Rights and Privileges (updated 13apr2010)

George Rebane

What is a RIGHT?

A right is always contrasted with and discussed in relation to the notion of privilege, which is the easier of the two to understand and define.

PRIVILEGE – The permission to do, be, or have something specific, which permission can be granted to and subsequently withdrawn from one party/agency by another granting party/agency that has the ability to prevent the privileged party from exercising the permission.  Privileges can be granted and withdrawn by individuals, institutions, and states.

We think of a right as being a permission that is in some sense of a higher order.  A right is always publicized and formalized in some permanent and accessible code.  To dispel any early fuzzy thinking, it is clear that rights are also held by individuals and agencies at the pleasure of a higher granting agency.  For example we don’t think of a right as being granted by one individual to another.  Although rights may also be withdrawn/suspended by the granting agency, such withdrawal is always a formal and publicized step that must be sanctioned by some code in law, or within a specific and broadly known tradition.

Rights issue from an agency that in some way represents the collective will of a society. Therefore, such an agency is almost always a duly established representative government that describes such rights in its constituting documents and derived law.  This makes it clear that permissions issued by autocracies are always privileges.

We also recognize that rights do not necessarily travel with the so-favored individual.  A right stops at the border of the domain under the control of the granting agency (a right in America may not be a right in Saudi Arabia and vice versa).  If the underlying permission does ‘have legs’, then it is only through an agreement (e.g. treaty) between the two involved controlling agencies.  And to the extent that on ‘foreign soil’ the permission may be easily withdrawn, there the right always reverts to a privilege.

Certain special rights (e.g. “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”) are sometimes advertised as being ‘inalienable’ – that is, deriving from a source even higher than the agency granting a broader collection of rights to individuals which includes such inalienable rights.  Inalienability of certain rights is a declaration by the agency’s members (e.g. citizens of a country) that if the agency’s minions attempt to withdraw such rights, then the agency and/or minions become outlaws and the members may legally or, indeed, morally be required to abolish it and reconstitute a new agency that honors such inalienable rights.  (Operationally this amounts to making a distinction between a ‘legal revolution’ and an ‘illegal revolution’.  But we know that all successful revolutions are legal, and all unsuccessful revolutions are deemed illegal insurrections and dealt with accordingly.)

Finally the permission represented by a right must be persistently enabled by the granting agency to its right holders.  The granting agency must continually and actively expend resources to ensure that the underlying permissions of a right are made possible throughout its domain.  As a collective, the agency cannot be indifferent to one of its subgroups of members denying another subgroup or individual a right without going through a due process specified in the agency’s social code (law, tradition).  This is the key distinguishing feature between right and privilege – one who grants another a privilege is under no moral or legal imperative to assure that the so privileged can or is able to enjoy the underlying permission.

Searching for the prime distinctions from the foregoing in order to render a succinct definition, we understand that 1) the grantor must be a collectively founded agency with an established and widely accessible social code, and 2) the granting agency must commit itself to and actually carry out the enforcement of the rights that it grants its individual members.  With this we offer the following.

A RIGHT is a codified permission to do, be, or have that is granted by an agency to its member individuals/agencies who have formed and maintain the granting agency to carry out their collective will in a manner that requires the agency to expend all necessary resources to insure that such granted rights are enjoyed uniformly by all of its franchised members.

Corollary: To the extent that the granting agency is not able to insure the universal enjoyment of a right within its domain, such right does not exist.

Sustainable Rights.  Not all sets of rights are operationally sustainable either because their scope is too broad, or they are members of a mutually inconsistent or insufficient set.  America’s Founders did not explicitly address this problem in their post-revolutionary labors.  However, their student and French economic philosopher Frédéric Bastiat (cf. The Law) recognized the need to identify a seminal set of rights which must be granted/included to provide the minimum structure upon which succeeding rights could be built upon in a reasonable manner that makes the whole set of rights sustainable.  This fundamental structure consists of three interlinked rights called the Bastiat Triangle.  In his words –

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

[13apr10 update] Using different words we can summarize the main points of the following operational definitions:

PRIVILEGE –
1. is a permission to do, be, or have that does not have to be formally codified;
2. is granted by party/agency that can legally prevent the exercise of the permission.
3. is intended to be granted and withdrawn with minimal or no due process; and
4. its grantor has no obligation to enable exercise of permission;

RIGHT –
1. is a codified permission to do, be, or have;
2. is granted by an agency that can legally enable and prevent the exercise of the permission;
3. is granted to specified agency members to carry out an expression of collective will;
4. is intended to be permanent and granted equally to all specified members;
5. its grantor has the explicit obligation to expend all required resources to enable exercise of the permission within its jurisdiction; and
6. is in effect only to the extent that its grantor enables its exercise.

[The above is adapted from materials I developed for a critical thinking course for journalists and media producers that I taught at California State University in the late 1990s.  Rights and privileges are perhaps some of the most important, overused, and least understood ideas in our society.  The objective here is to offer consistent and compact operational definitions for these ideas.  If some object to these definitions, then new labels must be fashioned and communicated that will serve these definitions.  This is because the above definitions are experienced daily by us all, and are therefore existential to our social order.  The added purpose of this posting is as an accessible reference for future discussions that require operational definitions of a right and a privilege.]

Comments

[Mikey McD]

Progressives would argue that Bastiat's triangle is worthless because 1.) it identifies a God and 2.) the triangle does not implicitly highlight equality/social justice. Bastiat is correct- it is our natural (God given) right to protect our self, liberty and property. Rothbard does a great job of highlighting the production of equality as a byproduct of liberty in "Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature" (http://mises.org/books/egalitarianism.pdf).

Per usual and ironically, it would appear that our government remains "the people's" biggest adversary.

What may need more attention is: "at what point do society's rights (think entitlement programs) cross the line of abuse of individual liberties?"

[George Rebane]

Society (the collective) per se has no rights any more than it has a nose or mouth. It is only individuals who have and can exercise rights. Equality and personal liberty are two ends of a see-saw; you cannot increase one without decreasing the other.

Be very careful of people who argue otherwise.

[Ben]

I remember my hackles being raised as a 15 year old in Drivers Education class when I read California handbook of drivers instructions. It repeatedly asserts that driving is a privilege and not a right. To think that a particular person isn't as entitled as another to use public roads to go to the store or to work?

George, I'm waiting for the right to bear arms to be given the same treatment as the right to healthcare. A mandate for those who can afford guns, and a Government Arms 12 gauge for those who can't!

It's a shame you can't take your lecture to congress.

[Mikey McD]

In America, the collective is "entitled" to my personal property. Tax season is upon us and we have Joe "the mouth" Biden quoted as saying,"You Call It Redistribution of Wealth, I Call It Just Being Fair". We are witnessing the "modern day slave drivers" in action.
http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/joe-biden-on-taxes-you-call-it-%22redistribution-of-wealth%22-i-call-it-%22just-being-fair%22-455245.html?tickers=^DJI,^GSPC,HRB,INTU,^IXIC,XHB,XLE

[George Rebane]

The use of 'Fair', as a government criterion for dividing up your property, should set off the loudest alarm bells in the land. Fair denotes application of a criterion or utility measure for a policy. All such measures are totally arbitrary, and only ignoramuses and/or scoundrels will try to represent that there are objective measures of fairness, and that they are uniquely qualified to apply such measures.

Fair redistribution of property was also put in place by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot, ... .

[Mikey McD]

Those with the tanks get to decide what "fair" is.