There is a lot of talk these days about rights, just as there was a smidgen over 200 years ago, when the founding fathers of the United States established a constitution to form a country of liberty. Politicians often stress the importance of “rights,” usually in describing how they intend to “preserve” them, but with so much talk come so many questions: what are rights? Where do they come from? Why do we need them, and where would we be without them? These queries are asked by the everyday Joe, discussed at great length by the most prestigious intellectuals in the country, and debated by the most powerful men and women in governments across the globe. In this article I strive to shed light on this important issue, and in particular I make distinction between the oft-confused concepts of “human needs” and “human rights,” to explain how they’re different, and why it matters.
The rights of everyone are two in number: the right to his person, and the right to the things he, as Enlightenment philosopher John Locke put it, “mixes his labor with.” These things are defined as his property, meaning that they can justly be used or traded away by their owner, and cannot be justly taken by other people. Rights are self-evident in the natural state of man, he being perfectly free to act independent of others, disposing of his possessions or his person as he pleases. This is important to recognize, as it means that no person is “given” his rights by other people; while some point to politicians and bureaucrats as the givers of our rights, they are, in fact, naturally inherited by everyone as a result of being able to make decisions. It is also important to note that one does not have the right to the possessions of others, or to another’s person, as nature does not grant anyone the power to control other people, or decide what those people do with the things that they possess. All rights stem from these two, basic umbrellas of what it is that people own. The United States Declaration of Independence famously declares the rights of its citizenry to be “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” the first of which is a logical conclusion of owning one’s person, and the latter of which are statements regarding the freedom of anyone to act as he chooses, provided he does not interfere with the rights of others. Man is incapable of creating new rights, but he is fully capable of taking them away.
But how does one take away the rights of another anyway? If nature bestowed our rights upon us, wouldn’t that mean they are impossible to revoke? Sadly, this is not the case. Unique to the actions of men is the use of force -- a physical invasion or threat of physical invasion that involuntarily bends the will of others to one’s interests. For example, a woman has the right, the option, to keep a purse she buys and use it to carry her things, this being the use of property she has honestly obtained. However, if a mugging man threatens her with a gun and demands her purse, he changes her options to: 1. give the man the purse or 2. get shot and lose the purse. Should the woman carry a handgun, she may choose to defend herself, this being a just use of force, but if she fails to oppose her aggressor or does not have such a weapon available, she will cease to have the right that nature has granted. In any other instance that the man approaches her without threat of such physical invasion, perhaps he approaches her with money instead and offers to buy the purse, the woman will always retain her right to keep her property. This is because any voluntary offer proposed by one human being to another will leave the offered person with the option to act as though nothing happened, and have no change to their circumstance. Thus, aggression through the use of physical violence is the sole destroyer of human rights.
Most commonly, people lose their rights to governments, oftentimes without even recognizing what has happened. It is the nature of a government to act in a manner that destroys rights, because it cannot exist without the use of physical violence -- this being the only way it obtains revenue. Consider a tax, and what that is and what it means. When the U.S. government taxes people, does it collect their money through voluntary agreement? Is it asking for donations to support a cause, or offering something in return? Indeed not -- the government demands each citizen pay his taxes, and threatens locking up in cages those who refuse to do so.
While it’s true that the government may provide services with tax revenue that may, in turn, bring benefit to the citizens who provided the funds, it remains as much a theft as the mugging man demanding the purse from the innocent woman. Even if he told her he would sell the purse and use the money to buy her a new coat, it remains a theft because he uses her property in a way that is contrary to her choosing. Even a government founded on democracy, with support from the majority of the people, will still destroy the rights of an oppressed minority if there is so much as one person who would prefer not to pay taxes in return for the benefits provided by the government, and typically it is many more than one person with such a preference. It is often said that in providing defense, the government protects rights and therefore is not destroying, but providing them. However, the distinction must be made between the rights of a people and the protection of those rights as, like many other things, nature does not provide protection to humankind. Furthermore, in order for the government to do so it must extract property from the citizenry by force, thereby violating the rights of taxpayers. While it’s also true that a citizen has the option to keep his things and leave the country, this violates the right of his person, his liberty in acting passively to remain where he moved to or was born without violating the rights of others. Because he has the right to both his person and his justly-acquired property, the government violates his rights by forcing him to choose between the two.
People are typically very fond of their rights, a truth that is self-evident and made manifest in pro-rights protests and movements across the world, and so governments will often remove the rights of a people by disguising their removal as the creation of a new kind of right -- the providing of one’s needs. Though “needs” are typically pretty hard to define, the basic understanding is that they are the resources and services that one requires in order to survive. The easiest way to see how rights and needs are fundamentally different, is while the former is provided by nature, the latter most certainly is not. Man does not live in a Garden of Eden, where food and immortality are provided by the goodness of natural law, he must act to receive his necessities, and by “the sweat of his brow” will he obtain the goods required to live. In other words, man can do nothing and retain his rights, but he must labor to attain his needs. When the government of China, for example, provides “material assistance” to the old, ill or disabled, under the guise of a right, what they are in fact doing is instating an obligation for other members of society to provide for these needs. As I said before, a government’s revenue can only be obtained through the threat of physical violence and the theft of other people, this because government by its nature does not produce wealth. The provision of this so-called “right,” therefore, is in actuality the removal of rights from taxpayers forced to provide for these material goods. Indeed, welfare or entitlement in any form, whether or not it is unjustly disguised as the provision of a right, is always destruction of the rights of innocent citizens.
This practice is used by governments all over the Earth, by some more than others. In 1945, the United Nations established a list of “human rights” with revisions made as early as the 1990s in a document loaded with this sort of phony rights creation, including the “rights” to protection, public service, social security, “holidays with pay,” food, clothing, housing, medical care, education and “necessary social services.” As discussed previously, the implementation of these, as has been done by governments in many different countries, is the formation of entitlement, and the destruction of true rights.
The logical follow-up question then, is “so what?” What difference does it make if people keep or lose the rights nature granted them? Consequences of the abolition of rights are many in number -- the simplest being that people tend to use their rights in a way that is productive and beneficial to themselves and others. Of all the basic facts discernible plainly by the way people act, it is that human beings are self-interested creatures. As described more accurately by economist Milton Friedman, co-founder of rational choice theory: “an individual acts as if balancing costs against benefits to arrive at action that maximizes personal advantage” (Friedman 15). People have an innate desire to obtain resources above and beyond those required to survive, which, as required by natural law, can only be initially obtained through the creation of wealth, i.e. the transformation of things from their natural state into one that is more useful to man. An example of this would be when construction workers and architects take lumber and brick -- resources that are relatively useless, in and of themselves -- to create a house that a family can live in and find useful. This sort of creation happens constantly between people, and can only ever be siphoned from by government.
Furthermore, people are interested in taking property they create and trading it with others voluntarily in win-win exchanges, which benefit both themselves and those they trade with. It stands to reason then, that the honest creation and exchange of property through voluntary means betters the lives of people, and should not be discouraged or made impossible.
Examples of these consequences to efficiency and production can be found in the current implementation of health care entitlement in the United States via the Affordable Care Act, better known as “Obamacare.” While it is true that a notable sum of previously-uninsured Americans is expected to benefit from access government healthcare (Cutler), provided the system remains functional, an analysis by Senators Tom Coburn and John Barrasso predicts a grim outcome. In particular, that “the overhaul will destroy a total of 120,000 to 700,000 jobs by 2019,” that it will “force industry leaders to curb the research and development of new medical tools,” and that it “creates a permanent disincentive against business growth” (Coburn). This occurs for a number of reasons. Firstly, as the government seizes the rightful property of taxpayers to provide for others’ healthcare, taxpayers become less willing to keep a job. After all, the workload of work remains the same, but now they’re keeping less of the money they make, thereby making government welfare options for the unemployed a more tempting substitute to holding a job. Secondly, the required increased taxation on business means that business owners are less willing, indeed less able, to initiate growth and development (Bowman). Just as there is a reduced incentive for people to stay employed, so is there a reduced incentive for people to hire, as the profit they make from their employees is significantly reduced. This leaves them with the options to either 1. pay their employees less, thereby tempting some to leave and cause the business to shrink, or 2. fire those employees who are no longer worth their revenue, thereby also reversing business growth. Should the business do neither, it will become unprofitable, and inevitably collapse to its competitors. Thirdly, mandating that employers provide healthcare services to their employees raises the cost of employing humans, causing workers whose jobs can also be accomplished by machinery to be laid off in favor of mechanical substitutes. This simultaneously raises both the rate of unemployment and the cost of doing business. From an economic perspective, the destruction of rights tends to follow the destruction of progress.
This same inefficiency is found in another form of rights violation seen today and throughout history, which is the prohibiting of sale for products deemed harmful by a given majority of people. For example, in the 1920s when the United States government upheld a prohibition of alcohol, illegal alcohol consumption became rampant, and drunkenness became more problematic than ever before. The desired effect of reducing alcohol supply was counterbalanced by a massive uprising of “speakeasies” -- illegal sellers of alcohol -- who reduced their costs by ignoring regulations and taxes. Likewise, the desired effect of reducing demand for alcohol was counterbalanced by a “forbidden fruit” effect, which increased the desire of some people to consume alcohol because it was forbidden (Miron).
Instead, the uncertainty of the alcohol illegally sold resulted in an increase in accidental poisonings. The lack of social controls and regulations led to an increase in patterns of binge drinking, as described by psychoanalyst Norman Zimberg who wrote: “People did not take the trouble to go to a speakeasy, present the password, and pay high prices for very poor quality alcohol simply to have a beer. When people went to speakeasies, they went to get drunk” (Zimberg 470). Since alcohol was sold in secretive environments, police were never notified by bartenders or customers during aggressive disputes, thereby raising the level of violent crime. Disrespect for the law saw dramatic increase, as people are more able to justify crime when they are already criminals, and the police force was made thoroughly busy arresting former-innocents who maintained the popular habit of drinking. As reported by economist Jeffery Miron, 7,000 arrests were made between the years 1921 and 1923 on the grounds of consumption or sale of alcohol, no doubt increasing costs of the police force, and further burdening the taxpayers (Miron).
The U.S. government’s current drug prohibitions have arguably shown many similar problems, including organized crime, mass arrest and imprisonment, drug abuse despite the law and a seemingly never-ending battle -- the “war on drugs” -- at an enormous expense. It is estimated that over 500,000 people are currently in prison for drug use, and that between $20 and $25 billion dollars per year have been spent over the last decade to fight drugs (Porter). This would likely explain a recent survey by economist Mark Thornton, which included hundreds of leading, modern economists and found that “most professional economists favored changes in public policy in the general direction of decriminalization [of drug use and sale]” (Thornton).
Another consequence of violating rights is that, by virtually all modern ethical standards, it’s an immoral thing to do, despite the failure of many to acknowledge when their rights are revoked. In 300 B.C. philosopher Epicurus described how "natural justice is a symbol or expression of usefullness, to prevent one person from harming or being harmed by another,” and in 20 A.D. the golden rule of Christ was composed, to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Since the time of these statements people have, for the most part, accepted a non-aggression moral code. Generally speaking, people believe in the immorality of theft and assault, as is taught by every major religion and the majority of philosophers since ancient Greece. The problem is that many do not realize the immorality when rights are violated, mostly because they aren’t aware of when it occurs. No one has an issue with receiving benefits from government sources, and most have no problem with letting others receive them, but where the benefits come from is typically of little concern.
Particularly in the case of welfare, where material goods are given to the needy and the poor, support is often lent on ethical grounds, with the modest belief that helping those in need is a morally right action. As explained by political scientist Gregory Shaw, people support welfare policies through “the long-standing sense of obligation to help the poor among us—whether driven by guilt, the practical need to raise up the next generation of citizens, religious conviction, a strategy to placate the poor, or simply a near-universal sense of humanitarianism” (Shaw). Social theorist Michael B. Petersen has noted that people will support welfare policies based on “perceptions of the welfare recipients’ deservingness,” with support lent when the recipients are perceived as “unlucky” (Petersen). Unfortunately, what most don’t consider is how the material goods are obtained in the first place, which is, as I’ve explained previously, by the use of force. In essence, while people believe they are charitably helping the poor by supporting government welfare, in reality they are not. Such charity could be accomplished through personal, voluntary donation, or by the founding of a charitable organization, but welfare programs are the product of innocent people being forced to give away their property. Demanding that others lend help is not the same as lending help, nor is it truly humanitarian in any sense of the word.
So what does all of this mean, and what can be done about it? Currently the United States, viewed by many as one of the scarce few relatively-free countries left on Earth, is at a crucial tipping point in its history. Prominent public figures are often swaying public opinion to destroy the rights of some people in providing needs for others, disregarding the costs that entail and the problems that result. As a fellow citizen of the United States I urge that people everywhere stand up for true rights, and that they strive where they can to see through deception in the world of politics. I urge that they reject the notion that material goods, even when they are needed, be provided to others through entitlement, and instead that they look for ways to serve charitably, advocating for voluntary means of providing for the underprivileged. It is crucial that the United States citizenry vote for policies and representatives with these concepts in mind, that our country may keep the liberty it was established to maintain.
Works Cited
1. Coburn, Tom, and John Barrasso. "Health Care Reform Will Destroy Jobs." Health Care Legislation. Ed. David M. Haugen and Susan Musser. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. At Issue. Rpt. from "Grim Diagnosis: A Check-Up on the Federal Health Law." Oct. 2010. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 8 Nov. 2012.
2. Cutler, David, and Neeraj Sood. "Health Care Reform Will Create New Jobs." Health Care Legislation. Ed. David M. Haugen and Susan Musser. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. At Issue. Rpt. from "New Jobs Through Better Health Care: Health Care Reform Could Boost Employment by 250,000-400,000 a Year this Decade." Center for American Progress, 2010. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 8 Nov. 2012.
3. Petersen, Michael B. "Deservingness versus Values in Public Opinion on Welfare: The Automaticity of the Deservingness Heuristic | Michael Bang Petersen – Academia.edu." Deservingness versus Values in Public Opinion on Welfare: The Automaticity of the Deservingness Heuristic | Michael Bang Petersen - Academia.edu. Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark, Jan. 2011. Web. 8 Nov. 2012.
4. Shaw, Greg M. "Changes in Public Opinion and the American Welfare State (Report)."Business Information, News, and Reports. Illinois Wesleyan University, 2009. Web. 8 Nov. 2012.
5. Thornton, Mark. "AMERICAN Economic Association." Ebscohost. AMERICAN Economic Association, 2007. Web. 8 Nov. 2012.
6. Bowman, Scott A. "Should I Stay or Should I Go? Tax Considerations in U.S. Expatriation." Ebscohost. American Bar Association, Oct. 2012. Web. Nov. 12.
7. Friedman, Milton. Essays in Positive Economics. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1953. Print.
8. Miron, Jeffery A. "Alcohol Prohibition." Economic History Services. Economic History Association, 1 Feb. 2010. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
9. Zimberg, Norman E., Nancy K. Mello, and Jack H. Mendelson. The Diagnosis and Treatment of Alcoholism. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979. Print.
10. Porter, Eduardo. “Numbers Tell Failure in Drug War.” New York Times 4 Jul. 2012: B1. New York Times. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
I love your paper. It is insightful and well written. The reality is that people complicate their own rights by making bad choices that effect other people's rights which leads to laws to protect the innocent, but the side-effect is of course that good people lose rights--right?
ReplyDeleteI would say yes and no- assuming I properly understand you. I fully agree that rights can be used to make unwise decisions, but as Reagan once said: "that’s one of our sacred rights–to be stupid" (http://reason.com/archives/1975/07/01/inside-ronald-reagan -- he says this in the last sentence of the first paragraph on page 2, but the whole thing's pretty great). I think that once one makes a choice - a legitimately *evil* choice - to effect the rights of others, it can only be through the use of a physical invasion, or a threat of such.
DeleteIt's also true that unwise decisions, such as excessive drinking or hard drug use, can more easily lead to actions that *do* effect the rights of others. There's no doubt that a drunken man is more likely to be violent than one who's sober. But if a man gets very drunk in a bar and initiates a drunken brawl, it is important to recognize that his first swing or kick is the action that violates another's rights, and not the getting drunk in the first place.
A sensible legal system of any kind, founded on nearly any principle, will justly acknowledge a punch as a crime or tort. Getting drunk, however, unless one believes in a government that protects people from themselves, will justly be considered as neither. As it happens, instating laws to prevent people from exercising their rights in "stupid" ways tend not to be helpful for anyone - as showed in some of the examples above - but even if they were, I would be opposed to them on moral grounds and on libertarian principles from which I believe a just legal system should derive its nature.
Keep in mind that once an act of violence is made - once one effects the rights of another - the aggressor no longer acts within his own rights.
If instead what you're saying is that people who violate the rights of others by physically aggressing, and acting outside their own rights, cause governments to impose their will on the innocent to provide the entire country of people with their protection, I'm in full agreement. I would note that "laws" do not necessarily imply the existence of a government, as a legal system does not require a government in order to function (though you likely disagree), but it is certainly the case that we end up with laws that mandate people be protected by the monopoly service that is the government as a result of the actions of a very few people.
Sorry if I've incorrectly interpreted you're point - let me know if what isn't related to what you had in mind!
You always write awesome articles. I guess that's why you're the Poli Sci major (economics maybe?) and I'm a Physics major. Golden and I often debate this at a fundamental level; Golden's beliefs fall similar to yours, where we have initial rights, and then governments take them away. Mine are essentially the same, but backwards. (sort of) From what I've seen, naturally, we have no rights at all outside of government/countries. It is only by groups of people coming together and enforcing ideals are rights born. (To simplify, I believe rights are created by countries, because they don't exist naturally)
ReplyDeleteHowever, in both cases the "safety for rights" case is still a crucial one. People simply trading away rights for the illusion of safety is not only bad for themselves, but bad for the American experiment.
Skyler,
DeleteI would give your concept of rights some serious thought, and if you have time read a little into Locke's Second Treatise on Government - second chapter (Link: http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr02.txt). The problem with the idea that people don't have rights without the existence of other people is that on some level it's verifiably false. If you believe in the right to life, for example, it's a fact that a person has the capability to live without associating with anyone. For obvious reasons his life wouldn't be as full, and the efficiencies of trade and specialization of labor would be lost, but he would preserve his ability to live because it's a law of nature that he does. An axiom, if you will.
Clearly we both arrive at the same conclusions - that people trading away rights to the government, which, even if you believe it provides rights - it can certainly take them away, is generally a bad idea. I stick to that principle 100 times out of 100, you maybe a little less so, but it's libertarian thinking in nature and will lead us to agree on most policies the government has to offer.
Since we both support, and anyone in their right mind supports, that people *do* get together to benefit from one another, the point that man theoretically has rights without other people may seem somewhat irrelevant. However, it does have one profound implication: if each person has their rights independent of other people or governments, a clear-cut "law" is established that, invariably, freedom is greatest when the invasive meddling of people is least. If everyone believed it, arguments for providing rights through tax would be null and the United Nation's phony human rights declaration would go up in smoke - because, after all, the provision of rights independent of those we obtained by nature is impossible.
Just some things to consider. Thanks for the comment.
I guess my thoughts are that rights aren't necessary to the action. Simply because someone is living and chooses to do so, doesn't mean that they have a right to life. (Outside of countries that enforce it, of course) If a lion kills a zebra, then doesn't the lion's 'right to kill' infringe on the zebra's 'right to life'. Like I said, the "no rights at all" and "infinite rights" arguments are pretty much the same, the difference is the latter assumes rights are necessary, where the former views them as a human invention. (obviously I lie on the former) I guess the overall drive behind the 'no rights' argument I see is that rights are something you are guaranteed (everyone has the right to life in the US, guaranteed) therefore life cannot be taken away without consequence to the thief. However, when the lion kills the zebra there are no consequences, because the zebra's right to life is not enforced. (therefore, not truly a right) As George Carlin stated, "They took them away, and rights and rights if someone can take them away. They are temporary privileges."
DeleteSorry, OCD, last sentence "rights *aren't* rights".
DeleteAh, I see now what you are saying, but I'm still in disagreement. Firstly, "the right to kill" does not exist. People have a right to their person and their property, with the explicit exception that they do *not* have the right to violate the rights of others. This is a central theme of the article - that the use of physical force against others is a unique sort of action. This is because anything a person does he can do independently of other people, except use force against them. The best way to think about rights is like property- your body is your own property because nature has given you the ability to act, and it follows that the things you create are yours as well. The lives and creations of other's, however, are *not* your property, and therefore you have no right to them.
DeleteSecondly, using this as justification for the idea that rights are granted to a person by other people is odd, seeing as it is other people who infringe upon one's rights in the first place. When people provide protection from other people, such protection would be unnecessary without *people*. Once again, I do believe that everyone benefits from living and interacting with others, but having said others solve problems that they themselves create is a zero-sum game. Nothing is truly provided.
I understand your argument that the United States government - a part of society - "guarantees" the right to life, but really what they do is protect it. From society.
So, from what I got from that, was that the only natural right anyone has, is to themselves. If so, then I believe you are closer to my viewpoint than you may think. In nature people have the ability to have themselves and property, (just as they have the ability to do anything) but I disagree with your notion of owning something you create. Yes, it was conceived due to you, but do you have it? The fact is that people do take other people's creations/things, regardless of whether you consider it a right. Wouldn't that mean that everything the thief stole he now has a right to? Even though he didn't have the right to take it? I guess the overall problem is my understanding of your argument, in which you are picking and choosing which scenarios things have rights in and which they can act upon them. Nature really doesn't work this way, its illogical to say that things (people in this case) have natural rights without any enforcement, especially the selective choices of rights.
Delete(Tab doesn't work on here, this annoys me....)
So, if the government can only protect the right to life, (which I agree with) then it can't protect any other right. (as you stated, they are not guaranteed) In which case are rights then simply guidelines to follow, if there is no ability to truly enforce one? If so, 'rights' don't exist at all.
Rhetoric is a curse of trying to sound smart.... truly, it is.
It seems that from your response and others there is confusion and dispute on my point as to exactly how rights are natural. I'll be sure to address these in a following post, as this is clearly a topic of interest.
DeleteRhetoric is the curse of trying to say anything while trying to not sound like you're attempting a brainwash.
First blog post of yours I've read, and I'm impressed; very well reasoned. Now, I'm 'a offer a rebuttal from a historical perspective.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I'd challenge any claim that rights are or ever have been natural or self-evident in practice. "Natural rights" is a tautology, so if it's going to be useful it ought to be able to withstand concrete analysis, and to me Lockean theories of rights fall apart because they cannot explain how things work in the real world. Locke said, "The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of Nature of his rule". I suggest that you'll never find a situation in recorded history (aside from Eden or creation myths) where that statement reflected reality. Even Locke recognized this, which is why he invented a theoretical State of Nature to justify his philosophy (well, he also argued that American Indians fit his state of nature, but that's just not true). Lockean assumptions about rights only work by ignoring reality; they are aspirational rather than descriptive. I'd argue that Man is a social creature and that hierarchy has always been inherent in our genetic and cultural makeup, and that rights are created from these hierarchies interacting in society.
Historically, rights are meaningful only as a function of power. In a state of absolute anarchy, this means that rights are what individuals can enforce themselves, but true anarchy is extremely rare. Because we are social we have have always formed larger societies based on various hierarchical relationships (there's never been a truly equal society or one without jockeying for power), and society has power to develop and defend rights. These rights don't necessarily depend on top-down creations like government or laws, although government is an efficient way of enforcing them. But rights can also manifest through unspoken societal norms and be enforced through nonviolent means like trust, shame, and alienation.
...blogger thought my reply was too long, so here's part 2:
ReplyDeleteBecause rights are created by society, they are inherently unstable and shifting. This doesn't necessarily mean that "anything goes" or that everything is relative: A lot of rights, such as a right to one's own life and property, have been very stable throughout history. Locke, I believe, mistook that stability for "self-evidence". But even then, every society grants exceptions to its most fundamental rights on varying criteria, and the exceptions prove that self-evidence is a fallacy. Other, less stable rights are created and destroyed constantly, sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly. Take slavery: By modern western standards, a great evil and a deprivation of fundamental rights. But in the majority of past societies, even in the Old Testament, slavery was an accepted norm that, in the minds of most people, violated no "rights" at all. (I'm sure slaves would disagree, but unless they successfully revolted they're weren't in much of a position to influence their societies!) So am I saying that slave-owning is really just relative and okay depending on your society? Well my modern conception of rights compels me to say that it's absolutely evil. But if I'd been born a slave-owning Roman in the first century I might say something very different. So sometimes "rights" are unjust or evil, depending on your perspective. Pick your issue: Slavery, healthcare, firearms, taxes, primogeniture -- the rights associated with them are necessarily and intrinsically tied to their historical and societal contexts. They are created and enforced by society, not by any self-evident natural principle, and to suggest otherwise is unsupportable in historical terms. Even Locke's own philosophy makes sense only because of the historical context of the English Civil War and Restoration. Like all manmade philosophies (at least, to me), it exists as a post-hoc justification and explanation of the historical events that preceded it, not as a universal governing principle.
Therefore, as a call to action, by all means pick the leaders that will nudge society in the direction you think best. Vote for people and support causes that will enforce the rights you value most. That's what politics is all about. But just because you think you're defending your rights doesn't mean future generations won't think you're a fool or a monster for having done so, because that's the way it's always been!
Casey- Thanks for the comment! I'll tackle your points in order.
DeleteYour contention with Lockean concept of natural rights, that it fails to reflect any situation in recorded history, is refuted by situations in recorded history. Medieval Iceland featured a stateless private-law system in 870 that lasted 350 years. A highly in-depth description of this society can be found in David Friedman's "The Machinery of Freedom" (Link: http://www.daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf -- Ctrl+F: 'Iceland' to find the right chapter). Ireland was without a state for as long as 1,000 years before it's brutal conquest by the English government in the 1600s. An equally in-depth description of this society is found in Murray Rothbard's "For a New Liberty" (Link: http://mises.org/rothbard/newlibertywhole.asp -- Ctrl+F: 'Ireland' to find the right section). When people settled the vast "west" of the present-day United States, they did so far faster than the government, and for a long portion of the 1800s remained without interference or protection from a government of any kind. "The Not So Wild, Wild West" explains this history in more detail (Link: http://mises.org/journals/jls/3_1/3_1_2.pdf -- the first page give a good summary). Between 1990 and 2006, all of Somalia was without a government, which returned only after the United Nations forcefully instated it. Even today, many Somalian regions exist outside of government control. Other examples of fully-free societies include 10 years of a stateless Pennsylvania between 1680 and 1690, and various Omish communities on which I don't care to expound. There are certainly examples of Locke's "ideal" scenario throughout history, and I can certainly find them, despite your suggestion.
These free societies featured no legislative authority or superior power. Incidentally, the hierarchy that you claim is inevitable, inherent through our genes and culture, was also non-existent. Legal systems existed in all cases, but with courts and protection provided through private, rather than government means. Such institutions as private defense and private arbitration are fundamentally different from the government in that they only apply force to those guilty of violating another's rights (specifically, those of their employees). Taxes were not collected from innocent people, instead fees were paid voluntarily by those who desired individual security. There existed no such laws regarding what people can drink or smoke or use, because there doesn't exist a market to prohibit victimless action, nor can profit ever be made in such a pursuit.
Indeed, they are examples in reality of Locke's proposed theories.
If we are to argue from a historical perspective, let us trace government back to its roots. The concept of a government has existed as long as people, with savages collecting in tribes to distribute daily earnings and protect one another from the forces of nature. This was a requirement in order to survive, as everyone teetered on the brink of subsistence, with variance in the collection of goods that could be minimized by collective redistribution (I explained this in full in one of my earlier articles (with pictures!) found here: http://theexperiencefreeopinion.blogspot.com/2012/07/public-vs-private-pictures-and-numbers.html). Mankind progressed over passing years, but maintained this overpowering all-intrusive system of government as far as the 16th century. The ages became defined by statism, slavery, serfdom and theocracy.
DeleteIt wasn't until the 17th century that the idea of individual freedom was born, and between the 17th and 19th centuries was a persistent rise in support for liberty - people realizing that many functions of the state had become unnecessary, indeed hinderances, to progression and upward movement. As a result, we see the rise of personal freedom and economic freedom and the creation of free markets. International peace replaced dynastic warfare and conquest, and the standard of living for people everywhere rose dramatically. Subsistence level became a thing of the past, regular people without political privilege were able to go out and *buy* things to better their lives. An industrial revolution occurs, providing mass production and mass consumption, and the world saw unprecedented progress in technology and civilization.
The 19th century features an unfortunate defect in human thinking. Driven by classical liberalism, society is halted on its road to paradise by the radical new concept of socialism. It was the anti-industrialist proposition that the rise in standards of living seen under capitalism could continue through a sort of "democratic" state control, where rather than have a few members of a ruling class run the government, it will be a government of the "people." The public backs the movement, and socialism becomes the new dominant intellectual concept by the end of the 19th century. As we all know- it was a failure. By the mid-20th century, the people of socialist countries everywhere were begging to eliminate the massive statism, which turned out to be not too dissimilar from the way things were run pre-17th century. Meanwhile, the capitalist nation of the United States soared in production, and became the most powerful country on the world has ever known.
By the end of the 20th century, the war between socialism and capitalism had ended, and capitalism was the undisputed victor. Socialists retained the one influence they held from their glory days, that socialism was more "morally" right than capitalism, and they fell back on the more moderate ideology of interventionism - a capitalist society regulated by the state. The libertarian movement rose to combat these ideas, and this is the battle fought today - between capitalism and interventionism. It is inevitable that the capitalists will win the fight by the 21st century's end, most likely through the increasingly-libertarian TEA party movement, at which point the truly free society will become commonplace.
Though it's a very round-a-bout way of coming to the point, the point is: hierarchy is *not* a product of "genetics," and societies with as little of it as possible have seen bigger growth than through any other method ever tested. Production by the state has consistently proved to be an inferior means of providing goods and services, and it is *unnatural* by its very nature as it destroys our natural rights.
DeleteThough this response is already far longer than it needed to be, I will conclude with the point that rights and truth are necessarily objective concepts. You are exactly correct in assuming that in the first century, or even much later, you likely would not have considered slavery the infringement of rights. Even John Locke, the theorist of freedom, was perfectly content in his involvement with the slave trade, failing to acknowledge them as people due to the pervading beliefs of his time. However, people's belief that rights have changed does not mean they have changed in actuality. It is also true that in past years you would have considered the Earth to be flat. Alas, it is round.
With respect, your sources will have more credibility if you expand them beyond a narrow range of libertarians and grapple with histories and philosophies from less stridently ideological sources--not to say Friedman and Rothbard are necessarily wrong, but can you harmonize their arguments with what historians like, say, Daniel Walker Howe have written about the American West? It's okay to pick a brand of libertarianism as your "side", but to convince a skeptic like me you'll need to broaden your scope a little.
ReplyDeleteBut setting that aside, it seems to me you've confused society with government. Government is usually a part of society, often a very powerful one, but the two are not equivalent, and maybe it's my fault for not making that clearer. Society, as I mean it, is a much broader notion comprising culture, economics, and familial and personal relationships. So, it's big. Government does not create rights, society does (though government can enforce or trample them). The stateless examples you mentioned absolutely had unique community-enforced standards of morals, laws, economics--in short, everything necessary to construct "rights". Even Somalia today has its own society, albeit a fractured and dangerous one. So if your point is to argue for a libertarian-anarchic society without government, that's fine. Not my cup of tea, but regardless, the rights developed by that kind of a society are no more or less natural than by any other.
Likewise, even a stateless society has hierarchical relationships. Whether you're talking families, tribes, villages, or anarcho-syndicalist communes, you're always going to have leaders/followers and struggles for power and influence (I know that "power struggle" has negative connotations but I mean it in a neutral sense. You could rephrase it as "advancing self-interest"). Whether those hierarchies exist as public or private entities is beside the point. I'm only broadly familiar with evolutionary psychology, but my understanding is the science there supports that we are by nature social beings who exist in hierarchical relationships with each other, although to me it's simply common sense. I'd also cite Jonathan Haidt as an excellent resource for more info, though again I'm definitely no expert.
The way you're framed your history of government actually makes my argument very well: It wasn't until the 16th and 17th centuries that modern ideas about individual liberty started taking hold, and these modern ideas can be directly tied to the societal upheavals that preceded them, from the vast expansion of trade that destabilized old economic paradigms, enormous religious changes, the rise of middle class merchants, weakening of old monarchies, etc. As I said before, Locke only makes sense because of his historical context; his talk of the sovereignty of the people would have been irrelevant in Catholic Spain. New philosophies develop in tandem with events of their day: The French Revolution led to an explosion of radical thought on individual liberty, and an equally vigorous "conservative" backlash as it spiraled into chaos. The philosophies that were developed would have had no meaning before the revolution; it was the changes in society that created them. Likewise, socialism developed as a response to industrial capitalism, and so it goes to today. Unlike the roundness of the earth, I'd doubt there's an absolute frame of reference waiting to be discovered, much less that we've discovered it already. When I hear talk of "natural rights", it smacks to me of cultural arrogance: "Finally, after eons of searching and generations of conflict, we have discovered what is right, and behold, it is what we believe!" So said pretty much every society that's ever existed.
The sources provided were necessarily biased, because only the bias would ever report them. No one has reason to expound upon the 1000 year anarchy of Ireland, for example, unless they mean to prove a point. But the legitimacy of Rothbard's claim- at the very least that such a society existed- has been factually proven, and is not in dispute. I don't intend to harmonize my examples with Howe or anyone else, as their purpose was only to show their existence. It is an easy matter to demonstrate how Locke's free society has existed in reality, and a much harder matter to convince you of libertarian ideology.
ReplyDeleteI assure you the day won't ever come when society and government become one in my mind. Government is, as you said, only a part of most societies - similar to how a cancerous tumor might be a part of one's body. Very powerful indeed. Neither government nor society can be the creator of rights, however, because a person can retain his rights without the involvement of other people. If you give that the United States citizenry has "the right to life" (subcategory of the right to person), you must also give that society does not provide this right, as individuals have the capability to live when disconnected from all society. If I leave the United States to explore the barren lands of Antarctica, does my life cease to be as soon as I leave the country and declare my independence? It might be a less fruitful life, by my lonesome, but it is not the case that my rights leave me. My rights to live on an empty frozen rock, use my liberty in any way that I choose, and pursue whatever happiness I might find there remain perfectly intact. This is because you were granted life by nature, not by man, along with your inherent ability to do things.
Natural rights as a concept has been misunderstood, I think, by you and others - I intend to right a follow up post with a clearer description of the way I see it.
Hierarchy is a function of authority, and authority is defined by the power to enforce commands, which can only be done by government. Therefore, a society without government is also without hierarchy.
I'm no expert either. Hence my experience free opinion.
Noting that ideas are based on their time is a valid argument, but I think you take it too far. We should acknowledge changes in public opinion, and it's often useful to trace the roots of the changes back to their cause, but this must be distinguished from the "right" answer. Objectively, there is an amount of government, if any, that is most conducive to the well-being of society, and that exact amount should be sought for in spite of popular belief. Your conclusion seems not to apply to me, since my personal beliefs on rights being natural are not shared by the vast majority of the population, nor has Western culture, in recent years, applied these beliefs to the development of modern society. Obviously I believe what *I* believe to be right, but finding problem with that would be a rather tautological contention.
Once again, there will certainly be a follow up post in the near future.