Most confused on human rights

(My Clovis News Journal column for December 18, 2015)

Most people’s understanding of human rights is upside down and backward.

The question isn’t whether you have the right to own and to carry a gun or a sword; drive a car regardless of license or registration; make, sell, or buy meth; use your property as you see fit; smoke Cannabis; write, sing, or say whatever words you want to express; open a business; or anything else that has been claimed at one time or another to be a right.

The point is no one- regardless of any justification- has the right to forbid you to do any of those things. All real rights are a right to not have something done to you.

Confusing the issue of rights is a way to control your thoughts and keep you thinking inside the box.

If people actually understood rights, the debate would be turned on its head; it would stop being about what you have a right to do, and become about what others have no right to do to you.

This is why the imaginary right to govern and control others can't exist and therefore can't be delegated to anyone under any conditions- it is based on someone doing to others things they have no right to do.

Most people still believe in this kind of imaginary authority, though, and grasping sociopaths are eager to take advantage of this primitive, superstitious belief and gain political power- or to get hired. Government extremists want to make you see rights as privileges; things to be doled out as rewards, or rented from bureaucrats. No one can demand you license a right without becoming the villain, themselves.

Anyone who claims to have such power is admitting to being a bully.

The only things you have no right to do are those things which violate the person or property of another. Violate, not offend. This means just about every "law" is stepping outside what anyone has a right to do by forbidding things which don't violate person, property, or mutually voluntary choice. You have no right to make up "laws" of this sort, and doing so anyway makes you the offender.

However, your right- for example- to own and to carry a gun doesn't make me obligated to buy you one, nor pay for your ammunition. No one has a right to stand in your way of providing it for yourself, but that's as far as it goes.

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What should government do?

(Previously posted to Patreon.)


What should government do?

That is the question that drives politics. And it's a stupid question.

Once you understand the nature of The State- what most people mean when they use the word "government"- you understand there is only one way to answer the question.

Government should do nothing other than get out of the way and stop. Stop everything.

Stop making up "laws" that violate life, liberty, and property. Stop enforcing the "laws" already on the books. Stop existing altogether.

But people like to argue over what they believe government should do. They mistake this passion for being informed and enlightened. Then they can argue over different policies and outcomes. They can hate each other for the choices they would make. Choices no one has any business making.

Slightly more honest people might say "I don't know" when asked "What should the government do about.... whatever?" They might believe they don't have enough information to make an intelligent argument for what government should do about everything. But you can only say that if you intentionally stay ignorant. You have all the data you need.

Aggression is wrong. Theft is wrong. Government can't exist without aggression and theft- without those it becomes something other than government. So, government is wrong. Government shouldn't. Anything. Ever. Period.

Saying "I don't know" in answer to this question is an attempt to avoid responsibility. An attempt to avoid being scorned for doing the right thing.

I'm sorry if you can't see how your pet issue could be solved without a gang relying on theft and aggression to solve it, but that's your failing, not mine. Good luck outgrowing that..

People fret over the oddest things

Such as hierarchies.

People who worry about hierarchies, and who believe them to be incompatible with anarchy, bewilder me.

There are legitimate hierarchies and illegitimate ones.

If I hire you to do a specific job for me, my insistence on you doing that job is a legitimate hierarchy.

If you are elected into some position and claim that gives you the "authority" to order me around, that is an illegitimate hierarchy.

If I can't specify certain outcomes in exchange for my paying you, then I'm not going to pay you. In fact, I won't trade with you at all- "pay" doesn't have to mean only money. It doesn't mean I am "over" you in any way, but it means we agreed that I would give you something in exchange for something else. I am not exploiting you unless I force you into an arrangement where you aren't willing to be. In which case self defense seems to be in order, not whining over hierarchies.

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