Quote from: deadlizard on May 02, 2011, 11:22:24 AM

From where do you derive rights at all?

My friend has a great blog post about this, from the perspective of a subjectivist. The whole thing is worth reading, but I want to specifically quote the section that argues for the right to property as an example of what I am looking for (roughly).

Quote

The chief resource of any subjective entity is their own body. The foundation for any subjective entity feeling secure is in having control of their own body to direct toward whatever aims it so wishes in acquiring a greater sense of security. Thus the very nature of the cooperative social mode of objectifying the subjective is founded on two implicit but foundational agreements, often called natural rights (in this context, rights born from the very nature of what it means to be social):

1) the right to life; and
2) the right to liberty

These two natural rights are technically negative rights, which means that they require a particular absence of action by others. The directive of these rights stated in negative terms are: a subjective entity has the right to expect that other subjective entities will not take their life (for without their life they cannot use the chief resource of their body) and the right to expect other subjective entities will not force their body to perform actions against their will.

Because the very definition of social is the respect for the voluntary actions of others in cooperation, we may term such behavior as being bounded by a social contract. Like any other contract, a subjective entity gains rights (natural rights in this case) so long as they abide by the contract; should they break the contract, they lose any privileges gained as rights by that contract. Since the use of aggressive violence is by definition a breaking of that contract, the use of violence can only be justified on social grounds in defensive use against such aggression. This is commonly called the non-aggression principle, that no justification exists for the initiation of violence.

There is a third natural right leading directly from the first two, but it is less direct, and that is the right to property. If a resource has not been gathered by any subjective entity and then is, the resource becomes the property of the subjective entity that has put their body and time into collecting it. Thus if another subjective entity takes that resource away without the consent of the owner, they have, through the clever leveraging of time, controlled the body of the owner. It is in effect the taker making a claim that the use of the body and time of the owner is theirs regardless of the wishes of the owner. It is thus the same thing as if the taker had beaten the owner into gaining the resource and beaten them to take it. It is theft and it is characterized by its aggressive violence and thus it breaks the social contract.