Natural Rights - Interpreting John Locke

The problem lies in the fact that the philosophers thought of man in nature as being independent from others. However all evidence points to men having always lived in social groups. Thus any "natural rights" a person would have would have to be in the context of being a member of a group. In the grand scheme of things it may turn out to be that the greatest natural right of all is the right to belong.

 

Essentially this is the way it works. When you purchase land you are in essence purchasing the right to occupy it, not own it - which you can then resale if you want. The government has the right to take your land away at any time. However being the government they have to afford you the opportunity to due process.

 

The idea of supply and demand didn't come out until more than a hundred years after Locke had died.

 

I guess the concept of public land eludes you.

 

Locke is given prominence because many of America's founders claimed to have been influenced by him. However his Essay Concerning Human Understanding may have had a greater impact than his treaties on government.

 

For what reason?

 

No one can show that natural rights exist.

If they existed, what good did "certain unalienable rights" that "all men are endowed by out Creator" with, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, do for the thousands of men who were drafted and died or were maimed in Vietnam?

What good did these supposed natural rights do the Jews and other minorities who were legally rounded up in NAZI Germany?

You can make a better case for liberty by demanding that government prove how it obtains "rights" to control people's peaceful activities. Rousseau's involuntary "social contract" just doesn't cut it.

Natural rights, natural law, and involuntary "social contracts" are as illogical as the divine rights of kings to tax and control people.

https://www.amazon.com/Natural-Dont...natural+law:+don't+put+a+rubber+on+your+willy.

 

i deem my lifestyle oppressed in context to the lifestyles of the rich in America and around the world, and excessive to the lifestyle of people in third world countries whose poverty is worse than American poverty.

supply and demand is relative to different people in different places, Americans who are not rich must use lawful force of government to equitably redistribute the natural right of property to everyone.

since the individual has the right of private natural ownership of land equitably, this cannot be socialism where government owns the land, and it cannot be crony capitalism where the individual is unfairly leveraged against others in the ownership of private land.

one notable free market capitalist who practices John Locke's principles is Donald Trump, he has recently mentioned he is 'under- leveraged' in competition.

 

it originated from your quote of john locke in the OP, john lockes ideal was that capitalism's end result was socialism's end result, where everyone is equal from their labor.

that interpretation of john locke is bad, some people don't pursue happiness laboring for what they need, they pursue happiness laboring for what they want.

if we adopt this interpretation of john locke we take the natural right of property away from the people who work harder to be royalty, since not everyone is happy as a peasant.

the founding fathers defeated england to give liberty to the American peasants, where they have the freedom to choose to accept the divine rights of kings for themselves or not. they believed john locke wanted the poor to have the natural right to property, and the poor could either choose to be kings from capitalizing on that property, or remain peasants by surviving and meeting their needs on that property.

using the proper interpretation of john locke, the natural right of property gives freedom to people with religion who find happiness without being rich, and gives freedom to people without religion who would find happiness with the divine rights of kings, or being rich.

 

For any reason

The US government has the legal right to take people's property because the Supreme Court said so, but that doesn't mean that it's ethical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

In NAZI Germany it was legal to round up Jews and confiscate their property, and it was illegal to harbor them.

 

Someone is in the middle of a revisionist history college course. Good luck. Just remember, D's get degrees. You don't have to buy what they're selling.

 

1. As to the first sentence, why does the order matter? 2. I didn't say the right of property is based upon society or statutory laws but that the social contract replaced the Divine Right as the foundation of statutory title. That's not only crystal clear, but repeated and repeated for emphasis in my post, so this thread is salving the confirmation bias that came to mind when first reading it, and will just stand on prior posts to it rather than continuing.

 

For anyone seeking basic understanding of how property law works in the US, ignore the above, in which each claim is false. Google up US property law wiki or somesuch as a bare start to learn facts instead of inaccurate gibberish.

 

Your statements appear to be a bit unhinged or you still haven't read Chapter 5 because Locke clearly makes several statements that contradict what you seem to be saying. For example in addressing how much a person can possess for their "support (e.g. food, shelter, clothes and other necessities) and comfort (new bass boat, airfare to Tahiti and other pleasures in life)" Locke states:

As much as any one can make use of to any advantage of life before it
spoils, so much he may by his Tabour fix a property in.

If you can use it then you can establish the Right of Property to it. The only limitation is where you can't establish a Right of Property to is anything that exceeds what you can possibly use in you lifetime or anything that spoils before you use it.

There's nothing at all Marxist about Locke's Natural Right of Property but there is a reason, among many, that compels me to believe he's talking about the Natural Right of Use of property the person possesses as opposed to a Natural Right of Ownership established by any form of title.

A Natural Right is not transferrable but a Title is. Locke, in Chapter 5 addresses a person growing an excess of wheat (if I recall correctly) that is more than they can 'use' but then they exchange the wheat for something else they need to "use" and the "Right of Use" established by the person's labor is unchanged even though what is being used based upon the exchange changes. The Right is not transferred by the exchange of the commodities. If the Natural Right is "ownership" then a transfer of the property would also be a transfer of the Natural Right because of the direct connection. That can't happen. The Right of Use is inherent in the person (inherent in the person is one of the criteria for Natural Rights) but the property itself is not inherent in the person. As noted previously the only thing the person "owns" are themselves and, because of that, their labor.

PS The Natural Right of Use also solves the "living wage" problem we have because the employee establishes a Right of Use for what they require for their support and comfort doing whatever the employer assigns and then, in exchange for that the employer must provide the compensation required b employee for their support and comfort in exchange for their labor that established the Right of Use.

 

Me? I graduated from college 50 years ago next June. Even back then they were selling Keynesian macroeconomics, and I didn't buy it. Got a D- for not spouting it back, and got an A in microeconomics..

 

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.

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

Now describe to me the seizure of property that you are going on about, and explain how this seizure is a JUST exercise of power that WE have consented to.

Yes, and we hung Nazis by the scores at Nuremberg for committing these crimes against humanity.

 

SEN. Rand Paul-
"Your rights are who you are, your rights are what you are, your rights are in your DNA - and the government can quite frankly, get over it."

The fact Americans recognize each other's shared instincts is how they exist. But you aren't paid to post that.

 

I'm not saying that the complete trashing of the Bill of Rights with such things as that Kelo vs. New London, CT, and the droning of an American citizen without due process is a JUST exercise of power, but I am saying that it is a FACT.

Here is the seizure of property that I was "going on about."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

 

when locke says in sec. 51 'so he had no temptation to labour for more than he could make use of', i interpret that as him meaning the natural right of property exists for people to labor on enough for survival, not to get rich from.

according to your interpretation of john locke, people have the natural right to use property to get rich from, but don't have a right to own that property with a title.

this statement is unhinged because the right to use property to get rich from creates the peasant class with force, since not all people are able to become capitalists and be rich from the use of land.

giving the peasant the natural right of ownership to land with title allows them the privilege of the divine rights of kings, where they can use that land either to labor for a living wage, or use that land to labor for becoming rich. this gives the peasant the liberty to determine the size of their kingdom with their labors, but always retain the right to be royalty no matter the size of their kingdom.

we should interpret john locke's message with the utmost of nobility, as to not desecrate his memory, so the traditional interpretation appears to be the proper interpretation. as highlighted below, john locke wanted the peasant to have the right of property the same way as the king, by command of God, in other words the peasant must have the divine right of kings, too.

 

We cannot be complacent about our rights as self-ruled citizens. "IF YOU CAN KEEP IT!" What was Dr. Franklin's admonishment and warning? What tools did our Framers provide us with to make sure we remain forever capable of "Keeping it"?

You would advise that we sit here and do nothing while "our trusted servants" arrogate the prerogatives of the Monarchy that we overthrew?

Our Preamble to the Constitution explains it's purpose:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America

We the People
To form a more perfect Union (continued perfecting is an ongoing process)
Secure the Blessing of Liberty to ourselves and those that follow us.

These are powerful marching orders and grave responsibilities, it takes a nation of courage to continue to carry them out. We ARE those People.

 

Although the Declaration of Independence acknowledges the self-evidence of our "unalienable" (inalienable, natural rights) and expressly establishes that government are instituted among men to "secure" (protect) these (natural) rights, and the 9th Amendment addressed the unenumerated (natural) rights of the person anyone that's ever taken anytime at all in learning about the natural rights of the person knows that since Day One the US government has not, for the most part, based any legislation on the natural rights nor does it do a very good job of protecting them.

We don't even teach anything of value about "natural rights" in our K-12 education which is why so many people in American have little understanding of them.

The Natural Right of Property, that was my opening post on this thread, is addressing that fact specifically because our laws of property aren't even remotely based upon the Natural Right of Property. That's a reason this thread should be of interest to anyone concerned about their "Right of Property" and I don't mean the statutory laws of property which is what the Supreme Court based it's decision upon.

Even though I know some about the Natural Right of Property even I'm learning to understand even more based upon the discussion here. Read Chapter 5 of the Second Treatise of Civil Government because when correctly interpreted (which is what we're doing) it will give each of us an understanding of what's right and wrong with the laws of property, that effect so many things in our life, in the United States. If enough Americans understood the Natural Right of Property we might even be able to bring about change to improve America.

 

This is incorrect. Natural law is based upon what "nature" itself and not upon the behavior of species including man. I would suggest that you start the Second Treatise of Civil Government from the beginning because there is a lot to be learned.

For example, based upon human behavior (or the behavior of lions in the wild) there will be some that rise to dominance but nature didn't; delegate any specific animal of a species, man or lion, the authority to be "superior" to the other animals in the species. The lion that becomes the leader of the pack and the person becomes dominate over people does so based upon their own self-delegated authority. Nature creates all of the member of a species "equal" and then some, based upon their own self-delegated authority using "might makes right" rises to the top in power becoming "unequal" to others of the species.

Perhaps the phrase "Who died and made you god?" reflects the question of why self-appointment to positions of authority is wrong.

 

Would explicitly endorsing a Lockean ethical framework really help to improve the US, though? For one thing, although the liberal-democratic, Western political model used in the US is ostensibly based on such a framework, it would not befit this political model to promote one specific view of ethics in an explicit manner, since deciding on an ethical worldview is an individual rather than a collective matter (similar to the reason behind state secularism). And for another, how would viewing legal rights as somehow inalienable and as containing some sort of vague supra-legal quality improve anything? If anything, it would just limit discourse by enshrining certain legal rights as unquestionable or as not needing proper justification.

 

Discussing Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government itself would be awesome but it would have to be done chapter by chapter starting at the very beginning because it's progressive in establishing the reasoning in earlier chapters that applies in later chapters. But in the future I'm up to that.

While you claim that Locke's Second Treatise of Civil Government presents logical contradictions in over 300 years no one has been able to actually demonstrate that. What I think people are referring to might be an "apparent" contradiction if the person hasn't understood or even read the logical reasoning from a preceding chapter. As I mentioned above it builds in a step-by-step process identical to how fields of mathematics start with axiom(s) (apparent or assumed truths) and then build upon that foundation.

In any event in 300 years no one has ever published any analysis establishing contradiction in the Second Treatise of Civil Government that would alter the conclusions built upon the sequence of logical reason.

As for Locke he's arguably not the only scholar that's addressed natural rights but Locke provided ALL of the foundation and logical reasoning to establish the truth of natural rights and no one else has done that or even attempted it to my knowledge. Other writer about natural rights generally refer to Locke as they address and/or present their own reasoning and I've found some that misrepresented Locke by pulling out of context and distorting what Locke is actually saying.

 

Whoa! Extremely well-said.