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Yes, at least in the US I have both of those rights, but neither is a "fundamental consequences of human nature". I have the right to not be enslaved because t

Yes, at least in the US I have both of those rights, but neither is a "fundamental consequences of human nature". I have the right to not be enslaved because the government and broadly society deems that valid. But that's a consequence of government force preventing people from enslaving others. Without government intervention, slavery emerges. It even still happens today, in the US in particular cases (prison, as one legal example). I don't see how something can be considered a fundamental consequence of our nature if, when left without supervision, it disappears. I don't think that you can provide a clear list of such "natural" rights. If "liberty" is one, why isn't "health"? Improving my health improves my liberty, but (in the US) we don't culturally consider healthcare a "right", although it is considered such in some other countries.

WalterBright 5y ago
> Without government intervention, slavery emerges A closer examination of history shows that slavery tends to fail when in competition with free labor. The emergence of free labor destroyed slavery the world over. The Civil War was the last gasp of slavery in the US attempting to protect itself from free labor. Slavery had already died out in the northern colonies due to it being uneconomic. Free labor caused the collapse of the USSR. Free labor destroyed Nazi Europe. > we don't culturally consider healthcare a "right" Sure we do. >50% of health care in the US is provided by the government, and the rest is heavily controlled by the government. Emergency rooms are required to treat people who cannot pay for free. The government has so thoroughly regulated, overseen, subsidized, distorted, etc., every aspect of health care, that in no way can it be described as free market. Let's try something that is free market - the software business. Software in the US is completely unregulated. What's the result? Incredible progress, world leadership, and plenty of very high quality FREE software. It's amazing, unpredicted, and unbelievable. But it's true.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  > A closer examination of history shows that slavery tends to fail when in competition with free labor. The emergence of free labor destroyed slavery the world over. The Civil War was the last gasp of slavery in the US attempting to protect itself from free labor. Slavery had already died out in the northern colonies due to it being uneconomic. I don't mean as an economic system. Chattel slavery is one particular example of macro-scale slavery, but macro-scale slavery isn't what I was referring to. Put another way, our markets are not perfectly efficient, and there exists enough slack to allow niches where inefficient cruelty can exist. Even though slavery was inefficient and had died out in the north, the South did all it could to keep it around. It still took a laws and war to get rid of it. If the government stopped enforcing all laws today, how long would it take for some people to be kidnapped and enslaved? A week? > The government has so thoroughly regulated, overseen, subsidized, distorted, etc., every aspect of health care, that in no way can it be described as free market. Something being not a free market doesn't make it a right, nor does the government providing it as a service to some people. You might be able to get away with the argument that emergency medical care is considered a right in the US, but emergency medical care is only a small part of healthcare.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    Take a look at what goes on in the healthcare system. It's all the result of unintended side effects of well-intentioned regulation. For another example, the AMA deliberately restricts the number of seats in medical universities. They are empowered to by law. This keeps the number of doctors down, and increases their pay.
    - joshuamorton 5y ago
      This has nothing to do with whether or not something is a "right". I'll remind you, the initial statement you made was "Rights are a fundamental consequence of human nature.", but you're now saying somewhat ahistorical things about slave labor and market economies. Even if what you were saying was accurate, is has nothing to do with how we define rights.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        You can (and people do) invent and define rights all the time. People have also tried to legislate that pi=3. Almost daily, legislatures try to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand. That doesn't make them rights, and it never works.
        joshuamorton 5y ago
        "The law of supply and demand" isn't a right. > You can (and people do) invent and define rights all the time.[...] That doesn't make them rights Huh?
        WalterBright 5y ago
        "The law of supply and demand" isn't a right. I didn't say it was. Neither did I say that pi=3 is a right. Please read what I wrote again.
        joshuamorton 5y ago
- ClumsyPilot 5y ago
  "A closer examination of history shows that slavery tends to fail when in competition with free labor" "Free labor destroyed Nazi Europe." I cannot even comprehend what this means - how were slaves a major part of Nazi war effort or economy? In your mind, did they loose a trade war and the 100+ million dead soldiers were a side show?
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    > how were slaves a major part of Nazi war effort or economy? The Nazis employed slave labor on a massive scale. Their slaves were Jewish prisoners, political prisoners, and POWs. The US free labor produced plenty of war material for two major wars, and enough left over to supply Britain and the Soviet Union. US troops were well fed, with plenty of gas, bullets, airplanes, ships, aircraft carriers, medical supplies, trucks, everything, and also managed to ship it all to the war zones. The Nazis and the Japanese never had a chance once the US got going. They had critical shortages of everything. For example, what did the Nazis do when the battleship Bismarck was sunk? Game over for the Kriegsmarine except for the U-boots. What did the US do when the Japanese wrecked the US aircraft carriers? Built lots more! What did the Japanese do when their carriers were sunk? Game over for naval aviation. Also, the Wehrmacht in WW2 was still very much a horse driven army. The German propaganda newsreels, shown endlessly in WW2 documentaries, avoided showing the horses and loved showing the mechanized troops. I don't think the US used any horses at all. Free labor also sunk the Confederacy. The Confederacy was never able to properly supply their troops with guns, cannons, powder, food, uniforms, or even shoes. They were largely barefoot.
    - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
      Help me understand your train of thought, so if there Nazis had 'free labor' they would never have shortages of oil and natural rubber? Would it just magically appear? And without the shortages they would have won the war, right? That must be the point you are making, because if they would have lost anyway then your argument makes no sense? And what about USSR, their 'free but not free' labor caused them to win and loose simultaneously?
- krapp 5y ago
  >Software in the US is completely unregulated. Banks, the healthcare industry, the aviation industry and NASA would like a word with you, as well as US import and export control regulators. Not all software in the US is the vomiting of code cowboys into NPM and Github, by a long shot. >Incredible progress, world leadership, and plenty of very high quality FREE software. Sorry, what potentially world-crippling bug are we on this week, I've lost count. Or was it a million dollar company that got hacked and exposed PII because their database layer was written by an intern using open source code written by a high-schooler who thinks writing SQL statements with printf is elegant? No... the unregulated wild west of software is turning out to be a nightmare. The regulated part, at least, holds bad actors accountable and doesn't depend on "all eyes making bugs shallow" and just hope quality emerges from the aether.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    If I sell medical software, yes, it would have to pass the FDA. Same for software going into aviation systems (the FAA). Same for NASA. > Not all Not a single byte of software on any of my computers now or since the 1970s have been regulated at all. > the unregulated wild west of software is turning out to be a nightmare How much have you paid for the software you're using right now? How much have you paid to use HackerNews? You're free to go use software written in the 80s, 90s, 00s, etc., if you like. I bet you aren't. Software these days is far less buggy than it used to be. It may appear more buggy to you, but that is the result of a large increase in the number and efforts of sophisticated (and well-funded) engineers attempting to subvert it.
    - edmundsauto 5y ago
      You didn't use strong encryption that was not allowed to be shared outside the US? I remember early versions of software (PGP, I think?) in the 90s had some warnings to this effect.
- cortesoft 5y ago
  Your arguments really sound like “just-so stories” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story) You are picking examples that fit your idea of what natural rights should be, and are ignoring the countless counter examples. If a free society is fundamentally better, why is China so successful? Countless empires have been built on 5e backs of slaves, conquered people, and oppression. Yes, most eventually collapsed, but so have all democracies except the ones that are currently around… and there is no reason to believe the ones around are the “end state” of the evolution and not just a snapshot of civilizations that will eventually collapse like all those that came before. Democracies have fallen, to be replaced by dictatorships… dictatorships still exist, and many are successful members of the international community… Saudi Arabia is a strong ally of the US, and doesn’t seem close to collapse.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    The rise in the standard of living in China is directly correlated with their adoption of a free market and dispensing with collectivism. > Saudi Arabia is a strong ally of the US, and doesn’t seem close to collapse. Why not tour Saudi Arabia and come back with a report about how people there live?
    - cortesoft 5y ago
      I wasn't making any claim about the lives of people in Saudi Arabia... my only claim is that it is an absolute monarchy, it is still around and not close to collapse, and is an ally of the US. All of those things are objectively true. It isn't only democratic countries that have survived.
      - WalterBright 5y ago
        I didn't make an argument about longevity.
CRConrad 5y ago
> I have the right to not be enslaved because the government and broadly society deems that valid. But that's a consequence of government force preventing people from enslaving others. Without government intervention, slavery emerges. That's one way of looking at it. Another is that you do have the right not to be enslaved, just by dint of being a human being, but that sometimes, someplace, because there are no laws or government to enforce your right, you might be enslaved anyway. In this second perspective, you have the right not to be enslaved even if you happen to actually be a slave; it's just that your right is being violated. That is, I think, what is meant by a "natural" -- or, if you are American, in a perhaps more familiar term, "inalienable" -- human right. You always have it; it cannot be taken away (or "alienated") from you. Yeah, I'm also a bit confused as to why the "Founding Fathers" left out healthcare. But maybe they didn't -- I mean, can you really be "happy" if you're ill...? So maybe they meant for it to be included under "the pursuit of happiness". (Hey, in their day medicine was less advanced -- you couldn't be as almost-certain of a beneficial result from medical care as we can today, so that, too, was more of just a "pursuit".)
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  I fully accept the idea that rights may be natural, and slavery violates an inherent natural right. But then how do we decide which rights those are? GGP suggested we do so by analyzing society, but that fails when rights are being violated, so...
  - CRConrad 5y ago
    A: By navel-gazing. I jest, but not completely: It'll probably have to be by philosophical introspection. You'll have to look at society -- societies, all over the world and throughout history -- and decide for yourself which of their traits are expressions and which violations of human rights. Figuring out from that which of those rights are "natural" and which not is... Not easy, so I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.

WalterBright 5y ago

> Without government intervention, slavery emerges A closer examination of history shows that slavery tends to fail when in competition with free labor. The emergence of free labor destroyed slavery the world over. The Civil War was the last gasp of slavery in the US attempting to protect itself from free labor. Slavery had already died out in the northern colonies due to it being uneconomic. Free labor caused the collapse of the USSR. Free labor destroyed Nazi Europe. > we don't culturally consider healthcare a "right" Sure we do. >50% of health care in the US is provided by the government, and the rest is heavily controlled by the government. Emergency rooms are required to treat people who cannot pay for free. The government has so thoroughly regulated, overseen, subsidized, distorted, etc., every aspect of health care, that in no way can it be described as free market. Let's try something that is free market - the software business. Software in the US is completely unregulated. What's the result? Incredible progress, world leadership, and plenty of very high quality FREE software. It's amazing, unpredicted, and unbelievable. But it's true.

joshuamorton 5y ago
> A closer examination of history shows that slavery tends to fail when in competition with free labor. The emergence of free labor destroyed slavery the world over. The Civil War was the last gasp of slavery in the US attempting to protect itself from free labor. Slavery had already died out in the northern colonies due to it being uneconomic. I don't mean as an economic system. Chattel slavery is one particular example of macro-scale slavery, but macro-scale slavery isn't what I was referring to. Put another way, our markets are not perfectly efficient, and there exists enough slack to allow niches where inefficient cruelty can exist. Even though slavery was inefficient and had died out in the north, the South did all it could to keep it around. It still took a laws and war to get rid of it. If the government stopped enforcing all laws today, how long would it take for some people to be kidnapped and enslaved? A week? > The government has so thoroughly regulated, overseen, subsidized, distorted, etc., every aspect of health care, that in no way can it be described as free market. Something being not a free market doesn't make it a right, nor does the government providing it as a service to some people. You might be able to get away with the argument that emergency medical care is considered a right in the US, but emergency medical care is only a small part of healthcare.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Take a look at what goes on in the healthcare system. It's all the result of unintended side effects of well-intentioned regulation. For another example, the AMA deliberately restricts the number of seats in medical universities. They are empowered to by law. This keeps the number of doctors down, and increases their pay.
  - joshuamorton 5y ago
    This has nothing to do with whether or not something is a "right". I'll remind you, the initial statement you made was "Rights are a fundamental consequence of human nature.", but you're now saying somewhat ahistorical things about slave labor and market economies. Even if what you were saying was accurate, is has nothing to do with how we define rights.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      You can (and people do) invent and define rights all the time. People have also tried to legislate that pi=3. Almost daily, legislatures try to repeal the Law of Supply and Demand. That doesn't make them rights, and it never works.
      - joshuamorton 5y ago
        "The law of supply and demand" isn't a right. > You can (and people do) invent and define rights all the time.[...] That doesn't make them rights Huh?
        WalterBright 5y ago
        "The law of supply and demand" isn't a right. I didn't say it was. Neither did I say that pi=3 is a right. Please read what I wrote again.
        joshuamorton 5y ago
ClumsyPilot 5y ago
"A closer examination of history shows that slavery tends to fail when in competition with free labor" "Free labor destroyed Nazi Europe." I cannot even comprehend what this means - how were slaves a major part of Nazi war effort or economy? In your mind, did they loose a trade war and the 100+ million dead soldiers were a side show?
- WalterBright 5y ago
  > how were slaves a major part of Nazi war effort or economy? The Nazis employed slave labor on a massive scale. Their slaves were Jewish prisoners, political prisoners, and POWs. The US free labor produced plenty of war material for two major wars, and enough left over to supply Britain and the Soviet Union. US troops were well fed, with plenty of gas, bullets, airplanes, ships, aircraft carriers, medical supplies, trucks, everything, and also managed to ship it all to the war zones. The Nazis and the Japanese never had a chance once the US got going. They had critical shortages of everything. For example, what did the Nazis do when the battleship Bismarck was sunk? Game over for the Kriegsmarine except for the U-boots. What did the US do when the Japanese wrecked the US aircraft carriers? Built lots more! What did the Japanese do when their carriers were sunk? Game over for naval aviation. Also, the Wehrmacht in WW2 was still very much a horse driven army. The German propaganda newsreels, shown endlessly in WW2 documentaries, avoided showing the horses and loved showing the mechanized troops. I don't think the US used any horses at all. Free labor also sunk the Confederacy. The Confederacy was never able to properly supply their troops with guns, cannons, powder, food, uniforms, or even shoes. They were largely barefoot.
  - ClumsyPilot 5y ago
    Help me understand your train of thought, so if there Nazis had 'free labor' they would never have shortages of oil and natural rubber? Would it just magically appear? And without the shortages they would have won the war, right? That must be the point you are making, because if they would have lost anyway then your argument makes no sense? And what about USSR, their 'free but not free' labor caused them to win and loose simultaneously?
krapp 5y ago
>Software in the US is completely unregulated. Banks, the healthcare industry, the aviation industry and NASA would like a word with you, as well as US import and export control regulators. Not all software in the US is the vomiting of code cowboys into NPM and Github, by a long shot. >Incredible progress, world leadership, and plenty of very high quality FREE software. Sorry, what potentially world-crippling bug are we on this week, I've lost count. Or was it a million dollar company that got hacked and exposed PII because their database layer was written by an intern using open source code written by a high-schooler who thinks writing SQL statements with printf is elegant? No... the unregulated wild west of software is turning out to be a nightmare. The regulated part, at least, holds bad actors accountable and doesn't depend on "all eyes making bugs shallow" and just hope quality emerges from the aether.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  If I sell medical software, yes, it would have to pass the FDA. Same for software going into aviation systems (the FAA). Same for NASA. > Not all Not a single byte of software on any of my computers now or since the 1970s have been regulated at all. > the unregulated wild west of software is turning out to be a nightmare How much have you paid for the software you're using right now? How much have you paid to use HackerNews? You're free to go use software written in the 80s, 90s, 00s, etc., if you like. I bet you aren't. Software these days is far less buggy than it used to be. It may appear more buggy to you, but that is the result of a large increase in the number and efforts of sophisticated (and well-funded) engineers attempting to subvert it.
  - edmundsauto 5y ago
    You didn't use strong encryption that was not allowed to be shared outside the US? I remember early versions of software (PGP, I think?) in the 90s had some warnings to this effect.
cortesoft 5y ago
Your arguments really sound like “just-so stories” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_story) You are picking examples that fit your idea of what natural rights should be, and are ignoring the countless counter examples. If a free society is fundamentally better, why is China so successful? Countless empires have been built on 5e backs of slaves, conquered people, and oppression. Yes, most eventually collapsed, but so have all democracies except the ones that are currently around… and there is no reason to believe the ones around are the “end state” of the evolution and not just a snapshot of civilizations that will eventually collapse like all those that came before. Democracies have fallen, to be replaced by dictatorships… dictatorships still exist, and many are successful members of the international community… Saudi Arabia is a strong ally of the US, and doesn’t seem close to collapse.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  The rise in the standard of living in China is directly correlated with their adoption of a free market and dispensing with collectivism. > Saudi Arabia is a strong ally of the US, and doesn’t seem close to collapse. Why not tour Saudi Arabia and come back with a report about how people there live?
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    I wasn't making any claim about the lives of people in Saudi Arabia... my only claim is that it is an absolute monarchy, it is still around and not close to collapse, and is an ally of the US. All of those things are objectively true. It isn't only democratic countries that have survived.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      I didn't make an argument about longevity.

CRConrad 5y ago

> I have the right to not be enslaved because the government and broadly society deems that valid. But that's a consequence of government force preventing people from enslaving others. Without government intervention, slavery emerges. That's one way of looking at it. Another is that you do have the right not to be enslaved, just by dint of being a human being, but that sometimes, someplace, because there are no laws or government to enforce your right, you might be enslaved anyway. In this second perspective, you have the right not to be enslaved even if you happen to actually be a slave; it's just that your right is being violated. That is, I think, what is meant by a "natural" -- or, if you are American, in a perhaps more familiar term, "inalienable" -- human right. You always have it; it cannot be taken away (or "alienated") from you. Yeah, I'm also a bit confused as to why the "Founding Fathers" left out healthcare. But maybe they didn't -- I mean, can you really be "happy" if you're ill...? So maybe they meant for it to be included under "the pursuit of happiness". (Hey, in their day medicine was less advanced -- you couldn't be as almost-certain of a beneficial result from medical care as we can today, so that, too, was more of just a "pursuit".)

joshuamorton 5y ago
I fully accept the idea that rights may be natural, and slavery violates an inherent natural right. But then how do we decide which rights those are? GGP suggested we do so by analyzing society, but that fails when rights are being violated, so...
- CRConrad 5y ago
  A: By navel-gazing. I jest, but not completely: It'll probably have to be by philosophical introspection. You'll have to look at society -- societies, all over the world and throughout history -- and decide for yourself which of their traits are expressions and which violations of human rights. Figuring out from that which of those rights are "natural" and which not is... Not easy, so I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader.