[WalterBright]

Under your view, there's nothing wrong with slavery if the government legalizes it?

> There is nothing inherently moral

Morality has nothing to do with rights.

> There is nothing inherent or inalienable about them.

Oh yes there is. The proof is simple - societies that guarantee those rights thrive. Those that abrogate them, do not.

[wizofaus]

I can personally believe slavery is morally wrong but still accept that a different culture may universally consider that there is a right to own other humans as slaves.

[WalterBright]

That different culture will be wrong. (And I doubt their slaves agreed with them.)

[wizofaus]

I did say "universally consider". Presumably that would only be sustainable if the slaves felt it was an arrangement that suited them.

[WalterBright]

I've never heard of slaves that were happy to be enslaved. Have you?

[wizofaus]

And the fact that there's no known good examples of slaves being happy with such an arrangement is a very strong argument in favour of any sort of right to own slaves being a unlikely sort of right that a society would ever successfully and sustainably adopt. I just wouldn't rule it out on principle - if there's anything like a "universal truth" I would accept it's that other societies/cultures need to determine their own rights for themselves, and they can't be imposed.

[WalterBright]

> I would accept it's that other societies/cultures need to determine their own rights for themselves, and they can't be imposed.

60% of society voting to enslave the other 40% does not make it right.

> they can't be imposed

They sure can be. The Union imposed freedom on the Confederacy, by force. The Allies imposed freedom on the Axis in WW2, by force.

[defrost]

The Janissary elite drawn from the devşirme system of child levy would be the obvious example, particularly toward the end when they controlled many of the state assets and staged palace coups to get the sultan they wanted.

[WalterBright]

I.e. when they graduated from slaves to palace coups, they weren't slaves anymore.

[tstrimple]

This is inane. I explicitly said that rights are orthogonal to morals. Why are you trying to claim I said the opposite? Do you understand what words mean?

[HDThoreaun]

How could rights be orthogonal to morals? Do you have any examples, either real or theoretical, of a right that came to be without an argument based on morality? In fact it's right there in the name. "Rights" refer to things it would be wrong to take away from people, making them right.