Read me my rights

The previous article in this series discussed the validity of the "natural rights" concept as well as set up a frame work for discerning what rights an individual naturally possesses. This article will extend that discussion to examine some common competing rights-claims as exist in the present culture and provide an example for using that framework in order to select the correct "right" an individual holds among these competing rights-claims.

In order to proceed, it is again necessary to reiterate what a "right" is: a right is a morally legitimate application of power. Moral legitimacy is derived from our natures as higher-thinking social animals. Power is simply the ability to do a thing -- and thus the application of power is the doing of the thing.

A claim to have the right to speak is not the claim that the content or location of the speech is morally legitimate; merely that the power to use one's own voice to communicate at will is a power that is held by the individual, that controlling the decision to apply that power can be morally exercised by the speaker.

Previously, it was shown that all natural rights extend from and are exercised by the individual. Again, even if we allow the assertion that a collective may possess rights, those rights will be asserted and exercised by individuals on behalf of the collective.

The controversy between "individualism" and "collectivism" is at the heart of many competing rights claims but resolving that controversy is neither the point of this article nor necessary to resolve competing rights claims.

In order to resolve competing rights claims, it is only necessary to understand that individuals do indeed possess natural rights as this creates a filter for determining moral legitimacy of a rights claim: an individual has a morally legitimate claim to any power that does not violate the morally legitimate powers of another individual.

The most basic morally legitimate claim is the claim to self-ownership, as this extends ipso facto from a human being an actor: all actions performed, that is all powers excercised, by a human being can only be performed by that same being. You cannot think to move your arm and, in so thinking, move the arm of the person next to you. Your will controls only your own actions. As such, you are responsible for all of your actions; even if an action is coerced of you, the action was performed by you and the choice to perform the action rather than suffer the threatened consequence was yours. This is not a question of moral culpability or the morality of coercion; rather to point out that the decision to take an action is always the decision of the actor.

As all rights are exercised by individuals, and only individuals may choose to act, and all responsibilities - and thus, all powers - are carried by the acting individual, it is a simple matter of fact that the most basic right is that of "self ownership". Self ownership is the acknowledgement that since only the individual may choose to act and that all action carries the responsibility for that action, the only morally legitimate view on the individual is that of self-possession: it is nothing more than a logical acceptance of free will.

Given self-possession, the moral legitimacy of all other rights can then be hierarchically evaluated. Any action of free will can be taken which does not violate the right of self-possession of another actor. This is the principle of non-aggression: your actions, in order to be morally legitimate (and thus a "right") must be limited in that they do not infringe the natural rights of others.

These two principles provide all that is needed in order to evaluate competing rights-claims.

In present culture, competing rights-claims are de rigeur in politics, if not a defining aspect of the current polarization. Presenting a rights-claim that competes with those of one's rivals is almost a requirement in political discussion. Minimum wages, monetary policy, gun ownership, tax and trade policies all come down to competing rights claims.

Sometimes, the questions are straight-forward dichotomies in which two such as whether an employee can expect a certain floor of value in exchange for labor (minimum wage) or whether employees and employers have a right to determine such for themselves. Other times, the rights-claims are not truly competing but are merely portrayed as such in order to increase polarization, such as the meme asserting that "If you think gun ownership is a right and not free healthcare, you're part of the problem."

In either case, whether rights claims are competing or merely asserted by different people but otherwise unrelated, our filter allows us to truly determine whether a claimed right is, in fact, right.

In truth, there are only two rights:

You have the right to your own person

You have the right to engage in any action which does not interfere with another actor's #1 right

Any other "right" is an exercise of these two rights. Any rights claim is the claim that one's action is within those two rights or it is proven morally illegitimate by not conforming to that framework.

Taking the above example of minimum wage, the assertion of a minimum wage as a "right" is the assertion that two actors MUST meet an outside requirement in order to enter into a voluntary agreement and that they may not enter into such unless it conforms to that requirement. The competing rights claim is the claim that two actors may enter into voluntary agreement according to conditions of their own choosing. A minimum wage interferes with the natural rights of both actors, even the one it is ostensibly crafted to protect. It states that the actor may not sell his labor below a certain value and as such stands as competing claim on their persons and actions. Since there can be no morally legitimate claim which interferes with an existing morally legitimate claim, we can thus determine that minimum wages are not morally legitimate. Contrariwise, the absence of a minimum wage law allows two actors to freely exercise their two natural rights and the one who the law was ostensibly protecting still possesses the right to refuse to sell his labor. As such, the only morally legitimate minimum wage is whatever two people freely agree upon.

Now in examining the second example of the gun ownership v. healthcare meme we can apply the same razor. The intended argument from moral outrage is of course, silly; the implication is that one side of politics wishes to allow people implements of violence, to "give the gift of death" whilst the other allows people the gift of health, to "give the gift of life". However, the meme actually makes rights-claims, so we'll ignore the sophistry and focus on those. In fact, two non-competing rights claims are made, and their competing rights claims are left silent in order to allow them to be placed in false competition for purposes of an argument from outrage. The actual claims are the right to own guns v. the right of others to deny you ownership of guns, and; the right to receive medical care free of charge v. the right to charge others for providing them with medical care.

Putting aside that these two controversies are in fact unrelated and that they were linked in order to provide a fallacious argument from outrage that favored one side of partisan politics over another, we may still evaluate these rights claims and come to the right conclusion.

Taking the argument of the right to possess guns versus the right of others to restrict one's possession of guns, we can again pass this through our simple filter to determine which right is in fact morally legitimate. Since simply possessing a gun does not violate one's own right to their own person, nor does it violate the person of others (using it on them, that is shooting them with it, is another matter entirely) as such the claim to the right to possess a firearm does meet our test. For the competing claim, the right to restrict another person's possession of firearms, there is no way to prosecute such a rights claim without violating their natural rights; since it is the natural right of a person to perform any action which does not violate the persons of other actors, to restrict that right is to violate that person's rights. Thus no gun control regulations are morally legitimate.

The argument on the right to free health care comes down to whether, by simple virtue of needing such, one has the right to compel action from others without their consent. To be sure, if a doctor, clinic or healthcare provider of any sort wishes to offer of their own means to provide others with medical care without expecting any sort of recompense such is their natural right; this, however, was never in question - it's called "charity" and society has many such in action where government regulation does not prevent it. What is truly expected in the claim to free healthcare, however, is that either doctors must provide their services without expectation of recompense regardless of their consent, that others must be forced to provide that recompense by proxy regardless of their consent, or some combination of the two. The competing rights claim is that doctors may provide their services in exchange for whatever amount or form of compensation they wish and that other persons have a right to retain their own value and providing whatever aid they wish, including none. The claim that one has a "right to free healthcare" is a claim that one has a right to violate the natural rights of others and is therefore not morally legitimate.

This illustrates that moral legitimacy of rights-claims do not derive from feel-good fallacious arguments nor from government dictate even in the form of a constitution. Morally legitimate rights-claims derive from the simple fact that all individuals possess two basic, natural rights. A constitution of humanity, it can simply be summed up as:

You have the right to your self.

You have the right to any action which does not violate the rights of others.

Self-ownership and non-aggression: Voluntaryism is the only morally legitimate framework for rights-claims.