The delusions of Western "natural rights".

A claim that illustrates your own inability to understand who, what and where Natural Rights are derived from, and again, men invent positive laws and privileges, not Natural Rights.

You would do well to look past the title of spaghetti Westerns and contemplate the relationship between human nature, often referred to simply as Nature, to Natural Rights.

Natural Rights are not created by men - positive laws and privileges are created by men - and it is you that is falling all over yourself. As you pointed out, a slave is not born free, thus your argument fails in its contradiction.

A claim that points to your own inability to understand the concept of equality expressed in the Preamble of the DOI. Same goes for your inability to understand that our Natural Rights exist regardless of your views and the positive laws that men create.

 

I agree. What I mean by the statement about logic is that we can determine, logically, what is a natural right and what is not, starting with the natural right to life.

 

Wealth arises from production. Government has nothing that it did not take first from those who produced something, and all such takings are by threat of violence.

 

Well, if you believe in magic, the central banks create paper and digits on computers. They then wave their rolled up economic degrees like wands, say a few spells, and that paper and those digits become more valuable than gold and we all call it "money."

 

"You don't understand our economic alchemy. It's horribly complicated and everything that goes wrong in the economy is your fault, anyway."

Got it. It's just like when a fundamentalist claims that we don't understand his system of salvation so that's why we are atheists.

Statism is truly a religion.

 

(Continued)

Apart from the fact rights are inventions of men, of course you can buy and sell property, if you can afford to do so.

They obviously are; nature - and often human nature - doesn't give two hoots about 'rights' -

Correct.

the 2nd part is correct: human nature evolved within the 'law of the jungle'.

"for all to be free, all must submit to rule of law": Cicero.

Absolute sovereignty - individual or national - is an obsolete concept based on the delusion that 'rights' are 'natural'.

Doctrines of international law, including the absurd concept of 'defensive' war?

Putin thinks he is defending Russia against NATO...so much for "defensive war"....

Such doctrines will be erroneous if they are based on delusions of sovereignty, ie based on non-existent 'natural' individual "rights": only created law can be "sovereign"; there is no sovereignty in nature.

 

There is no sovereignty in nature says the sheep as to goes to war against the pride of lioness that are looking for a late night snack...

 

It's the fault of the neo-classical 'flat-earthers', yes, with no understanding of how the money system works.

Incorrect. Religion is faith-based, the monetary system is describable eg in Keen's Minsky system

Law isn't a religion.

 

Then you agree that political authority, in which some people are "vested" in the semi-divine authority to violently control others, is also an invention and exists entirely in the imagination of those who don't question that belief.

 

Let's outlaw war!!! Then we can ride our unicorns to Lollipop Land and all have a chewy strawberry one! How about a few choruses of "We Are The World!" while we wait???

 

Correct. Sovereignty only exists within man-made law.

 

What makes you think that they don't understand it? Because they don't agree that it works the way that you believe that it does? It's very much like a cult. You don't believe in the leader's words, so you must be the one who doesn't understand

It is when you believe that government, with its central bank, can print numbers on paper and call it valuable and that everyone must obey the laws which require that paper to be accepted as money.

Belief that some humans can write things on paper and call it "law" and that everyone else must obey those words is very much like a religion. From where comes your obligation to obey other than your faith, a quasi-religious one, that they have a right to command your obedience?

Law doesn't require states. Nor does money. Religion doesn't require a high priest, but some people believe that high priests are necessary for religion, just like statist believe, without ever examining that belief, that their rulers are required for law and money.

 

political authority, meaning the authority the law.

Law - to promote " justice", as written by Hammurabi, one of the earliest codifiers of law. ....

Pity your delusional Libertarianism only works if there is only one individual in the world.

 

It's obvious tothose who know that money is created out of nothing.

No; a simple understanding of how - and by whom - money is created. The neoclassicists ignore it altogether.

You are catching on....hint: resource mobilization, not money, is the constraint for currency-issuing governments...obviously.

Try : "Seven deadly innocent frauds of economic policy": Warren Mosler", and "The Deficit Myth" by Stephanie Kelton.

It's not a belief, it's in fact the law. Whereas once upon a time religion WAS the law.

As I already noted, Hammurabi (C1750BC ) was the first to codify 'law" to maintain 'justice' in the land. Every 'sovereign' state has done the same, since that time.

How is law instituted, without government? By voluntary agreement? Absurd. Contracts have to be backed by the law, given likely disagreement between individuals.

Money? So how do you pay someone on the other side of the country?

You have it back to front of course: states require law (to avoid anarchy), and money requires the state to create it, in a usable form across the nation.

 

Strike one nature has a natural hierarchy.

 

of course I'll prove you wrong.

Both you and they are wrong. Men are not "created equal", that's an absurd statement. Equality has to be defined in law, and by definition eg equality of opportunity cf equality of outcome.

Liberty = freedom. Simple.

All rights are postulated, ie inventions of men.

Self-interest individuals who want to interact, will at some point need to submit to the adjudication of the law, when voluntary agreement fails.

That's what Putin thinks.

Beat you to it ...Putin insists on the same "rights" as you insist on.

Competition and self-interest are part of the 'human condition', as are the desire for life, liberty and ......whatever 'right' you want to invent.

You missed the fact I distinguished between the (subjective) reasoning employed by a self-interested individual, and the objective fact of the capacity to reason (a human faculty) possessed by all humans.

 

Codifying law and enforcing are two different things. Writing something on paper does not make it law, even if you claim to have the right to call it such. You've already stated that rights are made up, yet here you are affirming that they have an objective right to command obedience. You just can't explain why with any objectivity or logic.

Pity your delusional statism is founded on the quasi-religious belief that all are morally obligated to obey the scribblings, little more than magic spells, of people who won popularity contests and that law can only come from such people. Anyway, I accept your surrender, you clearly are unable to articulate a source of political authority that doesn't come from your unexamined, child-like faith. Just asking you to examine it causes you to lash out, for it would be a dangerous thing to try to reason out why you believe something so utterly.

 

You are already bowled....neither 'survival of the fittest', nor the alpha male (or female).....has anything to do with "inherent rights' to life or liberty.

 

Great. Then why is government needed in order to create it? It wasn't created originally by any government. Yet people used money for thousands of years, often without any government to get in the way. So why is it suddenly better when government decides what must be called money and what was called money for thousands of years and by disparate civilizations no good but some digits printed on paper are the best thing ever?

You said it's created out of nothing. Now you are saying that it's created by someone. If one person makes it up, it's not out of nothing. Perhaps it's out of your belief that they can be the only ones to create money. And, there's still something, your belief. Why should anyone believe what you believe? Because those who you believe should make money told you to believe that? You whine about "neoclassicists" as if it's some sort of epithet, that modern governments have solved the money problem, can legislate away supply and demand, and have overturned Say's Law, but do you believe that, or do you *know* that?

From where do they gain those resources? They don't create them. They never had any rightful claim to own them.

Money is not wealth. The belief that spending money creates wealth is magical thinking. It's tooth fairy economics.

Who decides that and what gives them the right to decide it? You said rights are constructed, so why do they get to construct rights but not others?

Some people wrote a book, called it the Bible and declared it the literal Word of God. Were they correct? You're arguing from the bandwagon. "Everybody believes this so you must be a fool not to!" Try logic some time. However, I don't expect faith to be overturned by logic.You'll do everything you can except examine that faith.

Funny you should say that. Have you heard of the Lex Mercatoria?

Also, there's another tautology. "Governments must create law so that law can be backed by the government." "Contracts can't exist without government but people contracted to create a government." Logic really isn't your thing, is it? If the government is the sole source of law, what makes them lawful? What made Hammarubi the lawful codifier?

You think remote payments were unheard of before the modern governments came along? Tell that to the Arabs!

Anarchy simply means "no rulers." It does not mean no law. The state, if anything, is the worst source of law, because the people you call your "rightful" (constructed in your mind through faith) rulers believe that they have the authority to turn right into wrong and wrong into right. Another reason that I call statism a religion is the unquestioning, child-like faith that anarchy is hell on Earth because your god, the state, is not there to save you from the demonic forces.[/quote][/quote]

 

Hammurabi had his means....to enforce the implementation of justice... to avoid anarchy in the realm. If most agree the law is 'just', then the state can enforce the law.

Yes it does, as noted above; your objection was to its enforcement, but if the people recognise the justice of the law, it will be accepted as law.

I just did, above.

It's not delusional, it's existed since Hammurabi

 

Even if that were true, it could still be argued there is a certain universalism to rights.

Like the U.S. Declaration of Independence states, some rights are "self evident".

 

His "means" were the people who believed that he was divinely appointed to deliver law by their gods.

I can forgive a religionist that. They, at least, can claim that rights come from their deity and the right to rule through divine mandate. What's your excuse?

Another tautology.

So has slavery, the belief that one human has the right to own another one. I would call that delusional, as well. But, again, at least some people had religion to dictate to them the right of slavery. What have you got?

 

I wonder if this entire argument boils down to the belief in moral relativism, which seems to be so prevalent on the ideological Left.

 

Wow, I wonder if that's ever been tried, and what were the results - every time

It's as if history and experience begin the day you're born, and accumulated knowledge and wisdom don't exist.

That first semester of college really throws some of you for a life changing loop, doesn't it??

 

Force.