But that makes no sense. Does a slave own the field he plowed? Does the person who fixes my car own my car? Does the Wageslave at Target own the clothes she sells? If you argue that they do... well that sounds suspiciously like communism to me.
I'm not saying property rights aren't a good thing. We need them for society to function. I'm saying property rights aren't self-evident inalienable natural rights.
That apple owns the OS of an Iphone isn't self-evident. Ford doesn't own the inside of my car, why does Apple own the inside of my phone? That Game-maker owns the right to its game isn't self-evident. I bought the game Monopoly and used the Battleship to play Sorry. Can I choose to use Mario to play Mortal Kombat?
As for being inalienable, I have a copy of Sir Conan Arthur Doyle's Sherlock Homes book Hound of the Baskervilles on my tablet and the new BBC TV version of it. If IP property laws are inalienable, why is it ok for me to make a copy of the book but not the BBC show?
Natural rights? I believe we're debating the meaning of the word presently but if you mean "rights not contingent upon the laws, customs, or beliefs of any particular culture or government, and therefore universal and inalienable" then no, they're not natural rights by that definition.
Locke and I will just have to agree to disagree regarding Property rights being a natural right. Under debate you can see that many people, including Thomas Jefferson did not regard property rights as Natural rights.
No one necessarily owns the field he plows, but everyone has the G_d-given right to own the product of his labor. For the slave, that right has been infringed and violated; the product of his labor belongs to another, who returns to the slave whatever portion he desires. Locke's point was not necessarily that one owns the field that one plows, but rather that one owns the wage earned for that plowing, and if that wage is spent to buy the land, then one owns the land.
Virtually no rights are absolute; we commonly take freedom and even life from convicted murderers, for example. But generally speaking, the right to own intellectual property can be considered a natural right. The right to benefit from that intellectual property - to what degree one can sell or license it and yet still retain some level of ownership - is a societal decision.
Can you elaborate on why you think this?
Celtic Ireland had no state or anything you could remotely call a state for a thousand years before the English conquest. It was an anarchist society/civilization with division of labor and technological advancement.
Celtic Ireland still had a tribal-based civilization, which functioned as the state. With good iron weapons and the will to use them, individuals were free to simply move away, displacing other people, if they wished more freedom, but generally speaking most individuals were subject to a tribal hierarchy. As to why I think civilization requires socialism, socialism is essentially a pooling of resources to be used (at least in theory) for the common good. At a very low level, that can be completely consensual, but one runs into problems extrapolating from that. Look at it from the lowest level, that of a hunter-gatherer group that wishes to settle down into farming and non-nomadic herding. Depending on the location, various things may be needed - irrigation, storage facilities, defensive works. Let's take irrigation. If the group is small enough, a consensual vote can be taken on digging a well and/or building a simple shadoof. But once a certain population size has been reached, it simply takes too much time to poll everyone and reach agreement on how many hours each will work and/or how much in the way of resources each will contribute. A tribe or village of hundreds of people simply cannot operate that way at anything beyond a near-subsistence level, although it can still have division of labor using barter. Above that point some socialism is required to flourish; some form of taxation (whether in goods or labor or both) must be levied, else the tribe or village will be a squalid, unhealthy place. One simply cannot produce a highway system or a river dam or a defensive wall around a major town based on consensual labor. Instead, the tribe or village must decide (consensual or otherwise) to contribute to the common good, regardless of whether each member supports each use of those contributions. The size at which that must happen obviously varies greatly, by climate, fertility, population density, and threats along with many other things, but it must happen. The degree to which it occurs is also very variable. But if nothing else, other groups who do embrace socialism will either force a group to do so, or make it subordinate. Iron Age Celtic culture was indeed anarchic by ancient or medieval standards; it was also pushed out of more desirable areas and/or subjugated by Carthage and Rome. Civilization is simply far too strong a force multiplier to resist.
That's half of it. The other half, the loss of freedom, is simpler. When government, be it tribal or elected or strong arm, takes part of your labor or treasure, it has taken a part of your freedom because you no longer have the freedom to decide how to use that labor or treasure. If you earn sixty bushels of grain in a year and government takes six, you no longer have the freedom to do anything requiring more than fifty-four bushels of grain, in total or individually. In return, you get more opportunity. That may sound like freedom, but it's not the same thing at all. If one lives alone in the wilderness one has absolute freedom to do or be anything one wishes, even though most of the possible choices are impractical. One can decide to be a jet pilot, but without a jet and a functioning economy one would simply starve while attempting to build a jet, a landing strip, and fuel production. Essentially, one's practical choices alone in a wilderness are hunter-gatherer or farmer, but one's freedom is absolute. In a functioning civilization, one loses much of that freedom. One cannot simply choose to be a jet pilot because there are qualifications which must be met and obligations which must be fulfilled. One can longer crap wherever one pleases, or cut down any tree one sees, or shoot any animal, or sleep wherever one wishes. But one has the opportunity to actually fly a jet, assuming those obligations are fulfilled and those qualifications are met. Thus one gives up some freedom in return for opportunity.
Note that this is the traditional definition of freedom, a lack of external constraints on one's actions and choices. Progressives now tend to define freedom as an absence of consequences, so that freedom depends on things like free education and health care. In other words, one is not free to be a potter unless one can make or take a living being a potter. By that definition one could be less free in the wilderness than in a totalitarian society where government assigned one's vocation, established and provided one's home, provided one's sustenance, health care and housing, and generally controlled every aspect of one's life. By the progressive definition a serf or slave may be more free than is a free man, for more of his needs are guaranteed by others.
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