The right stuff

From a Slashdot discussion:

No one has the "right" to do anything. A right can't be taken away, otherwise it is a privilege, and everything
can be taken away, by nature (or God, if you like) if not by man. This
cruel condition is what we as a species were fighting when we got
together and started forming civilization.

So if there are no
inherent rights, where do rights come from, and what do they mean? The
whole concept of rights revolves around society, around other people.
If you were alone in the world, you would no more think of rights than
a fish thinks of water. Alone without society, your power is your only
right. In order to form cooperative societies that benefit all more
than any could benefit himself alone, we all have to give up some of
our rights. I give up my right to hit you in the face or take your
things because you do the same for me.

So all rights are
arbitrary, agreed upon by society because they benefit everyone. And
all rights involve giving up some kind of freedom as well, so the
exchange had better be worth it. In the case of violence, pretty much
everyone can agree. The same goes for personal property. However,
private property is a harder sell. Too many freedoms are lost by too
many people for too little gain by too few.

Most people would
agree that the things a person works for should be their own, and this
is often used to justify private ownership of natural resources.
However, in order to labor on a piece of land and thus call it your
own, you need to keep others off it, and this happens before you have
the justification for doing so.

So private ownership of
resources can not be justified from first principles, only as an
arbitrary privilege granted by society. A privilege granted very
unfairly, I might add, as most resources are owned and controlled by
people who labored very little for the privilege. Therefore, society
has all the justification it needs to impose any kinds of limits or
qualifiers on the ownership of private property, from having to pay
taxes all the way to having to paint your house a certain color. If you
don't like it, you don't have to own property.

The original comment.