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DesideriScuri -> RE: Where do rights come from? (8/14/2012 6:17:25 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: SpaceSpank
God has nothing to do with rights. Only people.
There have been societies throughout human history that have believed in different god(s) or none at all, and they still had various rights that people were granted, even if it only applied to certain ones.
Them's not called "rights." Them's called "privileges." Huuuuuge difference.
quote:
When enough people gather in a close enough area things like this are needed. Being able to walk over and steal your neighbors property without any retribution leads to an unproductive situation for all. At some point "rights" come up because they have been deemed good for the collective whole by the society that created them. Religious rules are no different... "thou shall not kill" is a commandment because in a general sense it's a good one, not being allowed to just kill someone randomly for no reason benefits all involved in the vast majority of situations.
So if you want to know where rights come from, just look at the people around you, that's where they come from.
Rights either are, or are not. There is no try...dammit...mixed my quotes again. You either have a right when you come to be, or you don't ever have a right. A right doesn't require anyone else be there at all. You have the right to Life. If no one else is there, do you no longer have a right to live?
You have the right to pursue happiness. If you are on a deserted island, do you lose the right to pursue your happiness?
If you are the only one in the woods, do you lose the right to choose for yourself (liberty)?
Natural rights, which is what the DoI was referring to are endowed by our Creator, be it God, a golden calf, a multi-armed humanoid, a fat-bellied lucky guy, or whatever you believe in. If you buy the inputs to a product and make that product, that product is yours. You have the ownership rights. If you are hired to take those inputs and make that product, you do not have the rights to that product unless it was stipulated in your contract that you would be compensated with that product.
If a person works on a road crew, is the road "his/hers?" No. It is not. You do not have any right over it as anyone else, unless you were the one who had it built and paid for the inputs.
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