“Inalienable Rights: Part I The Basic Argument” - what Nozick and Rothbard got wrong
https://www.ellerman.org/inalienable-rights-part-i-the-basic-argument/
“An inalienable right is a right that may not be ceded or transferred away even with the consent of the holders of the right. Any contract to alienate such a right would be an inherently invalid contract, and, vice-versa, a right such that any contract to alienate it was inherently invalid would thus be an inalienable right.”
This is interesting, but it’s all based on terms that have never been proven to exist in reality via logical analysis. If there were a solid objective theory of rights existing outside of legal structures, it would make for a much more satisfying read.
Also, Ellerman’s arguments regarding slavery from a libertarian perspective never bring up what is credited within libertarianism as the main source of natural/human rights to begin with, individual sovereignty. If an individual is truly sovereign, then by definition anyone can emancipate themselves at any time regardless of any previously agreed upon contact. That’s literally what sovereign means, supreme or ultimate, trumping everything else.
@PropaGandalf, what is your take on the article’s argument?
I can’t respond to @minnix’s lemmy account, so I will put my response here to the second half of their post.
The traditional libertarian stories that are claimed to rule out self-sale contracts are addressed in:
https://www.ellerman.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Philmore-1982.scan_.pdf
The theory of inalienable rights is what rules out these contract for all coherent classical liberals. Notably, the set of ruled out contracts includes the employer-employee contract
