Francisco Ferrer

Again, liberty to do what with what? That's derivative; not a counter, but the answer is whatever you want that's not rights' violating. My answer. Wolf...? --Brant In a social context, liberty has to be defined in terms of rights, and rights have to be defined in terms of what one owns.

Again, liberty to do what with what?

No, it does not presuppose ownership. As I stated, one of the alternatives is "No person owns his own or any other person's body." Nothing was smuggled into the argument. If a man does not have a right to himself (his body) then he does not have a right to do anything with that body, including walking or eating or drinking. Ownership presumes the moral or legal power to exert control of a thing. Liberty is the extent to which one may act without violating the equal liberty of another human. Such a concept requires an understanding of what is properly mine and yours. If you prefer, I won't say "society," I will say the name of every person that I'm referring to: Mr. M V Fitch, Mrs. R Gadsby, Mr. R K James, Mrs. H Kane, Mrs. J Lea, Mrs. L A Mitchell, Mrs. S A Stavrou, Mr. A P Watts, Mrs. E A Webster, Mr. J A Wyatt.

I have written earlier on this thread on the logic of self-ownership: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14567&p=214734 Within a society (i.e. a place where two or more people may interact), there is a need for a common understanding on what belongs (i.e. may be used, controlled, consumed, sold) to whom. This concord may be regard as a statement of rights (i.e. a constitution), which is the foundation for a code of laws.

Yes, I understand. Can you clarify what you did mean by it? (French and Latin root is author, originator, promoter) I'd like to agree that you own your life, however I find it difficult to understand how you originated it. Here's a link to the post where I defined it: http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=14567&p=215837 One can come into ownership of property either by originating it or through first use. It is true that we do not create ourselves (i.e. our bodies) but we do have possession of them (we inhabit them and are the first to use them) and thus they are our own by right. As Locke put it: Though the Earth…be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property. It being by him removed from the common state Nature placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other Men.

Thanks for providing two of the word's several definitions. I hope it is clear that I was not using either one you listed.

If I have no authority over the pearl I found at the bottom of the ocean, who does? God? The King? The Department of Natural Resources? thefreedictionary.com "Authority: legal permission granted to a person to perform a specified act"

If you are having trouble grasping the idea of property right, here is a quick definition: the recognition of an individual's authority to use or control a particular thing. If the words in this definition constitute babbling to you, please consult a dictionary. You think that "right to liberty" is a phrase that that most people comprehend. Fine, then you should have no trouble expressing in words just what it means. Can Citizen A trade his right to liberty for Citizen B's car? Quickly: Flashing is not force. Laser beams at an intensity to cause damage are. Words are not physical force. Words spoken and amplified at high decibels are. Carbon dioxide and other gases escaping from the human body are not damaging; other emissions are. If people say a person has a right to life, they are omitting the context of "By what means?" During a nuclear war Citizen A has a "right to life" by crawling into the fallout shelter he built last year. He does not have a "right to life" by crawling uninvited into the fallout shelter Citizen B built last year. "Right to life" is no more meaningful than "Right to food." As for certain laws being statist, an analogy: the fact that algebra is most commonly taught by an employee of the state does not make algebra intrinsically statist.

Preventing mass murder restricts voluntary action? Then Hitler must represent the height of volunteerism! Touché. I didn't word my objection clearly enough. I'm objecting to the representation of laissez-faire as embodying a unique type of voluntariness. I don't find Weber's definition of government as a "monopoly" as accurate. Megacorporation, Inc. arose spontaneously through the accumulation of hundreds of deals, none which involved twisting arms or breaking knees. "Voluntary" requires context. I may voluntarily tap dance--in the space that I own or rent. I may not "voluntarily" tap dance on your daughter's birthday cake as an uninvited guest. I have volition only with what is properly mine. Megacorporation may do whatever with its own property. However, if I have a grievance against my neighbor, Megacorporation has no right to act as exclusive arbiter or adjudicator.

Staying alive is valued by most people. Dying is valued by a tiny few. And risky behavior is valued by a significant minority. What is important is the not the objective but the means. I may pursue X as long as I do so with what belongs to me. However, to state that everyone in society has a right to X without simultaneously stating "provided he attains it with his own wherewithal" is asking for trouble. I do not have a right to X if my only way of getting it is trespass. I do not have a right to life if it requires the government to rob everybody else to pay for my dialysis machine. The "right to liberty"? Liberty to do what? Scratch my own head? Feed the hungry children of Africa with taxes collected from you? The "right to move about"? Where? In the apartment I've leased? In your swimming pool when you're not looking? As for buying up roads and paths, there is a concept called easement, well established in common law, which allows for access to one's property. X's ownership of Lot A, may not be limited by Y's buying up the land around it. But easements are unmistakably property rights.

Preventing mass murder restricts voluntary action? Then Hitler must represent the height of volunteerism! As for Megacorporation, you wrote, "The region has centralized and is now governed by Megacorporation, Inc." Government--corporate or otherwise--by definition is a monopoly on force. Coercion contradicts volition.

Right to life means the right to take "actions necessary to stay alive"? Then surely Pauper X has the right to take some of Cattle Baron Y's longhorns in order to feed himself. The longer you avoid what property should be accorded to X and what property should be accorded to Y, the more you're going to encourage public takings to satisfy the "right to life." If a man "doesn't have a right to demand that anyone else provide" the necessities of life, then why not simply say that each man is entitled only to the property of his own body, what he has created with it, and what he has gained voluntarily from others? Why not say everyone has a right to _____________(fill in the blank), provided that he does not violate anyone else's property or to use force to compel another to act against what he explicitly chooses with regard to his person and property? That way you can fill in the blank with life, death, heroin, fast cars, unprotected sex--or anything else you like. "The notion that all human interactions should be voluntary is implicit in the right to life." No, it is not. If a constitution says, "Every person has a right ot life, and this government will enforce that right," you won't need any convoluted interpretations for lawmakers to start taxing the citizenry to pay for food stamps, free health clinics, and public housing.

The fundamental rule of the free society is not to violate anyone's property or to use force to compel him to act against what he explicitly chooses with regard to his person and property. Yes, this concept certainly goes against the desires of the predator who would like to murder, say, every redhead or albino he can find. But for a society to indulge such a killer would result in a net reduction of voluntaryism, for the multiple murders would cancel out any benefit of granting the predator his way. "voluntary: done or given because you want to and not because you are forced to." If I have warped this word, you are free to show how. As to your example of Megacorporation, Inc., if such a corporation is a coercive monopoly (i.e. uses force or the threat thereof) to gain exclusivity in the provision of a good or service, then the society it rules is most assuredly not free. Taxes are certainly not a feature of a freedom. Whether a portion of mankind will ever arrive at a perfect, force-free society is not something we can project with accuracy. But it is not because any part of laissez-faire theory is self-contradictory or impractical.

Laissez-faire is a voluntary society in the sense that each person is allowed to use what he rightfully owns, provided that he does not infringe on the equal right of every other person. True, a man who claims, wrongfully, that he has a right to a share of Bill Gates's fortune will probably not consent to the laissez-faire arrangement. But I do not know of any advocate of a free society who claims that such a system is going to please everyone. Where does the right to property fit in? At precisely the point when a woman--legally--shoots a man for breaking into her home. People who are less than thrilled at having full ownership of their bodies are free to invite others to run them over and hack off pieces of them. In such a way would their dignity as non-self-owners be preserved.

You are not qualified to make a critique of a political system that you willfully misrepresent. The advocates of laissez-faire do not say that charitable contributions to the hungry are corrections of the market. Any voluntary action is part of the market. Thus you have demolished an argument that no one here has advanced. The starvation claim is especially rich since whatever amount of hunger existed in semi-free countries of the past pales in comparison to those who starved under Stalin.

The argument has been reduced to the most rudimentary level in order to correct the misconceptions (or misdirections) of a contributor who falsely represents my argument with questions such as, "How can you then say that socialism is not in anyone's best interest?" While I have little hope that you will be able to respond to this post with anything but prattle on the order of "How will the market keep child molesters happy?" I will state, once more, that freedom, while benefiting the vast majority of people, will not be to the liking of those who prefer the life of a predator. I do not know of a social system that will please both the man who thinks that individual rights are sacrosanct and the man who thinks that the rest of men are just dumb animals waiting to be caged or slaughtered. Their interests are completely incompatible, and no one on this forum has ever supposed otherwise. I have said this twice before: We cannot please both the men who wish to murder and the men who wish not to be murdered. Satisfying the former group negates the latter group. Therefore, in choosing the free market and a legal system that protects each person and what he has gained through his own work and voluntary relations with others, we don't please everybody but we do maximize the satisfaction of individual wants on the widest possible scale. If you want to argue with a person who believes that Stalin and Mao can be made happy under laissez-faire, you're talking to the wrong fellow. What's compelling about the free market is that it raises the quality of life for people across the board (even people who now vote Democratic). Unfortunately, government-subsidized schools and colleges have successfully preached the doctrine that an unregulated market leads to economic economic chaos and misery--despite all historical data to the contrary. This forum (in a small way) works to correct such socialist propaganda. But too often we have visitors who are not here to engage in honest discourse but to waste our time. I'm done with you.

Thanks, but I needed that quote two days ago! You are yourself. You could say that your body belongs to you or even that you have a property in your person, although that has a strange ring to me, but I still don't like the phrase, "self-ownership". The reason it sounds strange is that it conflates the general with the particular. The right to life is a general right. A person has a right to life as a consequence of his nature as a rational, living being. A person also has a right to own property as a consequence of his nature. However, he may or may not have a property right in a particular thing. For example, he might own a car or he might not. It might be someone-else's car. If he purchased a car, then he owns it. If not, he doesn't. When you say a person owns himself, it sounds as if he purchased himself at some point in the past. Or, perhaps someone gave him to himself as a gift. The same thing applies when you say that a person not only owns himself but every part of himself. I suppose a person might have purchased his kidneys from someone else, but once they have been incorporated into his body, they are a part of him, not a possession. What about a person's mind? Did you just purchase yours last Tuesday? Now, you're looking for a buyer, but no one is interested. That's why you feel frustrated. Sorry, I couldn't resist. Locke generally made a distinction between life, liberty, and property. For example: If a person's life was merely a possession, it wouldn't be necessary to draw a distinction. The other objection that I have, as I have stated before, is that "self-ownership" is not axiomatic. Property rights derive from man's nature as a rational, living being. Life is logically prior to property rights and the purpose of property rights is to protect a person's ability to live. Property rights are the only method known to effectively protect human life. But, that is something that must be shown, not assumed. In The Virtue of Selfishness, Rand said: Property rights are the implementation of the right to life. They don't exist prior to the right to life and can't be explained without first acknowledging the right to life. Darrell Life is a process that requires oxygen, nutrition, protection from the elements, and sometimes expert medical attention. Unless we add a rather detailed qualifier, to insist that a person has a "right to life," is perforce to say he has a "right to oxygen, nutrition, protection from the elements, and sometimes expert medical attention." Elsewhere you have been emphatic that "in a free society all human interactions should be voluntary." The problem is that such a goal is not one and the same as the same as a "right to life." And unless your legal system makes it very clear which goal is paramount, those who favor using police power for wealth transfer will be only too happy to generate costly government schemes for promoting everyone's "right to life." When we say a person has ownership in something, it does not have to mean the possession of that property came though purchase. Following Locke, we can say a person attains rightful ownership though original use. Person X finds a diamond in the wilderness. He cuts it, polishes it and makes it his. Person Y occupied his body first and still occupies it now; he has not yet abandoned it. Therefore Y has an unimpeachable claim on his body through original use and continued habitation of the property. You say kidneys are a part of a man, but not a possession. I knew a man who had his gall bladder removed and kept it in alcohol. Was the gall bladder not a possession? What about clippings of his hair and fingernails? Ownership only makes sense in terms of use, control and disposal. I may sell you my car, but if I don't allow you to drive it or to transfer ownership to someone else, in what real sense are you the owner? Similarly, while it is conceivable that someone could sell himself into slavery, I do not see how the attributes and contents of one's mind could be transferred to another under present technology. When we say a person has rights in his body, we are in effect saying he has a right to do with that body as he wishes and, if he can, to keep that body alive without interference. Adding he has a right to life is at best redundant and at worst a potential foot in the door to the welfare state. If the purpose of property rights is "to protect a person's ability to live," then there could in fact be valid laws against suicide and euthanasia, for such life-ending activities would contradict the presumed "right to life" basis for rights. Furthermore, under such a premise, any other activity that is dangerous could be strictly regulated or banned. If "property rights are the implementation of the right to life," then, by the same token, the statist could assert that regulation of drugs is also the implementation of the right to life. Fewer dangerous drugs on the street, more lives saved, more "rights to life" protected.

I've never made the statement that socialism is not in anyone's best interest. Obviously, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and certain others derived great personal benefit from imposing a socialist order in their countries and then securing a position of absolute authority over it. The argument for the free market is not that every single person's wants will be perfectly satisfied. Obviously, voluntary exchange cannot serve the desires of the murderer, the rapist and the vandal. To the extent that the desires of predators are met, the desires of their victims are negated. This has been stated before--or have you not been paying attention? The great benefit of the market is that it is the most efficient system for delivering resources to a population. Moreover, it is the only economic system consistent with the recognition of man's rights. Yesterday, your presumed exception to the free market was a psycho-killer. Today it is the hard-line socialist. Tomorrow, I imagine, your devastating rebuttal will include a homicidal religious nut.

Thanks, but I needed that quote two days ago!

I have used the term "positive rights" in the sense that "positive rights require others to provide you with either a good or service. A negative right, on the other hand, only requires others to abstain from interfering with your actions." See here. Yes, understood, as all do here. But this is how the tangle and wrangle begins; try explaining it to other fellow citizens and folk at large. It's partly semantical, but "positive" should not ever be the preserve of 'claim rights' and 'entitlement rights'. (The right to human dignity -whatever that means- for one, more commonly heard, lately). Such 'rights' are of course claims on others, and mean wrongs to others. Rand says it concisely: "The concept of a right pertains only to action--specifically to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men. Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a POSITIVE..." (It's certain you know this well, FF). So for all purposes (beginning at self-clarity) "negative rights" should fall away in usage, I argue. I respectfully disagree. As Tibor Machan wrote, "Just as the new 'liberalism' is fake liberalism, so the new 'positive rights' are fake rights. In each case, the heart of a valid principle has been gutted." It is entirely appropriate that negative rights should be the at the heart of law, for equal liberty can only be found when both the individual and the government refrain from intruding on the person and property of others.

The bolded seems to contradict: It seems to me that an ethical theory which cannot tell mass murderers not to mass murder is no ethical theory at all. A. We cannot mass tell murderers what is in their best interests. B. We can mass tell murderers what is in their best interests. A and B are in contradiction. I choose A. Now, having chosen A, I may go on to say that everyone has a right to his own body and thus to be free of aggression from others. I do not have to know what is in any one person's best interests to recognize the law of equal liberty. No one has refrained from telling mass murderers not to mass murder. To repeat, satisfying the desires of sociopaths would necessarily negate the present and future satisfaction (and rights) of their victims. A society that protects the individual from aggression may not please everybody. The rapist, the cutthroat, and the vandal may prefer a realm where such protections do not exist.

I have used the term "positive rights" in the sense that "positive rights require others to provide you with either a good or service. A negative right, on the other hand, only requires others to abstain from interfering with your actions." See here.

I know. I got that much. That's why I'm asking you. If libertarianism is "only" an ethical theory, then you are merely saying that free markets should maximize consumer satisfaction. But, this whole time you were arguing that free markets do in fact maximize consumer satisfaction. Now, in this case, if "should" implies "is", then your whole argument collapses in on itself. That there are objective ethical standards, such as the principle of non-initiation of force, implies that there are things all people will find objectively valuable. Let there be no mistake: given a certain population and certain limited resources, the free market performs better than socialism at meeting the wants of the vast majority of individuals. Can the market meet the wants of the rapist, the cutthroat, the vandal? Obviously not, for satisfying the desires of sociopaths would necessarily negate the present and future satisfaction of their victims. It's true that we cannot mass tell murderers what is in their best interests (other than to say, don't kill if you don't want to be killed yourself). That does not change the fact that societies that centrally plan what their citizens are supposed to need will end in economic stagnation or collapse.

I suppose it is in the realm of possibility that some genius might conclude that "self-ownership" actually means ownership of any person but oneself. For his benefit we might have to draw a picture. If the law guarantees everyone a right to life, then an opponent of government subsidies of humanitarian missions to save lives would have to look elsewhere in the law to find that such subsidies are prohibited. If the law says nothing about "paid for by oneself" (your phrase), then the welfarists can look forward to running the show. Engaging in over-simplification doesn't necessarily imply the right answers to all questions. That is why we're having this discussion. Your over-reliance on property rights occasionally leads you to conclusions that seem unreasonable. Earlier, I stated that the right to life includes the right to take all of those actions required to thrive. I might better have used the word "flourish" or "prosper". At any rate, to thrive or flourish or prosper means to place a great distance between oneself and the needs of immediate survival and is associated with the psychological state of happiness. I also stated earlier in this thread that in a free society all human interactions should be voluntary, insofar as is possible or practicable. If achieving happiness requires that you donate a kidney, you would therefore have a right to do so. Donating a kidney doesn't interfere with the lives of other people. Suicide is sort of a marginal issue, but it is also complex so I'm going to set it aside for now. Dangerous sports might be necessary for some people to flourish and be happy and they don't require the involuntary involvement of anyone else. However, restrictions on children playing dangerous sports would be appropriate. Similar comments could be made about drugs. If the vital principle is to make all human interactions voluntary, then why not say so? The insistence on having the government grant everyone a "right to life" and then refusing to include any "silly phrase" about who and with what funds is going to ensure this right is asking for trouble from those fond of the idea of positive rights. What rights violations do you see in such a case? You may use the pronoun "himself" to refer to thoughts and personality of a man who no longer holds legal title to the body that he inhabits.

So if an individual decides that going on a murderous killing spree is in his best interest, we can't tell him otherwise because he is the highest authority on what is in his best interest? Before commenting on a subject, you should take the trouble do a little reading in advance. Libertarianism is the ethical theory of individual freedom, not the theory that there are no universal standards in ethics or that anyone may do anything he wishes. It is the law of equal liberty, defined by Herbert Spencer as the idea "that every man may claim the fullest liberty to exercise his faculties compatible with the possession of like liberty to every other man."