[ckocagil]

If no one is entitled to anything why did humankind abolish slavery? Child workers? Indentured servitude?

Think about it. Indentured servitude is nothing but a contract between two people. By your ideology it should be of no one else's concern. Yet, it is considered slavery and is illegal. Why?

Because it turns out life isn't as simple as "you're not entitled to anything". This same sentence has been uttered by people throughout the ages who profited by the status quo until the commoners got their heads, literally or figuratively.

Every law we have, including the ones that allow you to have private property, private land and virtual property such as copyrights and patents are man-made and arbitrary.

[ccffpphh]

Yes, the one thing we can all agree on is the right to self. Nobody other than themselves can control their body - by that I mean that no matter what you do, nobody can tell you what to think. You can be brainwashed by force, or conditioned to react a certain way to escape force, but you can never really know what another person thinks.

Regardless, one has a right to their body. It is their property. More explicitly, any individual intelligent agent that exists takes up some physical space and that space they occupy at any point in time to continue their existence is theirs only. Property can be given up voluntarily or if nobody else has a claim to it - in this case it extends that clearly rape is wrong, but prostitution is okay, as it's voluntary on both sides. Seizing someone's house is wrong, but exploring space and building new structures in the middle of nowhere is not.

Whether laws exist regarding private property (or the lack thereof), we can define a set of natural rights that any person has regardless of any local, regional, or global laws, constructs, or ideologies. We can all agree murder is wrong, rape is wrong, stealing is wrong, slavery is wrong, and the clearest and most concise way of setting this forward is by understanding that nobody is entitled to anything other than their body and any property they have gained which was either unclaimed or voluntarily from another agent.

Certain schools of thought disagree on unclaimed property, e.g. if one settles a piece of land and the landowner doesn't notice, but after a decade or so has passed and the resident has worked the land and only then the landowner notices, who really owns it? I am not in a position to answer this but I don't think it's "arbitrary" or "man-made" to expect natural rights over your body and property. Everything else, indeed, is abstract.

[ckocagil]

>Regardless, one has a right to their body. It is their property.

To what extent? Does this principle apply to indentured servitude? How about work related accidents, should a company be legally required to prevent them? Should a mining company pay compensation for the lung damage sustained by their miners, even though that was not in their contract? How about the environment, does this principle imply I have a right to breathe fresh air? How about drinking water?

>Whether laws exist regarding private property (or the lack thereof), we can define a set of natural rights that any person has regardless of any local, regional, or global laws, constructs, or ideologies.

You can, but it doesn't mean I or anyone else will agree to them.

>We can all agree murder is wrong, rape is wrong, stealing is wrong, slavery is wrong

No, we can't. People used to think slavery was ethical. What changed? Raping and plundering used to be ethical for a victorious army. What changed? Today the majority of the world eats meat, and it is very possible that in a century we will be seen as primitive carnivores.

You are also not defining what constitutes these crimes. Is capital punishment murder? Is it murder to kill an enemy soldier? How about an enemy civilian? How about collateral damage? Is it slavery if a company destroys all your other options, forcing you to work for them on their terms?

Is it unethical for companies to collude and fix prices or wages? Is it unethical when workers do the same? Is it unethical when a company pays the local police to break a strike?

The thought that "you only own your body, and you have to earn everything else" falls down pretty quickly once you look outside that idealistic bubble and see historical or ongoing issues.

[quacked]

There's an even more powerful counterargument to the facetious notion that "we all agree that murder/rape/slavery is wrong" than "people used to think it was right".

People today still think those crimes are right, as evidenced by the fact that there are many people who still do them. That's why we have laws against those crimes: to punish the many thousands of people who still attempt to carry them out, and in many cases succeed.

If we could "all agree that they were wrong", then we wouldn't need laws against those crimes, because no one would ever commit them.

[ajmadesc]

Why are we entitled to property?