[VladRussian2]

>The concept of "natural rights" is motivated by protection against the government.

yes, there is no natural rights in Nature, except may be the right to run as fast as one able to away from the next up in the food chain.

The current stage of human society is akin to a situation when a pack of predators and a herd of prey make an agreement that the prey willn't be hunted as long as it stays withing specified bounds. The pack will also protect the herd there from other predators. It is a win-win for both parties - the prey get relaxed and spend all its energy grazing and procreating and thus becomes fatter and the herd's headcount grows tremendously (the bounds were extended several times and now it is a pretty complicated patchwork), while predators hunt smaller percentage (the ones who can't keep themselves inside the bounds) of the much bigger herd of much fatter/slower/tastier prey with total amount of meat consumed by predators being higher than before the agreement.

The herd with time starts to believe that not being hunted down while inside the bounds is the natural right.

The predators sometimes can't resist and snatch some very tasty prey from inside the bounds - as long as such transgressions are kept below some low percentage, the herd wouldn't make big fuss of it to avoid risk of destabilizing of the agreement that works so great for the herd (true story, some members of the herd even have time and energy now to develop various theories about the thing they call Universe and why a prey and a predator got created(or evolved?)) .

[rayiner]

I think your predator/herd dichotomy creates a needless dichotomy, and also goes outside the bounds of its own analogy (predators and prey obviously don't agree in the state of nature, and in the presence of a fat herd the predators would multiply out of control until the herd thinned). I don't think it captures the relevant dynamics.

How I tend to view things is that humans are inherently pack animals. We are individually pretty weak and prone to being victimized, but organized together in a pack under leadership we can pretty much run the show. While, acting as a mob, we can always kill the leaders, the natural state of our existence is a very bloody anarchy so we avoid doing that unless absolutely necessary.

See, e.g., the French Revolution.

[VladRussian2]

>predator/herd dichotomy creates a needless dichotomy

"predator" is a role, it is the one who uses force/violence as a tool.

>predators and prey obviously don't agree in the state of nature

exactly. It took about million years of evolution for humans to get to the state where they became able to produce current agreement between predators and prey (i.e. some kind of government and society). Once they did, the humans took over the planet.

>the natural state of our existence is a very bloody anarchy

nope. At least during last hundred thousand of years (and well before), humans (the Cro-Magnon we're as well as other humans) have pretty much always had tribal organization. As you said yourself: "How I tend to view things is that humans are inherently pack animals. " Pack/tribe isn't anarchy. It is first and explicit step away from it.

>See, e.g., the French Revolution.

that isn't natural state. That is exactly what happens when predators transgress beyond the patience limit of the herd and the herd gets angry enough to throw out the agreement. It is also shows that such unnatural for humans situation wouldn't go for long, and the new pack would naturally emerge and the herd would rush into new agreement.