[troyastorino]

Legal concepts that are derivative from the natural right to liberty, e.g. freedom of speech, are protected by the government, but that is not the same as them being created by the government. An individual certainly has liberty, and thus freedom of speech, in the context of a state of nature. He does not, however, have a guarantee that an organization with a monopoly on the use of force, i.e. a government, will protect that liberty.

[rayiner]

I can't believe that there are so many people in a scientific, technical, industry like the software industry that believe in something as facially superstitious and handwavy as "natural rights."

[nitrogen]

I can't believe that there are so many people in a scientific, technical, industry like the software industry that believe in something as facially superstitious and handwavy as "natural rights."

As a first pass at a definition, anything you could do in the absence of any other people stopping you from doing it could be considered a "natural right."

That's not superstitious or handwavy, and I didn't have to belittle my audience to express it.

[foobarbazqux]

Do I have a natural right to hurt somebody weaker than me?

[Filligree]

That would seem to be implied.

[foobarbazqux]

From what I can tell, the idea of natural rights is really popular with people who are into anarcho-capitalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_and_legal_rights#Conte...

> Contemporary political philosophies continuing the liberal tradition of natural rights include libertarianism, anarcho-capitalism and Objectivism, and include amongst their canon the works of authors such as Robert Nozick, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, and Murray Rothbard.

As far as I'm concerned:

  legal rights : natural rights :: laws : morals

[rayiner]

My problem with "natural rights" is that they're a way to take one set of arbitrary priorities and elevate them to some sort of law of nature, without having to justify them on utilitarian grounds. You have a right to property but not a right to education. Why? Because the former is a "natural right." Its no different from resorting to "because the Bible says so." Its also used to undermine democratic consensus in the same way as resorting to theology. Oh, everyone thinks there is a right to education? Wrong! Because the Bible says so... Err... Because its not a natural right, just some creation of government.

[foobarbazqux]

Yeah, it often seems they're a disguise for moral absolutism. Some convenient rule system that you can latch on to and then use to decide if things are good or bad. Tax is the worst thing there is, for example.

But, natural rights are in the same category as human rights, and there are many human rights that I value despite their nonexistence as laws.

It seems to me that natural rights are often a covert argument for male supremacy over women and children. A man is stronger than a woman, therefore he has a natural right to dominate her. The same goes for children. A child has no right to anything from its parents, because if you must depend on someone else, you wouldn't be free to obtain it in the absence of other people.

But dependence is how we are born into the world. Education is given to us while we are in a state of dependence. Is it really only that educators have the right to educate? Perhaps, if you really don't believe in assigning rights on the basis of need.

In the libertarian mindset, it's almost as if the government represents one's parents, and the romanticized state of being alone in the wild represents freedom from one's parents. Actually I believe that it's next to impossible for anybody arguing for an extreme position like anarcho-capitalism in the typical cult-like manner that we see to be reasonable, because doing so would require making the connection from what they're proselytizing to their own lives and processing their own feelings about authority.

[hacker789]

> You have a right to property but not a right to education.

I don't believe in "natural rights", nor do I believe concept has any real value. That said, you're misconstruing their argument.

Someone who believes in natural rights would say:

> You have a right to own property, but you aren't entitled to be given property. Similarly, you have the right to get an education, but you aren't entitled to be given an education.

[foobarbazqux]

Are you entitled to suck the milk out of your mother's breast?

[hacker789]

Personally, I believe babies are entitled to be nourished (directly or indirectly) by their parents.

[kaonashi]

There are no legal rights in the state of nature. There is no liberty in the state of nature. These things don't exist as features of the land, they're concepts created by humans to curtail specific types of human behavior.

[foobarbazqux]

Do you have the freedom to profit from your ideas in the state of nature?

[a-priori]

Assuming we're talking about the Hobbesian "state of nature" then yes, of course you do have that freedom. Along with every other freedom.

But you only have a right to profit insofar as you can keep others from exercising their freedom to steal your ideas (or anything else).

[foobarbazqux]

If I have a natural right to profit from my ideas, isn't it reasonable that I might want a legal right?

[a-priori]

In a state of nature, there is no such thing as a "legal right", or law of any kind other than might-makes-right.

[foobarbazqux]

But legal rights are synonymous with might-makes-right. A natural or human right is something we would like to have but cannot guarantee until it is made into law. I am just asking whether laws about intellectual property correlate to natural rights in the same way that laws about physical property do, since the original claim was that they are 100% fabricated.

[a-priori]

Whether they're synonymous is entirely a matter of your world view with respect to the origin of the state's monopoly on the legitimate use of force, which is the defining feature of a state. Do individuals delegate their right to the use of force to the state, in the process giving them a monopoly on it? Or do states impose said monopoly on the individual, in effect overriding their natural rights? To avoid committing a fallacy here: or is there a third option?

[baddox]

Do you have the freedom to use violence to prevent others from profiting from your ideas?

[foobarbazqux]

You have the freedom to use violence prevent anything you bloody well like.

[baddox]

Was your first question rhetorical?

[foobarbazqux]

Yes, sorry :/

Well, maybe I didn't realize it though since I don't spend much time thinking about my freedoms in the state of nature, and people were making all these arguments about physical property being a natural right.