12 hours ago, AlexL said:
I objected to the implication that anything a “government” has the right to do come from individual rights of the government officials.
Here, once more, is the statement to which you objected (and which I’ve now expanded upon at length):
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First let me agree with the above: the only rights are individual rights. Anything a “government” (which is still a collection of individuals) has the right to do may only come from individual rights.
I disagree that there is any “implication” in this that some official has any “right” apart from any one else. Hopefully my taking the time to clarify has helped you to understand my meaning, as here, directly:
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The individuals who comprise the government do not have any right, more or less, than any other individual.
But then I’ll also say that these officials have the same rights, qua individual, as any one else… so yes, strictly speaking, anything a “government” has the right to do does come from the individual rights of the government officials, so long as it is understood that you and I have the same rights, equally.
If not, then I suppose we are left to imagine some magical source of the right of governance, like God and “the divine right of kings,” or that there is no “right” at all apart from the might of whomsoever proclaims himself in charge.
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
I specified that persons who are also government officials exercise their function not because of their individual rights, but as their specific duties ; I guess you overlooked this.
If I’ve overlooked anything, it was only in my zealousness to clarify my meaning (which I had judged misunderstood). But let’s correct that oversight here:
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
In detail: The government (the state) is instituted to perform a number of functions.
Yes.
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
Under a proper government, a number of institutions are defined (police, army, justice), together with a limitative list of their sub-functions and detailed procedures.
All right.
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
In this way, the functions and procedures are not rights given to the state, but strictly limited duties.
No, there are not “rights given to the state” (which is also not something I’ve said, I don’t believe), but anything that the state–or its agents–do is, of necessity, an exercise of individual right (and again, the same individual rights that you or I have). I don’t see the utility of distinguishing that from “duty,” here, and I fear the potential for misstep accordingly. But let’s continue.
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
They do originate in people’s individual rights…
Précisément!
(This is what I’ve been saying, and what you appear to have taken issue with, but I suppose we’re now too far invested for that to matter much…)
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
…but their protection is being delegated…
Yes, government represents a delegation… this is a not unimportant point to the question(s) before us, I believe. What is the specific nature of this “delegation”? What is (or ought to be) its mechanism, in reality? I imagine that we shall come back to this, and find it central.
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
…they become government’s duties. To the extent that these functions cannot be (yet) performed by robots ;-), people are hired (or delegated) in order to perform these duties – through strictly defined procedures.
Yes, I think this helps to clarify a bit, if we imagine the government in the role of hired help. Yet, while there is a sense in which a cook, say, has a “duty,” in that the cook has been hired to do something specific (cook) and is thus expected to do that thing (and not, say, wash the cat), I would never set that against, or as being apart from, the cook’s individual rights, or say that the cook’s vocation was anything other than an expression of his individual rights. I grow increasingly concerned that this use of “duty” is more apt to confuse than clarify, and that it might hide some yet-submerged difference of opinion.
Specifically, I don’t see how it is meant to contend with anything I’ve said to this point, though I trust that… somehow it must. Otherwise, what are we arguing about at all? 
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
Again, those are not rights given to the government officials, but strictly limited duties.
I agree that the “delegation of rights” upon which a proper government acts is strictly limited. I continue to balk at your use of the term “duty,” though perhaps your meaning is unobjectionable, and I’m only reacting this way based on things like this quote from Rand’s essay “Causality Versus Duty”:
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One of the most destructive anti-concepts in the history of moral philosophy is the term “duty.”
An anti-concept is an artificial, unnecessary and rationally unusable term designed to replace and obliterate some legitimate concept. The term “duty” obliterates more than single concepts; it is a metaphysical and psychological killer: it negates all the essentials of a rational view of life and makes them inapplicable to man’s actions . . . .
But assuming that Rand is not here speaking to your use of the term (and currently I believe that she is not), I’ll try to let go of some of my discomfort as we continue.
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
In order to perform these duties, people have to be specifically commissioned for this.
Ah. Now we’re getting somewhere.
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
IOW, not everybody can proclaim himself a police officer.
People have to be specifically commissioned? By whom? If it does not do for a police officer to proclaim himself such, then who possesses the power to make a (legitimate) police officer out of an ordinary citizen?
Or when you say “not everybody can proclaim himself a police officer,” do you mean to imply that some people, some lucky few, can proclaim themselves police officers? I wouldn’t think so, but otherwise we have yet to put our finger on precisely where a police officer gets his authority from.
But are you quite sure I cannot proclaim myself a police officer (in right, I mean; not according to contemporary law wherever we happen to live)? If I were to swear myself to upholding the principles of proper governance (taking upon myself what you cast as “the duties of government”), then what do you believe ought to stop me, in reason? If what the government does is right, then why cannot I act likewise?
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
Now about competing claims of sovereignty over a territory. The specific case was UK and Spain, both right-respecting states. UK has no legitimate claim over Spain territory, because Spain is rights-respecting and it is already there. It was for such a context that I said “the legitimate claim to authority has the one which was the first to establish on that territory a rights-respecting régime”.
Probably we have enough on our plate without discussing contemporary politics too much, but I do wonder… when you describe Spain (or the UK) as being “rights-respecting,” what is your criterion? Personally, I live in the United States, and while I regard it as being relatively rights-respecting in comparison to other governments, contemporary and historical, I also know (as is oft decried on these very forums) how the government of the US taxes and regulates and, in general, violates the principles of just governance. That is to say, the US government routinely violates rights. Why, the source of its funding in everything it does is predicated on the violation of rights!
This may or may not be at issue between us, but it might matter to the present discussion if we were to toy with the idea (as others in the thread have already seemingly begun) of establishing a “Galt’s Gulch.” Whether in Spain, or the UK, or here in the US, wouldn’t such a thing then become “the first to establish on that territory a rights-respecting régime”? Or would you see that as a competition between two “right-respecting states,” and thus say that those Objectivists should not be allowed to establish an independent government within some preexisting state?
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
So that your “Gilligan’s Island” case is completely different.
Perhaps so, but at present I do not see how.
10 hours ago, AlexL said:
I will only say this for now: if Skipper says he respects others’ rights, but also that he’s in charge and everyone else must submit to his authority, then he has deep mental problems 
Have you seen the show? Gilligan is his best friend, his “little buddy,” leading him continually into disaster after disaster; certainly the Skipper has some deep mental problems!
But… isn’t this otherwise your claim? That some government sets up shop (somehow) on a territory, proclaiming itself to be in charge, and demands that everyone else must submit to its authority, and because it is the first to do so, this becomes legitimized?
I understand you consider what you’re saying as being different from the Skipper proclaiming himself in charge of the island, but again, I have yet to understand the difference.
