Property Rights are the most important rights

[Occupied Deutschland]

From the "freer the market..." thread.
Who here thinks property rights are the most important rights we have, why? Why not?
Personally, I do believe this. "Property Rights" means that one is entitled to what one produces or earns. In a short definition, it's what one 'has'. So, you're right to life is protected under the phrase property rights. Anything that restricts you're life (smoking, drinking, sexing, texting, sexting, drinxting (ala the gubmint)) is therefore restricitng your property rights.

[Trotskylvania]

Basing all liberty on property rights means your liberty is directly proportional to your pocket book. If you own nothing, you have no freedom.

Stop for a minute and think if that is a reasonable outcome.

[Vetalia]

Well, if you define your body to be your property, then your income doesn't matter. You still own that no matter what.

[Augarundus]

All human beings have two rights:

1) The right to self-sovereignty.
--- To 'rule themselves'.

2) Representation.
---Voting.



The former covers property, life, liberty, etc. Freedom of speech as well.

The latter covers voting and freedom of speech rights.

[Fartsniffage]

Well, if you define your body to be your property, then your income doesn't matter. You still own that no matter what.

Would you really want to do that?

Bankrupcy hearings would be a lot more interesting....

[Jenrak]

From the "freer the market..." thread.
Who here thinks property rights are the most important rights we have, why? Why not?
Personally, I do believe this. "Property Rights" means that one is entitled to what one produces or earns. In a short definition, it's what one 'has'. So, you're right to life is protected under the phrase property rights. Anything that restricts you're life (smoking, drinking, sexing, texting, sexting, drinxting (ala the gubmint)) is therefore restricitng your property rights.

Actually, right to food, water, and basic necessities is most important.

Cause it's irrelevant what you hold dear if you're dead from dehydration or starvation.

[Occupied Deutschland]

From the "freer the market..." thread.
Who here thinks property rights are the most important rights we have, why? Why not?
Personally, I do believe this. "Property Rights" means that one is entitled to what one produces or earns. In a short definition, it's what one 'has'. So, you're right to life is protected under the phrase property rights. Anything that restricts you're life (smoking, drinking, sexing, texting, sexting, drinxting (ala the gubmint)) is therefore restricitng your property rights.

Actually, right to food, water, and basic necessities is most important.

Cause it's irrelevant what you hold dear if you're dead from dehydration or starvation.

But why should everyone have a RIGHT to food, water and basic neccessities (and who decides what is 'basic') If Hitler wasd dying of dehydration would you give him water because it's his "right" as a human being? (I know it's extreme but...)

[Fartsniffage]

But why should everyone have a RIGHT to food, water and basic neccessities (and who decides what is 'basic') If Hitler wasd dying of dehydration would you give him water because it's his "right" as a human being? (I know it's extreme but...)

Yes.

Because I'm a human being.

[Galiria]

Actually, right to food, water, and basic necessities is most important.

Cause it's irrelevant what you hold dear if you're dead from dehydration or starvation.

But why should everyone have a RIGHT to food, water and basic neccessities (and who decides what is 'basic') If Hitler wasd dying of dehydration would you give him water because it's his "right" as a human being? (I know it's extreme but...)

So property rights are more important than the right to food and water because Hitler was human and thus could be thirsty or hungry?

Nice logic.

[Occupied Deutschland]

But why should everyone have a RIGHT to food, water and basic neccessities (and who decides what is 'basic') If Hitler wasd dying of dehydration would you give him water because it's his "right" as a human being? (I know it's extreme but...)

Yes.

Because I'm a human being.

NAZI-SYMPATHIZER (I'm joking)
But seriously, sure it'd make you feel better to give the person dying of dehydration water, and that's good of you. But you are still exercising you're own judgement which is protected because you OWN it.

[The Voltania]

The OP would make a great comedian.

Not only does it diss on the poor (who, believe it or not, aren't all lazy or want to be that way), it also takes out freedom of speech, voting, expression, nutrition, etc.

[Einssein]

There are no rights. People come and go. As soon as you assign one person their rights, they create more people and suddenly they need rights too and mess with everyone elses' rights. Truth is, survival of the fittest. There are no guarantees. Any "morals" or "philosophies" that argue so are lies for their self interest.

[GeneralHaNor]

I would refuse to live in a world without property rights

Property rights are essential to maintain freedom
I value my freedom, more then I value security, physical or economic

[Galiria]

I would refuse to live in a world without property rights

Property rights are essential to maintain freedom
I value my freedom, more then I value security, physical or economic

And again, property rights are meaningless if you have no water or food.

[Occupied Deutschland]

I would refuse to live in a world without property rights

Property rights are essential to maintain freedom
I value my freedom, more then I value security, physical or economic

And again, property rights are meaningless if you have no water or food.

So, you go out and MAKE food and water. Then, when you are sitting feeding off you're triumphant effort other people are not allowed to come by willy-nilly and TAKE you're food and water by force. If you choose to share it with them, more power to you. But property rights ALLOW you to vote and be free without someone breathing down your neck.

[The Voltania]

And again, property rights are meaningless if you have no water or food.

So, you go out and MAKE food and water. Then, when you are sitting feeding off you're triumphant effort other people are not allowed to come by willy-nilly and TAKE you're food and water by force. If you choose to share it with them, more power to you. But property rights ALLOW you to vote and be free without someone breathing down your neck.

How can water be made?

[Fartsniffage]

How can water be made?

Burn hydrogen in oxygen.

[Galiria]

And again, property rights are meaningless if you have no water or food.

So, you go out and MAKE food and water. Then, when you are sitting feeding off you're triumphant effort other people are not allowed to come by willy-nilly and TAKE you're food and water by force. If you choose to share it with them, more power to you. But property rights ALLOW you to vote and be free without someone breathing down your neck.

Make food and water? Firstly to make water you either need to find fresh water, or set up a distillation process for salt water, and to make food you either need to grow it, which will take time, forage it and run the risk of eating something poisonous (let's face it, barely anyone nowadays knows what's poison and what's not) or hunt animals, which isn't easy.

And I fail to see what property rights have to do with voting, which is a completely different right.

[Jenrak]

Actually, right to food, water, and basic necessities is most important.

Cause it's irrelevant what you hold dear if you're dead from dehydration or starvation.

But why should everyone have a RIGHT to food, water and basic neccessities (and who decides what is 'basic') If Hitler wasd dying of dehydration would you give him water because it's his "right" as a human being? (I know it's extreme but...)

There are two major schools of thought to the idea of rights. Before, let us begin on a basic debriefing of the idea of rights. The position of rights are split into two main definitives - negative and positive rights. Negative rights are rights that cannot be impeded by outside forces unto an individual, such as the right of religion, right of free speech, etc., whereas positive rights are rights that are allotted to people naturally because of their status as sapient, feeling constructs. Such positive rights are food, water, and (in many places) healthcare. The distribution of negative rights distill from positive rights - to provide a negative right, you need to provide positive rights.

This is known as the GAL movement (Green, Alternative, and Libertarian). The GAL movement is a resurgence that occurs in politico-sociology where people, when given a particular undetermined and undefined 'threshold limit' of a particular set of positive rights are allocated thereby negative rights or begin to develop negative rights. In other words, when you give someone a particular set of base rights (such as right to food, water, shelter, etc.), then they no longer compete for survival and thereby can begin using their cognitive and deductive capacity to things other than simply trying to stay alive.

This theory is posited and strengthen by Amartya Sen's theory of human resources, in that humans are required to provide these rights because each and every person has the potential to become the next Albert Einstein, and thereby without a means for us to actually see what they'll become, affording these rights to them is the beginning stage. By giving positive rights to individuals, we at least give them the opportunity to better society as a whole - imagine if, for example, Mark Zuckerberg's mother had starved to death - would Facebook have existed? While the question is arguable that eventually progression would incite that Facebook would have, the fact that innovative processes are difficult to understand make providing rights a focal issue to human progression.

Now, there are two major camps of rights allocation - cosmopolitans and communitarians, each with their own consideration of ethics. Cosmopolitans believe in the distribution of rights to human beings under the consideration that humans are humans, and thereby because of our identity as humans we must thereby give them the rights that are basic and positive - food, water, etc. Communitarians, comparitively, believe that people must provide rights to their perceivable communities because of an 'insider-outsider' divide. In other words, they focus on communities and identifiable communities of individuals - it becomes difficult to argue for the support of an outside community because of the theory of a 'pot pity' - all people contribute to this pot to reap the benefits. Now, you may argue this in terms of communitarianism that we must not give Hitler water in that he does not fulfill the moral community in that he's a killer, and that he doesn't fulfill the identity community in that we're not his supporters, and thereby he should not be given a set of basic positive rights as communitarians, since cosmopolitans otherwise would argue that we should at least afford him basic positive rights because of his human identity.

However, the issue (and fallacy) in the communitarian argument to the Hitler theory spans three major topics. Firstly, who defines and gives out rights? We cannot simply give out rights and take them away, because that contradicts the idea of a right - an inalienable obligation of social stratum and institution afforded to humans within constructed societies - if we take out a right, it undermines the definition of a right.

Secondly, the communitarian argument focuses on economic purpose - we cannot help communities because communities require that since only members put their support into the pot will it become beneficial as a given right for them to receive. The argument of outside communities does not apply because the question if framed to say 'do we have a right to determine who lives or dies' rather than 'does Hitler deserve the water'. The question is moot because the right to kill is not a right at all, and thereby we cannot reasonably argue that people have a right to kill under any circumstances. Simply convention and pressure forces people to kill (as in self-defense) or instinctual or political motivation (to get rid of enemies) or institutional moral (war), but it is by no means a right that affords people to kill, and thereby to leave Hitler to his death by depriving him of his right is an act that is not a right in itself.

Thirdly, and lastly, there is the final idea of right appropriations. Is Hitler deserving of less rights than any other mass murderer? Because you answer so quickly, understand that we ourselves are constructed by bias. Constructionist ideas note that because we give value to non-physical things do we give them non-physical value. This applies to murder just as it applies to currency, law, borders, and nationalism. The concept of murder is death - people die all the time, but the significance of murder occurs because of a sudden detachment of emotional identification within our society to a particular thing. A soldier dying itself is not tragic, but the grief and pain that he creates in his death felt by his loves ones and friends is tragic. This, when looked at it rationally, is a construct of our reality unto another. Therefore, let's apply this to the idea of rights - what difference does Hitler have with an otherwise pious or kind man who orders the death of many hundreds? What difference does a dictator have who kills a 100 people with a kind president who kills an equal amount for another cause?

Can it be morals? Ah, but remember, the social construct upon which we define right and wrong are our own biases, and the concept of rights as obligations of social actors unto people must not have moral biases. How then, can we define a quantified idea with a non-physical construct? We can't physical create rights out of thin air, yet it's a social norm that we have come to believe. What is it then? Who is capable of having these rights, can they be undermined, and if so, who is capable of doing so? Can we actually measure in aggregate data non-human rights?

In summary, to deprive someone of their basic positive rights, such as water, deprives them of basic negative rights, and as a result puts our own rights in question because it no longer becomes a right because no longer is it an obligatory social construct by institutions to provide to individuals under our own sense of sapient thought.

And finally, most importantly, what is the utility of the action between the application of rights and taking it away?

[Gravlen]

tl; dr

[Dead Snow]

Jen - you can't reason with Generalites?!

[Gravlen]

Also, property rights are not at the top of my list. I go with the basic human rights (in a traditional western sense) first, followed by political and social rights before reaching economic rights.

[Hydesland]

Also, property rights are not at the top of my list. I go with the basic human rights (in a traditional western sense) first, followed by political and social rights before reaching economic rights.

I would absolutely, 100%, definitively, if I was forced to categorize rights into groups, include property rights well into the 'basic human rights' group.

[The Cat-Tribe]

From the "freer the market..." thread.
Who here thinks property rights are the most important rights we have, why? Why not?
Personally, I do believe this. "Property Rights" means that one is entitled to what one produces or earns. In a short definition, it's what one 'has'. So, you're right to life is protected under the phrase property rights. Anything that restricts you're life (smoking, drinking, sexing, texting, sexting, drinxting (ala the gubmint)) is therefore restricitng your property rights.

Before I could possible answer your question, I would need to know the following:

• What are "property rights"?
  
  
• Where do they come from? How are they justified?
  
  
• What things are subject to the protection of property rights? In other words, what can one own?
  
  
• How does one come to be the legitimate owner of a specific item of tangible property?
  
  
• How does one come to be the legitimate owner of a specific parcel of land?
  
  
• Who enforces these rights/protects ones property?

I challenge anyone who says property rights are the most important rights (or believes property rights should be absolute or near-absolute) to answer these questions.

[GeneralHaNor]

I would refuse to live in a world without property rights

Property rights are essential to maintain freedom
I value my freedom, more then I value security, physical or economic

And again, property rights are meaningless if you have no water or food.

Property rights enable you to be self-sufficient instead of relying on government to provide for you.
If you can't be bothered to ensure your own survival, why should I care if you live or die.
If you want to live, prove your desire to do so by earning it. Instead of robbing Group A to provide for Group B.

Death is natural, Life is struggle.
I have an obligation to make sure that I survive
but I don't extend that obligation to everyone else, simply because they happen to live near me.