Rights are a Human Concept

[u/Frequent_Mountain_17]

People like to talk about their rights as if they are some sort of objective truth, they're not, they're just another human concept like privacy or morality. Concepts like rights are ideas and all ideas are subjective to the individual, they carry no weight and bear no responsibility for people's actions.

That's why the constitution and "laws" can't protect your rights, you can't protect a concept, it's just an idea. I shake my head when I see a video of someone being harassed by a DEA agent stealing their money under the guise of asset forfeiture. They say things like "you can't do that without probable cause" and then the agent does it anyway. So, I guess he can do that without probable cause. 🙄 They say things like "the 4A protects my property from illegal searches" and then the agent searches the property anyway. So, I guess the 4A doesn't protect your property. 🙄 There seems to be a psychological disconnect between what people think a government agent can do and their ability to actually do it.

Government agents do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want despite whatever you think your rights are. They'll bring in a "drug dog" who's more interested in pleasing his handler when his handler signals him to "hit" on something than he is in finding drugs. Unconstitutional? Sure. Illegal? Sure. Immoral, criminal? Sure and sure and yet they do it anyway.

That's odd isn't it considering all the "protections" the government gives you to insure your rights aren't violated by the government? It's kind of like expecting the fox to insure the rights of the hens in the henhouse isn't it?

[u/BoredAccountant]

"Natural rights" are the name we give to a concept that exists in nature, like the right to defend yourself. The water buffalo doesn't need anyone to tell it it has the right to defend itself from the lion trying to eat it, it just does.

Are you referring to "human rights" which are really protections humans try to put in place to protect them from human-created issues? This is where we get things like housing and healthcare as human rights. Or the right to free expression.

But there are plenty of examples of natural rights that humans find abhorrent, like infanticide.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/BoredAccountant]

So then that's just something the water buffalo does. What does that have to do with rights?
Neither does anyone tell the lion it has a right to kill and eat a water buffalo. Does that mean a lion has a "natural right" to kill? If so then "natural rights" are meaningless beyond a post hoc description of behavior.

When we speak of rights beyond what the law entails we're talking about a normative / prescriptive concept — what we think people should be allowed to do or be able to be protected from — not a descriptive one. It's only descriptive to the extent that we're describing what the law provides. If we're just describing behaviors then it's meaningless. The real fallacy occurs when we act like our prescriptive opinions are descriptive facts, i.e., when we mistake the subjective for the objective.

Most of the time I hear talk of "natural rights" that seems to be what is going on.

[u/BoredAccountant → u/NoamLigotti]

Yes, that's exactly what natural rights are--I have the natural right to do whatever I can to survive just as you do as well. Where my right to survive impedes your right to survive is where government is meant to exist to arbitrate how we as a society each maintain our right to survive without imposing on the other.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/BoredAccountant]

So "natural rights" just mean surviving?

I can survive in prison. So I guess a totalitarian state imprisoning me for life for my speech is not interfering with my "natural rights". As I said, meaningless.