You have no rights(blog.oleganza.com)
blog.oleganza.com
You have no rights
http://blog.oleganza.com/post/52698404368/you-have-no-rights
3 comments
Teaching that "if you steal, people won't like it" is not a commandment with a death sentence attached to it. It's just teaching how things work in society. But making a commandment or a law, and forcing people to obey it, in most cases is just a shield for violating this very principle by someone else.
One of the real things is that we need a framework for rights which is not dependent on "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone...." The problem, as the article notes, is that rights applied universally, are not a liberating concept.
I am going to propose one here. Rights, I see as emergent from cultural context, rather than inherent in the human condition. Culture is always an interplay between the group and the individual, groups of individuals repurpose culture all the time.
So my definition is very simple. Rights to the individual and subgroups are held where necessary for the reasonably just functioning of the culture. We recognize abortion as a right in contemporary American culture because women cannot have equality in a soul-crushing corporate workplace without it, but that doesn't mean one can declare that it always has been a right to everyone.
Similarly free speech and due process are necessary for our form of governance to survive. Otherwise we just have turn our country into something fundamentally unjust according to the ideals of our culture.
I am going to propose one here. Rights, I see as emergent from cultural context, rather than inherent in the human condition. Culture is always an interplay between the group and the individual, groups of individuals repurpose culture all the time.
So my definition is very simple. Rights to the individual and subgroups are held where necessary for the reasonably just functioning of the culture. We recognize abortion as a right in contemporary American culture because women cannot have equality in a soul-crushing corporate workplace without it, but that doesn't mean one can declare that it always has been a right to everyone.
Similarly free speech and due process are necessary for our form of governance to survive. Otherwise we just have turn our country into something fundamentally unjust according to the ideals of our culture.
> We recognize abortion as a right in contemporary American culture because women cannot have equality in a soul-crushing corporate workplace without it
Completely regardless of any pro life or pro choice bias, I don't really understand A) why you think this is true or B) why you think that "because it is necessary for equality in a soul crushing corporate workplace" is a valid justification for something.
> Similarly free speech and due process are necessary for our form of governance to survive.
And once again, you're justifying the means on account of the ends without justifying the ends as worthy, why should we care if that particular form of governance survives?
Care to enlighten me? Curious.
Completely regardless of any pro life or pro choice bias, I don't really understand A) why you think this is true or B) why you think that "because it is necessary for equality in a soul crushing corporate workplace" is a valid justification for something.
> Similarly free speech and due process are necessary for our form of governance to survive.
And once again, you're justifying the means on account of the ends without justifying the ends as worthy, why should we care if that particular form of governance survives?
Care to enlighten me? Curious.
Ok, so first I am discarding the idea of universal right and wrong and arguing these arise from within a culture as a consequence of cultural structures. In this way I am largely following thinkers from Aristotle and Cicero through anthropologists like Arnold van Gennep, Victor Turner, Claude Levi-Strauss, and Ronald Grimes.
In the past for example, sleeping around might have been seen as morally wrong because it had social implications that may not exist today in the same way. Rights and morality both effectively address proper functioning of society. Other societies draw different lines. The Todas in India for example believed it was immoral for a woman to retain her virginity until after menstruation, and they practiced polyandry too.
The question is what are the social consequences for a given right being restricted or a given immoral action being performed.
Does this make more sense?
In the past for example, sleeping around might have been seen as morally wrong because it had social implications that may not exist today in the same way. Rights and morality both effectively address proper functioning of society. Other societies draw different lines. The Todas in India for example believed it was immoral for a woman to retain her virginity until after menstruation, and they practiced polyandry too.
The question is what are the social consequences for a given right being restricted or a given immoral action being performed.
Does this make more sense?
Ok, so the justifications for the ends under discussion is accepted because "That's the way things are, ergo that's the way the majority of people have decided that they ought to be by participation". They live in countries with totalitarian democratic governments, they work in soul crushing corporate jobs, therefore those ends are "desirable" without direct justification beyond that?
That seems like confusing is and ought in the exact opposite of the way that humans tend to do it normally?
That seems like confusing is and ought in the exact opposite of the way that humans tend to do it normally?
Not quite.
I think you have to look at government as a product of culture, and I think you have to look at culture as a functioning system. It isn't a question of what the majority have decided. It is a question of how things fit together.
The problem with a "it's just the way it is" argument is that it prevents any possible critiques across cultural boundaries. That's not what I am proposing. I think you have to start from the way it is, look at how things fit together, and then find problems with this. However such a discussion is incomplete unless you can point to why people generally accept something and what incentives they have to accept it.
Let's take a rather major example: female genital cutting in Sudan. It's very easy to just say "this is oppression of women!" but that doesn't really work. A much more thorough review would include:
1. The very real problems reproductive-wise and health-wise this causes, but also
2. The fact that this practice is a way of marking privileged socio-economic status, and therefore giving it up is essentially placing women who would forgo the practice outside of the upper classes, and
3. The fact that this practice has become in the wake of Western criticism a way of circling the wagons cuturally, and a symbol of standing up to perceived colonialism and thus confers additional positive status that way.
I think you have to look at government as a product of culture, and I think you have to look at culture as a functioning system. It isn't a question of what the majority have decided. It is a question of how things fit together.
The problem with a "it's just the way it is" argument is that it prevents any possible critiques across cultural boundaries. That's not what I am proposing. I think you have to start from the way it is, look at how things fit together, and then find problems with this. However such a discussion is incomplete unless you can point to why people generally accept something and what incentives they have to accept it.
Let's take a rather major example: female genital cutting in Sudan. It's very easy to just say "this is oppression of women!" but that doesn't really work. A much more thorough review would include:
1. The very real problems reproductive-wise and health-wise this causes, but also
2. The fact that this practice is a way of marking privileged socio-economic status, and therefore giving it up is essentially placing women who would forgo the practice outside of the upper classes, and
3. The fact that this practice has become in the wake of Western criticism a way of circling the wagons cuturally, and a symbol of standing up to perceived colonialism and thus confers additional positive status that way.
Rights have "due process" attached to them, as you noted. This is exactly what creates violent religion called "state".
My suggestion is to use "contracts" as a basis for all social agreements. People voluntarily agree to certain behaviour between each other and "lock up" themselves in voluntary obligations. Breaking these obligations is punished by economic ostracism by others, who'd like to keep their obligations and benefits. If you steal, we will not sell you bread until you pay your debts. That simple. If some bunch of people agreed to not pollute the river and you come and pollute, they would not deal with you. If you disagree, no one kidnaps you, please feel free to negotiate and boycott back. Just like on your interview: if you don't like job conditions, you withdraw your service. But also employer withdraws his payment if he doesn't like your conditions. So you either come to some common grounds (without any need for "rights" or "morality"), or you go different ways.
On a large scale it can work beautifully with internet and crypto proofs of agreements. You can have millions of people easily lock up in common agreements on intellectual property, pollution, insurance against disasters etc. Anyone willing to go against existing relations will face ostracism from millions of people absolutely automatically (via dispute resolution organizations that will act as delegates/proxies).
The trick is only to grow such "contract / dispute resolution" network to a large enough scale when bullying is big economic risk. Today, people trust state to make decisions who's bad, who's good and state makes a good job to hide these people in jail and courts, so you don't even have a chance to negotiate openly. Almost no one has millions of chances to find supporters. In voluntary society you can always go to a competing agency and try to convince them that you are right and others are wrong. If they can successfully prove that to customers, they'll win the market. So what is acceptable and what is not will be decided locally by the market, never set in stone, always renegotiable to the maximum satisfaction of everyone.
My suggestion is to use "contracts" as a basis for all social agreements. People voluntarily agree to certain behaviour between each other and "lock up" themselves in voluntary obligations. Breaking these obligations is punished by economic ostracism by others, who'd like to keep their obligations and benefits. If you steal, we will not sell you bread until you pay your debts. That simple. If some bunch of people agreed to not pollute the river and you come and pollute, they would not deal with you. If you disagree, no one kidnaps you, please feel free to negotiate and boycott back. Just like on your interview: if you don't like job conditions, you withdraw your service. But also employer withdraws his payment if he doesn't like your conditions. So you either come to some common grounds (without any need for "rights" or "morality"), or you go different ways.
On a large scale it can work beautifully with internet and crypto proofs of agreements. You can have millions of people easily lock up in common agreements on intellectual property, pollution, insurance against disasters etc. Anyone willing to go against existing relations will face ostracism from millions of people absolutely automatically (via dispute resolution organizations that will act as delegates/proxies).
The trick is only to grow such "contract / dispute resolution" network to a large enough scale when bullying is big economic risk. Today, people trust state to make decisions who's bad, who's good and state makes a good job to hide these people in jail and courts, so you don't even have a chance to negotiate openly. Almost no one has millions of chances to find supporters. In voluntary society you can always go to a competing agency and try to convince them that you are right and others are wrong. If they can successfully prove that to customers, they'll win the market. So what is acceptable and what is not will be decided locally by the market, never set in stone, always renegotiable to the maximum satisfaction of everyone.
Due process is a cultural thing too. I wouldn't say that aboriginal peoples whose due process is a shaman pointing a bone at someone and uttering curses necessarily is violating anyone's human rights.
Typically, people were beating shit out of someone who was not behaving "correctly".
But is your view that small tribal societies without a professional judiciary are necessarily violating human rights for lack of a professional judiciary or even clear code of laws?
I don't hold people responsible for their actions until they've been exposed to an argument against them. E.g. ancient doctor is not responsible for not using antibiotics. But if he does not use them when he knows about them (and they are accessible), then he is responsible.
Doesn't that mean though that it is our moral imperative to modernize all traditional peoples in the world? Under that argument, shouldn't indigenous peoples be discriminated against to encourage them to modernize?
I don't believe in moral imperatives. I simply try to teach people things I understand when they are willing to listen. I'm not obliged to do that. They are not obliged to listen. But if it happens that I tell you arguments why government is evil, I will hold you responsible if you simply disagree without a convincing counter-argument. So we could have been friends before, but after could be not anymore.
Are you a voluntaryist / ancap with hopes for the implications of the underpinnings of the system via cryptographic protocols by any chance? Your ideas sound very familiar.
I am voluntarist who doesn't believe in convincing people, but believes in economics. If there are tools that benefit most of the people and keep risks low, people will use them. Crypto is one of such things. Politics and revolutions are not.
>If people steal from you find out why they hate you
This whole blog is gibberish. Juveniles apparently up vote without reading.
This whole blog is gibberish. Juveniles apparently up vote without reading.
Ah, so thats why I was taught not to steal by my school teachers, parents and other mentors. Its because they were all thieves, just trying to clear their territory of competition. I'd better go buy some locks from the lock shop...