[Dianna]

Nothing about unalienable property rights is there ? Without the state there is no such thing as a property right. They only exist because the state creates them. Granted the people created the state, but once they did the state is sovereign.

Much of our understanding of "rights" comes from the thinking of John Locke. The very first "property" rights we have is to our own body and the work it produces. From there, we can assume that we must have to right to own the things we buy with the labor our body produces, and so on and so on.

Our rights come from God because we are human. The government ONLY exists to safeguard our rights. For more information you can read Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government. It's a fairly short book and explains these issues very well.

[VRWC_minion]

The very first "property" rights we have is to our own body and the work it produces. From there, we can assume that we must have to right to own the things we buy with the labor our body produces, and so on and so on.

I agree. We start with our inherent rights. We as a group once decided to use these rights to overturn the King's rule and institute a new state founded on a democratic republic. In doing so we turned over our powers to the state according to the constitution of the state. In these constitutions we reserved or limited the power of the state. Sone of these limitations related to property is the right not to be searched, right to not have to quarter troops and finally the right to be reimbursed by the state if your property is taken.

Some of the laws passed by the states creates not only property but the resultant rights and obligations that go along with that property.

Absent the state there would be personal property but you would only be allowed to keep what you could carry or defend. There would not be any intangible property (ie no Micrsoft products), there would be no stock ownership, no nonprofits, no deeds to real property,. All your property would be subject to merely what you can either carry or fight to defend.

So, your restuarant owner and rental property owner is subject to the laws passed by the state which restrict his right to the use of his property as well as he benefits from the laws that allow him the enjoyment of his property.

The one constant theme that I have told the smokers that they don't want to hear is that if they really cared about the owners rights they would help him get reimbursed for the taking of his property, which could be measured by the decrease in the value of his business attributable to the lost revenues. The smokers using this property right claim don't want to hear that because it doesn't fit with their agenda which is totally selfishly geared toward smoking and not toward property rights.