Ecurb wrote: ↑May 20th, 2022, 3:52 pm
Of course I agree that some rules may be morally unjustified. However, as I pointed out in my previous post, the property rights of the owner of a restaurant do NOT infringe on any "natural rights of free association" he may have.
You're actually correct there. (Most) property rights are not natural rights; they are "common rights." The only property to which one has a natural right is the right to one's body. But I'm a little puzzled by your claim, " . . . the property rights of the owner of a restaurant do NOT infringe on any 'natural rights of free association' he may have." You're right, of course, but . . . who claimed they did? Did you mean to say something else there?
There are two rights involved in the restaurant example --- the "common" property right to the restaurant (assuming the proprietor is the owner), and the right of free association. The former allows that owner to decide who may enter upon his property, and under what conditions. The right of free association allows him to decide with whom he will do business. The latter, unlike the property right, is a natural liberty right.
He can associate freely whenever he wants to, but just as an easement allowing people to walk through his land along a river doesn't interfere with his right of free association, neither does a rule prohibiting him from banning black people from his restaurant. Nobody forced him to own a restaurant. If he doesn't like the rules of ownership, he can sell.
Well, that is a poorly chosen example. No one has an easement allowing them to walk through someone else's land, along a river or anywhere else, unless the owner has granted that person such an easement. Such a privilege granted by some third party, such as the State, would not be an easement, but a "taking," and would require payment of just compensation:
"[The California statute] is simply an expression of the Commission's belief that the public interest will be served by a continuous strip of publicly accessible beach along the coast. The Commission may well be right that it is a good idea, but that does not establish that the Nollans (and other coastal residents) alone can be compelled to contribute to its realization. Rather, California is free to advance its 'comprehensive program,' if it wishes, by using its power of eminent domain for this "public purpose," see U.S.Const., Amdt. 5; but if it wants an easement across the Nollans' property, it must pay for it."
Nollan v. California Coastal Commission (1987)
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federa ... on-1957267
The problem with your position, GE, is that it implies that property rights occur naturally . . .
No, it doesn't. Property rights (other than one's right to one's body) are not natural rights.
. . . and when what you deem as proper property rights (i.e. rights to control other people vis a vis an inanimate object) are limited by law, that interferes with natural human rights (like free association).
Same confusion as noted above. Property rights and the right of free association are two distinct rights.
Where they derive, if not from a divinity, is unclear.
Whence they derive is perfectly clear. I'm pretty sure we've covered this ground before. Property rights arise with first possession:
"To gain possession, then, a man must stand in a certain physical relation to the object and to the rest of the world, and must have a certain intent. These relations and this intent are the facts of which we are in search."
--- Oliver Wendell Holmes,
The Common Law (1881, Lecture VI, 216)
"Behind nearly every system for establishing property rights lies the basic notion of first possession. This rule grants an ownership claim to the party that gains control before other potential claimants. Gaius, the first-century Roman commentator, stated the ancient rule clearly: “What presently belongs to no one becomes by natural reason the property of the first taker” (Mommsen and Watson, 1985, Book 41, section 1)."
https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/ ... 5-011/html
Here is one of the better histories:
https://www.sfu.ca/~allen/1st%20poss%20 ... lgrave.doc
In my opinion, and in that of all other reasonable people, property rights derive from the traditions and laws of the culture in which they exist.
From the traditions and practices of the culture, but not from the laws; the laws in common law countries (regarding property ownership) merely codify those pre-existing rights and practices. All (natural and common) rights precede laws.
The legally and culturally constituted rules regulating their property explicitly state that this is not the case.
Laws that conflict with natural or common rights have no moral force, and fiat "rights" ("frights") conjured from thin air by politicians have no moral significance.
Why always support "property rights", instead of rights to freedom of movement, or expression, or (even) association?
Oh, I support all of those as well. That is an odd remark, in a discussion debating whether the State may dictate what pronouns a person chooses to use, and whether it may dictate with whom a person must do business, and in which you
defend infringement of those freedoms --- and then, bizarrely, pretend there is no infringement.