From the White-PillBox: Part 34

You wouldn’t think there could be a White Pill in a topic as contentious as rights. But there is.

Finding a White Pill in rights discussions starts by clarifying what rights are, and are not.

Rights are not things

Whatever rights may be, they are clearly not tangible. They are not physical objects that can be used, claimed, given or traded.

Which means they are not ownable. Concepts cannot be owned, whether the concept is “rights”, or any other. This is because ideas and concepts are not scarce resources (things which can only be possessed or used by one person at a time, that is, over which there can be a conflict).

Thus it is inaccurate to refer to rights possessively (my rights), or as objects (rights protect me).

Do rights derive from nature?

The Declaration of Independence says men are endowed “with certain inalienable rights”. This would suggest those rights arise from the very nature of man (natural rights).

But it is unclear how rights can be natural. If human rights were derivatives of nature, presumably they would be as difficult to break as natural laws (defying gravity, for example). Instead, it is quite easy to violate the supposed life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness of others ¹.

The Declaration tries to address this by defining how these rights can be secured. But this begs the question of why, if they are natural, rights would need any help. After all, the laws of physics clearly do not need our help to make them work properly.

The idea of natural rights also makes no sense from the time perspective. Trying to defy the laws of physics fails immediately. On the other hand, violating someone’s rights usually succeeds immediately. The violation seems to have no problem getting past the right itself. Indeed, all the victim can do is wait and hope for relief or restitution, i.e., wait for his supposed rights to be restored.

The process seems more artificial than natural.

The matter is even worse when “rights” extend into positive entitlements (the right to food, shelter, etc.). If a lone person on an island has such rights, exactly how does he claim or assert them, so he can be fed and housed? Clearly, labeling such rights as natural is literally meaningless.

Why rights discussions are muddled

These discussions try to artificially graft two things together. One is the objectively validated laws of nature (physics, chemistry, etc.). The other is human interactions. The mistake is expecting peaceful human interactions to have a natural foundation, and then calling that “rights”.

Rights discussions assume they can build their foundation on the objective world of natural laws (how things are). From there they use the word “natural” to imply their discussion is equally rooted in the tangible world of hard facts. But judging the “right” kind of human interactions can only be normative (how things ought to be).

The White Pill: rights discussions can be highly simplified

It starts by eliminating the fog: by avoiding the use of the term natural law as a foundation. Also, avoiding the trap of relating rights to political laws.

Rights discussions can focus instead on the social aspect of human existence. The social context is the only way to make rights discussions intelligible. They are only meaningful in the context of two or more people interacting. As indicated above, to the single human detached from any others, rights can have no meaning whatsoever. We can claim all we want that we possess certain rights, but it means nothing if we expect to assert them.

Rights - a function of our interactions

We can think about rights, first of all, by considering how we expect to interact with others. Namely, that when it comes to our choices over our body and property, others need our consent. Also, we tend to treat others in exactly the same way, by respecting their consensual choices over their body and property.

So rights are essentially our understanding that this is a two-way street; that the honoring of consent is expected of all who interact.

What’s good for the goose

We can see the elegance of this view by examining non-consensual acts.

We started with an understanding that we should not violate each other’s consent. But when someone acts contrary to that understanding (by aggressing against us), the mutual nature of the understanding is ended.

The person who has initiated aggression has altered the mutual understanding. He has opened the door, so to speak, to a new understanding, one that permits defensive force when necessary. We are not obligated to respect their consent, since they made clear that they do not respect ours. Their act of aggression was essentially a public statement that makes their position clear: aggression is acceptable to them. They can hardly object to the victim’s use of defensive force.

In this sense, “equal rights” are maintained. Just as peaceful interactions are expected mutually, an act of aggression becomes mutual with respect to its defensive response ².

This also suggests how restitution in kind makes sense. We can review the degree of harm caused by a consent-violator; from there we can gauge what compensation comes closest to making the victim as whole as possible.

Conclusion

Rights conversations need not be contentious. The non-aggression principle gives us the starting point to a clearer view of what we mean by the term.

Rights are not written in the fabric of reality, and not in our nature as humans.

Instead, rights emerge the minute we start to interact. Because along with our interactions come understandings (usually unspoken, but always based on experience). Those understandings are reciprocal, and reflect our expectation of peaceful interplay.

Those understandings fulfill a major attribute of the commonly understood purpose of rights: helping to protect us from the violent acts of others. Those understandings are what we mean by rights.

1. It also eliminates the need to debate the idea of whether all men are created equal. And in any case, what is meant by “equal” is rarely clarified. For example, it cannot mean physically equal: we are not clones of one another. We are born differently and mature differently. We are very different with respect to our appearances, our talents, our limitations, and our life experiences.

Yet in some technical (perhaps nerdy) ways we are indeed equal:

• The laws of physics apply to everyone equally.

• We are all members of the same genetic species.

• Each of us is numerically one person.

But whatever rights are, they do not arise from any such interpretations of equality.

2. It should be made clear that defensive action needs to be proportional to the original act of aggression. A victim (or his agent) has a range of defensive actions available to deal with the original act, and where possible obtain redress. But this range has reasonable limits (which evolve over time, as organic common law evolves). Were there no limits, defensive force could far exceed the original act, and itself become an initiation of aggression. This undermines the mutually reciprocal nature of the interaction.