Belindi wrote: ↑October 8th, 2019, 4:34 am
Since you say that, "Persons are defined by possessing rights," I assume that by "omitting personhood" you mean the aims of increasing production or economic growth disregard workers' rights. Is that your claim?
Yes, as a general trend. Robert Owen was an owner who paid attention to workers' welfare. True, we are now 'post-industrial' as you point out. However there are many workers who are still labouring in Dickensian conditions.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ker-deaths.
In the US and Europe many workers have to work overlong hours per week just to make ends meet, or to keep their jobs. In the UK some qualified nurses have been using food banks.
If, so then you are probably assuming that persons have some "rights" which they don't actually have. All persons have rights to enter into relationships with other willing persons, including economic relationships. I.e., they have rights to employ their talents and efforts on any tasks they choose, and to the products of those talents and efforts. They also have the right to exchange the products of their labor and talents with any other willing person, on any mutually agreeaable terms. But no one has a right to the products of someone else's labor or talents, or any right that others serve them.
That argument justifies workers' cooperatives. Rights are not natural but must be conferred by the more powerful on the less powerful . . . My I not credit you with knowing as well as I do when people who sell their labour are in poverty?
It is apparent that we need some clarity as to what a "right" is. That some workers labor under "Dickensian conditions" or that nurses rely on food banks, or that some workers are in poverty tells us nothing about their rights. You seem to be laboring under the assumption that people have "rights" to whatever contributes to their welfare, or to whatever they "need." But that is not what the noun "right" denotes.
The meaning of that term, as it was used and understood in such documents as the US Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights, the English Bill of Rights, and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, was derived from the founders of the liberal tradition (Hobbes, Locke, Blackstone, Kant,
et al) and from the common law. The most succint summary is perhaps found in the French Declaration:
"1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.
2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.
3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.
4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights."
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https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/rightsof.asp
The natural rights --- rights possessed by all persons irrespective of the existence or decrees of any government --- fall into two broad categories ---
liberty rights (rights to act) and
property rights (rights to things).
One has a natural right to do anything which does not injure anyone else (per #4 from the French Declaration). Acting to acquire property is one of the natural liberty rights embraced by that article. That gives us a basis for property rights: One has a property right to anything one has acquired without injuring anyone else.
To say that Alfie has a right to something X, or a right to do something Y, is to say that he is rightfully in possession of X or may rightfully do Y. This the moral sense of "right," and it means that Alfie harmed no one in acquiring X, or will harm no one by doing Y. That no harm is done to other moral agents is the
sole criterion for distinguishing between morally rightful and wrongful acts.
For property rights, the working test for the validity of a claim of right per the common law is the
first possession rule --- Alfie has a right to X --- a morally justified claim to X --- if he is either the first possessor of X or he acquired it via a "chain of consent" from the first possessor. One typically becomes a first possessor either by producing or discovering a thing. Why this test? Because if Alfie is the first possessor of X, then his acquisition of it could not have harmed anyone else, because no one else (by hypothesis) previously received any benefit from it.
In summary, any proposition of the form, "P has a right to X" is true IFF P is either the first possessor of X, or P acquired X via a chain of consent from the first possessor. If that condition is satisfied then the rights claim is true. If it is not satisfied the rights claim is false.
Many of the "rights" declared in the UN Declaration imply that people have "rights" to goods produced or discovered by other people, or "rights" to the services of other people. Since no such "right" can possibly satisfy the above criterion --- and indeed will contradict it --- they are bogus. They attempt to re-define "rights" with the aim of undermining the moral principle and undercutting the very protections the term was coined to denote. They seek to legitimize stealing and slavery.
All right, I'll abandon 'predators'.Let's agree that all living species depend upon other living species. Some relationships are parasitic and some are commensal.I claim work cannot exist unless the relationship between employers ans employees is commensal, or cooperative in attitude and practise.
I agree! If the employment relationship is voluntary and both parties receive benefits to which they have mutually agreed, then the relationship is commensal. Don't confuse commensal with paternalistic.
In democracies criminal law derives from moral law. Are you a democrat small d ? I am.
Yes. But a "constitutional democrat." Decisions as to the activities of government must be made by majority rule, but the powers of the government are limited by a written consitution which cannot be overridden by majorities. Those powers are few and specific --- maintaining a rule of law and a common defense, managing natural commons, and supplying certain public goods. They do not include meeting the personal needs or guaranteeing the personal welfare of any citizen.