Day: February 24, 2020

I take the non-aggression principle to be a “relatively-absolute absolute”

I believe that societies that follow the non-aggression principle (NAP) are better than those that don’t. To me, the NAP is a “relatively-absolute absolute”. I learned the concept of relatively-absolute absolutes from James Buchanan. These are persistent truths about the world of humans; they are not necessary in some absolute sense like, say, the conservation laws but are generally true and fundamentally important for human flourishing. Continue reading “Rationality in a World of Suicidally Deluded People”

The phrase “property rights” appears to refer to the rights of property. That of course is meaningless because property aren’t people, and therefore property cannot have rights. Property rights refers to the notion that humans have the right to their private property. Therefore to place property rights in some form of opposition to human rights — as I did in the previous post — is silly. The two essentially mean and amount to the same basic idea. Human rights are property rights, and vice versa.

It all begins with the axiom of self-ownership. To quote Murray Rothbard, the brilliant libertarian economist, from an April 1959 article:

. . . each individual, according to our understanding of the natural order of things, is the owner of himself, the ruler of his own person. Preservation of this self-ownership is essential for the proper development and well-being of man. The human rights of the person are, in effect, a recognition of each man’s inalienable property right over his own being; and from this property right stems his right to the material goods that he has produced. A man’s right to personal freedom, then, is his property right in himself. Continue reading “Human Rights are Property Rights”