Semi-Daily Journal

Hmmm, "quite bad" (as opposed to "really bad) is applause? That's a parallel universe indeed....

I said that he applauded them for including positive liberties in the index--not that he applauded the quality of the index itself...

The Cato Institute is indeed awesomely consistent. They stay bought.

That reminds me of "The Fox and the Hedgehog," wonderful wonderful Isaiah Berlin!

As for Cato, phooey.

Reading the Cato institute and applauding anything in it is like reading anything by Lyndon LaRouche and applauding any thing in it. Even if the surface observation has some validity, there is a profound inner schziophrenia just beneath it.

Reading the Cato institute and applauding anything in it is like reading anything by Lyndon LaRouche and applauding any thing in it. Even if the surface observation has some validity, there is a profound inner schziophrenia just beneath it.

Property Rights are a negative right - the right not to have one's property taken by another without permission, whether that another government or otherwise. "Legal Structure..." refers to those things the government does to protect property rights, not some positive right to anything. There is no corresponding positive right to property.

Access to sound money requires a bit of torture to get it in negative terms. Unsound money means money that has inflation. Inflation of the scale we are talking about with "unsound money" results from increases to the money supply, presumably by government. Therefore, "access to sound money" involves a government that doesn't take undue advantage of the "inflation tax" and redistribute wealth from moneyholders to government. Therefore, it is just another negative right - a right not to have one's money lose its value due to government action. I.e. another property right. It isn't a right TO money in the first place, only a right that the money one acquires be stable.

As I said - tortured. How this measure would deal with a country which doesn't issue money, or relies on private bank notes for money, is key to this. It should give "full points" to that society, on a negative rights framework, if government's only role is to guarantee that said banks meet their contractual obligations. Since said country doesn't exist, I can't prove this is what Cato was thinking.

>>Property Rights are a negative right<<

Property rights are a positive right: the right to have assistance in getting your stuff back after somebody takes it.

Brad DeLong

>

Doesn't that obliterate the distinction between positive and negative rights? Without government, i.e. courts and police, no rights can effectively exist. I don't think the Cato Institute are advocating anarchism.

Brad: The property right is the right to have the stuff not be taken in the first place - it is a right that is applicable to one's fellow humans, not just to the state. By the logic you use, the right to life isn't a right not to be killed, it is a right to "see" the killer punished.

If you dig into Cato's measures, the 5 factors used to calculate the property area are:

Judicial Independence - the judiciary is independent and not subject to interference by government or the parties to the dispute.

Impartial court - a trusted legal framework exists for private businesses to challenge the legality of government actions or regulation.

Protection of intellectual property.

Military interference in the rule of law and the political process.

Integrity of the legal system.

If Brad's "right of recovery" were implied, there would be something here about effectiveness of the criminal code, or some such. Most of these things are primarily security against government action, or government corruption of the legal system. "Intellectual Property" is something of a battle in libertarian ranks - many aren't sure it is moral, since it is, essentially, a government granted monopoly on something. Cato is on the pro-IP side, claiming that one's ideas are part of one's product, and thus property.

The "positive" part of it is that, in the libertarian framework, government's only justification to exist is as an entity to protect people's negative rights. People don't have a "right to government". Government is a creation of rights-bearing people to protect those negative rights - without it, the recourse is to round up a bunch of friends and go get your property back. (Once fundamental rights have been violated, all bets are essentially off - force has been initiated.) Government can draw up groundrules, but without unanimous approval, government cannot do anything that a private individual doesn't have the right, in absence of government, to do. (That is the most pure theory of minarchist libertarianism. Cato, and most other "mainstream" libertarian groups, modify this with additions, mostly on pragmatic grounds.)

Isn't the common distinction between positive and negative rights largely meaningless in practice?

The right to property is a positive right to enjoy the possession and fruits thereof, and a negative right not to have it stolen.

The right to free speech is a positive right to say what you want and a negative right not to be punished for doing so.

Etc. etc.

Negative and positive rights can be distinguished by the corresponding duties of others. For negative rights, the corresponding duty is non-interference. For positive rights, the corresponding duty is to provide the content of the right.

Is that the same thing as this?

http://www.fraserinstitute.ca/shared/readmore.asp?sNav=pb&id=551

Or am I living in a parallel universe?

rvman wrote, "Property Rights are a negative right - the right not to have one's property taken by another without permission, whether that another government or otherwise. 'Legal Structure...' refers to those things the government does to protect property rights, not some positive right to anything. There is no corresponding positive right to property."

You have it entirely backwards. Property rights are, for the most part, *positive* rights created by government.

One of the most fundamental property rights is the right of ownership of land. No government, no ownership of land. Even intuitively, where one can plausibly argue that the right to the fruit of one's own labor is an inherent right that does not need to be granted by a government, there is absolutely no corresponding natural right to land (apart from improvements).

"Positive liberties are things that give citizens the ability to actually do things with their negative liberty: education, public health, social insurance, stable stores of wealth, courts that will enforce promises and thus allow you to commit yourself to courses of action, et cetera."

Perfect, Isaiah Berlin.

By the way IB dictated all his essays.

Property is not a natural right. The most primitive societies did not, as best we can tell, have it. Property is something society grants to people, nothing more or less.

"Access to sound money requires a bit of torture to get it in negative terms. Unsound money means money that has inflation. Inflation of the scale we are talking about with "unsound money" results from increases to the money supply, presumably by government. Therefore, "access to sound money" involves a government that doesn't take undue advantage of the "inflation tax" and redistribute wealth from moneyholders to government. Therefore, it is just another negative right - a right not to have one's money lose its value due to government action."

I don't think that's "torture." It's a very logical step. Government's get into debt. They try to get out of debt by causing inflation. That effectively takes money away from people who have it.

It's very clearly a negative right...the right to not have the government destroy the value of money The People have earned.

"Property is not a natural right. The most primitive societies did not, as best we can tell, have it."

Yes, and they didn't have a right to liberty either; slavery was widespread.

And their lives were "poor, nasty, brutish, and short."

That's not a coincidence, either.

Slavery was not a primitive institution. Hunter-gatherers do not have use for slaves. And once you got out of childhood, life-expectancy was similar to what we had at the end of XIX century and early XX. And they had not to work as long to eat.

DSW

"Property Rights are a negative right - the right not to have one's property taken by another without permission"

My right to a $1 million government bonus check is a negative right--the right not to have the government fail to give me my $1 million.

The point is, you can phrase anything in terms of positive or negative--you have to look at what's going on more closely for how you phrase it to means something. Property rights are positive rights, because without government, there are no property rights. In a hypothetical "state of Nature" anarchy there are no property "rights"--simply what one is strong enough to hold.

"Slavery was not a primitive institution."

It goes back to before recorded history, as much as several millenia before the time of Christ. That's primitive enough for me.

http://www.mariner.org/captivepassage/introduction/int001.html

"My right to a $1 million government bonus check is a negative right--the right not to have the government fail to give me my $1 million."

It's remarkable, the lengths people will go to, to appear clueless. ;-)

"Property rights are positive rights, because without government, there are no property rights. In a hypothetical "state of Nature" anarchy there are no property "rights"--simply what one is strong enough to hold."

Oy, vey! Don't you see that that's true of ALL "natural rights?" In nature, there is no "right to life"...no right not to have one's life taken, without "due process of law?" A lion doesn't consider a gazelle's "right to life." Without laws, all that keeps one alive is being strong or clever enough to stay alive.

So, does that mean that a "right to life" is a positive right, bestowed by the government? No, it's a right *secured* by the government. Exactly as a right to own property is a right secured by the government. And one also has a right to not have one's life or property taken *by* the government (those are "negative" rights).

There's a huge difference between the government: either protecting a cabinet I've made from others, or not not taking the cabinet from me, versus the government *giving* me a cabinet made by others, or giving me the money to purchase said cabinet (for no service rendered).

Daniel Davies is simply wrong. It's been historically established, by more than 130 years of U.S. history up to WWI, that protecting property rights and having a sound currency do NOT quickly lead to government-provided healthcare, retirement money, and other positive "rights." (Which aren't really rights at all, but are instead government-provided benefits...achieved by taking *away* other's property.)

That text does not contradict mine. The right to have slaves was a positive right in some societies, but not primitive societies. Farming societies are not properly primitives.

DSW