In a vacuum more so means not in collaboration with other humans ie not part of a society or family which has happened very frequently. And while yes currently people do not live in a vacuum it is a very good starting point as humans are naturally selfish. Thus why I said those rights are adapted to fit society and technology levels. Rights like certain personal freedoms.

People arent always going have parent and it is still possible for a person to become completely isolated from other people even in first world countries.

They are related yes but are not the same thing. So their concepts dont exactly transfer over. But still i even said that by evolutionarily standards that wealthy people have adapted and succeeded.

Society isn't a scale, its not mean to be perfectly balanced ESPECIALLY not when there is a focused goal to achieve some kind of forced balance, that often leads to societal catastrophe. Thats what the purpose of capitalism is, the ability for a economy to correct itself with extremely limited intervention.

Wealthy people very often can afford to forget about adaptation after they have lost their mo at. If you see that as a bubble that is about to pop then there shouldn't be any issue then since the bubble popping would be the problem fixing itself.

People have large amounts of wealth currently have a much different position than something like a monarchy did in the past. They dont control the government and there isn't just some singular target or family. Its just a bunch of individuals many of whom people dont even know the names of.

No one is forced to follow capitalism, if they want to they can move to one of the non capitalist countries and try any number of alternative economic systems that they want. Socialism may not be as extreme in its forced redistribution compared to its contemporaries but it is still forced. And in a country that values individual liberty above all else those two are not a good fit. Natural laws are hard set into reality, and even those we be can occasionally bend, man made laws hold even less meaning than them. The goal is less constraints of freedom, not more.

This article seems quite unfair to the position, which it calls the "Brute Rights Assumption," that the "genealogy problem" isn't worth addressing. It does so by arguing against a weak Libertarian position. But that doesn't establish the claim that "genealogy problem" is important at all or is worth addressing as the first of the three problems. Instead, it seems to me that this "genealogy problem" is one of those things about which Wittgenstein famously said "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent." Any attempted investigation of the actual nature or source of natural rights that tries to reduce them to language and rationality will inevitably cheapen them—and should be avoided.

What of people who do not have a reasonable option to leave? Can the law not be applied to them?

And more importantly, what of people who decide to stay but explicitly confirm that they do not want to be a part of the social contract, benefits or otherwise? The option to leave is important because people staying when they could leave is an indication that they accept the town rules, and that indication could be overruled by an even stronger indication (explicit statement) to the contrary.

If you argue that people should be forced between leaving the state or accepting its laws regardless of their personal consent, then you need a moral justification for that, and we run into the same problem from before.

It's not a Lockean justification for rights, yet contractualists use is to justify a Lockean conception of what natural rights are (moral facts). You are either not properly distinguishing between Lockean arguments and Lockean conclusions, or you really do not see the incoherency between the justification and the idea that it is meant to support. Either way, the inconsistency remains.

That's why the option to leave is important. If they chose to stay they are subject to the rules. That is their choice.

Hobbes never relied on actual consent either. And yes they do, because you can't declare rights that impose duties onto others without a reasonable justification that others can reasonably accept. And this is not Locke's view of rights.

If you source moral and legal authority from a social contract, then no, you can't apply the law to people who are not part of that contract. That is what "willing agreement" means.

To prevent people who do not agree with the town rules from entering the town, you need a moral law that allows limiting their freedom in that way. And of course, that law can't be the town rules, because they're not part of the town, and because if that were the case you'd fall into infinite regress.

So if you want to justify applying legal codes outside of willing participants, you need something beyond consent to justify that.

You really fell down a rabbit hole of bad logic.

Try Hobbes.

Contractualists don't rely on either type of consent. They try to make rights do things only an argument from consent could jusify. The conception of rights and justifications don't fit each other. Thus, internally inconsistent.

Yes, this is the only argument made for implicit consent and its not even applied to moral philosophy (I'm not even sure how implicit consent would apply in that case). Again, contractualists have never used either actual or implicit consent, and their failure to do so isn't Lockean. To attribute this view onto them is a blatant misunderstanding. But if you know of any social contract theorists that rely on those ideas of consent, I'd be curious to know.

> not being able to apply those rules and restrictions to people who explicitly do not consent to the social contract.

If someone I don't have a "social contract" agreement with attacks me I will certainly defend myself and perhaps kill them if necessary, and that would be morally justified. I don't need their agreement to do that. Similarly if someone who doesn't agree to my town's social contract regarding property rights breaks into my home and steals my stuff why should I need their agreement to apply the law? If you don't agree with the town rules you should not enter the town.

This is Locke's argument for Political Authority, not natural rights.

There is no misunderstanding, the view is internally inconsistent

See here for Locke on tacit consent. Again, contractualists don't take either an actual or implicit consent view. This is a misunderstanding of the philosophy.

This is outright false. Locke saw rights as God given natural facts, not based on any kind of consent, implicit or otherwise. You are talking nonsense.

>You can argue the "social contract" is the willing acceptance of a group's rules in order to obtain in-group or social benefits

You can, that would be implicit (or explicit) consent, which is not the view argued in the article (theoretical consent - the idea that people would consent if they were rational).

You can certainly support a view of rights that is based in implicit or explicit consent to a(n actual) social contract, but then you'd run into the problem of not being able to apply those rules and restrictions to people who explicitly do not consent to the social contract.

As for whether modern social contracts maximize personal wellbeing, and whether the survival of such contracts or the apparent mass consent to them is indication of such is an entire discussion to have, and one that I'll not participate in for now, if you can forgive me for that. However, as for the question of whether that Lockean view, it isn't. I'd say your view (and this depends on how you view "benefit" and "unfairness") is closer to Utilitarianism. I'm not familiar with J.S Mill's theory of rights, but I'd guess his position is somewhat similar.

This is a descriptive account of rights, not a normative one that philosophy focuses on. Rights exist regardless of their violation or their declared non-existence or someone's imagination.

Implicit consent is not actual consent as you refer to above. Only Locke has made a serious argument for implicit consent, which contractualists have not adopted. Social contract theory takes after Kant and Rawls. Again, why this social contract theory is not Lockean but Kantian.

It seems clear that we only have rights that our society agrees to maintain, both positive and negative rights. This is most obvious with women in the modern era, but certainly throughout history there are numerous examples of people being denied what you might consider to be a right. What then is a right if it is so easily violated and if entire societies can deny their existence?

Did you know everything - including iffy natural scientific stories - are man made so man madedness does make an argument against anything?

A wild claim to make when we have no idea how anything else experiences reality

You can argue the "social contract" is the willing acceptance of a group's rules in order to obtain in-group or social benefits. It is a valid "contract" to the extent that you can leave the group and it's rules and join another (or live as Robinson Crusoe).

There is no a-priori reason to suppose a group's rules would be fair or maximize benefits over restrictions, however as long as there are multiple groups and individuals or families can migrate between them or influence the rules, then there is a selection effect towards the most beneficial, fair and effective rules. The fact that other primates also have strong concepts of "fairness" suggests that this group selection on rights and duties has been affecting our ancestors for millions of years. Thus you can argue that modern societies have reached a near-optimal and thus pretty "moral" set of rules for maximum personal net benefit with minimal restrictions and unfairness. It is therefore probably unreasonable for someone to reject modern social norms. I don't know if this is considered a Lockean view.

Of course it has. Implicit consent (and other less popular "consent replacements") has been an argued position since Rousseau's time.

I've skimmed over the articles you posted and haven't seen anything to suggest that the view I ascribed to you is inaccurate.

It doesn't. I discuss this in the piece as well: "[our laws] weren’t created from scratch out of someone’s rational intuition. Rather, they evolved as legal scholars and authorities developed and discussed broad legal principles and applied them to ever-changing circumstances."

Yes, but that ignores that our legal system wasn’t simply rationally designed but instead evolved over many centuries. The US inherited English common law which traces back past the Magna Carta. Other societies develop other legal systems and sets of rights.