/liberty/ - Liberty

>seeing that might invariably makes right more often than not

Balance of power is the ultimate basis of the non aggression principle.

When you start thinking about how things are instead of how they should be all comes to place.

>>85637

>Can you call yourself a Libertarian while still seeing that might invariably makes right more often than not?

This is more or less a fact of life, nobody necessarily disagrees with that. The NAP specifically exists so that you can fight someone who initiates aggression towards you or at least so that you could hire someone who can protect you. Libertarianism is not pacifism.

>I take issue with the concept of inalienability. Let us take the right to free speech as an example. Most liberally minded folks, including the founding fathers, regard this as an inalienable right - a right that cannot be gifted or taken away, a right that is with you from birth, from which you cannot be separated without first losing yourself.

On a national level, yes. But on your own property, or in your own community you should be able to decide what's acceptable and what's not. For example, you can't just throw insults at me when you're at my house, I will deem it unacceptable and kick you out, this is what property rights and freedom of association is for.

Freedom of speech is especially important on platforms of discussion, because if you're constantly micromanaging and shutting people up and putting words in their mouths then the quality of your forum is going to be very low, however, you can still ban specific types of users if you feel like it will raise the quality of discussion, though you will be doing it at your own risk because if you provide a shitty service then you will also get less profits.

>But can you really claim to have a right if you are unable to uphold them? Rights only have meaning if you are able to put them into practice. The concept of free speech may exist in abstract, but in order to have a right to free speech, you need to exercise that right, because rights only exist as an exercise, which necessitates some degree of might.

The real challenge is setting it all up in a way so that so that no one security provider ends up with a monopoly on force, the moment one of them gets out of line, all others team up to punish the NAP violator, in simpler terms, what you get is basically a federation.

>>85637

>Might is the only real eternal, the only principle that is truly inviolable.

This is true, and a good thing. Just remember that we're social animals, and that strong men often make weak leaders.

>>85638

>>85646

>>85658

I don't disagree with any of this. What I'm saying is that rights only really "exist" in the real sense if you have the power to practice them. Hence, I don't really put much faith in the notion of an "inalienable right." I believe in free speech, but I also see, obviously, that there have been places and times when the right has essentially been dissolved. If such a thing is possible, I don't know how we can refer to this right as inalienable. The notion of inalienability seems to be caught up in the idea that you can still possess a right while not being able to practice it, but that sounds like nonsense to me. A belief in a concept can't easily be taken or given away, sure, but a right to that concept, any right, certainly can.

To me, rights exist, but inalienable rights necessarily can not.

>>85659

Rights are things that people are entitled to. You are entitled to life and liberty, but that doesn't mean you can't be killed or imprisoned. It just means that killing and imprisoning people is immoral and the government should exist to protect its citizens from being killed or imprisoned.

>>85660

>entitled to

How can something you're entitled to be considered inalienable? Entitlement is derived from whichever entity has a monopoly on power, whether that be a state or a smaller coalition of individuals. Entitlement varies so I don't see how something you're simply entitled to could ever be treated as something that no-one, regardless of affiliation, could give up or have taken away.

>>85663

Taking away those rights destroys a person's owness.

>>85667

>a person's owness.

Right, I understand the idea that depriving someone of one or more of these inalienable rights deprives them of their essential humanity, but this is a vague concept; you would need to prove it had some basis in objective reality. How does taking away someone's right to freedom of expression, for example, render them non human?

And, anyway, that doesn't solve the secondary issue: the fact that these rights CAN indeed be taken away in the first place. Inalienable indicates that such deprivation should supposedly be impossible.

>>85668

Owness is not humanity. The latter is based on biology, as observed by examining humans. The former is deduced from the self-evident truth that only a person can act from himself; therefore, taking away this ability hurts him.

A right can not be taken away because if someone does not have them, then he is also forbidden from being a person.

>>85669

>can act from

Do you mean for or from? Explain this further.

>then he is also forbidden from being a person.

Regardless of person-hood, the activity can be taken away, which rather squashes the idea of inalienability.

>>85671

I meant for himself.

Either the right exists and so does the person, or neither do. If someone's freedom of expression is taken away, then it is not the part of him that wanted to express that is hurt, but those freedoms that remain.

>>85673

>Either the right exists and so does the person, or neither do.

The problem with this is that these rights exist in abstract, while persons do not. I know the idea of person-hood exists in abstract, but there is nothing in the real for inalienable rights in this sense. You could take away these rights, or otherwise constrain them, and still be left with a people. What, then, is your evidence for these rights being inalienable?

>>85675

You would not be left with a person if taking away rights involves killing. Taking away other rights hurts a person, even if the human is alive and without physical damage.

>>85677

>Taking away other rights hurts a person

Yes, but that isn't the issue being discussed. The issue is that inalienable means that a right cannot be given up or taken away, and yet we see that they can be - practically speaking. I'm trying to understand why this word is often used, when the principle behind it is so flawed.

>>85681

Who uses this word? Wasn't all this invented by classical liberals around the Enlightenment period? I think by inalienable, they mean it's something that cannot (or rather, should not) be violated by the government. I'm not gonna defend this though, because I agree with you, it's a very flawed concept.

>>85681

The rights really are inalienable because there exists no person who doesn't have them.

>>85663

>Entitlement is derived from whichever entity has a monopoly on power

The founding fathers were all Christians. I'll leave you to figure out which omnipotent entity they were referring to.

>>85637

>Can you call yourself a Libertarian while still seeing that might invariably makes right more often than not?

I see a lot of Hobbesians over on /pol/ claiming this, but I have to ask: if might is all that makes right, why aren't aggression-prone ooga boogas ruling the world? The most powerful nations have consistently been the ones with the freest markets, inhabited by peoples comparatively measured in their aggression response, and with comparatively more protection of fundamental rights than other countries. Within markets, nonviolent competition is overwhelmingly favored as a strategy, with overwhelming success. The only time force is used is when a firm knows it won't have to foot the bill for that force, or any of the subsequent consequences, e.g. they bribe some no-name bureaucrat with a pittance to send the National Guard against a competitive business, and/or their own striking workers. The only group in the economy that consistently uses force in all of its transactions besides the state itself are criminals. And most professional criminals are on the lowest rungs of society, acquiring neither great wealth nor great power from their use of coercion. There are occasional exceptions such as the Mexican cartel bosses, but even then their influence is strictly of the underground variety, and they're only influential at all because they know they have enough state officials on their side. If might makes right, why is it so bad at getting the users of it results?

>>85699

Because cooperation is a more effective strategy even within the idea of might makes right? Might is often assumed as physical power, while it can also represent power in general, be it in the form of money, influence or resources. It does not have to turn into a gladiatorial arena because of it.

>>85699

>I see a lot of Hobbesians over on /pol/ claiming this, but I have to ask: if might is all that makes right, why aren't aggression-prone ooga boogas ruling the world?

Violence is the basis of all human interaction: respect is based in the knowledge that the bigger and stronger individual will almost certainly win in a fight, but that the smaller and weaker individual can still inflict enough damage to make a fight not worth the risk unless the stakes are very high. Predators don't hunt other predators, not even the weak and sickly ones.

It's not that "might makes right" is incorrect, it's that people misunderstand it to mean that you can crack skulls all the way to the top of the world. It's compelling leadership that makes might, not muscles.

>>85701

>It does not have to turn into a gladiatorial arena because of it.

The Hobbesians to whom I've spoken seem to think otherwise, claiming that people will only respond to the incentive of raw, visceral power, and that something like a profit motive is too "abstract" and detached from true power to properly influence human behavior I'm not saying this shit makes sense, just repeating what I've been told.

>>85699

>why aren't aggression-prone ooga boogas ruling the world?

Because they weren't able to exert sufficient force. All the spears in the world are going to do very little against modern ordinance for example.

>>85731

>something like a profit motive is too "abstract" and detached from true power

Then they're grasping at straws and losing the gist of their own argument in the process. Obviously, they should realise that might needn't be explicitly physical in nature when it relates to specific examples. Though it (tends) to have its origin in physicality.

>someone engages in a hostile takeover

>this action is mostly accomplished in abstract

>however the forces upholding and protecting the action itself ultimately result from the physical

>the concept of a hostile takeover is reinforced by legislation which in turn is backed up by the ability of certain individuals (police) to physically take hold of anyone who breaks the law and to put them in a state of bondage

>the state of affairs as a whole is protected by the superstructure of the state, which in turn is protected (and projected) through the physicality of its military

>>85637

>This leads me on to a secondary problem I have with the distinction between negative and positive rights. Negative rights are supposedly inalienable because they exist in the absence of activity, while positive rights require protection to be real because they rely on action. Free speech is considered a negative right because it is the right of the individual NOT to have what they say be inhibited or punished in a legal context. The right to police protection is considered a positive right because it requires individuals separate from yourself to get up off their asses and actively start providing you with security. But is this not a question of semantics? All rights, whether negative or positive, rely to some degree upon the duty the individual feels to bring them to fruition - duty is an inherently protective practice that sees the individual take on responsibility in order to vouch for the thing itself - all rights therefore rely on the activity of protection to bring them about. Might is the only real eternal, the only principle that is truly inviolable.

The problem with positive rights is that they can be taken to absurd levels. A world in which everyone respects the property rights or the free speech of others or the integrity of their marriages is easily conceivable. Add "right to adequate housing" to the mix, and you have relativized all these goods. The right to property is relativized, right to bodily integrity, and so on. Even other positive rights are relativized, but in that case, why call them rights at all?

Furthermore, positive rights frequently have nothing to do with liberty, but with power. You're conflating two entirely different concepts when you posit a freedom to work wherever you want, whether people want to hire you or not. Negative rights aren't the whole truth either, there's a little bit more to freedom, but they're 90% of the truth.

c'mon guys, we already had child rights discussion in the abortion thread, do not start it all over

>>85753

This.

>>85637

Some of us are kind of hinging on free-market solutions to defense in order to compete with imperialistic states.

I think the core question is this: Do people & societies function better when the concept of individual rights (and subsequent responsibilities to not infringe on the rights of others) is accepted, or rejected?

I think history shows pretty clearly that acceptance of the concept of ("negative") individual rights leads to much better outcomes than does rejection of the concept, and would furthermore suggest that further this is pushed, the better off we will be, as per the trend.

As for police, the police have no legal duty to protect citizens even in our current societies (look it up) despite the concept of positive rights being accepted by the nanny state. People accepting the ("negative") right of self defense (which could extend to looking out for family/friends/neighbors right of self-defense) is a much better alternative without the numerous infringements of personal rights that cops today engage in.

> All rights, whether negative or positive, rely to some degree upon the duty the individual feels to bring them to fruition…

Yes, and this is exactly why it is important for people to understand/accept/promote the fundamental moral truth of individual human rights, for without them societies are liable to crumble and collapse.