Rights are the means by which we can reasonably predict human behavior. Without predictability, the existence of higher life forms would be impossible. FULL ARTICLE by Christian Michel
Source link: http://blog.mises.org/10961/why-we-have-rights/
Why We Have Rights
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Well, the fluctuating and political nature of laws and rights are really dangerous.
What was legal yesterday is a “crime” today and will be legal again tomorrow.
The creation of victimless crimes has got to be the biggest danger against law and order.
If it’s a crime to deposit, withdraw or transport your own hard earned cash, then why bother obeying the law.
When laws plunder and oppress the honest individuals, one might as well become criminal.
Under oppressing regimes, crime is like a breath of fresh air, a self determination gesture, a way to affirm self and to survive.
And I alway tought one went further ahead with a handful of might than a bagful of rights.
If “rights” don’t come from your own might, if they come from some sort of authority such as government or even society as a whole, then they aren’t really rights, they are priviledges which can be taken away anytime.
How can this qualify as a right ?
The way society is organized, a right is that wich is defended by a third party. You can’t defend your rights by yourself.
In some states and some countries, it’s a crime to even brandish a weapon against a home invader. You are the one who will be carried away by the police if you thwart an invader in your home by pointing a barrel at the invader.
In Canada, if you just own a taser or pepper spray in your house, you could end up 10 years in jail. Those weapons are prohibited. You can’t even hang a baseball bat on your entry door inside your house. And if they can’t find anything “criminal” about it, you can be sure they will try hard to find something psychiatric about it. The existence of psychiatry is the last nail in the coffin of rights and freedom.
Rights might make human behavior predictable, but we have no rights. We live under the tyranny of the government’s and society’s whims.
I would like to remind people to pay some attention to Hayek’s words in “Law, Legislation and Liberty” to understand the concept of rights, especially the notion that rights (and law/rules) are a product of human action not human design and NOT nature. So it would be interesting to share some light on the topic from the point of view that “natural rights” actually doesn’t exist.
Of course rights don’t come from an authority
, rights (in a primitive form) was “established” among humans (as social beings) as a concept and the rules which was based on those rights long before humans was able to articulate that, long before even language come to exist (language are also a product of human action not design and a result of somewhat predictable social exchange between individuals which wasn’t possible without the concept of rights). So while I agree with a great majority of this article, I must point out the obvious error… there is no such thing as natural rights.
Of course positive rights are “rights” by human design and as such they are actually not rights at all, they are temporary privileges. Yet another example of incorrect use of language… to name something incorrectly.
I think, Andras, that should “Of course, all ‘rights’ are positive rights.” People don’t have negative rights rather they have the ability to do something or not. A victim of the schoolyard bully can theoretically defend himself but if he’s not strong enough then tough luck, if he’s strong to hurt the bully but the bully’s friends will return with even more force then it’s tough luck again. If the victim contracts with a strong kid who can defend him from the bullies then he’s safe for a while but happens when the bodyguard demands more and more money until the victim is back to square one? After all, Thomas Hobbes’ Theory on the Social Contract is the sensible version: “weaklings gave up their freedom to some strongmen to protect themselves from marauding strongmen in the hope of finding security”.
@Gil
Actually negative rights are the rights one have without taken something from others, so yes they are exist. We have a right to live (that’s a negative right) but not at the price that someone must support us (that would be a privilege = positive right). Of course there is a completely different question if we can or can’t realize those rights, but regardless of our success or failure to exercise our rights those right as a concept exist.
We can of course try to find different means to exercise (or realize) our rights, we can use the service of a strongmen but that is only one way of doing things, we shouldn’t loss the difference between concepts and applications of those concepts. Rights are abstractions, applications of rights are not.
I agree with Andras to some extent. The concept of natural rights is inherently flawed by the fact that there is no external source from which they come (a similar problem occurs when considering “souls”–they are not detectable and also not necessary). I don’t think we have to embellish human morality by attempting to establish parts of it as “natural”, i.e. sacred and unchangeable. Rather, the things which we find to be morally right should be morally right because we find them to be so. This circular reasoning is necessary in the case of morality because there is no logical source from which it springs.
This leads to philosophical contradictions that people have been trying to solve for ages. Each one has tried (unsuccessfully) to create a fully consistent morality, failing primarily due to the arbitrariness inherent in the necessary cornerstone of any philosophy: the source of morality. As libertarians, we believe that the source of morality is, roughly speaking, liberty. A utilitarian would say utility. Epicureans would say happiness. Others might say love, cooperation, or any number of other ostensibly good things from which they believe that all other goods must spring.
My point being, of course, that none of these philosophies can be called best, just as none of the ancient myths regarding the seasons could be called best. I prefer the libertarian economic ideal, but I’d rather that it not be built up as a philosophy. To do so would be to make it what it is not and indulge in myth as opposed to fact.
Agreed, Ribald. I think ethics is mostly the elevation of one’s personal preferences to the level of some grand cosmic principle. This is a universal, cross-cultural phenomenon, which leads me to believe than any philosophical system of ethics is suspect.
I think it is much more realistic to say “I’m sick of working my ass off only to have the fruits of my labor taken to fund all the useless and destructive BS coming from Washington”, rather than to rant about my inalienable right to property.
It sounds like some people haven’t read “The Ethics of Liberty”.
@Micah
I can’t speak for others, but I did read it… a really good book, but not as good as the combined knowledge from many other (mostly libertarian) books.
Moral Relativists (Mike and Ribald): I suggest reading Richard Sharvy’s amusing essay: “Who’s To Say What’s Right or Wrong? People Who Have Ph.D.s in Philosophy, That’s Who.”
http://mises.org/journals/jls/21_3/21_3_1.pdf
I would also like to add that morality is probable the only remaining area of “code of conduct” where we still have a purely product of human action. What I want to say is that moral norms are (still) not something designed by an authority but rather authorities was formed on the moral principles and they are responsible to maintain the written form of moral norms and not to change it by design.
Of course those authorities have a responsibility to change the written form of those moral norms as society evolves as moral norms evolves (sometimes they fail to do so but in that case they become irrelevant institutions).
Morality is not relative but morality isn’t constant as many people think, as a product of human action morality evolves. I agree that people with Ph.D’s in Philosophy are best suited to interpret and write down moral norms but we must know that they are merely the people who read those moral norms out of the living society, they are not the people who actually “invent” it.
They should also act as a guide to people in order to change morality for the better and not for the worse, but they should never impose they will and wishes as moral norms.
Human action (good and bad) trough countless generations are responsible to form moral norms, Philosophers are the most qualified to explain them and to put them in a form that most people can understand and apply those moral norms to their actions in order to become valuable and respected members of society.
Of course some moral norms are so evolved that we simply can’t imagine any changes to them, it still doesn’t mean they won’t change over time (if not for the better then unfortunately for worse).
We can only view the world according to our current knowledge, we can’t imagine the world according to our future knowledge, so even the most normal and most solid beliefs, facts and norms could and probably will change over time.
>Only rights are transferable, not property itself.
Just ate a candy bar. Anyone want the rights to it?
Isn’t it easier to write, ” ‘Google’ social contract theory?”
Good stuff in the comments so far.
Some food for thought though: Since “rights” are a human-prescribed notion and the way of enforcing a right is either through force or persuasion, then what makes governments and their use of coercion and force morally wrong? Sure, it screws over the citizen but it surely must be “right” for the big businesses and politicians who profit from the system?
It just seems to me that there is no real justification for property rights and freedom from coercion other than saying that “I prefer not to see the fruit of my labour taken from me” and “I believe that society would be more prosperous as a result”. You can show that one policy leads to less overall prosperity, or that increasing debt leads to a currency crisis, but how can you morally justify a system when there is no such thing as an objective morality? I guess this is part of the ideological conflict over time that has never really been resolved.
then what makes governments and their use of coercion and force morally wrong?
Good question. I’m not sure any particular end can be morally justified, but, as you imply in your second paragraph, the means to any particular end are much more objective. Some means are more effective than others at achieving desirable goals. What’s the goal? Increasing human misery? Or increasing human happiness and well-being?
There’s also a certain universality involved–if the best way of satisfying my desires is to make sure that other people’s desires are satisfied, then it’s hardly my own selfish, personal preferences that are involved, but the interests of society in general. While this in itself doesn’t remove the subjectivity, it does give that subjectivity a certain consensus among people.
IMO, the topic is a little misleading. My problem is with the word “have”. Rights do not exist on their own. They exist only in a rational mind capable of forming concepts.
I may end up “quoting” Ayn Rand on this though I know there are many who may object to it.
In my assessment, “Rights” are fundamentally a Moral concept. At a very basic level, they guide and sanction a man’s actions in a social context. When an individual acts within his “Rights”, his actions are right. The important point to note is that the word “sanction” here is used to denote the sanction not of society but of man himself and the reality he faces. An action is “sanctioned’ if as judged by objective reality, it results in enhancement of his long-range well-being and not “sanctioned” if it does not
“Rights” are nothing more than the elevation of the concepts of right and wrong to the social level. Just as at the individual level, you cannot keep doing the wrong thing and hope to lead a better life, at the societal level too, you cannot hope to keep acting outside the scope of your “Rights” and hope to lead a better life.
“Rights” are thus a recognition of a condition of existence necessary for the survival of man qua man.
Morals themselves are nothing more than a code of values. Therefore, an understanding of the basic concept of value is necessary to understand the concept of “Rights”. As Rand put it, value is that which we act to gain or keep. This raises a basic question – “Why do we act to gain or keep anything at all?”. The answer is simple – “To sustain and enhance our life”. I know this sounds circular, but there is no other way in dealing with an axiomatic concept such as Life.
In my assessment, Life is the highest value to any human being and everything else has value only in relation to it. A dead man can have no values since values themselves are a concept that can be formed only by a rational mind. (Circular again, but then “consciousness” is an axiomatic concept)
The most fundamental “Right” is the Right to Life. All other “Rights” spring from this. The “Rights” to Liberty, Property and the Pursuit of Happiness are all logical corollaries of the Right to Life.
Thus, I think we “have” Rights because we recognise, with the aid of our rational mind, that are better off living with them than without. It is indeed very selfish, but then I also think selfishness is a virtue of the highest order and we are, individually and as a community, better off by refusing to be ashamed to say “I am selfish”.
As I understand it, Rand’s (or rather, Objectivism’s) value of life is not merely survival or subsistence (bare existence), but rather, life fully lived, to the best of one’s ability, in order to create a high quality of life, satisfaction and happiness.
While it might seem obvious or self-evident that one ought to seek happiness and thus, a high standard of living, many people clearly are unable or unwilling to do so, preferring to sustain some level of misery or degradation in their lives. And some people commit suicide.
We could, of course, fall back to the biological instincts and desire for life, but that would be mere existence, and not a full, rational life.
Thus, it is not clear if the value of and desire for life is truly axiomatic, or merely an assumptive premise, the subjective preference of the individual.
Michael A. Clem,
Thanks for the thoughtful answers.
As far as government coercion is concerned, too many people still believe in the illusory godlike power of the planners and of govt. to make life better for all; however, this is changing with time and this change has accelerated since the financial crash of 2008. It seems more and more people are realizing that the old left-right dichotomy isn’t quite working out and more people are seeing the light of liberty and the benefits of having less government overall (rather than just choosing your flavor of government).
Mr. Clem,
In regards to living in misery and committing suicide, It is not for you or anyone to pass judgement on others’ motivations or priorities:
“…that a man who sacrifices life, health, or wealth to the attainment of “higher†goods—like fidelity to his religious, philosophical, and political convictions or the freedom and flowering of his nation—is motivated by []rational considerations. …the striving after these higher ends is neither more nor less rational or irrational than that after other human ends.
…”Man is capable of dying for a cause or of committing suicide. To live is for man the outcome of a choice, of a judgment of value.”–LvM
I would add that a man could sacrifice those things for “lower” goods too, like pity, and attention, or dependency and his actions are still rational.
But I think I’m getting off topic.
Andras:
Deep Morality isn’t as inconsistent as you say. Surface morals may change depending on the circumstances of the society in which you live but Deep Morals are Universal.
Ethics, I think, ought to be considered thoughtfully and broadly, not unlike economics. Like the broken window fallacy; what is seen and what is not seen? Sure my gluttony brings me happiness now, but what are the long term consequences? Sure my Lust brings me temporary ecstasy but what are the implications on others lives and then in turn their attitudes and actions toward me.
That is not to say that morals are utilitarian or pragmatic in nature nor are they generated and evolve out of centuries of trial and error of human action. They, like all truths, exist a priori and independent of interaction and observation; and logic and human understanding bring us closer to realizing these truths.
The ‘evolution’ or morals that we witness is simply the advancement toward (or, as is often the time, retreat away from) the ultimate truth. Rothbard’s dissertation on economic and social Paradigms applies to ethics as well, I think.
http://mises.org/rothbard/paradigm.pdf.
Will, I’m not passing judgement–I’m questioning the axiomatic nature of Objectivism’s value of life as the highest value.
Michael A Clem,
” Thus, it is not clear if the value of and desire for life is truly axiomatic, or merely an assumptive premise, the subjective preference of the individual. ”
You are right. It is not truly axiomatic. A person may choose death over life if life as metaphysically possible is expected to be unbearably painful, as it would be for a terminally ill person with no hope of a cure.
Therefore, it starts with a choice – the choice to live. Except that once that choice is made, the rest need to be consistent with it. As an example, once you make the choice to live, you do not act randomly but act such that you sustain your life and enhance it. You choose food over poison, pleasure over pain, etc.
Hope that clarifies.
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