Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

>Property rights exist because the people consent to them.

You clearly have absolutely no understanding of what "rights" mean. They're based on deontological arguments, that's why they're called "inherent" rights, not based on some weird utilitarian notion that anything can be morally right if enough people believe it is. By your view of rights raping someone would be okay if enough people want to do it.



> They're based on deontological arguments

You clearly have absolutely no understanding of how "rights" work in the real world. There is no divine force enforcing your god-given right. There's only power. The reason the current "rights" even exist, is because they are enforced through power - if I steal from you, police comes over to my place and beats the shit out of me. Remove the police (and all other forms of power) from the equation, and you can wipe your ass with your "rights".

Or in other words, deontology is just glorified astrology, a bunch of mumbo-jumbo poppycock.

> By your view of rights raping someone would be okay if enough people want to do it.

You're trying to reduce this argument to absurdity, but in many ancient civilizations, rape, in some contexts, was considered okay.


I'm not an arbiter of what's right and wrong. I'm just some guy who gets to decide which rights I'll stand up and defend, and which ones I'll allow to lapse. My reasons are irrelevant to whether my behavior contributes to the emergence or dissolution of rights (but I think they happen to be deontological arguments anyway).

Bodily autonomy, I'll defend in all cases, no need to argue that one here.

Property, not so much. It's part of a bargain. If the people with an outsized share of the property don't exercise their control over surpluses to ensure some degree of decency for all (which they haven't) then they're in breach of the social contract, and is time for a discontinuity in property rights that gives us a different set of people to try out the same contact on.


Some rights are intrinsic, sure, but what makes you believe that property rights are, and especially abstract property rights that aren't rooted in actual physical possession or use? (i.e. some registry somewhere saying that X is yours actually giving you a natural right to control what other people do with X).

And lest you claim that this is some kind of extreme communist take on it, here's Thomas Jefferson on the subject:

"It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all... It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society."




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2026 batch! Applications are open till July 27.

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: