[extropy-chat] What the #$?! are rights anyway?

Harry Harrison xyz at iq.org
Sat Jun 17 07:25:53 UTC 2006


On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 20:33:10 +0800, "Jack Parkinson" <isthatyoujack at gmail.com> said:
> started complaining that discussing the rights of women versus those
> of fetuses is not a suitable topic for a transhuman list, I found it
> necessary to ask the lot of you to tell me what rights are, where they
> come from, and why they are in any sense "real"?
>

Rights are freedoms of action that if abridged result in punishment to
the actors involved. If there were no people there would be no rights.

Hence the Divine right of kings from the middle ages, the right way,
mining rights, conjugal rights, marital rights, etc.

The decision as to what should be punished and what may be ignored is
political. This does not mean that rights are unimportant, but rather,
that politics, (the societal control of freedom and wealth), is so
important as to be more important that rights.



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