>>41
>Individuals only have rights insofar as they are able to defend them.
Wrong.
I'll explain.
First of all, bear in mind that all Rights, at least all Inalienable/Individual Rights, are Rights to an ACTION, and NOT the right to an object. Rights are not a guarantee that a person will earn or succeed in achieving the object. It is a guarantee that he is free to pursue the object and that if he does create/achieve it, he is guaranteed to own it.
Now, onto the nature of Rights. The Rights of an individual does NOT come from what he can "defend". Might does not make Right. What a person, a human begin, have a Right to, is defined and entailed by his nature, by the virtue of been human. Politically, a society can either recognize these Rights, or not. If a society decides to politically not recognize these Inalienable Individual Rights and decides people can have the Rights to do anything as long as it is backed by majority consensus and whatnot, backed by what people can "defend", then that just means people in that society will get to do things they have no right to as a human begin as long as they have enough power and influence. That person could be businessmen who have the money to lobby the government to pass regulations that bars out his competitors from the market, or poor men who have the numbers to vote the government into robbing the property of others to give it to them. Those examples are the results of what happens when politically a society decides to recognize Rights based on what people can defend, instead of recognize Rights based on what been a human begin entails.
>Individuals, therefore, in the interests of security and a common vision of what these rights should be create societies.
The goals of every human society are the preservation of the society's vision, and the security of its members.
I agree, that is correct. But what social vision are you talking about? The vision that some men have the right to make others into their slaves for whatever purpose, or the vision that every men have the right to pursue his own life and happiness but does not have the right to sacrifice others for his end?
>The position of the method by which goods are exchanged in these societies, its economy, must be subordinate to its goals. Otherwise its goals are subordinate to its economy. If a societies goals are subject to its economy, its members have only those individual rights they can afford to buy.
I agree, that is also correct. But again, what are the "goals" of the society you are talking about? If the goal of a society is to do what is right and promote human life, then it will recognize Individual Rights and subject its method of economy, it's method of allocating wealth within itself, to voluntary trade, and only voluntary trade. All forms of stealing and robbery would be banned.
If the goal, the vision, of a society is not to do what is right, does not place the life of the individual as its standard, but places some other goals higher than the life of the individual, such as service to God or feeding the poor, then that means the purpose of that society is to make human begins into slaves to serve such an end. And if that is the goal, then not just econ-political policies that deals with economy, but all political polices, will not be justified by whether or not it promotes life, whether or not it's right, but by whether or not that political policy can accomplish this "greater" or "nobler" purpose. And when politically the End justify the Means, then any means, economically such as robbery, and in other areas, no matter how destructive to human life, no matter how wrong, no matter how horrible, can be politically justified.
>Freedom may be man's natural state, but all men are born into societies, and membership in a society restricts freedom and instead confers liberty in accordance with its vision and its goals. This liberty comes at a price, and its rewards and preservation require contribution. That the entire habitable 21st century world has been claimed by various societies, and there is no longer any way to live completely outside one of these societies bears repeating.
For the first part, it's true and I agree, society does place restrictions on a man's freedom in accordance with its vision and goals. But again, this leads back to the central issue, what kind of visions and goals are you talking about? Because what the kind of restriction is going to be placed depends directly on what kind of goal and vision you are trying to achieve.
If the vision is to create a society for the purpose of promoting human life, of promoting what is good and right, then every individual's physical freedom to pursue their own life and happiness will NOT be politically restricted. What will be restricted is every individual's physical freedom to steal, rob, murder..etc.
Now if the vision is to create a society for the purpose of using human life as a means, as slaves, to achieve some other "greater" purpose, then what actions are restricted and what isn't, will be much more different. I don't think I have to elaborate then what freedoms will be restricted, and what will not be.
As for the second part, I already dealt with that erroneous point in my previous posts, the erroneous point that individuals somehow takes on some kind of responsibility, some kind of debt, when they live in a society.
It's very simple, I'll explain again. Since wealth production does NOT take away from others, and since a Nation, a government, does not and cannot somehow own the land it governs, like a piece of property owned by a person, the only responsibility an individual have in a society is to pay for what he buys, and own up to his contracts. That's it. He does not own other individuals, in our case the poor, the wealth he produced and payed for, since their poverty is not caused by him producing wealth. Nor does he own the government anything for living on his OWN land. He might own the government cash if he uses public entities such as road and whatnot, but only if he USES them.
So unless you have something new to say about his point, stop repeating the same erroneous argument.
>Absolute private ownership is impossible in any society, and to underscore my point I'll mention that, as is common knowledge, all contemporary societies employ the concept of eminent domain.
Oh, so your argument that absolute private ownership is impossible in any society is because no society in history nor present day have it?
That's like people arguing few hundred years back that to fly or reach the moon is impossible because no one had done it. Or people in medieval times arguing that a free society is impossible and there will always be nobles, because nothing different have been done.
Now I am NOT arguing that ANYTHING is possible. Somethings are not. But I AM arguing that reason and facts points to that absolute private ownership, or in whole, the absolute political recognition of the Individual Rights, is possible, and more importantly, is right, and promotes life.
>The argument over the justification for private ownership is moot. Rather than private ownership, societies confer liberties based on investment. To judge this investment based primarily on economic grounds subordinates the society to its economy. A society whose primary goal is overall wealth, regardless of it's distribution, is best represented by monarchy, aristocracy, or oligarchy.
Wealth distribution again?
Either you can't understand what I explained in details in three posts about the nature of wealth and of wealth creation/production, or you just plainly refuse to.
Whatever the case, I am not explaining a single word more.
>I believe that a man must have food and shelter before he is capable of pursuing life, liberty, and happiness.
Don't drag concepts out of context. Refer to what I said about Rights at the very beginning of this post.
Freedom we are talking about is political freedom, meaning free to act without the physical compulsion, of other men within a society. Freedom to pursue one's life and happiness means freedom to do so without the permission from other men, whether they be the government or your neighbors.
That is what it meant, no more and no less.
You say a man must have food and shelter before he is capable of pursuing his life and happiness. That is true. But that has nothing to do with the concept of political freedom to pursue one's life and happiness. Unless someone is physically preventing by threat of force a man from earning and buying food or eating his own food, physically coercing him from buying a house or living in his own house, then a person's Right and Liberty to the pursuit of his life and happiness is not violated.
>Capitalists, insofar as their position within society is concerned, believe that they can have their cake, and eat it too.
You obviously either have no idea what Capitalism really is, or you have no idea what you are talking about.