What is a 'right'?

[Jim Choate]

A 'right' is an activity that any individual could engage in (at least in
principle) while 'in a state of nature'.

So what does 'in a state of nature' imply? It implies human activity a
priori to the concept of 'civilization'.

What are the limits of such activities? Isolation, sharing, and force.

The concept of 'force' is required because not all individuals want to
share.

Isolation allows an individual to engage in any desired activity for the
simple reason there is no potential interference.

Sharing, such as in a family group, such that resources are distributed
but at the same time have more persons active in its 'management' (I draw
a distinction here becuase of such things as Clovis Point behaviour).

And finaly, force. The ability of one individual to significantly impact
anothers physical being directly.

Why do people institute 'civilization'? Because we can't live in
isolation. There are groups greater than families. And finaly, because not
all individuals will use force in the same manner.

The concept of 'right' is intimate and irremovable from the concept of
'coercion through physical force'. Why? Because one can't have a 'right'
unless one also has the ability to use force to defend it.

What does it take to use 'force'? Existance and motivation/desire,
irrespective of whether we talk of 'a state of nature' or 'civilization'.

One can not remove the concept of 'right' from 'force'. They are not
seperate concepts or entities (similar to momentum).

The only way to mitigate the use of 'force' is to mitigate 'desire'.

The only way to mitigate 'desire' is to use 'force' (or at least make it
clear that if a behaviour is engaged in force will ensue).

To do this we institute a (hopefully) common system whereby the inter play
between 'force' and 'desire' are hopefully balanced.

Note that there is nothing in nature which implies that force and desire
will be mitigated in and of themselves (so much for CACL philosophy). In
fact, if one looks at game theory it becomes abundently clear, even given
the utility of game theoretic concepts, that the best strategy is not to
play by the rules given a choice (this helps explain why non-sentient
biological activity conforms to game theory in many cases).

This of course destroys any concept of 'utopia' where everyone plays by
the same rules all the time without exception.


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