Don't we all have the right to a basic level of livelihood? Why should the family I was born to determine wether I have clean water to drink or not, for example?
You can argue that certain rights are fundamental, but it doesn’t mean anything if most people disagree with you. Whether or not rights are “fundamental” (i.e. exist outside of an enforcement structure) not a useful distinction, because it’s meaningless - whether or not you get to exercise that right has nothing to do with your claim being correct, it has to do with other people agreeing and sanctioning your behavior.
Like most normative claims, personal rights do not really exist coherently if you don’t first define them in the context of a relationship. This is demonstrably the case because the idea of a right would be redundant or meaningless if it were not for an adversary threatening that right in the first place.
Because of this thing called reality.
If the circumstances of your birth are unfortunate, that's sad, but it does not have to be other people's problem.
In the wild there is ownership (or possession), and animals defend it with brute force. Property rights regulate this and tend to enforce the concept of ownership in a civilized way.
Without property rights, we'd be back to defending ownership with violence, even on the individual level. Few people want that, and I'm not one of them.
By the way, we are not at risk of going back to defending ownership with violence, for the simple reason that we haven't left that situation. Property is defended with violence and the threat of violence every day in the most civilized of countries. That's what police and prisons are: violence.
True. That's why I added "even on the individual level". It's difficult to explain what is different about the way say a lion defends his territory by attacking any intruder and the way a man defends his house by calling the cops when burglars show up, but I'm sure there is a difference, and I believe it makes sense to say that one of the method is civilized when the other is not.
You have the right to it, but you're not entitled to it.
To me, having the right to do something means you can't be prosecuted for doing it. It doesn't mean that society must help you.
As a practical matter, what do you think happens to any society that suffers a class divide severe enough that (a) the majority of the citizenry ends up in the underclass and (b) being in the underclass sucks badly enough to really piss people off?
Societies need to take care of their citizens and ensure they receive, if nothing else, fair treatment under law and approximately equal opportunity. Otherwise, you get behavior like this: https://youtu.be/HL45pVdsRvE?t=60
What a lot of people on both sides don't seem to be getting is that Trump getting elected was an expression of bipartisan anger and frustration on the part of voters. Their anger and frustration may have created an even worse result, depending on whether you think Trump is going to ease or worsen inequality in this country, but guess what? Stupid things are exactly the result of festering anger and resentment.
There are a bunch of folks out there -- maybe you're one of them, maybe not, I dunno -- who kind of wish for some kind of implosion of American society. They think they'll come out ahead, because they've got guns or they live in the middle of nowhere. But, they won't come out ahead, they'll lose. Everyone will lose.
So you can pontificate about the ideological merits of extreme Libertarianism all you want, but in practice it works exactly as well as extreme socialism.
It has a violent revolution. But your question contains an unstated assumption: that capitalism leads to "the majority of the citizenry [ending] up in the underclass". Feudal societies saw most people living in poverty. Communist societies saw most people living in poverty. Properly functioning capitalist societies have a healthy middle class, and a tolerable standard of living even for people at the bottom.
"So you can pontificate about the ideological merits of extreme Libertarianism all you want, but in practice it works exactly as well as extreme socialism."
The society that came closest to "extreme Libertarianism" was the United States in the 19th century. (Especially after the civil war). That was the century of the industrial revolution, huge advances in technology and wealth production, and an unprecedented rise in the standard of living.
No, not capitalism specifically, and that's not a claim I made. (Unless of course you believe that capitalism necessarily leads to the exploitation of the poor.)
> That was the century of the industrial revolution, huge advances in technology and wealth production, and an unprecedented rise in the standard of living.
Even if I agreed with your premise, is it your argument here that those things happened because of libertarianism? Because (a) historians would disagree with you, and (b), you're still stuck with the same problem as every other libertarian: where are all of the 21st century libertarian utopias then? Is it in Galt's Gulch, Chile (https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bn53b3/atlas-mugged-922-v...)? Is it somewhere in Antarctica, one of few (barely) habitable places on Earth with no government? Is it Mauritius? Liberia? Colorado Springs (https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/30/colorado-...)?
I'm not sure what you mean by "approximately equal opportunity", since the circumstances of life are so different it seems delusional to me to hope for equal opportunities for everyone.
But I do agree on the concept of fair treatment under law, and I believe it's a fundamental basis for the notion of justice.
I just don't believe poverty necessarily results from any unfair treatment, and that as such its prevention or mitigation is not society's duty.
But anyway, your belief doesn't agree with reality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSH9_IWeSK4
"Terry Bossert, Range’s vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs, told a Pennsylvania Bar Institute gathering in Harrisburg earlier this month, that the company tries to avoid siting its shale gas wells near “big houses” where residents might have the financial resources to challenge the industrial-type developments." http://www.post-gazette.com/powersource/latest-oil-and-gas/2...
"I’m a public defender. It’s impossible for me to do a good job representing my clients." https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/our-public-defender-...
"How companies make millions off lead-poisoned, poor blacks" https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/how-compa...
"I make a lot of poor financial decisions. None of them matter, in the long term. I will never not be poor, so what does it matter if I don’t pay a thing and a half this week instead of just one thing?" https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/your-br...
"How municipalities in St. Louis County, Mo., profit from poverty" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/...
"As Court Fees Rise, The Poor Are Paying The Price" http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/312158516/increasing-court-fee...
I have 5,233 carefully-organized bookmarks in Pinboard. I can keep doing this for a while.
The fact of the matter is that poverty by itself is unfair treatment. Those living in poverty automatically have fewer judicial options in legal disputes, bear an unfair proportion of costs in legal matters, have their communities unfairly targeted by exploitative businesses that know the citizens don't have the resources to fight back, and are subjected to poorer nutrition and harmful living environments which virtually guarantee that those people born into poverty will also die in it -- and of it.
Let's take them one at a time.
1. Life - so one has the right to life, yet is not entitled to it? If I take your life and don't get prosecuted for it, then everything is cool?
2. Liberty - if your skin color was black in the Antebellum south, you had the right to libery, you just weren't be entitled to it?
3. Pursuit of Happiness - you have the right to say, be able to read, which I think most would agree is pretty essential to pursuing your happiest self. But you are not entitled to any basic education, and the onus should be on you?
This is one of the most cynical viewpoints I can think of.
Edits: premature eclickulation
Your third example is interesting because indeed, I personally believe that education should be a service like any other, one that society is not supposed to provide, at least not by law. On the other hand, law should not prevent your from getting one, nor should it allow anyone to prevent someone from having one. Hopefully you can see the difference.
It's like say owning a car. You have the right to own one. If someone steals it, it's a crime and society must punish it. But society does not have to provide you one if you don't have any.
You are part of a lynch mob in the 30's. Your crime of murder is swept under the rug.
You live in Alabama in 1836. A man frees your slave, and you had to shoot him as he runs away. You are now out one slave (no murder, right?) and the man who freed him is in prison.
Laws change. Rights are inalienable.
"America was founded on the idea that human beings are born with natural rights, such as the rights to life, liberty and property. A person who holds this view of rights makes no demands on others except that they respect those rights. Today, however, many Americans talk about rights to a college education, state of the art medical care and even birth control pills. These are rights understood as entitlements and a person who holds this view of rights, far from making no demands on other people, is making claims on other people’s money and resources. This understanding of rights not only sets citizens against each other, but it undermines the whole idea of natural rights."
http://blog.hillsdale.edu/online-courses/natural-rights-vs.-...
I like especially the "it undermines the whole idea of natural rights". Clearly people like me are the result of this undermining.
Please don't use this kind of argument to turn HN into reddit.
I'm also fairly certain this has nothing to do with the concept of justice.
Most of the world has signed conventions that makes basic livelihood a right -- and puts it on the state to ensure this.
Perhaps you don't agree with these laws and conventions. But please consider that the very concept of "ownership" and "property" is also something that is only upheld by laws.
Also on a pragmatic level, why should those without property acknowledge and support a state which doesn't look out for their basic livelihood? A state that does not at least try to make sure everyone has a livelihood is a sure path to social unrest / revolutions that causes problems for rich people as well.
You should turn around and ask: Why should people support the notion of property?
Property is part of the social contract in much the same way that human rights (everyone having a livelihood) is part of the social contract.
Some problems for sure, but it's probably manageable. Poverty is not and should never be an excuse for crime. Rich people can build as many prisons as necessary.
Or Russia in 1917.
Things were close in the US in 1932 - hence the new deal.
Poverty isn't an excuse for a crime, but people with children to feed can be used as a tool by revolutionaries very easily. One revolution often leads to another (France and Russia also Germany saw this) as the faction in power loses it's grievance and acquires shiny things.
The problem is that this precipitates economic collapse and therefore more poor people.
"Managing" the problems isn't cheap either; thugs, cameras, guns, torture, prisons and PR are not free. There are a variety of costs, including the personal ones when the children of the rich discover that Daddy or Mummy spends half their weeks chainsawing people's arms off.
And Jesus, what's the point? I mean, isn't it just better to have a world where you can go out for a latte or buy a pair of pants in a store without being afraid ?
Technically we can say that equilibrium is that the rich support a welfare state and the poor do not use the rich to decorate lamp posts. Some players have forgotten this, they are irrational, but that doesn't change the game and in future iterations it will return to it's balanced state.
If I'm starving to death and you're hogging the bread, I'm taking it from you. The law is not morality. At some point (I don't think we're there yet today, but we're heading in that direction) I think crime - stealing in particular - is more excusable when the rich have stacked the deck.
You want to define one set of laws you agree with "justice" and another you disagree with "charity". That is namecalling and intellectually lazy.
The same state and body of laws that define property also defines taxation.
Without a social contract, there is no property. Property isn't obvious! My viking ancestors considered it good and noble to pillage Englishmen.
The social contract you live in happens to define property, but also define taxes and redistribution to the poor. It gives the poor rights. Not charity.
You seem to consider property more "natural" or God-given or such than taxation and everyones right to eat. Why?
It seems like you think the right to "property" is somehow above the right to life. In most of the world BOTH of those are guaranteed by the same laws and the same social contract.
You are one of the people for whom they build gulags.
They do, because the laws are bought by the rich.
Most people disagree with that and seem to think it’s possible to have angels from heaven running the government machine. The thing is that even if you manage that, it’s bound to go wrong at some future election.
That indeed demands justice.
> I think isn't a bad thing as long as the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood. The problem is that in the US, that isn't true, and so, people clamor for justice.
That is not a demand for justice, but charity.
Words have a meaning, please don't misuse them.