Sovereign free-men and women on the land are not considered to be within this class.

This is why the State has to confirm that you are one of their subjects before it can claim authority over you. That said, understand that the State only controls those that voluntarily enter into its artificial world as State or United States citizens.

We are now born into debt seeing that we have need of these resources but cannot obtain them without some type of payment.

The debt passes temporarily to our parents who supply us with our various needs while we are educated / socialized to believe in the necessity and fairness of these practices.

We re-assume the debt upon reaching adulthood . We are funneled into a wage
based consumer society that emphasizes purchase over produce and where the value of a days work is determined by employers, bosses, supervisors etc…

The proponents then use the small percentages who excel within this system as proof of it’s validity.

The debt passes to our parents until we become adults. Meanwhile we are socialized to believe that this is a necessary and just practice and that there is no cause for outrage.

We take on the debt again once become adults. We are funneled into a wage based consume society where the value of our work and knowledge is now determined by employers, bosses, firms, supervisors etc…

Finaley,

There is a notion that “rights cannot exist in a vacuum” – and I think this refers to legal rights. But this notion obscures the very meaning of “rights.” Isn’t a human right called so because it is morally or normatively right? If not, what is the origin of this concept?

It doesn’t matter whether or not it is possible to enforce or defend these rights, the right is independent of all action. A person’s right to his life and his property is absolute, and it is not abolished if it is denied. When a right is denied or violated, this is wrong, morally, ethically, normatively speaking.

I think a similar distinction has been blurred in the realm of economics when talking about a “good.” When civics teachers introduce elementary students to the phrase “goods and services” it ingrains this loss of meaning at a very deep level. A “good” in economic terms is anything that a consumer deems to be a good thing, whether that is some trinket or service or medium of exchange or anything else.

Regarding the question of whether a State that was given property by someone, there are a few responses to that: (1) The State isn’t legitimate in the first place, so how can it possibly have a property right anything? (2) Talking about the State as if it can have a property right in anything is non-sensical, because there can be no “group rights” (this objection doesn’t apply to monarchy); (3) In the case of the person giving his property to the State, in that case, the State would immediately owe that property to all of its victims, as restitution/retribution.

I think some people here are confusing might with right, and committing the is-ought fallacy. Simply because someone can disrespect your natural rights doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. You have a right to your body and your property, whether States and criminals tresspass against that right or not. Simply because a criminal steals your $20 doesn’t mean that you don’t have a property right in it, and that he somehow does by the act of stealing it. This is like saying that because people do commit murder, talking about the immorality of murder is irrelevant.

Anyone can control anything out of shear might. That is a different matter.

Everyone wants the benefits of property rights, but nobody wants the restraints that it imposes. Naturally, a thief wants to be unrestrained in its acquisition of land, but simultaneously benefit from the property convention. It can’t be had both ways. Acting in a way that contradicts the restraints is a demonstration of rejecting the convention. Therefore, the thief is not subject to the benefits.

We might simply mean “has control over”, or we might mean “has a legitimate claim on (a property right to)”.

Like any thief, the state can control the things it steals. That doesn’t mean it has property rights.