Curt Doolittle

Category: Law, Constitution, and Jurisprudence

  • If We Ever Cloned Hominids, Would They Have Human Rights?

    Rights are the product of an exchange where terms are specified in a contract. For rights to exist a contract must exist – stated or written, or assumed.

    If we cloned hominids, and cloned them sufficiently well that they could negotiate agreements with us, it is very likely that we would have to grant them NATURAL rights – because we cannot create contracts without natural rights. 

    The definntion of human right is fungible.  They are a preference.  Meaning, they are not necessary right, and as such not natural rights.  They are aspirational rights, or desired rights, that while not necessary we have asked all other people to respect.  If these clones were able to understand those rights, and consent to them, then we could grant them rights if they would grant them to us. This would be a contract for exchange, and therefore each side would have rights.  Even if these rights are not written or spoken, but just understood and adhered to.

    Animals cannot have rights because they cannot conduct an exchange with us. We treat animals as if they have rights, because we have an agreement with others to treat animals as if they have rights.  But they do not have rights.  We simply have obligations to other people to treat animals as if they have rights. Our obligation is to other humans, not to animals.

    Animals only have rights by analogy.  But human beings like to feel that rights come from somewhere supernatural, and others don’t understand the construct of rights, so they anthropomorphize animals.  This is a simple mistake, but the majority of people make it either out of ignorance or for ideological reasons.

    I hope this helps.

    https://www.quora.com/If-we-ever-cloned-hominids-would-they-have-human-rights

  • What Is A “right”?

    1) RIGHTS:
    A “right” is a claim against other members of a contract, wherein each party grants the other party something (a right) in exchange for somthing else (an obligation).  Each person then has ‘rights’ as agreed upon in the contract, as well as obligations. This is the meaning of the term ‘right’.  A right is something that you obtain from others in exchange for granting them something.  There is no other logical meaning of the term, unless you invent a god or demon, or some equivalent that you are supposedly in contract with.  (Although the term ‘right’ is abused by way of analogy and metaphor, which I will explain below.)

    2) CONTRACTS:
    A contract can be discreetly created, such as a handshake, a promise, or an agreement. Or a contract can be written as a note, a written contract, or a constitution. A contract can be created by habituation as a “norm”, such as manners, ethics and morals.

    While very few people understand this, ethical and moral statements  are those that compensate for asymmetry of information between members of a contract for norms.  This contract for norms is we call a society.  Manners are promises that you will respect ethical and moral norms.  Ethics are rules that we follow to make sure that there are no involuntary transfers of prooperty due to asymmetry of information in an exchange.  Morals are general rules that we will follow to make sure there are no involuntary transfers from others who are outside (external to) any action or exchange.  (Having a chid that you cannot pay for, and expecting others to support it, is an involuntary transfer from others. That is why it’s generally been considered immoral.)

    One can voluntarily enter discreet contracts.  But normative contracts are a necessity because people cannot peacefully and productively cooperate without them. One can generally move between groups with different normative contracts (societies, and communities) but it  is all but impossible to avoid them entirely, and it is entirely impossible to exist in a community without adhering to that contract – usually people are excluded from opportunity, punished, imprisoned, ostracized, or deported, for violations of the normative contract.

    3) NATURAL RIGHTS:
    Some contract rights are both necessary for humans to engage in contracts, and possible to grant in contracts. Such as surrendering our opportunity for violence  theft and fraud, from those with whom we are in contract. If we surrender our opportunity to use violence theft and fraud, we define this set of forgone opportunities “property rights’.  Because these rights are necessary for peaceful cooperation, and necessary for contracts to function, we call these necessary rights ‘Natural Rights’ – in an effort to limit the ability of governments to violate the contract rights that are necessary for human cooperation when they make laws.

    If we define our minds and bodies as our property. And we define those objects, that we freely obtained through exchange as our property, then there is only one natural right and that is property. It is the only right necessary, and the only right universally possible to grant to one another – because we must refrain from something, rather than do something.  In this sense, there is only one possible human right, and all other rights derive from it.

    3) HUMAN RIGHTS:
    Some contract rights are not necessary but beneficial. These rights generally can be categorized as forms of ‘insurance’. They cannot be direclty exchanged without an intermediary institution acting as the insurer. People cannot equally contribute to their costs.  We call these rights ‘Human Rights’.

    4) DEMANDED RIGHTS:
    Now this is not to say that you have no control over your rights. You can for example (and we all do) demand additional rights in exchagne for our compliance with manners, ethics, morals, norms, laws that are levied equally against all. These rights are not human rights, they are not natural rights.  They are rights that you demand for your compliance.  THe problem is, that means that they are just a preference.  That’s all.  You must get a right in exchange even if you demand it, it cannot exist until there is a contract for it, somehow. And we can cause discomfort, economic friction, and political resistance. Or we can offer to contribute more somehow in exchange for additional rights.  In this sense, most arguments are in favor of demanded rights, in the form of FREE RIDING, PRIVILEGES, RENTS, and DIVIDENDS.

    5) FREE RIDING (CORRUPTION)
    Free riding is letting other people pay for something that you enjoy. Voting for a tax that you don’t have to pay is free riding.  Living off your parents is free riding.

    5) PRIVILEGES (CORRUPTION):
    Sometimes we attempt to seek privileges not rights – a privilege is something that unlike insurance, is something we are likely to obtain, and which comes at a cost to others, without our providing something else in exchange. These are not rights, but privileges at the expense of others.

    6) RENTS (CORRUPTION)
    In contemporary politics, unscrupulous people attempt to label privileges as rights, so that they can obtain something from others at no cost to themselves   This is not seeking rights but seeking privileges. It is a form of corruption, which is just an indirect form of theft.

    In economics, seeking privileges from government is a form of corruption called ‘rent-seeking’. (Which admittedly, is an old and confusing name.  In previous centuries, people would seek to obtain an interest in land so that they could collect rents on it.)  Today, people seek an interest in tax revenue so that they can collect income from it.  This is Rent-Seeking. The government, in practice, if not in theory, owns all land, and we rent it from the government by taxes. If you cannot pay your taxes, you cannot keep your land.  Taxes today, are no different from taxes under feudalism. We have just replaced private landowners with a political bureaucracy. In both cases we are renting our land, and in many cases the homes we build, from the government. Taxes are our rents.  And people who seek to own part of taxes are rent-seekers.

    7) DIVIDENDS (REDISTRIBUTION)
    if you obey norms (manners, ethics and morals) and obey natural rights (property), you do so at a cost to you.

    If you think of society as a business (it is, because it must be), and the business is to grow the local market (it is, at least to maintain it), because everyone in the local market will profit from it. (they do). Then these businesses (societies) grow through phases, just as businesses do (or really, business go through phases like society does, just a lot faster because they’re smaller), and in certain early phases(startups) they require a lot of investments from their shareholders (citizens), and in other phases they produce tremendous surpluses (mature, commoditized businesses), then we can see that most of the problem we deal with in politics, is who makes what contributions, and who collects what dividends, and how those dividends are used.

    PROBLEMS WITH DETERMINING DIVIDENDS (REDISTRIBUTION)

    It is very hard to argue against dividends (redistribution) if people respect (adhere to) manners, ethics, morals, and natural rights (property rights), as well as whatever arbitrary laws are created that affect all people equally.

    The general argument, which is true, is that by adhering to maners, ethics, morals, natural rights and arbitrary laws, you earn the right to participate in the market for goods and services.  And that dividends are a due only to those people who provide goods and services in the market.  The problem is that a market can’t exist without consumers, and that consumption is equally as important as production and distribution.  You can’t have one without the other.  So this argument is at best, empirically weak.

    The problem with dividends (redistribution) is not the logical requirement for dividends (redistribution), but the problem with how to determine what a dividend is,  how to collect them, who has earned them, and how to allocate them, and how to distribute them.

    But I will have to leave that  rather lengthly discussion for another time. 🙂

    This is very close to the ‘final word’ on rights. It is extremely hard to criticize this series of statements using any form of rational argument.  I will be happy to engage literate people on the topic but ask the moderators for their help.

    Curt.

    https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-right

  • Libertarianism: In A Stateless Society Based On Private Property Rights, How Would You Avoid Imprisonment By Another Individual Purchasing All The Property Surrounding Your Property?

    A stateless society based upon property rights is a broader definition than Rothbardian Libertarianism, which would argue that you must compete via price for access to your land.

    But that is a relatively silly thing to say given the logic at hand:

    The questoin is, if you have property and it’s capable of being locked, then how did you get there? Were  you stealing access already?   Did you sell your land to someone without thinking of preserving that access?  Or lastly, did someone buy your access somehow and now desire to charge you for it?

    The problem is, that this circumstance actually doesn’t arise, unless you were committing an act of theft or rent in the first place.  And if that is the case, then you have obtained access to your property at a discount and as such must now pay full price for access, and pay the cost of your discount.

    I am not really sure this is a libertarian argument. it’s pretty ancient common law. Generally speaking most societies allow free passage on land boundaries just to avoid this problem.

    The libertarian argument doesn’t make instinctual moral sense to people because it sounds like an involuntary transfer without added value or compensation.  But the truth is that the circumstance can’t really occur unless you were obtaining access at a discount in the first place.

    https://www.quora.com/Libertarianism-In-a-stateless-society-based-on-private-property-rights-how-would-you-avoid-imprisonment-by-another-individual-purchasing-all-the-property-surrounding-your-property

  • Would Creating A World Citizen Help Or Make Sense?

    Who is your insurer of last resort?  THat’s what citizenship is.

    https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Would-creating-a-world-citizen-help-or-make-sense

  • If Democracy Is Forcefully Enforced In A Country By Another, Wouldn’t It Be Called Dictatorship On The Enforcer’s Part?

    It is not dictatorship it is conquest.  Conquest is any alteration of the current allocation of property rights, property allocation  and norms, by force, whether that force be direct (violence and theft) or indirect (the promise of violence or theft in the event of non-compliance.)

    The justifying argument is generally that all other forms of government are even more corrupt that democracy.  This is questionable in practice as democracy seems to be a peculiarity of western civlization, and doesn’t seem to work very well elsewhere.  In india for example, corruption is so pervasive that the country stagnates. Whereas in China where the government is very strong, and now an oligarchy, the government managed to make everyone literate and move the economy much faster than India.

    Consumer capitalism and property rights are meaningful exports. THe tradition of democracy looks as though it has proven to be a failure outside of western Europe – where corruption is simply very naturally low due to ancient cultural reasons.

    https://www.quora.com/If-democracy-is-forcefully-enforced-in-a-country-by-another-wouldnt-it-be-called-dictatorship-on-the-enforcers-part

  • ORGANIZED VIOLENCE We can use organized violence to create government. We can us

    ORGANIZED VIOLENCE

    We can use organized violence to create government.

    We can use organized violence to create property rights.

    We can use organized violence to enforce property rights.

    We can use organized violence to destroy property rights.

    But you can have neither government nor property rights without violence.

    The source of freedom is violence.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-03-18 01:48:00 UTC

  • Kinsella’s Criticism of Locke, and My Explanation of Locke’s Reasonable Mistake, and What To Do About It.

    [T]hanks to Stephan Kinsella for giving me the opportunity to explain why Locke accidentally created the Labor theory of value. (From a FB post)

    I’m starting to think one of the costliest intellectual mistakes of all human history was Locke’s ridiculous idea that we own the fruits of our labor (or that we own our labor). This labor theory of property has led to all kinds of mischief, not to mention the labor theory of value and communism and hundreds of millions of deaths, plus the horrible IP system which also literally kills people and retards progress and imposes relative impoverishment. PLus, Locke anchored his theory in God-owns-us stuff, instead of rational argument, and he was a racist and pro-slaver. Meh. Lockean homesteading is correct, but not for Locke’s reasons. I’m going to do a long blog post about this.

    He needed to justify the middle class takeover of property from the aristocracy. To put a fork in feudalism. In the church. In the feudal commons. And to do that he had to justify ACTION as the source of property ownership. And he made the obvious logical leap that confused ownership with (a) subjective value, (b) exchange value and (c) market value. Which to us, is absurd, because we work to expose properties of the market in order to illustrate the evils of the middle class and proletarian states. Each of which attempts to reconstruct that aristocratic commons under different administrative ownership – full of sound and fury but changing nothing. But he wasn’t trying to do [what we are – expose the problem of the middle class and proletarian states]. So he didn’t have the need to disentangle the spectrum that we call ‘value’. (a,b and c above.) You’re right that he was imperfect and that there have been consequences to that imperfection. [B]ut to some degree, our emphasis on subjective value alone creates a similar problem. 1) Subjective value is immeasureable. (psychological) 2) Exchange value is incomensurable (barter: visible but incommensurable )) 3) Market value is calculable. (prices: visible, commensurable) I think, that when we libertarians use imprecise language that we make Hume’s mistake. We dont go deep enough and create confusion: political externalities. Just like he did. Because we do not illustrate the problems that the market solves by commensurability. Instead we think subjective value is self evident. And it may be. But it is incomplete. And therefore insufficient to support our claims. This is the same problem we have with Rothbardian ethics and Misesian Praxeology. Theyre incomplete as stated. And if incomplete they cannot be apodeictically certain as we claim. Too deep perhaps. More simply: There is more to value than subjectivity. [Subjectivity is but one point on a spectrum.]

  • REVOLUTION (Expensive and destructive) SECESSION (Expensive) NULLIFICATION (dirt

    REVOLUTION (Expensive and destructive)

    SECESSION (Expensive)

    NULLIFICATION (dirt cheap.)

    Nullification is the least expensive and least procedurally complex means of weakening the central government.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-02-08 11:40:00 UTC

  • WRONG WITH UKRAINE : ABSENCE OF THE RULE OF LAW Absence of the rule of law, is t

    http://www.chadbourne.com/files/upload/Ukraine_GeneralLegalConsiderations_BusinessUkraine_2011.pdfWHAT’S WRONG WITH UKRAINE : ABSENCE OF THE RULE OF LAW

    Absence of the rule of law, is the absence of property rights.

    “In short, Ukraine, like other former Soviet countries, suffers not only from a lack of suitable legislation and regulation and from considerable doubt as to how the courts will interpret the existing laws and rules, but from the concomitant absence of a belief in and respect for a “rule of law.” – Chadbourne, Kiev.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 12:53:00 UTC

  • NULLIFICATION IS CHEAPER THAN REVOLUTION OR SECESSION 1) Nullification. Inexpens

    NULLIFICATION IS CHEAPER THAN REVOLUTION OR SECESSION

    1) Nullification.

    Inexpensive. Weakens tyranny, allows greater social experimentation, preserves existing economy, promotes local opportunity while preserving federated trade, credit, insurance and military assets.

    2) Secession.

    Expensive. Eliminates tyranny, allows greater social experimentation. Creates opportunity, improves the economy, and autonomy. Allows adaptation of institutions. *Can* weaken credit, insurance, and military assets. Can also improve them.

    3) Revolution.

    Devastatingly expensive. Damages the economy, social capital, institutional capital, trade, credit, insurance, and military assets.

    Revolution carries a very high cost. The choice between Nullification and Secession is simply whether the value of the federated services of insurance, trade, credit and military are more or less valuable. Assuming that the federated system is anywhere near solvent, nullifying LAWS while retaining legitimate functions of a federal system – largely as insurer of last resort – inexpensively reduces the state to it’s only beneficial function.

    We needed a federal government because we had a vast continent that could be occupied by competitive international powers. This federated system allowed us to conquer that territory, and insure no foreign power did so instead. This strategy worked.

    But that was the ONLY REASON for the federal government at the time.

    At present, the federal government has only one redeeming value, and that is as insurer of last resort, and provider of military services too costly for independent states to field on their own.

    Nullification is the systematic means by which to devolve the united states federal government from a law-making body to a body that does nothing but provide insurer of last resort services.

    (Originally under Dave Quick’s excellent post on nullification – Here for record purposes.)

    Source date (UTC): 2013-01-15 04:27:00 UTC