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Comment by wz1000 | Hacker News Reader

I am not convinced that there is any meaningful distinction between "negative" and "positive" rights. Take property rights, the classic example of a "negative" right. But what are property rights but an entitlement that the government will protect your property? What use is the right to fair trial without an entitlement that the government will provide you a lawyer and select an impartial jury? What use is a "negative" right to liberty or free speech without an entitlement that when someone tries to infringe these rights, the government will protect you?

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The intellectual meaning of rights and rights-philosophy is long gone everywhere, today the law is nothing but the will of the powers that be. Keeping that in mind, i can tell you from memory that property rights and it's philosophy in the US are based on the British definitions and those are based upon Lockean principles, based on a believe in natural rights. In a nutshell the fruit of your labour and being the first to appropriate creates your rightfull property. Legally having property therefore does not mean the government will protect it per se. People who are against Lockean definitions tend to mock saying "Planting a flag ( first appropriation ) allows me to rape and pillage a country", something the british did with lockean arguments to justify the behaviour. We're lucky to note however that in most schools of rights philosophy; there is a monopoly on violence owned by the state, not it's citizens.

its philosophy

The problem with the Lockean conception of rights is that merely improving some natural resources doesn't necessarily entitle a person to claim ownership. It doesn't factor in any externalities resulting from the appropriation, nor does it factor in the inherently communal nature of human life and the fact that no human can practically be reared to maturity without a community, and that therefore our appropriation of limited resources (property) affects our surrounding community in potentially negative ways.

It's a little more complicated than that. To take an extreme example, in some cases you can use force (even deadly in some states under certain circumstances) to exclude trespassers from 'your' property. Thus, the right to property is not only a right to have the gov't protect it for you, but also a restriction on the government from prosecuting you for certain acts taken by you on your property.

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