[MichaelGroves]

> If the government abdicates its role, I agree you have the right to enforce your own personal justice. [...] I also find it a bit spurious to say that the government has abdicated their permission, but the laws are still in effect

You've conceded that in absence of a government, people have the right to enforce their own personal justice. If the right to pursue justice still exists in absence of a government, then some sort of law must also exist in absence of a government (from what else would you derive a right to seek personal justice?) The laws to which I appeal now do not come from governments, books, or gods; I believe they are encoded in our genes after eons as living as a social species. Social instincts which evolved to facilitate cooperation in groups are the root of all basic laws written down by governments. When somebody is wronged, in violation of these universal laws, they feel it in their bones.

If you don't believe any of that, believe this: when people feel wronged they will seek justice. Either a government can provide them with a safe framework to receive justice, or people will seek it themselves. You'll never succeed in scolding people away from desiring justice. When seeking vigilante justice is routine, that is categorically a failure of government to provide justice.

[bsanr2]

>from what else would you derive a right to seek personal justice?

Natural rights.

>The laws to which I appeal now do not come from governments, books, or gods; I believe they are encoded in our genes after eons as living as a social species.

>If you don't believe any of that, believe this: when people feel wronged they will seek justice. Either a government can provide them with a safe framework to receive justice, or people will seek it themselves. You'll never succeed in scolding people away from desiring justice. When seeking vigilante justice is routine, that is categorically a failure of government to provide justice.

You're trying to justify violating the sanctity of life in response to a violation of the sanctity of property. These are clearly not on the same level, and so you feel the need to defend this utterly unnatural stance. What you want is permission to carry out vigilante justice without the threat of reprisal, but that's not how this works. If you do something as protest that can later be rectified, that is something different; but if you throw off the mediating force of the law to unilaterally take what can't be given back, you have opened yourself to like or greater doom. Nothing can protect you, not even your self-righteousness. Justice doesn't exist in a state of nature, only dead-reckoning and vengeance.

[vdqtp3]

> You're trying to justify violating the sanctity of life in response to a violation of the sanctity of property.

Eviction by force is not the same as murdering someone for squatting. You're conflating the two.

[bsanr2]

He's suggesting that it's his right to do so. That's what is meant by his referring to action outside the law. It's the natural conclusion to such action, because for the people being evicted, the loss of shelter can be tantamount to loss of life.

There is no world in which violence is seen as an appropriate tool to force an eviction where people do not die resisting eviction.

[llampx]

Not to mention, property doesn't come for free. I as a middle-class person may have poured years of my sweat and blood into my property and then someone can waltz in and claim my hard work for their own with a hand-wavy "I can't afford market price for rent here"

[MichaelGroves]

> Natural rights.

'Natural rights' are the entitlements we feel that we have, derived from the rules we feel others must follow according to natural law. 'Natural law' is the rules for social conduct which are baked into our genes. Or, as wikipedia puts it

> Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and so are universal, fundamental and inalienable (they cannot be repealed by human laws, though one can forfeit their enjoyment through one's actions, such as by violating someone else's rights). Natural law is the law of natural rights.

Natural law and natural rights are two sides of the same coin.

[bsanr2]

If natural law is a form of genetic determinism, as you suggest, genetic variation and diversity would lead to not one singular set of natural laws, but a spectrum of them. Collectively-held rights cannot be derived directly from this broad spectrum; natural rights serve as a medium through which felt natural law may be applied practically and collectively. It is thus wrong to speak of "natural law" as a justification for socially-permissible action; you are only doing as you wish, with no regard for how others feel.

Again, when you do so, you must understand that others have no obligation to tolerate it.