Here’s my version of it -
there exists no “right” that requires the voluntary denial of the life, liberty or property of another person.
Sounds like you are talking about the difference between positive and negative rights. Righfull Liberty, the right to be left alone, which the government claims you don’t have, vs the right to force someone to give you something that they produced, free medical care, etc. which the government claims you do have.
Walter Williams talks a lot about this subject.
“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?” ~ Frederic Bastiat
“The chief difference between free capitalism and State socialism seems to be this: that under the former a man pursues his own advantage openly, frankly and honestly, whereas under the latter he does so hypocritically and under false pretenses.” ~ H.L. Mencken
The truth is that one cannot achieve liberal ends using the state, because the state is inherently anti-liberal:
Politicians, bureaucrats and leaders will compete for positions of high authority in the government bureaucracy that idealists believe must exist in order for their ideal society to become reality. But what kind of people have the best chance of winning any such power struggles--whether military, political or bureaucratic?
High-minded idealists are always at a severe disadvantage in such power struggles. People who intend only to help others are not likely to be the best at using and retaining governmental power--their very idealism, if sincere, prevents them from using the strategies and tactics mostly likely to win.
So the most ruthless people tend to succeed at wielding coercive power, and kind-hearted people invariably find themselves at a disadvantage in making practical, effective and implementable decisions on how to most effectively use the power of the state.
"When under the pretext of fraternity, the legal code imposes mutual sacrifices on the citizens, human nature is not thereby abrogated. Everyone will then direct his efforts toward contributing little to, and taking much from, the common fund of sacrifices. Now, is it the most unfortunate who gains from this struggle? Certainly not, but rather the most influential and calculating." ~ Frederic Bastiat
Hierarchical power structures can have only one result: giving effective ownership to the rich and powerful, and denying it to everyone else.
The ruling class advocates and supports the state because they know this. They use the state for its ability to grant immunity, monopoly, special privilege and legitimacy.
*Iron law of oligarchy:* "sociological thesis according to which all organizations, including those committed to democratic ideals and practices, will inevitably succumb to rule by an elite few (an oligarchy). The iron law of oligarchy contends that organizational democracy is an oxymoron. Although elite control makes internal democracy unsustainable, it is also said to shape the long-term development of all organizations—including the rhetorically most radical—in a conservative direction.
Robert Michels spelled out the iron law of oligarchy in the first decade of the 20th century in Political Parties, a brilliant comparative study of European socialist parties that drew extensively on his own experiences in the German Socialist Party. Influenced by Max Weber’s analysis of bureaucracy as well as by Vilfredo Pareto’s and Gaetano Mosca’s theories of elite rule, Michels argued that organizational oligarchy resulted, most fundamentally, from the imperatives of modern organization: competent leadership, centralized authority, and the division of tasks within a professional bureaucracy. These organizational imperatives necessarily gave rise to a caste of leaders whose superior knowledge, skills, and status, when combined with their hierarchical control of key organizational resources such as internal communication and training, would allow them to dominate the broader membership and to domesticate dissenting groups. Michels supplemented this institutional analysis of internal power consolidation with psychological arguments drawn from Gustave Le Bon’s crowd theory. From this perspective, Michels particularly emphasized the idea that elite domination also flowed from the way rank-and-file members craved guidance by and worshipped their leaders. Michels insisted that the chasm separating elite leaders from rank-and-file members would also steer organizations toward strategic moderation, as key organizational decisions would ultimately be taken more in accordance with leaders’ self-serving priorities of organizational survival and stability than with members’ preferences and demands." ~ Encyclopedia Britannica
There is no explicit right to refuse service to someone.
re: “True RIGHTS Can Never Depend on the Coerced Cooperation From Others.”
By “rights”, I assume you mean “individual human rights”, such as those expressed in the Declaration of Independence.
My reaction to your thesis title is that, sometimes “others” try to take away one’s individual, God-given, human rights. And, unless one can defend oneself, or one’s civilization that believes in God-given human rights - that individual or civilization is, sooner or later, going to have to defend or “coerce” some “cooperation” from those “others” who do not believe in individual, human rights.
So, I’m not sure that the thesis holds, unless I am misunderstanding what you mean by “coerce cooperation”.
I think a more defensible statement regarding “true rights” might be that “true rights” depend on a moral worldview that believes in such God-given, human rights. Most of world history has been a denial of such rights and they are often only achieved at great sacrifice.
You’re on the right path. Rights are inherent in the individual. You do not have a right to or claim the production of another. For thousands of years the opposite was true. We called that system slavery.
If that were true, police could never coerce a criminal to refrain from robbing a bank or shooting someone, and courts could never coerce people to pay compensation in tort cases.
People have a right to be free of coercion if they’re minding their own business. But outside Utopia, to deal with people who knowingly and directly coerce or do damage to others, coercion seems to be unavoidable to stop them.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
In order that my right to life might be guaranteed I may occasionally need police officers to forcibly require others to cooperate with my continued existence, e.g. not murder me.
Similarly with regard to liberty and preventing someone from kidnapping me and/or putting me into some form of indentured servitude.
In order that my right to the pursuit of happiness might be guaranteed I may occasionally need judges to enforce contracts that allow me to continue to benefits from terms of those contracts that the other side might wish to renege on.
My own feeling is that there really are no such things as rights, if by rights we mean things that people can expect to have or receive. Throughout history there have been multitudes of cases where something claimed as a right has been denied one or more people.
A better way of thinking about things that people ought to have is privileges. There are privileges that are attained by way of personal effort such as the privilege to drive a car if you pass a driving proficiency test. These are things that most people would label as privileges.
There are other privileges that most people would call rights that obtain only when the society as a whole exerts a certain level of effort and proficiency. For example, we have the right to vote in elections that are meaningful only to the extent that we as a society run elections in a fair and orderly manner. It seems that this is not the case now. It seems that lots of voter fraud is occurring with only a few instances being discovered and prosecuted. So it seems that although we technically have the "right" to vote, we may have lost what I call the privilege to vote because we have failed to maintain a fair and honest election process.
We have maintained our privilege/right to own firearms only because a sufficient number of citizens have fought tooth and nail to retain them. The future, however, is looking dimmer as the liberals find more clever ways to undermine gun ownership through background checks, bans on ammunition, artificially inflating gun and ammo prices by overpurchasing for non-essential government use, etc.
At some point individual citizens will not be able to guarantee their individual "right" to own firearms. As is the case now, it will require the sustained efforts of a significant portion of the society to guarantee the right/privilege to own firearms for all those individuals that wish to own them.
This is not about the libertarian principle of non-aggression. This is all about having an educated and activist population willing to fight to maintain the privileges they deserve to have.
That is why the US is on the ropes right now. Too few people willing to risk too little to support rights/privileges that they may no longer deserve to have.
It kind of depends on what kind of “right” you are talking about. If you are talking about “liberty rights”, then yes, all that is required is that others don’t interfere with your exercise of the right.
Many of our fundamental “natural rights” fall under that category: the right to self defense, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc. You could also include many “civil rights”, such as the right to vote, or the right to legal representation under this category.
However, there is also the concept of “claim rights”. These are trickier, because they do depend on the action or inaction of others. For example, we claim the “right to life” or “right to property”, but our claim depends on the general cooperation of others. If there is no enforcement of statutes against murder, say, then my right to life is debatable. I can still assert the right, but it is of little practical use in such a situation.
So “claim rights” might run afoul of your definition. Those rights are kind of negative rights, telling others what they can’t do, rather than saying that you have a right to do something. So they cannot be said to exist without coercing cooperation from others.
Shouldn’t a just an rightous government be a right of all people? Then, shouldn’t this be provided without cost to all as well?
My right to the pursuit of happiness depends on the coerced cooperation of you to go into my plantation fields and pick my cotton for me.
-PJ
Leela from Futurama:
Professor! Please! Society is never gonna make any progress until we all learn to pretend to like each other. Now let’s go over there and make these hideous strangers feel welcome.
I would make the point that governments don’t have rights. Governments only have powers. A right is only the domain of the individual. And only the individual has a right; groups or sub groups only excercise powers that should be limited, not emphasized.