A couple years back, I engaged in discussion with a conservative friend who is very philosophical and very well read. He is extremely good at making me question the assumptions I don’t even know I’m making. This conversation is loosely based on the one we had. *Standard Amateur Disclaimer: I am not, nor have I ever been a philosopher. My exposure to philosophy is minimal at best. I may trample over great discoveries of the past without even acknowledging them, or I may walk into giant bear traps without even knowing. This is a stream of consciousness article with minimal editing.
OSCAR: Natural rights are the most important concept in governance. As governments drift further away from recognition and defense of natural rights, they become more evil.
AUGUST: Absolutely, natural rights like free healthcare, abortions, and public accommodations.
OSCAR: Those aren’t natural rights, they’re infringements on natural rights.
AUGUST: Infringements like profiteering, not paying your fair share, and bigotry?
OSCAR: No, those are consensual activities and mere thoughts.
AUGUST: So, mere thinking and consent are the difference between rights and infringements?
OSCAR: Well, no. Those are characteristics of things that are rights, but rights aren’t rights just because they’re mere thoughts or consented to. Rights are consequences of self-ownership.
AUGUST: Self-ownership means you have unassailable natural rights, like the right to life?
OSCAR: Yes, self-ownership includes an unassailable right to life.
AUGUST: You’re saying that, because you have self-ownership, you have an unassailable natural right to life? How do you know this? Does nature somehow affirm this natural right? Or does nature indiscriminately kill you, despite your unassailable right to life? Or is it that people are somehow physically prevented from killing you?
OSCAR: Well, no, none of that. Rights are more about morality than some law of physics.
AUGUST: Oh, morality! Right and wrong! Virtue and vice! So, since people have an unassailable right to life, it’s wrong in all situations to kill somebody, including in self-defense, the death penalty, and war?
OSCAR: There are certainly exceptions. For example, self-defense is the clash of one’s right to life against another’s right to life. In such a situation, the wrong is in the initial aggression that causes the clash of rights.
AUGUST: I see, so it’s okay to kill your boss for the initial aggression of exploiting your labor.
OSCAR: No, of course not. Exploitation isn’t infringing a right. You aren’t forced to work for your boss.
AUGUST: So rights mean that you shouldn’t be forced to do things?
OSCAR: Yes, rights are things you shouldn’t be forced to do without your consent.
AUGUST: So, criminals shouldn’t be forced to respect other people’s rights?
OSCAR: Well, uhm…. rights only extend so far. You don’t have a right to violate other people’s rights. You may only violate their rights when you have their consent or when not violating their rights would cause one of your rights to be violated.
AUGUST: That seems to rely a lot on what a right is. What is a right?
OSCAR (now wary of being corner cased to death): Umm, a right is . . . a right is easier to describe than to define. A right is dependent on the interpersonal interaction. A child has different rights in respect to their parents than in respect to a stranger. A right is also dependent on the specific context. Killing a burglar stealing your wallet from your bedroom in the middle of the night is different from killing a fraudster who stole your money by grabbing your credit card information.
AUGUST: So a right is some undefinable thing that changes wildly with context?
OSCAR: Well, no. Rights change based on the authority relationship. You have no liberty in view of a superior authority, except as voluntarily ceded or compelled by an even more superior authority. See, for example, the town having no authority in view of the state, except where the state or federal government grants it to the town. In contrast, you have total liberty in view of an inferior authority. A dog can in no way morally restrain you, except for when you voluntarily abstain for the dog’s benefit. It is only in view of a co-equal authority that rights have any meaning. It is the equality of man and human authority that give meaning to rights.
AUGUST: So if rights are based on authority and the equality of man, are you saying that rights are attempts to prevent inequity between men and between man and institutions created by man?
OSCAR: Yes! As with any co-equal relationship, there are certain things solely in the domain of the first, other things that are solely in the domain of the second, and some things that are in an overlapping domain between the two. For example, parenting.
AUGUST: So, in this Venn Diagram description, your domain is your rights with respect to me, my domain is my rights with respect to you, and the shared domain is collective rights between us and conflicting rights between us. While that may be helpful on a theoretical level to be able to categorize things, it leads into the question, how do I know what is in your domain, what is in my domain, what is in our shared domain, and what is in neither of our domains? In other words, what rights are there?
Hopefully this conversation is useful to spark dialogue. From this, you can see that my contention is that rights are the boundaries erected between rightful exercise of authority between co-equal people and immoral abuse of authority between the same co-equal people.
If this type of article has enough interest, I may continue to write in this style in the future, continuing this conversation.
The rights of two individuals cannot come into conflict with each other. Where the may seem to, it is the misapplication or misunderstanding of what is a right.
I disagree. Rights conflict all the time. Any time one person is constrained from their full personal liberty by rightful concerns of another, rights have collided.
Here’s what I think is a straightforward example: does my right to go to bed trump my neighbor’s right to play his music as loud as he wants as late as he wants? I realize this is a very mediocre example and doesn’t rise to the heights of gun ownership, property rights, etc.
Your neighbor has no right to as loud as he wants unless he is 2 miles away
In a sense though, that example does tie into the discussion of property rights. And that’s where I think the real discussion needs to happen. Where do people draw the line on what you can do on your property? Let’s say you live in a cul-de-sac. Should you have the right to play loud music at night, to shoot drugs up on your front lawn (I’m assuming at this point that the Drug War was ended,) or to shoot targets with your firearms while your neighbors are out?
I don’t know the answers, but I do think it’s something more libertarians ought to be bringing up.
He’s polluting your property. Your rights: violated.
Agreed. If he has a large enough property that he can play really loud music or shoot targets without anyone else hearing, ie affected by noise pollution, he can absolutely do it. Otherwise he must come to an agreement with his neighbors. Same with other pollutants, which would be the libertopia way of helping the environment.
Ironically, this used to be the way it was in ye olde England, where construction of factories were hindered because people would sue them for damages by pollution. Then the progressives came along and demanded this be stoppes because these stupid rubes were hindering progress, and you can’t make an omelette without ruthlessly crushing a few dozen eggs beneath your heel.
Incidentally, I found a good podcast on the libertarian solution to the environmen that I recommend to anyone on a roadtrip or otherwise doing mindless activity. Like posting here (I kid, I kid.)
https://m.soundcloud.com/scottishliberty/only-capitalism-can-save-the-environment
Full personal liberty is by its definition constrained by the liberty of others. Unless your philosophy is that you have liberty and othera do not. There will be conflicts and that is the job of justice to solve. Yoi dont have a right to some sort of absolute liberty defined as do whatever you want
Not sure if it is what you meant, but this isn’t the same as rights themselves conflicting.
mr simple is correct.
Although, I may posit he and I may be incorrect because Goedel is lurking around every corner.
But he is also lurking somewhere out about the 3rd standard deviation so can be ignored in most conversations.
I disagree. The entire philosophy of mediation of just claims would not disappear tomorrow if everyone had a perfect understanding of rights. The fact that everyone lacks perfect knowledge further complicates the issue and increases the need for a clear and specific set of principles an individual can base their action on AND a fair and free method of resolving the claims of people who acted as best they could and still possibly infringed on another’s rights.
The fact that you may not a method of mediation doesn’t mean that rights conflict. It means that we aren’t perfect in our understanding or acting towards them.
Or, to follow on your invocation of Goedel, that the set of natural rights is incomplete. If they never contradict the set must be incomplete, so there will be areas that cannot be resolved by the application of rights. Or the set is complete, and all situations can be covered, but there must then be cases where they are contradictory.
This isn’t a limit of human knowledge, but of logic in and of itself. Adding human failings on top of it complicates and masks this issue, but it exists independent of us.
I’m curious as to why it should matter if two people can correctly believe they have a right to do something in which one’s actions would interfere with another in a substantial way. It seems like an unnecessarily strict requirement of rights. As long as we have a non-arbitrary way of resolving the disagreement that doesn’t require further rights violations, why can’t rights intersect?
The rights of two individuals cannot come into conflict with each other.
What about your right to go armed, and a property owner’s right to bar you from his property unless you disarm? You can’t both exercise your rights without one of you limiting that exercise.
He’s polluting your property.
No, he’s actually interfering with your “quiet enjoyment” of your property. Regardless, you can’t do what you want on your property, and he can’t do what he wants on his property. One of your rights is limited/violated by the other’s exercise of his rights. Traditionally, we say you can exercise your rights so long as you don’t violate the rights of another, but that frequently begs the question; you both want to violate the other’s rights, unless we further define property rights in a fairly non-intuitive way to say that your quiet enjoyment or his making noise on his property isn’t really a right. That may be a “misunderstanding” by one of you, but its a misunderstanding of a non-intuitive/external/arbitrary(?) limitation on your rights.
If he has a large enough property that he can play really loud music or shoot targets without anyone else hearing,
This introduces the idea of contingent rights, namely, you have the right to play loud music if and only if nobody can hear you, and that is contingent on something other than your ownership of property. Which may be a way of saying there are few to no absolute rights, only contingent rights. Without giving it too much thought, I suspect most to all rights are contingent. Even your right to life is contingent on not attacking other people.
Inalienable isn’t the same as absolute, though. If my survival depends on forcing a doctor to operate on me, it might not be that I am justified in doing so. I don’t have an absolute right to life, but it is inalienable. I can’t permanently give you the right to deprive me of it* for some consideration.
*I can, but only as long as I hold myself to it. Society will not enforce that contract in our current framing of rights. Which is why talking of rights outside of how they govern interactions between individuals with competing desires and values doesn’t make sense to me. Rights outside of a social framework don’t exist. As has been pointed out from the earliest modern writings on the subject. You have to leave the state of nature and form a society before rights exist or can be enforced. Natural rights are just those that we agree should not be deprived from an individual without both a strong reason for doing so and a due process for depriving one.
Rights are the stuff the government gives me. Do I win an internet?
*Smacks Hyperion on the knuckles with the Ruler of Liberty*
Give a man an inch and he thinks he’s a ruler.
That giving a man an inch thing sounds kinda gay
I would flog that fact out loud if I were you.
Pie was every inch a sailor!
Just the tip?
But how can I get any rights if the government don’t give them to me? If that were the case, some rich guys would have all the rights and there would be none left for the rest of us.
There are 235556773 rights on earth. If we keep the global population under that there is enoigh for all
That’s less than the population of the USA. Obviously to achieve that goal, we’re going to have to get governments a lot more involved in healthcare.
+a few billion more Charlie Gards
You jest, but I have this argument with my wife all the time. She believes generally speaking that natural rights do not exist, and rights are simply privileges which a consensus of people grant each other. So, you have a right to free speech, for instance, until most people decide you don’t.
I couldn’t disagree more, but she makes the point in a relatively pragmatic, reasonably considered fashion that I don’t find infuriating.
You say this in jest but I believe it is a lot closer to reality than any of us want to admit. we like to wax poetic about natural rights but when the rubber meets the road your rights are only those that you can defend or convince someone else to defend on your behalf. Look at the right of self defense. Every living creature on earth has the right to self defense. It is built into the bodies of nearly all of them. Yet off the top of my head I can name several supposedly first world nations that outright criminalize self defense. I am not just talking gun ownership either. Fighting back against an assailant is a crime. If the most simple and basic natural right, the right to defend one’s life, can be removed, what hope is there for the less obvious ones?
Agreed. It is an is/ought problem. We have natural rights to our own body, thoughts and property. Governments are attempts to protect those rights. But any government strong enough to protect you rights is strong enough to take them away.
I think that our rights here in the US began dying with the creation of the war on drugs. Self ownership is now a hazy subject. If you want an abortion, you apparently own your own body. Want to do some cocaine or ectasy? Then you’ve given up owning yourself. And as the government gets more involved in healthcare, we will own ourselves even less, if at all. It’s strange that anyone would consider the government owning and rationing healthcare as a right. Not only is it not a right, it’s a further erosion of rights. Stupid people get what they deserve, the problem being that the rest of us get it as well.
I think our concept of rights began dying earlier, at least with the Depression. At that point, that’s when the thought that the government needs to provide and protect for people (at the expense of others,) really became mainstream. I feel like the Drug War was just a product of that.
I’d say reconstruction. As soon as the Union made approval of Constitutional amendments a term for readmission, it was only a matter of time.
World War I was also an important watershed with an assault on free speech. I think this was particularly onerous b/c it was one of the earliest times that a large majority of Americans concurred in denying rights to their fellow citizens.
Of course, if you want to go further back, the Alien & Sedition Acts also had significant support.
Yeah, good point.
FDR
I think that our rights here in the US began dying with the creation of the war on drugs.
The war against rights started with suffrage.
100% this. As soon as everyone was allowed to vote, we were doomed.
Women and minorities hardest hit.
Citizen, absorb the assault with good humor, then report the crime at your local police precinct! Let the system work! What if you try to defend yourself and you accidentally kill the assailant??
The right (theoretically) still exists, it’s just that you’ll be punished for exercising it.
The problem is immoral laws that keep getting passed, and then the selective enforcement of the laws that exist. I’d say between the drug war, anti-sodomy laws, “free speech” codes, and other sundry blue laws we’re reaching a very low point as a nation in believing that the rule of law exists anymore. We’re not at whiskey rebellion levels yet, but I don’t see a change for the better coming.
I am free no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; If I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do. — Bernardo de la Paz
I wouldn’t say it’s true at all that what the government says is a right. The way things are is different then the way things should be, or the way things people think they should be. Two different concepts. It’s like saying murder must be okay since murder happens.
That’s why when someone says rights are what the government gives us it’s not even a statement that makes sense. It’s circulate reasoning. The way things ought to be, is the way things are. And if the way things are changes, then that’s how they ought to be.
Exactly. That a right can be infringed doesn’t mean it’s no longer a right any more than the fact that laws can be broken makes them stop being laws.
Yes, but that’s incomplete. Rights are what government gives me and what I want government to give me that it’s not yet because conservatives want people to die.
As humans ar individuals, human rights need apply to the individual and must not require the presence of another. As such healthcare cannot be a right.
In my point of view any concept needs to be as universal and objective as possible to have worth otherwise it changes based on whim. As such rights cannot depend on person or circumstance. If you are stuck in a blizzard and have a stroke with no doctor around no right is broken. Were healthcare a right this would not apply.
How is a right universal when nature doesn’t respect it? What worth does the supposedly universal right to life have when a bear is ripping you limb from limb?
See my point above. You don’t have a natural right to life. You have a natural right to defend your life.
Isn’t that just as worthless in a universal context? As I discussed in the article, rights only matter when the parties are co-equal. When you are attacked by a superior force (a grizzly, for example, is a superior physical force), your abstract right to self defense does nothing to help your situation. The bear is still going to kill you. Either rights are universal and toothless, or they’re aspirational and situational.
And again a animal is not human so the question of rights does not arize. Righth are only bout other humans. Not lions and tigers.and bears oh my, no starvation, no cancer no lightning strikes. A bear.cannot infringr.your rights.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/animalia/wp/2016/09/13/animal-abusers-are-being-registered-like-sex-offenders-in-these-jurisdictions/
You defending yourself from the bear is not where natural rights kick in, I would think natural rights are in play is when the laws of the nation you are from try to interfere with your natural right to life.
That’s a perfect example of a natural right. You have the right to defend yourself from the bear because every living thing has the right to defend its own life. And this is something we can arrive at by considering a situation where you would believe something lacked that right. Even in the case of a condemned criminal on death row or someone killed in self-defense, you would never make the argument that the person didn’t have a right to try to defend themselves, you’re simply arguing that, in the first case, the defender is exercising his/her own similar right, or in the second that the state has a positive right to kill them.
So you have a right to preserve your own life, but you don’t have a right to have your life preserved for you. It’s a classic example of negative rights vs. positive rights. Success of your efforts to defend yourself against the bear would if it were a right have to be a positive right, obligating an external party’s abdication of their own rights.
Nature has nothing to do with ot. Natural.rights are about human nature not bear nature (sorry jesse). As such the whole talk of rights is in relation to other humans. Gravity is not infringing on you right when you fall off the clift
Nature is about what is laws of.physics and such morality is about how human should behave to other humans
That’s my point. Rights are a relational thing. If I flew to the moon by myself, my rights don’t come with me. Rights are meaningless in a vacuum (literally and figuratively)
What i am saying rights totally come with you. If you go alone.on the moon there is literally no one to infringe rights
My thought experiment took me the other direction, that rights don’t exist until there is a relationship. Why does that matter? Because if rights are based on a specific authority relationship, it takes care of why parents can do certain things governments can’t, and why government can’t rightfully do certain things that God can.
You lost me at the God part
rights don’t exist until there is a relationship
I don’t agree. The morality of the relationship would still exist even if the relationship didn’t exist.
I’m speaking of a theoretical relationship, not an actual relationship. Theoretically, children have different rights with respect to parents than with respect to complete strangers or the government.
What do you mean nature doesn’t respect it? Nature has no consciousness. Discussing what nature ought to do doesn’t make much sense to me.
The point is to define the scope of rights. Some treat natural rights as if they are laws of physics, when they’re not. If “natural” rights aren’t respected by nature, then in what sense are they natural?
Natural in the case of rights mean they exist unless someone restricts you. Natural rights are negative rights. Free speech means you can say what you want, in order for free speech to be restricted it requires an outside actor to restrict it. If you were the one person on earth no restriction would be possible. At the same time no conflict exists with a billion people on earth all having free speech. Free speech doesn’t require anyone to give you anything.
So it could be said that the natural state of humans exists with no natural barrier to speech.
Right to healthcare requires someone to give you something. Therefore someone’s natural state would have to be subservient to your need. So someone would have to be naturally inferior and superior by their existence. Positive rights create a contradiction.
Rights are moral statements so defining their truth is not easy, however most people will agree that humans own themselves. Once that is axiom is agreed you get property rights and all the other negative rights, but no positive rights without violating that axiom.
Rights are statements about what’s morally correct. If I say murder is wrong it doesn’t mean murder is impossible, and the fact that murder is possible does not prove murder is right or wrong as a moral concept. Then you get into whether moral concepts can exist as true. That takes awhile so I’ll stop there.
You win the internet for today.
A lot of people, including those commenting here, do not understand negative rights.
If someone is obligated to act for you to have your “right”, it’s not one.
This doesn’t always have a happy outcome, but the moment you cede a single negative right because it happens to be to your advantage, you’ve lost them all.
Al that being said the fact that I banged fewer models then DiCaprio is a direct infringment of my rights and i demand some government or other to redistribute the wealth, and by wealth I mean Kendall Jenner to me
I hate phone typing.on the subway. Crowded and no spell check.
Caitlyn may be available.
/The pursuit of happiness is no guarantee of the attainment
Gross. Way to aim for the middle.
Well being on my phone i could not spell emily ratawhatever
Straff, I’m obviously desperate for your approval.
http://imgur.com/a/vl3GO
Very interested in you continuing this. I’m going to have to re-read this high.
Thanks!
That’s not even a photoshop, is it? Just a pic?
YESSS!
Very interested in you continuing this. I’m going to have to re-read this high.
Thanks!
I see a disturbing trend emerging. Everyone starts getting top hats and then some people start getting top hats that are not only plain black top hats, but they get these designer top hats, in different colors, sometimes with stars and stuff. Obviously, this is causing inequality and we need a top hat czar to make all top hats equal again.
+1 star-bellied Sneetches.
I AM AN INDIVIDUAL WITHIN A COMMUNITY OF TOP HATS. FUCK OFF SLAVER! (did I say this right?)
But what about the people without top hats?
No one should be allowed to have a top hat until we all do.
Vote for us, the new better deal! A top hat in every garage and a chicken in every top hat!
Your indirect request has been noted. I have some actual work to do but check back here.
Speaking of top hats, if you have time I humbly request a beholder avatar with a top hat. And maybe a monocle or ten.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQO_62Bsm2PbqYJoyZDTS3GPW_NLXc6FCPZPEp2eXIY51pl0GwDKA
Done
http://imgur.com/a/RnJT6
*Sniff* It’s…it’s beautiful
Are you some kind of photoshop genius?
I don’t want a top hat, but can you make me more attractive?
Give me a larger image and I’ll apply my algorithms
I don’t want a top hat, but can you make me more attractive?
Not possible.
Not enough computing power yet?
I’ll try again in 18 months.
I should have put a disclaimer, if you see this, don’t feel compelled to make one for me.
Too late.
http://imgur.com/a/xjtlw
Alright, thats actually pretty good. I like the idea of crusading against the Cosmotarian heretics and SJW infidels.
If you’re going for an insignia rather than a true tophat, shouldn’t it be a porcupine humping a pile of money?
Seriously though, not Straf but I think it’s awesome. I laughed for 30 seconds straight when I saw it.
I think a tophat on the helmet, preferably at a jaunty angle, would be just the thing.
What about those of us who don’t want top hats? I’d have to take it off to get in my car, which would be a hassle.
What happens when you get an emergency invite to a top hat party, and then want to freeload on the rest of us upstanding citizens? No. You don’t have to use it, but we are mandating top hats for all, with a small tax on ‘Cadillac’ hats to subsidize top hats for those with larger than normal heads.
I was walking in the woods one day and came across a little shack. As I approached the shack, a tall slender man opened the door. He stood there stark naked except for a fine top hat. I said, “You have no clothes on”. He replied, “I don’t need them, no one ever comes out here”. So I asked, “Then why wear the top hat?”. “Just in case”, he replied.
“What am I, a hobo?” he replied.
Bah… next you’ll want to have universal fedora coverage. I’ll wear my flat cap and be done with it.
“But what about the people without top hats?”
You can dance if you want to, you can leave your friends behind.
Top hat arms race! What a time to be alive!
Sez the guy in a trucker hat.
That, sir, is a fitted cap from my favorite outdoor range. Just because you don’t have thumbs doesn’t mean I won’t challenge you to pistols at dawn, sir!
In re: life
Nature giveth, and nature taketh away.
You have a right to life your natural life, free from mankind trying to take it away.
Sort of on topic, what are most Glibs’ opinion on Homeowners Associations? Do you think they’re too powerful, or that they’re alright because they’re private organizations?
I fired a realtor for showing me a house in a HOA. Whether or not they’re voluntary, they contribute to the meddling mindset that makes everything you do the community’s business.
That’s where I tend to stand. I hate them in practice, because of the fact that they like to control what you can and can’t put on your property, but I do understand they’re voluntary.
I think they’re a consequence of the cookie cutter subdivision zeitgeist that has been around since the 90s. When your house is one of 15 of the same model for sale within 3 miles, really small things like the neighbor’s paint and fence height has a huge impact on how much you can get for your house.
I’ll never live in a neighborhood that has one. And they seem to be every fucking where now. So if I ever choose to buy another home, this pretty much limits my choice to isolated single family homes. Homeowners associations are like a congregation of every little Hitler wannabe in your neighborhood. A little tribe of sociopaths competing to tell you what to do with your own property.
Based upon your comment from the other week, you live in one right now.
Not sure what comment that was, but there’s no home owners association here.
You had some construction crew lock you out of your deck.
Any condo building is going to have CC&Rs.
Oh, yeah, well that was the property manager, I’m renting here. There is no HOA.
^this.
Though the area I live in is older, and has been shrinking for the past ~50 years, so we don’t have a lot of new build (and thus fewer HOAs).
From a libertarian perspective, there isn’t anything wrong with them. I can put any precondition on selling you something that I want, as long as you agree to it, just another form of contract.
My FIL runs a roofing company. He does everything he can to avoid working with an HOA.
Probably because he’s honest.
I just got a new roof 2 months ago.
It was crooked as hell. I think the roofing contract for my area was just over $7 million. It certainly didn’t look like even $1 million worth of work.
He’s literally as honest as the day is long.
But he avoids HOAs because everyone wants to weigh in on the project and because it’s not uncommon for a member of the HOA to sue a contractor if the HOA member doesn’t like anything. He was involved in one project and someone overheard an HOA board member say something along the lines of, “it’s not really the roofing company’s fault but they have the most insurance.”
They’re voluntary.
I live in one. I don’t like it, but I also don’t like mowing my own lawn or maintaining my own pool.
I imagine that most people here absolutely hate HOAs and would avoid them at any cost.
OK, I take that back. Not ALL HOAs are voluntary.
We have something here called Mello-Roos Community Facilities Districts. They can essentially vote an HOA into existence after you’ve purchased the property.
Mello-Roos is primarily used to build infrastructure through a special district tax levy. Isn’t that a little different from a Home Owner’s Association that defines the decor of the outside of your hose and what cars can and cannot be parked on the street?
*house
In Orange County, they are used for things that would normally be under the purview of an HOA, and I’m not talking about master-planned cities like Irvine.
If 2/3rds of your neighbors want a pool, you’re paying for a pool.
I guess you wouldn’t call that an HOA anymore, but it’s still the same function, but public instead of private.
I feel like this is a microcosm of why the conservative hard-on for local government is terribly misguided.
“I don’t want those assholes in DC to run my life, I want my shitty neighbors to!”
So it’s just local govt overreach, not a HOA?
How much are HOAs supported by government laws and policies? I understand that they’re voluntary in theory, but if in practice the law basically sets them up everywhere and the voluntary part is “choose which one will be your master” it starts to break down a bit.
The laws here are actually quite reasonable. Some laws protect the HOA from free riders (i.e. the lien), and some laws protect the owner’s property from the HOA.
The CC&Rs, which are attached to the deed of the property, are very specific and spell out what the HOA can and cannot do, and they are very hard to change once the ink is dry at the county recorder’s office.
For example:
The streets here are private. We have a guard at a gate who keeps out people who don’t live here. That’s paid for by my association dues.
If I don’t pay my dues and my account goes to collections, they can’t exclude me from my property.
Even though the street is private, they are not legally allowed to prevent me from driving on the street to get to my property, no matter how much I owe. And that’s State Law.
Well… It’s not like anyone has to join them, right? I guess I consider it a private organization, so they can make their own bologna-rules about how their bologna-neighborhood must be.
Of course, I’d never join one, but it’s not like they’re strong-arming anyone.
If you buy a house in that neighborhood then you have to join it. I would love to opt out and throw my pool key through their window, preferably tied to a brick.
Well. No one is making you buy that house in that neighborhood. There’s lots of other houses and neighborhoods.
I argue that an HOA is like a Unionized work environment. Don’t want to be part of it? Seek home ownership/employment elsewhere.
The difficulty comes when areas are nearly 100% new build and all HOA, you don’t really have much of a choice.
You still have one last choice: don’t buy. I get what you’re saying, but it still comes down to the fact that 99.9999% of HOAs are voluntary.* It sucks that some areas are so rife, but buying a home is not mandatory. I get that sometimes the choices we have suck, but no one is owed a life of easy choices, either.
*Excepting the example Playa mentions above
They’re every damn where. The last time I considered buying another home, I couldn’t find anything outside of isolated single family homes that did not have one. People have all turned into dumb sheep.
Developers are pretty much forced into creating them as a condition of getting the permits.
This pretty much describes my ideal house.
I live in a city, in a small house, cheek-to-jowl with my neighbors, but it’s too old to have an HOA. Instead, we have Mrs. Simms, a nosy, elderly black woman whose disapproval I fear more than nearly anything else. Also, we’re not really in a neighborhood where people are running around measuring lawn height. Not decrepit or ghetto or whatever, just most people here aren’t that uptight.
When we move, which will be in the next few years, I’m looking for suburban to rural, no HOA, and preferably enough space that I can shoot guns in my back yard without a police response. Or, really, enough space that it no longer makes sense to refer to “back” or “front” yards.
I have one and it is one of the biggest mistakes of my life. I pay someone to make my life harder. Oh and I have access to a pool constantly filled with screaming children. Yay.
We dont really have those for houses, just appartment buildings
I am glad to be done with mine. But they aren’t necessarily bad, just that they attract the kind of people who ran for student government and lost.
On the one hand: Personally, I despise them. My last house in Louisville wan’t in one and it was awesome. My current one is fine…for now.
On the other hand: Its a voluntary contractual situation, so I am fine with that in general.
On the gripping hand: I would limit deed restrictions, including those related to HOAs to 25 years max. There are a number of reasons for this, but the fact that ownership should mean ownership is one of them. There are other reasons too, but that is a longer post. Maybe an article size one (hint hint – but I am at least 3 behind in promised articles).
I live in a rural development with a HOA. It owns the well system and pays for the insurance on the common grounds. That’s about it. The covenant is remarkably light weight. It requires 2/3 vote to change the rules, but the changes don’t take effect until the covenant expires and gets renewed. With a 3/4 vote, the changes can take place in three years. The original covenant expires in 6 or 7 years, so I expect the families in the neighborhood could band together to fuck things up for my eventual retirement. But they are mostly rational people so far.
The fact that it expires is important.
My sister, for example, has a deed restriction that limits her lot size to at least 2 acres. I think they are over 4, so they could split it, in theory, but not into a dozen 1/3 acre chunks. And I don’t think it expires. IMO, the original owner still owns a use of the land and should be paying property tax on that usage.
Or, you know, sunset the provision at a reasonable time.
I live in a HOA. I read the rules before buying into the neighborhood and felt like I could live with them. I’m 5 years in and have zero complaints. In fact, I find it to be a useful organization that doesn’t meddle too much unless asked. They are moderately proactive about owners keeping up building appearances, but not obnoxiously so. They cover maintenance issues and community upkeep for a very reasonable monthly fee. They also can help “mediate” if you have some neighbors infringing upon your property rights. Yeah, I’m looking at you – mr. guy who never cleans up his dog’s shit…
I’m appreciative of their ability to help maintain my property value, should neighbors decide they would rather try to drag the neighborhood standards down. I can certainly understand some HOAs could be abusive and undesirable, but that hasn’t been my (limited) experience. YMMV.
Hy HOA was created in 1957. The bylaws consist of two pages total and do not include what I can do with my property. It’s just about the common areas; lake, pool, etc…
Not too bad.
I handled the dog shit problem myself.
The resolution was much more to my satisfaction.
They aren’t unlibertarian, because they are private.
If they are too powerful, its because of either the contract creating them, or the failure of the homeowners to keep them on a short leash, or both.
I think the problems mostly have to do with scale. Very small ones (like mine – 14ish members) are no problem. At some point (I dunno – 50?) they get impersonal and thus unaccountable by civil/social means.
This is probably just gonna be a stream of consciousness, but it is what it is.
Personally, I view Rights as self-sovereignty. If you can do something alone on a deserted island, it is a “Right.” You can speak freely, work as you please, and so on without anyone else. The moment the property of others (including their bodies) starts being affected it is no longer a right. Because of this, anything which requires control of other people’s resources or actions, including their labor, to provide it is not a right (e.g. healthcare, mandatory accommodation, “free” abortions). “Provide” is the key term; abstaining from murder or theft, for example, is not providing anything, and abstaining from providing is obviously not providing either. By contrast, something like universal healthcare requires labor from doctors and resources from medicine, and mandating both be provided infringes on the self-sovereignty of someone else’s actions and/or propterty.
Admittedly there are some odd cases. Self-Defense for example is when someone else tries to infringe on that which you own, either your life or your property, and you contest that infringement woth a gun. An aggressor is trying to infringe on your self-sovereignty, and in doing so waved their own right to their personal well being. Children are a trickier case for me, because kids are stupid and need their parents to direct them and provide while growing up. I admit for kids I usually go for the Clarence Thomas copout of limiting the rights of children because, again, kids are stupid.
Children are a whole different ball game. Well, dependents in general.
I find this an interesting stance. It would imply that stupid people generally don’t have rights (or rather have limited rights). I don’t necessarily disagree, although it also could apply to the mentally ill, which I am less comfortable with.
The “kids are stupid” comment was more of jest, and I agree I am extremely uncomfortable with a definition of rights that would justify things like Buck vs Bell. I think it’s more about children being dependents, and as dependents they must wave some rights to the person providing for them. In the same way, someone taking care of a dementia patient would absolutely be able to limit that patient’s choices because the dementia patient is completely dependent on the caretaker. They have essentially given up some self sovereignty and some of the benefits of it.
By contrast, people who are just stupid but can care for themselves still have self sovereignty that cannot be infringed.
I understood the ‘stupid’ in that context to mean the severely mentally retarded*, that, similar to children and those with serious mentally illnesses are a danger to themselves and incapable of living without other’s support. The part about the mentally ill that makes me uncomfortable is that someone has to define it- and that means someone’s rights can be taken away by defining them as something. I realize this sin;t much different than arbitrary age limits for adulthood, or defining a species or deciding who really is too stupid to care for themselves, but I guess it hits closer to home because I am more likely to go crazy than commit a serious crime or start reverse aging. I also think people who are depressed have a right to take their own lives, but that doesn’t square with treating it as a mental illness.
*I mean only those that really cannot fend for themselves
Agreed. “Stupid” was absolutely the wrong word to use. I was being flippant and imprecise, and for that I apologize. I think instead the better word is dependence. The threshold for stupid is, as you said, very subjective. Dependency, true dependency on another for your well being, is much more solid and objective. And by dependency I do NOT mean “You didn’t build that, someone else made that happen.” I mean reliant on the voluntary provision of individuals without compensation foe continued provision for any of the basic necessities (food, shelter, water, air, warmth). So someone in a nursing home is not dependent on the nurses, they are dependent on the people paying the nurses. As a dependent, you are waving some of ypur self-sovereignty to the people you are dependent on, which in turn gives them the right to dictate some of your actions until tou are no longer dependent on them.
No need to apologize, I was following in your footsteps, for as long as it was convenient. Seems convenience is only that in the short term. 🙂
Children don’t waive rights. They have them held in trust by a person who (supposedly) has their best interest in mind, and will manage their rights in much the same way that a monetary trust works. My problem with Thomas’s work is that it assumes that any agent acting in loco parentis has access to the full trust of that child’s rights, rather than a specific subset necessary to guard their life and safety. It would be like the nanny being able to draw against the monetary trust without limit versus the nanny having limited access to a petty cash fund and being required to present receipts for expenditures.
If my child is not in immediate physical danger, you’re gonna need special permission from me, the guarantor of his rights trust, to strip search him. That ain’t petty cash.
Similarly, all persons who are mentally incapacitated enough that they may not be able to safely exercise their rights (or manage their affairs) often get represented by a guardian ad litem, who acts as a court oppointed guarantor of the incapacitated person’s interest.
I agree, though I think I am phrasing things poorly. I am defining rights as self-sovereignty; people own themselves and their property. If someone is a dependent, that is requires voluntary donations of someone else’s property without compensation of that person for their continued survival, whoever is giving them their property can dictate some of their actions. This does not give the parent/guardian free reign of the dependent’s rights; They cannot kill them, rape them, sell them into slavery, etc. They can only dictate actions so far as necessary to safeguard the dependent and provide for the dependent. So the government has no right to force children to go to school, but a parent has the right to send his or her own child to school.
The moment the property of others (including their bodies) starts being affected it is no longer a right.
That means there are few to no rights in a society, because damn near everything you do affects (for some value of affects) the property of others. See the noisy neighbor example above. This is a little too “communitarian” for me.
This is square on the topic for my next writeup. My next article’s premise is: Assuming my authority based definition of rights, what rights do we have, and how far do they extend. I’m not sure how to write this yet, because I perceive the question wading pretty deep into the absolutism v. relativism debate, which is a whole different can of worms.
I had this conversation with a Left-wing friend of mine about rights and the continued inclusion of imagined rights. Warning: in this portion I was defending the right of Christian bakers to not be forced to bake a cake for a gay wedding, which basically makes me a horrible person. I’m sorry, Gary Johnson.
“You cannot make-up rights. You have no right to purchase a cake from the baker of your choosing, nor do you have a right to purchase contraceptives from the pharmacist of your choosing. These are not innate rights. The ability to buy a cake or contraceptives do not define a human. Rights are derived from the innate characteristics of a human being. A human can be defined by his ability to speak, to have a conscience, to defend himself, etc. These characteristics form the basis of ‘rights’. They are granted to them at birth.
For example, a dog can be defined by his ability to bark, his ability to wag his tail, and his ability to walk on all fours. He is not defined by his ability to eat one dog food brand over another.”
IMHO, one of the defining attributes of rights is universal applicability. Free speech applies even to people we don’t like. Forcing to bake a cake though, they admit they would not force jewish bakers to bake a neo-nazi wedding cake, or gay bakers to bake a Christian wedding cake. Giving them a protected status in essence says they have more rights than others do.
True, but the Left would argue that class status should apply to immutable conditions. A Nazi can stop being a Nazi and a Christian can stop being a Christian, but gays can’t stop being gay.
It’s bunk obviously, but this is their understanding, so they concoct ‘rights’ to subvert natural rights.
The problem is there is no consistency in their belief in this. Many have genuine mental problems that causes them to feel attraction to prepubescent children. They can’t control thw attraction (though they can and absolutely should control their actions.) Should people be allowed to deny them service. How about women denying a service to men. Should theatres be allowed to show a woman’s only screening of Wonder Woman? Black only showing of Black Panther?
Alternatively, ask them to apply it to protected beliefs. Should a Jewish baker be able to deny service to a white Muslim (so no racism copout)? What about a Bernie Bro denying service to Republicans or trump voters?
I approach the gay baker question and other similar questions from the POV that owning yourself means you must own your labor.
If your labor is not yours then it means someone else owns it.
If someone else has more say over your labor than you than someone else must be your superior. What you do, at least in some portion is owed to them so they are the master and you are the slave.
So of course slavery is an acceptable concept.
Obviously that uses logic and progs don’t like logic so rather than a rebuttal you get handwaviness.
Ask Roscoe Filburn about rights. He’ll show you where they are. right down the toilet.
Which is utterly disgusting because a few years later FDR proclaims in his “second bill of rights” speak that it should be a right for “every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living”.
But they will claim that to maintain that right of “…return which will give him and his family a decent living” they (government board) must dictate how each member of the community should manage their own property.
now I’m all worked up,
“it should be a right for “every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living”.
And we can totally change the laws of economics to make that work. Well, I mean we could have except for the kulaks and wreckers.
That concept of positive rights is annoying because it’s so shallow and ignores that people have thought about these questions for thousands of years. At least if you are going to posit a concept of rights that includes positive rights you need a rebuttal to the contradictions people have pointed out in that area.
Rights have been created as a concept through reasoning and logic so they are no provable through some scientific experiment, but they also aren’t just fucking made up. Negative rights may be wrong, but you would show them to be wrong through reasoning not just ignoring them.
One of the things that pisses me off is how little time schools spend on that concept. The entire philosophical moral structure underlying the bill of rights is just ignored. “Here’s the constitution, here’s the bill of rights, here’s what they say.” Why do they say that? Not important. So kids the up with this concept if the constitution as “just some guys opinion man!” instead of a deeper product of the human condition, as studied by many great thinkers, and informed by all of history.
I was walking to lunch near the Daley Plaza, and some halfwit who was protesting for Medicare for All, stopped me and asked if I believe that health care is a human right. I told him absolutely not. After the dude caught his breath, I explained that we shouldn’t be able to force doctors, nurses, or anyone in the medical profession to provide services against their will. The guy didn’t get it and said some mealy mouth shit about how the free market has ruined our health care system.
At that point I said have a nice day and walked away. But it did get me thinking. The Left and even the Right rarely have discussions about rights and the difference between positive and negative rights. That’s why they view rights as anything that benefits them, even if it requires the use of government violence.
With what our public education is turning out today, if the person is under 30, I totally understand why they would think that way. There’s a Youtube up where Tucker Carlson is interviewing a young lady who thinks that everyone should have free college and healthcare. When he asks her how that all gets paid for, after a few awkward moments of deer in the headlights, she suggests we tax the rich. The whole thing was that she didn’t have the least clue about economics, but was still convinced she’s right and that socialism is what we need. The public education system needs to burn to the ground.
“The public education system needs to burn to the ground.”
Can we wait ten years until I retire?
I’m not sure how you survive in that environment if you’re faculty.
Keep my head down and try to undermine the system from within.
Oh, sure, I’ll make sure to leave the pension system intact when I have my flamethrower out.
Fortunately, where I teach the retirement fund is the equivalent of a 401(k). So, no state pension.
You would love this Hyperion. In my Law and Economics class during college the professor asked what should we do about the high tuition and how could the college offer better services. The students wanted the school to cut tuition but also have the school to pay their loans payments until they got jobs….that could sufficiently pay the loans off. It gets better. The students also wanted the school to provide them all of these dazzling services.
Having enough, I raised my hand and asked, “How are we going to pay for all of this stuff but yet cut tuition?” One or two got it but the rest of the class were deer caught in the headlights.
And this was an Economics 300 level class.
Enlightened voters
One guy suggested that the College of Commerce students pay more in tuition than the Liberal Arts students because we will be the ones who find jobs the fastest.
Kick that dude right in the nuts.
How about they pay more because they’re a drain on the system?
I responded that no one forced any of the students to major in basket weaving.
From each according….
There is a reason that engineering students are usually paid to go to grad school.
When I was in college, the entitlement thing had just barely started to creep in. But it was far in the minority and most of my classmates still thought the road to success was through hard work and self reliance. It’s a damn shame what the left has done to our education system.
There’s a reason that they don’t have this conversation.
One side would lose. Badly.
They’re not planning on having a discussion for sure. They’re planning on cranking out enough brain dead zombies to give them complete power. They’re doing a fine job.
I think a lot of people have assumptions about the world and the nature of things without really thinking about or questioning them. For example, how many people view the state as a monopoly of force even though that’s been the accepted definition for the last few centuries? They’ve just never thought about what exactly it is, assuming that “we’re a democracy, so government is what we decude to do together.”
how the free market has ruined our health care system
By its non-existence? We haven’t had a free market in healthcare since the 1960s at the latest.
It’s almost like something happened right around 1965.
The Left and even the Right rarely have discussions about rights and the difference between positive and negative rights.
I think the modern formulation of “positive rights” is really “privileges” – stuff you can force other people to do for you. IOW, its another fucking euphemism *spit*.
Rights are those freedoms you have the power to obtain and keep. Power would include convincing everyone else your concept of rights or a right is legitimate (or enough people or the power structure to ensure you get what you want). Without power it doesn’t matter what you think.
Under your definition, there’s no such thing as an infringement of rights. If you can’t get people to play along, you simply don’t have enough power to make your preference into a right.
Correct
Most major belief systems have some concept of the golden rule so that appears to be something universally accepted in Theory if not in practice. Of course historically people difference between “rights” of the tribe vs everyone else. It’s still a moral construct though.
If you can’t get people to play along, you simply don’t have enough power to make your preference into a right.
Then, do you believe all morality is just a matter of force?
Shit, I just lost a long post. One more try. I am saying that morality was created by humans to help create a social structure within the family/tribe. The Golden Rule is a logical conclusion to deal with human proximity conflict. Other animals have their own methods to acheive group cohesion. Without the power to enforce the moral laws though they are meaningless. They are natural only to the extent self-survival is natural. Nature doesn’t care whether there is conflict or not. We care because conflict creates risks even for the strongest.
To use an early example, your neighbor has a right to blare his music at 3 in the morning if no one stops him.
“Right” is just a word that we created to describe an idea. I take no issue with the debate over positive and negative rights. The term “Natural Rights” to me however is somewhat of a misnomer. That doesn’t make them not worth fighting for.
JB, I think you are conflating “power” with “rights”. As in, your neighbor has the “right” to kill you if no one stops him. Under this formulation, there is no such thing as a violation of rights, only a contest of power.
This is very much what the critical legal theorists pushed (and are still pushing, I am sure). It is rooted in neo-Marxism and ultimately a denial of agency. Pass.
I don’t see it as a denial of agency. We have laws. If you don’t play by the laws, you may be held accountable. Sometimes we knowingly choose not to like when I smoke a joint. I do so with agency intact.
I’d argue he has a right to blare his music so long as it doesn’t bother anybody.
Well, yes and no.
Silence is not consent.
I’d argue he has a right to
blare his musicvoice his opinions so long as it doesn’tbotheroffend anybody.Is there a difference?
Yes. In the former, we were talking about property rights.
And to clarify, I have a right to the quiet enjoyment of my property. So do you.
If I don’t object quickly enough or loudly enough to your music coming over my property line, that doesn’t create a right for you to blare music onto my property.
Yes. In the former, we were talking about property rights.
So, I can prevent my neighbor from voicing his opinions if I can hear them on my property and find them offensive?
It raises an interesting question, though – I think we would all agree that silencing someone in, say, a public forum because their opinion are offensive is wrong. And that we can silence (or evict) someone voicing offensive opinions if they are on my property; no question that being the property owner gives you rights on your property.
Its when your rights on your property extend to limiting someone else’s rights on their property that things get interesting. Even the example of quiet enjoyment raises the issue of reasonableness – do you have the right to enforce absolute silence on your neighbors, because any sound that passes onto your property is offensive to you?
“Reasonableness” is generally code for “balancing”, so we are back to rights being contingent and their scope determined, not by the individual who wants to do something, but by community/society/the state.
If I don’t object quickly enough or loudly enough to your music coming over my property line, that doesn’t create a right for you to blare music onto my property.
So if you have played loud music on your property for generations, and I move in next door, I can shut you down? What if you have raised pigs on your property for generations and I find the smell offensive and incompatible with my “quiet enjoyment” (which doesn’t refer solely to noise, BTW). Can I shut you down the day after I move in?
That sounds like another question of reasonableness.
If the property smells like pig shit, that’s going to be reflected in the sale price. The property comes with a pig shit smell.
Okay. Then, I simply don’t think you and I will ever reach an agreement. I believe right and wrong are things that exist independent of our recognition of them.
I do have just one question though – how can you be a libertarian if you don’t think morality exists independent of the will of the pack?
Because I believe in libertarian values. Don’t conflate power only with force. If everyone agrees in non-aggression and voluntary contracts then no actual force is required. A powerful idea can provide the necessary “power” in and of itself. I didn’t years studying theology, philosophy, and ethics. I find no “natural” source of morality. That said, I was raised with western Christian and try and live my life by the golden rule. I belive everyone should. I didn’t howeved inherit a golden rule gene nor was it imprinted in my brain upon birth.
I spent year years studying.
Damn autocorrect
At the end of the day, like are ancestors who came up with the golden rule, we have to come up with our own rules to structure society. I believe history has shown that capitalism and liberty works best for everyone (that would obviously include me) . That has nothing to do with morality.
That really doesn’t make sense. If rights are “freedoms you have the power to maintain and keep” then rights do not exist outside of things you have.
If I don’t have the power to maintain free speech then by your definition free speech is not my right. But I wouldn’t even be able to imagine a concept of free speech to fight for if the concept didn’t exist already external of my physical reality. So if the concept can exist separate from whether I can enforce it then the concept and the ability to enforce it are not the same.
You also have the whole thing where if I can enforce slavery I have a right to do it. Which again, means that’s perfectly fine as a moral statement. The way things are and the way things ought to be are different concepts. Rights are statements about the way things ought to be. Saying the way things ought to be must be the way things are is circular and just misunderstanding what the concept of rights is. Unless you are a moral nihilist, which you can’t be if you imaging anything would or could be better a different way than it is now. It’s not compatible with libertarianism or any belief system at all.
“Better” for society is a moral statement. It is not objectively better to be a slave or master, it is a moral value. If you thing creating happiness is better than misery than that’s a moral value. There’s no reason why society can’t live in prisons, or why people in society should live at all without moral values.
There’s no reason for you to favor capitalism or liberty without morality. Without morality capitalism and liberty are not “good” or “bad” they are meaningless. The difference between capitalism and socialism without morality is equivalent to the difference between red and blue.
Yes Bob, your correct. That is my morality and I misspoke. However, what I am saying and have been trying to say is that morality had no basis other than human “preference”. What I’m trying to get to is that these “rights” and this “morality” are not supplied to us by nature. There is no “Natural” Law, and there is no such thing as “Natural” rights. There is no “Natural” source nor can anyone prove that there is.
There’s a difference between saying there are no moral truths, and it’s not possible to prove the moral truths scientifically.
That’s an interesting concept which I won’t tackle here. But I’ll say this, it’s like saying the world is a simulation, or free will does not exist. Neither of those things are provable (true or false), but everyone acts, and must act as though we do have free will, and morals do exist.
So I get that deeper philosophical point and I’m not going to waste a lot of time trying to rebut it.
“everyone acts, and must act as though we do have free will, and morals do exist.”
I don’t dispute either of those things. I only dispute the origin of morality which must come from man.
Wdalasio. Where did your morality originate?
Rights are rights, regardless of wether they’ve been violated.
The existence of rights and enforcing them are 2 different matters.
I disagree. Power is a method to defend rights, but rights themselves not stem from power. Power can determine what is legal or not, what you can and will punish or not, but it does not determine right and wrong, rights or infringements. If so, President Bernie just has to pass a law to make healtchare truly a right (until he runs out of other people’s money of course)
OT for soccer fans.
What do you think is the biggest problem facing Arsenal FC? A manager who does not have the support of most of the fans? Inability to get going in the transfer window? No Premier League title in 13 years? Not progressing past the Champions League Round of 16 for 8 years?
Of course not! The biggest problem is that the team’s American owner is starting his own on-line hunting channel:
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-40773618
I thought the problem with Arsenal was that they always try to walk it in.
I would attribute it more to a delinquent ability to execute a convincing theatrical fall.
the Brits protesting African trophy hunting is fucking rich. thanks for opening the dark continent to Great White Hunters, btw.
and conservation works. even the WWF thinks so.
Hating on Americans is somehow not xenophobia.
Not progressing past the Champions League Round of 16 for 8 years?
Well, Arsene Wenger said it was the referee’s fault last season.
I think a lot of the confusion around rights stems from the failure to look at rights as what they fundamentally are – a moral concept delimiting the acceptable bounds of human interaction. What you think of rights is, accordingly, going to stem from what you think of morality. As someone who doesn’t buy into the concept of morality as socially determined, the notion that the government can grant or take away your rights is absurd. It can violate your rights or refuse to recognize them, but that doesn’t create or destroy them any more than the acceptance of slavery made it moral. So-called “positive rights” are a perversion of the term because, rather than limiting human interaction, it mandates interaction to the benefit of some and detriment of others.
Good grief Oscar, your friend’s head is full of a hodgepodge of gibberish. Pure scrambled shit. A good place to start is by making a distinction between positive and negative rights. Sorting out that guy’s bullshit would take weeks.
Negative rights impose a negative duty on other to interfere with your actions. They are founded on the principle of self-ownership. Enjoying negative rights requires an environment of civilized society.
Positive rights impose a positive duty on others to provide you with goods or services (infringements on other’s negative rights) so they are not rights at all. Positive rights are founded on the principle of might makes right. They basically follow the law of the jungle.
I’d like to see someone go to a college campus and start asking students passing by to explain what rights are. How many of them do you think would mention the first or second amendments?
I’d wager heavily that the top two answers would be some form of the following:
1. Umm, like, a woman has the right to her own body.
2. Umm, like, everyone has a right to healthcare.
On a college campus? I think the top answer would be: “Everyone has a right to education.” With the free part being implied by their (incorrect) understanding of a right.
I viewed him as more being devil’s advocate/playing the fool. Seemed he was trying to force Oscar to examine his premises.
Its a very common way for people who have some training in philosophy to engage on issues like this. Look at absurd examples, probe for unexamined assumptions and faulty definitions, etc. It can come off as really assholish if not done right. Err, so I’ve heard?
Its a very common way for people who have some training in philosophy to engage on issues like this.
It’s the Socratic method, for any who may be unfamiliar, so it has a long and storied pedigree as one of the fundamental means of philosophically debating an idea.
The last time I used it on someone, I was at a bar, and he threatened to kill me.
I almost followed too much of Socrates’ life.
Don’t take everything he says at face value. He uses superficially stupid statements to challenge assumptions. Pretty much nothing of what he actually believes is contained in his responses.
Yes
I’ve given up on talking about rights. In the rare cases when I talk to people about “rights”, I try to shift the discussion to “autonomy” and “compulsion”. And compulsion always comes in the form of violence or threatened violence.
Hm, this is an interesting strategy. Is that just because you find the terminology too poisoned for people to accept your arguments without talking about ‘positive rights’? Or do you have a philosophical difference with respect to the existence or definition of rights?
Yes, the word “rights” has become so overloaded it is not possible to talk about anything without arguing about basic definitions.
But it is easy to ask someone who can force them to do something they don’t want to.
Unfortunately, the word “rights” is one of the many corpses littering the battlefield of meaning as the neo-Marxian hordes continue their march through the institutions.
Along with the prominent example of ‘liberal’, and to a lesser extent the word ‘progress’.
Sometimes it feels like being on the losing side for the past few hundred years, though logically I know many more people are more free than they used to be, and many injustices have if not stopped, been improved the world over.
Now, “progress” means “one way vice grip”.
To aovid confusion, I’m guessing you’re Oscar, like your icon?
Yes, but don’t put too much weight on who says what. It’s very loosely based on a real conversation.
Did you want more Jill Filipovic? Of course not, but I’m going to give to you anyway because I obviously hate you all:
Jill Filipovic
@JillFilipovic
Not long ago it felt like feminism was on the upswing. How quickly the right and the left have pushed us aside as inconvenient and uncool.
12:25 PM – Jul 31, 2017
Needz moar pussy hats
Why do you hurt the ones you love?
“Fuckin’ pendulums, how do they work?”
-Insane Jill Posse
Crazy thought but… once you’ve achieved your goals (equality, civil rights), why do you need to keep the ideological torch alight? The perpetual existence of groups and schools of thought whose goals have ostensibly been achieved is dysfunctional.
I’m pretty sure (considering most left-wing commentators seem to have the attention span and memory of goldfish) she’s actually referring to, say, four years ago when the big dumb culture wars were going on (Gamergate and such) and people were desperately trying to kowtow to feminists lest they be accused of wrongthink rather than any ideal of equality or civil rights. It’s about power, and feminism has had significantly diminishing returns over the last year or two.
There are plenty of opportunities for feminists to make inroads into women’s rights in parts of the world where women are actually still oppressed.
Instead feminists have decided to lend legitimacy to these oppressive cultures in the name of crushing capitalism. Maybe that’s why they’re being dismissed?
Because they have power, infrastructure, an organization, and most of all, power. It’s one of the reasons that I respect Candy Lightner and Patrick Moore, both of them saw the organizations that they started accomplish their base goals, and then start expanding and reaching.
Ya’ know what Jill? When the feminist movement starts advocating complete insanity such as ‘math and science are tools of the patriarchy so we need to do away with them’ people tend to dismiss you as completely insane.
Don’t forget about feminist glaciers or whatever that nonsense was.
How quickly the right and the left have pushed us aside as inconvenient and uncool.
Not quickly (or far) enough.
ENB writes strange and short article at Reason:
When the new Hulu series The Handmaid’s Tale—based on the beloved 1985 Margaret Atwood novel of the same name—debuted in April 2017, it was quickly cast by the pop-media as a cautionary tale of great relevance to the Donald Trump era. The story centers on “handmaid” Offred (Elisabeth Moss), a baby-bearing slave in the new fascist and patriarchal Republic of Gilead.
In this society, women are forcibly cast as wives, housekeepers, or handmaids; homosexuality is outlawed; surveillance is standard; God is the justification; and once-powerful women like Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski) are now barred from intellectual and practically all public life. Thankfully, the series, created by Bruce Miller, avoids heavy-handed attempts at contemporary political allegory and lets the artfully shot, star-studded, chillingly dystopian story speak for itself.
If only the commentators were as restrained.
Whether it was Bruce Miller or the producers, whomever decided to distance the series as much as they could from both feminism and contemporary political culture make a brilliant marketing move that probably gives the show a sustainability it would have lacked if it went full prog. The marketing guys are probably shaking their heads in frustration every time they see some self-righteous feminist screed about how ‘the Handmaid’s Tale is like, totes happening right now’.
It is happening now. It is happening now all across the Middle East and parts of Asia and Africa.
As backwards as certain societies are, they don’t have concentration camps for blacks and use political dissidents to clean up nuclear waste. So no, not as bad. Atwood’s society is more cartoonish evil than anything in current reality.
Have you been to North Korea lately?
North Korea, for all its insanity, does not have a compulsory breeding/rape program, at least according to dissidents. If you haven’t read Atwood’s book you don’t really understand how mindnumbingly stupid the society she creates is.
The breeding/rape program is a direct result of lack of fertility in women, due to ecological issues. It’s not that far fetched, given those circumstances.
Is her imagined theocracy really more harsh than the one ushered in by the Taliban when they took over Afghanistan? I don’t think so. A woman could be beaten by a random man for walking alone, for not wearing a burqa, speaking in public, or for any number of other “offenses.” Women were not allowed to go to school or be educated past the age of 8. They endured a large number of forced marriages, often at a very young age. Yes, that was an extreme example, but there are many rural areas in the middle east that are little different right now, and of course, many areas that are only slightly less strict in their treatment of women.
People always imagine themselves as doing the right thing so if the author can’t give the villain a concept of how they imagine themselves to be doing the right thing the story comes across as cartoonish.
based on the beloved 1985 Margaret Atwood novel
Is it me, or does “beloved” seem an odd word choice here? When I think “beloved”, I think of a favorite children’s story. Or something where you really, really like the characters or the setting.
‘Beloved’ as in Canadian high schools make you read it in a desperate attempt at elevating Canadian authors.
“beyond reproach” is maybe what she is going for.
I’d never even heard of it until lately, and AFAIK, I don’t live in a cave, though I sometimes wish I did.
Yes, as per my comment below – the book was never wildly popular, nor deeply appreciated by the audiences you might expect (feminists, sci-fi fans)
the people pretending the book was some big-deal are only doing so to help tout the new revival, imo.
Sorry, but this crap just comes off as so ridiculously fucking over the top in its basic premise that I couldn’t even begin to entertain watching it. Chilling? I don’t think I could hold back from laughing.
We don’t need a dystopian piece of fiction based on theocracy in the West banning women from public life. We have real world examples. Talking about it just isn’t woke enough for the ENB’s of the world.
When you realize the book was written because Atwood was hysterical about Reagan and thought that a theocracy was on its way, suddenly the deranged premise makes a lot more sense.
At least when people like Alan Moore flipped out about Thatcher their fascist dystopias were slightly more plausible, in The Handmaid’s Tale women become second class citizens because the government freezes all women’s bank accounts and takes all the money. And everyone just goes along with it, because we all secretly want to oppress women.
I watched the show with my wife and one element that makes it more believable is there is a children of men type of situation where birthrates plumet almost to zero and people start to crazy because of that.
That’s also present in the book, but it’s important to note that the reason for it is “CAUSE REAGAN WOULD START A NUCLEAR WAR AND POISON PEOPLE WITH POLLUTION”. Of course, even with medical technology in the 80s, there are much better solutions to the problem than setting up a compulsory breeding program under a patriarchal society. I mean, for the love of God, just set up a baby farm run on in vitro fertilization and pay off a ton of women, it’s not hard.
They are also insanely dumb a terrorist attack happens and they declare martial law, suspend the Constitution and allow a fringe religious group who committed those terrorist attacks to take over the government. After all of this it is serveral years before the general population becomes worried.
Huh. That is very revealing actually.
Kind of goes along with the idea that proggies are more racist than average- they can’t empathize with people living in actual theocracies, so they have to invent one that nabs people ‘like them’.
I think it would be “punching down” or exerting western privilege or some shit for them to refer to the real-world societies that behave that way in the present day.
Honestly, I would love to have a dystopian comedy along Attwood’s lines. The premise of what Progressives see as a horror world, this is what will happen if the GOP get their way, etc, all intentionally played for laughs.
“My fellow woke Resistance members and I hid in a friend’s house, repairing our thick brimmed glasses from the riots yesterday and trying to wash the blood out of our multicoloured hair. Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. “YOUS LEFTY FAGGOTS COME OUT, THIS A SHAKEDOWN”. Three massive, cisheteronormative white men in overalls came bursting through the door, American flags tied as armbands to their side. While one of beat the only black body with us for no reason whatsoever, the others began searching through the house, looking for contraband. “WHAT’S THIS?” said their leader as he tore up a floor board. He pulled out a green vegetable with his fat fingers. “YOUS IN TROUBLE NOW, YOUS AIN’T ALLOWED TO HAVE KALE NO MORE.”
Yeah, not so much.
When it came out, it wasn’t seen as “feminist” (because its not) so much as an attack against modern Puritanism, which was sort of a pop-topic of the mid-1980s which was tied up w/ abortion as well as other issues re: ‘social mores’ (homosexuality, drug use, ‘bad language’, mass-murder movies and video games, etc). The book was “controversial”, as they say. and the 1986 review linked there isn’t wildly positive, despite being sympathetic to the message.
*disclosure: my mom was an english teacher, and had copies lying around the house, and i read it when it came out, and then again for lols while in college. it never impressed me much (and i was an avid reader of dystopian sci-fi) in either sitting, and it never had much ‘buzz’ with the reading-public in that period (mid-80s-mid-90s) either.
It’s no 1984 or Brave New World when it comes to dystopias, it occupies a kind of mid-tier status mostly because of how goofy the premise is.
“First ask yourselves, Gentlemen, what an Englishman, a French-man, and a citizen of the United States of America understand today [1819] by the word ‘liberty’. For each of them it is the right to be subjected only to the laws, and to be neither arrested, detained, put to death or maltreated in any way by the arbitrary will of one or more individuals. It is the right of everyone to express their opinion, choose a profession and practice it, to dispose of property, and even to abuse it; to come and go without permission, and without having to account for their motives or undertakings. It is everyone’s right to associate with other individuals, either to discuss their interests, or to profess the religion which they and their associates prefer, or even simply to occupy their days or hours in a way which is most compatible with their inclinations or whims. Finally it is everyone’s right to exercise some influence on the administration of the government, either by electing all or particular officials, or through representations, petitions, demands to which the authorities are more or less compelled to pay heed. Now compare this liberty with that of the ancients.
“The latter consisted in exercising collectively, but directly, several parts of the complete sovereignty; in deliberating, in the public square, over war and peace; in forming alliances with foreign governments; in voting laws, in pronouncing judgments; in examining the accounts, the acts, the stewardship of the magistrates; in calling them to appear in front of the assembled people, in accusing, condemning or absolving them. But if this was what the ancients called liberty, they admitted as compatible with this collective freedom the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community.”
I larfed:
Tactical Assault Rock
Some good reviews, too:
There’s more.
Oh my god that’s awesome.
I loved “does it come with a rail mount” questions.
“”Not available since the days of Cane and Abel”
“Cane” *cringes*
lol
i had to fix the spelling of “Abel” (it was Able). I overlooked “Cain”
What I have never gotten is an explanation for is how any person is born with an inherent right to subjugate other people. There is an awful lot of gibberish that purports to explain but nothing solid. We are all born the same; that is naked, screaming out heads off and trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. No one gets a practice run, we all have to figure it out on our first go round. What makes one man’s humanity inherently more valuable than anothers? The only quality anyone can use to subjugate others is violence or the threat of it and that is simply not civilized.
It’s a little more subtle than that for most. It’s not the elevation of one individual over the other, it’s the elevation of the collective over the individual, and by extension, the elevation of the representatives of the collective over the individual.
It isnt subtle at all. The collective is just a surrogate for those without enough power to overcome you by themselves. They may see it as subtle or noble but the nature of it is still the same. An individual is bullied into compliance. That the bully has two arms or 2 million makes no difference.
I agree. However, you have to address the social contract canard in order to make headway on the argument. That’s why I put it that way.
*facepalm*
I forgot about that. Yeah, you are right. Have you ever talked to a delusional schizophrenic? Or a true-blue fanatic? Trying to explain to them why having everyone walk to one side of the earth to restore its balance will not make everything alright is a waste of breath. No matter what you say they have a way of explaining it away with something even more crazy.
“Social contract? Yeah, whatever bro. Bring me a copy, show me my signature and I will hop to it.”
Not giving is taking, you see, and if someone wants something it’s the obligation of anyone who has more of it to give it, because at that moment it stops being their property. So, really, using violence to force people to attend to your wants and/or needs is basically the same thing as recovering stolen property.
Exactly right Suthen, the logical consequence of positive rights is subjugation of one human to another must be moral without any explanation of why one person is different from another.
You HAVE to reject the concept of self ownership and embrace ownership of some by others in order to have positive rights.
Natural rights are a very strange way for a materialist to view the world. The premise under deterministic materialism should be framed, “Under the following constraints, X amount of compulsion results in Y amount of resistance/lack of cohesion/loss of income”, rather than anything close to NAP or another principle meant to be followed without exception. A moral argument about whether one should engage in X amounts of compulsion even if one is willing to accept Y amount of [bad thing] is what is necessary for a natural rights framework to hold up, and it is necessary to go far beyond materialism to do this using reason rather than sentiment. Ethics without transcendence (or something akin to it) are not much more than an aesthetic preference, and this includes political ethos.
Not all of us are materialists.
Rights are choices. They arise naturally as an artifact of our agency.
We know they’re real because violating them has consistent consequences in the real world–across cultures and throughout history.
Violating one’s right to choose one’s own religious beliefs, to physically defend oneself, to speak one’s mind, to choose who gets to use one’s property and how it’s used, etc., etc., and the consequences are similar–across cultures and throughout history.
That is what I mean by “natural rights”. They arise naturally as an artifact of our agency and violating them has real and consistent consequences.
Our legal rights are more important here in the United States than in many other countries because our Constitution does an unusually good job of approximating our natural rights–and that can lead to a lot of confusion.