said:
But that promotes the idea that everyone is friends with everyone else.
You didn't promote the idea that it's OK to kill a friend, if you have to feed your family; so doing so now, is asinine.

You said that if you needed food, that it was OK to take if from somone who had more; even if you had to kill them.

You're trying to wiggle out from under what you said and that shows, by the fact that you're now attempting to dissect the issue.

If you promote the idea that it's OK to steal and even kill somone, because they have what you "need"; then you're going to see a lot of people die and it won't be on the side that it appears that you think it will be.
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I'm not dissecting the issue. I'm trying to clarify it for you.

Post 17 I wrote,
It is natural (nature's way) to take from others if it's a question of survival. It is also natural and OK , as well, to take from others in order to survive if the taking does not interfere in the other's survival.
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"interfere in the other's survival." That's the key phrase. If a person is starving I don't believe it's right to take from someone else if that would result in the other person starving. If the other person has enough but they would watch someone else starve then, yes, I do believe it is OK to take. Why not? The worse that can happen is the other person kills them but they would die anyway. What allegiance does one owe an individual who is capable of helping but would refuse and let the person die?

As for friends with everyone else I suppose it depends on ones definition of friends but, yes, that is what a country is all about. I'm sure there are people in uniform in Afghanistan who don't know anyone who died on 911. Why should they care what happened in NY City? Would they sacrifice their life if terrorists bombed a building in Russia?
 
apple0154 said:
I'm not dissecting the issue. I'm trying to clarify it for you.

Post 17 I wrote,

"interfere in the other's survival." That's the key phrase. If a person is starving I don't believe it's right to take from someone else if that would result in the other person starving. If the other person has enough but they would watch someone else starve then, yes, I do believe it is OK to take. Why not? The worse that can happen is the other person kills them but they would die anyway. What allegiance does one owe an individual who is capable of helping but would refuse and let the person die?

As for friends with everyone else I suppose it depends on ones definition of friends but, yes, that is what a country is all about. I'm sure there are people in uniform in Afghanistan who don't know anyone who died on 911. Why should they care what happened in NY City? Would they sacrifice their life if terrorists bombed a building in Russia?
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You're not clarifying anything; but you are trying to muddy the waters.

So if someone who is starving takes from someone else has enough, who gets to decide that the other person has enough.
The starving person, the person with the food, or someone else??
And once that decision is made, what's to stop the situation from turning into two people starving now?

The rest is just you trying to add more mud to the water, so you can hope to find a way to hide your spinning.
 
IF we went by "nature" and "nature" alone, what we understand as "natural rights" might be very different. For instance, in nature, it is perfectly natural in the mammal world, for the strongest alpha male of any group, to dominate and control the rest of the group. Those not wishing to conform to the dominant alpha male, are summarily killed by the alpha male. Survival of the fittest gets pretty brutal in nature, so what we have developed is not really "natural" at all, it is more "civilized" than the typical rules of nature dictate.

I would argue that what we currently understand as "natural rights" are a derivative of spirituality and religious belief. Whether you want to hear that or not, I believe that to be the case here. Civilization of modern man came about through spiritual enlightenment, and the most fundamental primaries for civilization, was the realization of what we call "natural rights."

Our DoI refers to these as being "endowed by our Creator." Note that "Creator" is capitalized, and there was a specific reason for this. The fundamentals of what our founders established, is rooted in the belief that our Creator made us all equal creatures, entitled to the same considerations of liberty and rights, to life and the pursuit of happiness.
 
I agree, which is why its getting more difficult to hold on to our natural rights, as we become a less religious country. Oh, well...
 
Threedee said:
I agree, which is why its getting more difficult to hold on to our natural rights, as we become a less religious country. Oh, well...
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what if religion wasn't natural?

i believe in god, however, how is it one discusses natural rights with an athiest? enumerated rights? ettc......

watermark, grind et al.....think god is a joke....so, i wonder where their sense of rights come from. themselves. their current culture. their music, their late night snacks. ??

they believe my belief is a joke. so they laugh at it, without ever having to actually rationally consider it. at least from what i've seen on this board.

hence the question(s) to watermark about rights....
 
Yurt said:
what if religion wasn't natural?

i believe in god, however, how is it one discusses natural rights with an athiest? enumerated rights? ettc......

watermark, grind et al.....think god is a joke....so, i wonder where their sense of rights come from. themselves. their current culture. their music, their late night snacks. ??

they believe my belief is a joke. so they laugh at it, without ever having to actually rationally consider it. at least from what i've seen on this board.

hence the question(s) to watermark about rights....
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Actually, religion isn't natural. By definition, spiritual belief is supernatural. Atheists will contend that mankind acquired moral codes through social contracts which provided mutual benefit. But this also contradicts nature, as there is no starting point without faith. Before the first social contract was ever considered, someone had to first have faith in man's "goodness" over natural inclinations.
 
Yurt said:
what if religion wasn't natural?

i believe in god, however, how is it one discusses natural rights with an athiest? enumerated rights? ettc......

watermark, grind et al.....think god is a joke....so, i wonder where their sense of rights come from. themselves. their current culture. their music, their late night snacks. ??

they believe my belief is a joke. so they laugh at it, without ever having to actually rationally consider it. at least from what i've seen on this board.

hence the question(s) to watermark about rights....
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The point that Locke, Hooker, and their American followers pointed out is that, yes, we believe in God, but this is something that every member of society can believe in and understand, with the caveat that it might not work if a people loses its faith. They believed that natural rights could be observed and understood by atheists, as well as people of every religious stripe.
 
Yurt said:
what if religion wasn't natural?

i believe in god, however, how is it one discusses natural rights with an athiest? enumerated rights? ettc......

watermark, grind et al.....think god is a joke....so, i wonder where their sense of rights come from. themselves. their current culture. their music, their late night snacks. ??

they believe my belief is a joke. so they laugh at it, without ever having to actually rationally consider it. at least from what i've seen on this board.

hence the question(s) to watermark about rights....
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I don't believe in any objective, universal morality. Nor do I believe in any inherent rights.

Humans are social creatures, we live in a society and many of the rules, laws and regulations that are in place serve to create an overall level of happiness that is mutually beneficial for our survival and ability to lead productive lives. Not being able to kill anybody you dont like or steal property is an overall good for society.
 
<(' . '<) said:
I don't believe in any objective, universal morality. Nor do I believe in any inherent rights.

Humans are social creatures, we live in a society and many of the rules, laws and regulations that are in place serve to create an overall level of happiness that is mutually beneficial for our survival and ability to lead productive lives. Not being able to kill anybody you dont like or steal property is an overall good for society.
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According to apple, it's OK to kill someone else if you're starving and someone else has more then you think they "need".
 
<(' . '<) said:
I don't believe in any objective, universal morality. Nor do I believe in any inherent rights.

Humans are social creatures, we live in a society and many of the rules, laws and regulations that are in place serve to create an overall level of happiness that is mutually beneficial for our survival and ability to lead productive lives. Not being able to kill anybody you dont like or steal property is an overall good for society.
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then you're ok with islamic laws....?
 
Yurt said:
then you're ok with islamic laws....?
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I don't choose it for myself, but if others do, who am I to take away their freedoms to practice their religion the way they choose to do. I know of several woman who have gone into it knowing full well what it entailed, and they weren't dumbies, they just had faith that it was their 'call'.
 
Dixie said:
Actually, religion isn't natural. By definition, spiritual belief is supernatural. Atheists will contend that mankind acquired moral codes through social contracts which provided mutual benefit. But this also contradicts nature, as there is no starting point without faith. Before the first social contract was ever considered, someone had to first have faith in man's "goodness" over natural inclinations.
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People have values and they come up with post-facto rationalizations for why they believe in those values. Religion was just one of the first post-facto rationalizations for morality. I do not kill for the same reason I do not starve myself to death. The fact that there are outliers doesn't disprove the point. Every person is different. People do starve themselves to death sometimes, and people do kill sometimes.
 
Yurt said:
then you're ok with islamic laws....?
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If you mean to ask do I feel islamic laws are immoral I would say no, because I do not believe in morality as a realistic matter.

If you are asking me do I agree with islamic laws, I would say no. As they oppress nearly 50% of their society by treating them as second class citizens. That doesn't seem like a fair deal collectively.
 
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