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I think you’re getting tripped up on language, which is a shame, since you’re missing out on some interesting ideas. The natural rights thing is more of a thou

I think you’re getting tripped up on language, which is a shame, since you’re missing out on some interesting ideas. The natural rights thing is more of a thought experiment: first, imagine there is no government. What do people have? What’s the “state of nature?” This was a pretty radical idea in Hobbes’s time. So it doesn’t make sense to believe a thought experiment isn’t real. Like, it’s a thought experiment. Discussing which rights exist within the framework is the thought experiment. Then social contract theory is like okay, why should anybody give this up? What do they gain? Large groups of people don’t just do stuff for no reason (supposedly). Democracy means power comes from the common people, not necessarily voting. E.g. Athenian democracy selected officials at random.

colinmhayes 4y ago
> imagine there is no government. What do people have? What’s the “state of nature?” People have whatever they can take for themselves, a.k.a. nothing. The base state is that people have no rights at all. Rights are nothing but an agreement among society that if everyone follows these rules things will be better. That agreement can change at any time.
- notch656a 4y ago
  It's an interesting difference of opinion. There are those who believe natural rights are naturally conferred to the individual, and others that believe rights are conferred by society. These two personality types often clash harshly, because one sees society as having no right to interfere with his rights and the social rights person sees the dissenting individual as having no right to abstain from the "social contract" that they at best agreed to merely by being born and remaining in the boundary of many members of that society. In the earlier days, the US was far more individualistic, at least in the Western territories. There was some hope for the more individualistic rights leaning individual. Now I'm not sure what our last bastion of hope is from persons who don't recognize us as having any rights without dear government.

colinmhayes 4y ago

> imagine there is no government. What do people have? What’s the “state of nature?” People have whatever they can take for themselves, a.k.a. nothing. The base state is that people have no rights at all. Rights are nothing but an agreement among society that if everyone follows these rules things will be better. That agreement can change at any time.

notch656a 4y ago
It's an interesting difference of opinion. There are those who believe natural rights are naturally conferred to the individual, and others that believe rights are conferred by society. These two personality types often clash harshly, because one sees society as having no right to interfere with his rights and the social rights person sees the dissenting individual as having no right to abstain from the "social contract" that they at best agreed to merely by being born and remaining in the boundary of many members of that society. In the earlier days, the US was far more individualistic, at least in the Western territories. There was some hope for the more individualistic rights leaning individual. Now I'm not sure what our last bastion of hope is from persons who don't recognize us as having any rights without dear government.