Microsoft Hatred FAQ 5166

Then why were you claiming that a government can infringe on a person's rights if those rights are not codified or even accepted by those people? The idea of inalienable rights for anyone in a Western society only exists if you believe that the rights of Western societies are inalienable and should be respected everywhere. There is a huge arrogance in that buttumption, though, and once you enter a jurisdiction that does not hold your rights to be inalienable they are no longer your rights.

You can have generally agreed upon rights, but as you note, those rights can only be hoped for if the systems exist to enforce them. Once those systems erode, you no longer have rights only hopes. The more you allow those systems to be eroded, the less you can expect your rights to exist.

In the end, the slippery slope theory would suggest that if you allow MS to get away with bad business practices you are in effect giving all companies the right to leverage whatever means are at their disposal to do the same, to the detriment of society.

I brought it up as an example of why rights are difficult in all cases. You can't claim that anyone has a right to the land they live on. Your only legitimacy to ownership comes through goverment and its ability to enforce that legitimacy for you. And if you really want to get contentious, in Canada and the US your only legitimacy comes from an artificial transaction between a landowner and your government at some time in the past to legitimize its sovereignty over Native American land.

Your only real right when it comes to land ownership is to receive some kind of compensation if it is taken away. Your government could decide at any time to expropriate your property to build a new highway (for example), and you'd be out in the cold. You can try to fight the government in court but more often than not you'll lose because the greater good of society outweighs your right to own the land (and the buttumption is always that governments work for the greater good of society).

And add to that all the covenants and municipal laws you have to obey when purchasing property and the notion that you have sovereignty over your land becomes even less tenable.

Matt