Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!think!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!ATHENA.MIT.EDU!melissa From: melissa@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Melissa Silvestre) Newsgroups: mod.legal Subject: Let's build a set of rights from scratch! Message-ID: <8608062233.AA17611@TRILLIAN> Date: Wed, 6-Aug-86 18:33:55 EDT Article-I.D.: TRILLIAN.8608062233.AA17611 Posted: Wed Aug 6 18:33:55 1986 Date-Received: Fri, 8-Aug-86 05:45:01 EDT References: <8608041647.aa08472@SEM.BRL.ARPA> Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Reply-To: Melissa Silvestre Organization: MIT Project Athena Lines: 46 Approved: info-law@brl.arpa In article <8608041647.aa08472@SEM.BRL.ARPA> ("Col. G. L. Sicherman") writes: >>[ME] >> Classic misconception here. There are two kinds of rights. There are >> negative rights, called liberties, and positive rights, sometimes called >> entitlements. John Gilmore (the >) is referring to negative rights. >> Dave Massey (indented) is referring to positive rights. Many of us believe >> that there is no such thing as positive rights, and that the sole >> purpose of government is to protect negative rights. >> Everyone can have and exercise negative rights all at the same >> time without conflict (by definition of "negative right"). > >The trouble with these absolute definitions is that no right is absolutely >negative. Most legislative debates are about whether an activity hurts >enough people to be worth regulating; i.e., how "positive" the activity >is. For example, the right of a factory owner to pour smoke into the air >was once regarded as a liberty, but is now regarded as an entitlement or >a privilege, because the right to breathe clean air has come to be regarded >as a "liberty" in your sense--though some people would call it an entitlement. > >The right to foul the air is a "negative" right, if the only criterion is that >everybody can exercise it at the same time. But it's not the sort of right >that I want to see protected! What I meant was that a "right" in the traditional sense can only be a right of its theoretically possible for everyone to exercise all of them. The only kinds of rights which can meet this criterion are negative rights, by definition. In your example, there is a clear conflict between the "right" to pour smoke into the air and the "right" to breathe free clean air. Clearly at least one of those, and maybe both, aren't true rights. Rights should be a closed set logically. The simplest set of rights is the null set. There are no internal conflicts. Almost as simple are sets with one member, that being one of the traditionally recognized "negative rights", like freedom of worship in your own home. The moment you add another element to this set, it must be checked against the existing members, as well as against itself. The object, of course, is make this set as large as possible under these restrictions. If you try to include just one "bad" (inconsistent) member, you've corrupted the set, and your philosophy has just become "anything goes, as long as it feels good". Is anyone up to the challenge? If you don't like my starting-off right, feel free to choose another. Remember it must be self-consistent. And I'd prefer to keep children and other "incompetents" out of it, since the question of whether they require an entirely different set isn't established. -- Melissa Silvestre (melissa@athena.mit.edu)