Libertarian Island II: Individual Rights

In this second installment of the adventures of shipwrecked Libertarian Bob and Left Libertarian Ann somewhere in the south seas.

Self-Ownership and Individual Rights

It has been said that all rights we have as human beings are rooted in individual self-ownership. If taken literally, and not as some sort of metaphor, this cannot be right.

Some talk suggesting self-ownership is the source of rights might be nothing more than rhetorical flourish, elaborating the observation that we have rights with respect, e.g., to our hands that are, in many respects, at least as strong as our rights with respect to our gloves. That I will not dispute. I here take issue only with those, perhaps few in number, who have been carried away and truly embrace the theory that the fundamental basis of individual rights is a property right of self-ownership