Your One Right

Within liberty, you have just one right.

You can exercise this right, or you can abstain from exercising it. You can defend this right. You can try to delegate its exercise. You can try to deny its existence. You affirm your one right by doing any of the above. This right is the self-sovereign authority to act.

You can act with impunity in a utopian setting.

Your actions have consequences in the real world. Your right to act is limited by the impact its exercise has on the free exercise of another actor’s right to act. This limitation applies to all actors within a real-world setting.

You can possess a good through voluntary manufacturing, exchange, or transfer. You can think for yourself. These actions are derived from the axiom that you have the right to act.

The right to act does not confer a right to a good. Action refers to efforts you make to accomplish an end. These efforts, aka labor, may result in a product that someone can use. Products, such as shoes or services, are goods. Shoes are material goods; services are immaterial goods.

You can get shoes by making them, or by trading your property for them. Someone could voluntarily give you shoes. These are all legitimate ways to get shoes within liberty. All these ways require that you act: to make, to trade, or to receive. These shoes are goods, products of someone’s efforts.

Someone else provides a service to you. You can legitimately get this service by trading, or as a gift. Service can be anything you can imagine. You can have someone else organize your office or home. You can have someone else represent you in a dispute. You can have someone else treat you for a disease or injury. The list of services ends when you run out of imagination. You have to act: to trade, or to receive. These services are goods, products of someone else’s efforts to organize, to represent, or to treat.

Within liberty, you own you. You have a limited right to act. That limited right includes the authority to legitimately own a good that you made, bought, or received.