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>>that infringes on someone else's negative right (to take their property without the state interfering) That is not a negative right, it is not a right at al

by syshum 6y ago

>>that infringes on someone else's negative right (to take their property without the state interfering) That is not a negative right, it is not a right at all. The entire concept of rights, as understood by common law, is based on Natural Rights under a Lockean philosophy of Self Ownership, that you own yourself. Under no conceptional understanding of natural rights would have have the right to take someone else's property. So if we are going to start from a completely foreign concept of negative rights then we have no basis for a conversation at all https://www.learnliberty.org/videos/positive-rights-vs-negative-rights/ https://www.learnliberty.org/videos/positive-rights-vs-negat...

nicoburns 6y ago
Rights are a much broader concept than "natural rights". See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/ I certainly recognise property rights (although in principle there's no reason why one couldn't believe in rights without that being one of them), but I also recognise a lot of other rights (including "positive" rights). And don't recognise negative rights as being more fundamental than positive rights. The positive/negative distinction
- syshum 6y ago
  It is not a matter of them being more "fundamental" There is no way for a government to provide you with healthcare (positive rights) with out infringment of my negative rights to my labor (i.e they must take a part of my labor via theft what you call taxation in order to provide you with the right to a service). The only other way for a government to provide a service would be indentured servitude where they require a person to provide the service under threat of violence / imprisonment That is why I reject the concept of positive rights, because they require that other people have their labor, property, or self ceased by the government to fulfill those rights that is fundamentally unethical to me negative rights do not have this ethical problem
  - nicoburns 6y ago
    There's no way for government to protect your property rights without infringement on my negative rights to my liberty either. This is particularly obvious in the case of private ownership of land. Without private property rights I would be free to walk across and otherwise make use of that land it is your property rights which take that freedom away from me. And this isn't a theoretical issue either: prior to the enclosure of land in the 15th-19th centuries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure), most land here in the UK was common land that anybody had a right to make use of to graze animals and make a living. The expansion of private property directly took away that right and deprived many of their livelihoods. Even today we still have the Right To Roam (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#United_Kingdom) and at least walk on private land which provides for significantly more freedom than is available in the US (there is close to zero danger of being shot just for walking somewhere in the UK). For other property it's less obvious, but enforcing your property rights still requires encroaching on my liberty. For example, without property rights, I would be free to walk into a shop and take whatever I wanted to. Or rock up to your unlocked car and drive off with it. The only way that this is prevented is through active enforcement by the state. Ultimately, if I persist in doing these things then I will be physically imprisoned. And it takes significant resources to run the policing and justice systems, just like healthcare. Now obviously nobody thinks I should just be able to walk up and take your care. But other forms of private property are controversial. In particular the idea that you ought to be able to keep all of that wealth that people give you (without taxation). You are only able to hold onto that wealth in the first place because the state enforces your right to keep it. There is nothing a priori that says that the state (which ultimately represents its citizens) must always enforce that right. To summarise, many "negative rights", including the right to private property, have exactly the same ethical problems as "positive rights". At which point it becomes a simple matter of what you consider moral and important. You're right that state-provided healthcare deprives you of wealth that you could otherwise have. But the reverse is also true. You having the wealth deprives others of healthcare that they could otherwise have. You just happen to think that property rights are more "natural" and important.
    - 6y ago

by syshum 6y ago

nicoburns 6y ago

Rights are a much broader concept than "natural rights". See: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/ I certainly recognise property rights (although in principle there's no reason why one couldn't believe in rights without that being one of them), but I also recognise a lot of other rights (including "positive" rights). And don't recognise negative rights as being more fundamental than positive rights. The positive/negative distinction

syshum 6y ago
It is not a matter of them being more "fundamental" There is no way for a government to provide you with healthcare (positive rights) with out infringment of my negative rights to my labor (i.e they must take a part of my labor via theft what you call taxation in order to provide you with the right to a service). The only other way for a government to provide a service would be indentured servitude where they require a person to provide the service under threat of violence / imprisonment That is why I reject the concept of positive rights, because they require that other people have their labor, property, or self ceased by the government to fulfill those rights that is fundamentally unethical to me negative rights do not have this ethical problem
- nicoburns 6y ago
  There's no way for government to protect your property rights without infringement on my negative rights to my liberty either. This is particularly obvious in the case of private ownership of land. Without private property rights I would be free to walk across and otherwise make use of that land it is your property rights which take that freedom away from me. And this isn't a theoretical issue either: prior to the enclosure of land in the 15th-19th centuries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure), most land here in the UK was common land that anybody had a right to make use of to graze animals and make a living. The expansion of private property directly took away that right and deprived many of their livelihoods. Even today we still have the Right To Roam (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam#United_Kingdom) and at least walk on private land which provides for significantly more freedom than is available in the US (there is close to zero danger of being shot just for walking somewhere in the UK). For other property it's less obvious, but enforcing your property rights still requires encroaching on my liberty. For example, without property rights, I would be free to walk into a shop and take whatever I wanted to. Or rock up to your unlocked car and drive off with it. The only way that this is prevented is through active enforcement by the state. Ultimately, if I persist in doing these things then I will be physically imprisoned. And it takes significant resources to run the policing and justice systems, just like healthcare. Now obviously nobody thinks I should just be able to walk up and take your care. But other forms of private property are controversial. In particular the idea that you ought to be able to keep all of that wealth that people give you (without taxation). You are only able to hold onto that wealth in the first place because the state enforces your right to keep it. There is nothing a priori that says that the state (which ultimately represents its citizens) must always enforce that right. To summarise, many "negative rights", including the right to private property, have exactly the same ethical problems as "positive rights". At which point it becomes a simple matter of what you consider moral and important. You're right that state-provided healthcare deprives you of wealth that you could otherwise have. But the reverse is also true. You having the wealth deprives others of healthcare that they could otherwise have. You just happen to think that property rights are more "natural" and important.
  - 6y ago