| | Ed,
I certainly appreciate the clarity and generosity in your reply. It makes me feel that we are giving each other the material out which we will hone better understandings of a critical subject.
I'm not clear as to the differences you are ascribing when you contrast having a right to something with having the right to anything. You wrote, "...that a right to something (legal) is akin to the right to anything (moral)." There are a number of differences between moral and legal rights, but I don't understand making that distinction. If I worked, engaging in voluntary associations, earned some money and used the money to purchase a car - all voluntary, free market actions, then I have a right to possess or dispose of that car. It also works to say that I have the right to possess or dispose of that car. Note that the only conditions I've stipulated are those required to ensure that my right is moral (voluntary associations and productive effort). If I wanted to talk about a legal rights, I would have said that I SHOULD have a/the legal right to possess or dispose of the car. I said, "should" because the law is man made and may or may not coincide with our individual rights.
When we apply a moral or legal right to a concrete situation, we go from the general to the specific, of course. So, when I say that I have the moral right to posess or dispose of that which is mine, I'm still talking about my right in general. To apply it, I'll have to be specific, and I might say something like, "I'm selling my car to Bob." Once that sale takes place, I'll still have the right to dispose of my property, but that car will no longer be my property so, I won't have the right to dispose of it.
If we were to say that moral rights, because they are universal and stated, and understood, in those general terms that belong to all of us equally and inalienably, don't exist in any concrete form... that is, in application to a specific instance, then we would have torn them from reality and made floating abstractions of them. We have to be able to say, that if X is my property (acquired morally, regardless of the law of the particular nation), then I have the right to dispose of X. Once I have disposed of X, I no longer have the same moral rights to X that I did. I still retain my rights in general, because I have not done away with them. I only did away with the rights pertaining to X.
Rights should be understood as a collection of actions associated with something. I have the right to sell a car, to store it in my garage, to drive it, to loan it to friend, or to rent it out. If I rent it, I loose the right to drive or possess it for the period it is rented. Someone might say that these are legal rights - arising out of a contract - and that would be true, if it occurs in a nation whose laws recognize and support such things. But legal and moral can coincide. I can have a legal right to drive my car, and a moral right to drive my car.
You appear to be saying that we can separate out rights such that some can be given up (the legal ones?), and others we can not give up (the moral ones?). Am I getting that right? If that is your understanding, I disagree. If we own it, if it is ours, if we have it by moral right, then we can dispose of it. But we can only do so for ourselves, and our act cannot effect that right as held by others.
Someone might say that we don't have the right to sell ourselves into slavery. I find the idea of a 'voluntary slavery,' i.e., a contracted state of slavery, to be repulsive (technically, it can't really exist, since it can't meet the definition of 'voluntary' and 'slavery' at the same time - but ignore that for sake of argument). It might not be good for society and I believe that a society where such a thing happened to any degree would suffer for it. But the same could be said for a society that allowed socialist communes, as long as they were voluntary. The same thing could be said for a society that permitted people to get on a soapbox and pledge allegiance to Nazi ideals. But, if people have a right, they have a right.
Can a person trade away their right to freedom, per se? In one sense, "No." They can't 'trade away' their metaphysical nature, or the freedom of others. But there is no single, or set of single applications of that freedom that they can't trade away. If it can be enumeratred, listed, described, or just understood between the two parties, then it can be traded. And because it is silly to discuss a freedom where such a freedom can only be understood as long as it does not apply to anything specific... well, you get the idea.
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Bill, In other words, one cannot surrender one['s] right to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness; nor, in the sense described, can one surrender one's property rights. I would agree that one cannot change the metaphysical nature of a human. I would agree that one cannot surrender what one does not own (like the rights of some third party). But I would argue that one can trade away anything that is theirs and can be part of a voluntary agreement. To be part of an agreement, it must be understandable, the understanding must be held by both parties, it must be voluntary, etc. - these are the moral conditions from which we have derived some of the elements of contract law.
That said, it means that there must be a clear understanding of what is being traded. And I'm saying that if that can be achieved, it can be traded. If it can't, then maybe not. But the deeper principle is that if we own something, we can either exercise or dispose of it.
Let's say a man is dying of liver cancer but has a good heart and he is a very rare blood type. Does he have the right to sell his heart, to earn money to leave his family, even though it means ending his life a few months early? Bill, I agree with you that if he didn't FIRST possess the right to his body, the right to his life, the right to trade away whatever he owns, he couldn't dispose of them. But if makes this deal, accepts the money and disposes of that, can he back out of his deal? Can he claim that it would violate some right that can never be taken from him, or given away? Clearly, ending his life will end every single right he ever possessed. If the contract were fulfilled, against the man's later change of mind, and his life taken to harvest the heart he sold, was that a violation of any of his rights? And if not, then a person can trade away their most basic of rights (but only their own, not for anyone else).
If I own a car, I can sell it. Or, going smaller, I can sell just a part of it (lease or rent it). If I own a business, I can sell the business. Or, going larger, I can sell, along with the business, my future rights to engage in that kind of business. The degree to which one can generalize or understand any right, while still being able to distinguish future acts that might come under that generalization or understanding, is a limit to what can be traded. This is just about the requirements that exist to have the 'meeting of the minds' that is the nature of a voluntary agreement.
Look at all that a person trades away when they join our voluntary military forces. It is pretty much every detail of how they live their lives for the next four years: what time of day they get up, what clothes they wear, what they eat, where they go, what they do, even - and in particular - the right to avoid dangerous situations that might leave them dead or maimed. The understanding shared by the military and the potential recruit is adequate in terms of what is being traded.
No matter how much we discuss this or that aspect of rights in the abstract, rights can have little effect on human life until an otherwise abstract right gets tied to a concrete. Past, present or future acts have to be related to the otherwise floating abstraction of rights to be of use. If we can describe, with adequate specificity and clarity, some future act, then we may be able to associate it with a moral right. And if we can do that, then it becomes something, all else remaining equal, a person with that right can trade away.
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