What Rights Do You Have?

in #anarchy7 years ago

If the leftists are to be believed; food, water, shelter, healthcare, income, education, even internet are all basic human rights.

If you ask a "conservative", they may say something like; free speech (except when the flag is involved), security, and the right to bear arms.

Food, water, shelter, etc. are all good things, but are all good things rights?

What is a Right?

The dictionary defines right as a moral or legal entitlement to have or obtain something or to act in a certain way. Generally I like that definition, but I'm going to nix the word "legal."

Having that word muddies the definition. Anything can be a legal right, that depends on nothing more than the whims of politicians. I'm interested in absolutes. With that being said, I'd like to rephrase this definition as a question:

What do you have a moral entitlement to?


The only logical answer is a simple one: 

You have a right to yourself. 


That's it. 

Your rights end exactly where another person's begin.


Any "right" that infringes upon someone else's sole right to self cannot truly be called a right. Any answer other than "a right to yourself" falls apart under scrutiny. Let's try it with a couple of examples:

You have a right to healthcare. What exactly does this mean? Do you have the right to someone else's labour? Someone else's facilities? Someone else's time? Someone else's property? You cannot have a right to healthcare without infringing upon the rights of someone else.

You have a right to education. What does this one mean? A right to go to school? A right to a building you don't own? A right to use services without paying for them? A right to materials, books, facilities? You cannot have a right to education without infringing upon the rights of someone else.

You have a right to shelter. Do you have a right to land? If it doesn't belong to anyone else and you cultivate it yourself, then yes (more on that later.) Do you have a right to a roof over your head? Do you have a right to the labour required to accomplish that? A right to plumbing? A right to electricity? You cannot have a right to shelter without infringing upon the rights of someone else.

Is that clear enough? Do I need to go on?

You have a right to try and access healthcare, education and shelter of your own volition. But that doesn't need to be said because that falls under your right to self. 

What is Your Right to Self?

Your right to self means that you own yourself. No one else has the moral right to own you. An extension of this right is the right to property. Why? Property is an investment of yourself into the world. If I labour and mold the resources of the earth to create something, that thing is mine. No one else has claim to it. In the same way, I can trade my labour for someone else's property if we both agree to the terms.

Many commonly known rights actually shouldn't even need to be stated because they fall under the umbrella of this one true right. The right to free speech, to bear arms, to practice religion: all of these are extensions of your right to self.

It's pretty simple. 

Stop trying to make it so complicated. 

Stop putting your faith in unrightful masters who seek to infringe upon my rights and yours.

Become an anarchist. 

~Seth

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Great explanation. This is one of those things that I always wish people would comprehend. But when I try to explain it, it turns out I just hate poor people and want sick people to die.

People are so stuck in the view that compassion=government interference that it can be hard to open a civil dialogue.

Hey @sethlinson , just happened to see your other post about your animated series thanks to some re-steems from Luke and Sterlin, nice work! After checking out your blog I am glad to see another principled voluntaryist over here spreading the good word. Upvoted and followed man, your neighbor to the south :)

Thanks! It's always great to connect with other voluntaryists. I followed you back.

Much appreciated! Not sure where you're in Canada, but if you're in the Winnipeg/Ontario area swing on down tomorrow for the Minneapolis Steem meet up! It's only a 7-8 hour drive :)

I am in Ontario. I would love to go to one of these Steem meetups one day but I'm not going to drive quite that far :P

Ha, no worries. I'd say just take an Uber, but my buddy who just visited from Winnipeg says you guys don't have it yet. Let alone it would be pretttttyyyy spendy.

We have Uber in Toronto and probably other cities too, but it isn't everywhere.

This is a great article, which complements one I wrote a few days ago quite nicely.

Rights are one of those things that people seem quite confused about, so it's not exactly surprising we both write such similar articles.

Anyways, I won't post a link, but if you're interested in reading my thoughts on rights, it's on my profile.

Have a nice day.

I don't mind if you post links in the comments, so long as it's relevant ;)

I'll check out your article. Thanks for commenting!

Things that i never learned in school - what my rights are....

Things I never learned in school - basically anything of real importance.

I've never been a fan of rights because then you inherently have wrongs. ;) (Speaking strictly from an objective perspective)

I really appreciate your definition of rights though, it quite reminds me much of my definition of freedom.

The only thing I have any issue with is the "right to shelter." I do not support personal ownership, temporary authority surely but not ownership. Land is free and so are the materials which are procured from such (not processed materials, raw materials). I do agree that you don't have the right to the labor necessary to build the shelter, but you can surely build your own shack if desperate enough.

Great article!

But considering the fact that personal ownership of land has been a thing in many cultures and regions for a very long time, how can you extricate the land itself from the labor that has been applied to it?

For instance, if I purchased a piece of land with money that was the product of my labor, and then someone comes along and says, "You don't own this land! Land is free and so are the materials!" and then proceeds to move in/use the land, is that not an infringement of my rights to my labor and time that I gave up in exchange for the money to buy the land?

Very great point, @lesliestarrohara. My response was confined by a purely hypothetical situation where ownership has not been a part of the equation.

As for how we would implement these ideas into the current standing of society where ownership has been the standard procedure applied to land, I'm not 100% sure I could answer that well enough to suffice everybody. I personally am a voluntarist anarchist, and I cannot force others to behave any differently than they already act. I can, however, band together with other like minded individuals who have already come together under this idea. I believe that given the choice, generally people would voluntarily help set up communities to assist each other where needed. Land would not be an issue because there would be no competition for resources as resources would be shared. I think that corporatism has basically programmed us into competition, it requires an us vs them scenario to exist - shooting for the top is the only goal in corporatism.

So how to employ these ideas right now?

Live the revolution.

As old Sidhartha says, "be the change you want to see..." the rest will follow.

Interesting. I also classify myself as a voluntaryist anarchist, but I take a different view on land ownership, competition, and resource allocation.

I think that communities like what you are talking about (where land and resources are shared) could exist and prosper in a voluntaryist society, and, at the same time, so could competitive, capitalist markets. To me, land ownership makes sense, and there is nothing inherent about ownership or competition that is damaging to people or to communities, or even to the environment. It is, as you say, the corporatism that ruins everything. But not because it's competitive--because it's monopolistic.

I was kind of lightly hinting at the capability of both ideas coexisting in my previous response, I should have made that more clear.

I absolutely agree that both communities could exist together, and could even work in collusion in some instances.

Corporatism creates competition, competition divides people and makes them take sides in order to defend the successes of their team. If competition is equal then it is not competition it's equal exchange.

Capitalism does not inherently create competition, though it can be an aspect of capitalism when extortion comes into play. Capitalism allows for equal exchange to flow freely in a free market, but standards can be enforced which cause an unequal exchange at certain levels and then competition takes place as you fight to do better than the other in any exchange.

I don't necessarily support capitalism, but I also know it's not a demon needing exorcised.

This post gets a 8.74 % upvote thanks to @sethlinson, @sethlinson - Hail Eris !

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