Quote from: Mr2001 on July 01, 2011, 12:58:34 AM

Are you saying you're entitled to ruin all my film unless I agree to outlaw shining flashlights through windows?

Yes, exactly. It cannot be the case that I have the right to shine a flashlight in your window and you can still sue me if I do so and damage your film. If it's my right to shine a flashlight in your window, it's your obligation to protect your property from a flashlight.

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What's the purpose of this Rube Goldberg system of rights and wrongs? Wouldn't it make a lot more sense to say that what happens to me and my property as a result of your act is what determines whether I've been wronged?

It won't work, rights would hopelessly conflict. How can I have a right to drive my car down my driveway if you can sue me if my doing so knocks down your fragile glass structure?

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You seem to have this backwards. If my violation of your rights damages your property, that's actionable. But damaging your property alone is not a violation of your rights. You have no right not to have another's actions damage your property.

I beg to differ. If what you call "property rights" don't even fulfill the basic requirement of stopping someone else from breaking my stuff, then they're so watered down as to be worthless.

Your scheme will cause hopeless conflicts. How can you have the right not to have vibrations damage your fragile glass structure and me have the right to drive my car onto my driveway?

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Otherwise, if I drove my car down my driveway and created vibrations that ruined your glass structure, that'd be actionable even though driving my car down my driveway is something I'm supposed to have the right to do.

Sometimes one person's rights conflict with another person's rights, but we don't need to demolish those rights in order to resolve the conflict.

You seem to be recognizing as rights things that simply are not rights. There is no right not to suffer damages. Life is damage.

Nobody would want to live in your world. A person doing normal activities that they have every right to do could wind up liable for massive damages even though they didn't violate the rights of others one bit. Say I build a car that blows up if anyone utters the word "cheese". Does this mean nobody can ever utter the word "cheese"? Does this mean there's some rights conflict? No, it doesn't. There's no right not to have your car blow up. The right is about a zone of exclusivity, not about freedom from adverse consequences from the rightful actions of others.

Say my house is in danger of falling down. I ask you to fix it and you refuse. Say then my house falls down. Why didn't your not fixing my house violate my right not to have my house damaged? There has to be (with a very few special expections) a wrongful act, an act that violates the right.

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Say you and I both have a shot at a particular client. It's near certain the client will pick you or me. I disconnect a wire in your car. Your car doesn't start. But there's no damage, reconnecting the wire costs nothing. If you miss the meeting and lose your chance at the client, is that actionable? I violated your property rights not by damaging your car but by trespassing on it. The damages aren't the physical changes to the car but the meeting you missed. I violated your rights, you have damages fairly attributable to that violation.

A meeting with a potential client has no tangible value, even if I wish to have his money and I'm "near certain" my wish will come true. It's not mine yet.

That doesn't mean there's no damage from your act, though. Clearly reconnecting the wire cost something, otherwise I would've reconnected it in zero seconds and gotten to the meeting on time. It cost me the time it took to diagnose the problem and reconnect the wire, and we can assign a value to that time.

You're disputing the hypothetical rather than addressing it. The hypothetical is that no physical damage to your car takes place but you can prove you missed the meeting and suffered damages.