Comments on: 18. “Rand, Rothbard, and Rights Reconsidered” http://libertarianpapers.org/2010/18-touchstone-rand-rothbard-and-rights-reconsidered/ A Journal of Libertarian Scholarship Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:59:49 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Simon http://libertarianpapers.org/2010/18-touchstone-rand-rothbard-and-rights-reconsidered/comment-page-1/#comment-6552 Simon Sun, 17 Oct 2010 20:39:45 +0000 http://libertarianpapers.org/?p=1387#comment-6552 With regard to your last paragraph, see p. 177 of Man, Economy and State, where Rothbard says that certain personal contracts are indeed unenforceable

]]> By: Samantha http://libertarianpapers.org/2010/18-touchstone-rand-rothbard-and-rights-reconsidered/comment-page-1/#comment-6535 Samantha Mon, 20 Sep 2010 09:13:37 +0000 http://libertarianpapers.org/?p=1387#comment-6535 Minarchism and anarchism are views on the usefulness of government. I don’t see how such has any primary relationship with rights as government is not the source of rights. They are sourced in our nature as beings. Thus the question of whether or not you need a government as such to avoid as much violation of those rights as possible is orthogonal. In fact the first paragraph of this paper says that the question of government is relevant to the protection of rights, not their existence or what they consist of. So the title is a bit misleading.

But then the paper does claim that their are positive rights requiring forced compliance. Which of course does indeed require coercion of others to supply these purported “rights”. The example of children is given. But this is surely a strange example in that no analagous logic can be drawn that would apply to the rights of adult human beings with any unarguable validity.

I don’t acknowledge any “right of retaliation”. Right of defense of course but that is hardly the same thing and I find the wording rather chilling. Enforcement of contract is not “retaliation” but laws against fraudulent dealings depriving others of property (or other values) against their will.

Rand viewed rights as negative just as much as Rothbard did. I don’t believe Rothbard ever said that contractual commitments are invalid or unenforceable as the author implies.

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