[quote]

That's easy. Anyone would be a fool not to agree immediately that you
must
have that right, in exchange for your agreeing that he must have the
same
right over his own body and mind and his mind's products. I've made
this
argument myself many times here that property is the product of one's
creative efforts and is one of the three unalienable rights (life and
liberty being the other two).

But now suppose that the other beast of a sub-human being over there
/rejects/ this principle and alleges instead that your body belongs to
him
as, for example, the "natural right" of a white slave-owner over his
black
human property (ala Bob Kolker's scheme). My theory handles this
situation
neatly. He possesses no right over his own body -- so you may kill him
to
set yourself free! -- precisely /because/ he has /refused agreement/ on
the
principle that each person's body must belong to himself. Thus, that
sub-human's right to his own body was itself contingent upon his
agreeing,
and it does not exist without it.

Thus, even the three unalienable rights are agreement dependent. You
simply
cannot have them while at the same time renouncing them!

They are "unalienable" in the sense that they are implicit in every
agreement and they cannot be waived by agreement. You cannot "agree"
that
you have no right of free choice (liberty). If you had no such right
then
how could you choose to agree? And if you do not choose, it is not
agreement. This means, life, liberty and property are implicitly
required by
the concept of agreement. But it still does not mean these rights
somehow
magically exist /without/ agreement!

[/quote]

I do have to say, Jim gets ever-so-close to the correct position, i.e.,
that rights logically precede contractual agreements, are indeed
preconditions for valid contractual agreements, but for whatever reason
doesn't want to concede that the "three inalienable rights" of bodily
and property integrity ("life, liberty, and property") are rights we
necessarily have irrespective of particular agreements.  On his view,
these rights are actually something like meta-rights, that are
necessarily presupposed in any valid contract, or necessarily contained
in the concept of contract.

And yet, unless I'm missing some *really fine* distinctions, Jim's
position here amounts, in actual meaning, to the same thing as the
Rand/Objectivist theory of rights.  The relation between the "three
inalienable rights" and contractually-derived rights would then be that
between the general and the particular, the procedural and the
substantive.  (Regarding this latter: the procedural principle applying
to all contractual relations is "respect each individual's person and
property"; substantive rights are rights defined by contractual
agreement.)

So to use the example of Galt: he doesn't enter into agreement with
dissenters, so the dissenters either go their own way or move to
initiate force against Galt (law of excluded middle here, folks), in
which latter case they renounce any claim against Galt's defensive use
of force.  As far as I can tell, this amounts in actual substance to
unconditional rights held by both Galt and the dissenters, to be free
from initiatory force against person and property.

What's a little funny is that Prescott's argument sounds something like
Hans-Hermann Hoppe's argument regarding the rational preconditions for
human interaction:
http://www.hanshoppe.com/publications/Soc&Cap7.pdf

This cause for some curiosity and fascination in "libertarian circles"
is actually nice and brief, covering all of about 8 pages in PDF.  A
similar version of argument comes from N. Stephan Kinsella, who argues
from the legal concept of "estoppel"
http://www.mises.org/journals/jls/12_1/12_1_3.pdf

What's funny is that these arguments are formalist-rationalist and
Hoppe in particular is explictly Kantian throughout in his philosophy.
Their whole argument centers more or less on the idea that ones is
guilty of inconsistency in denying basic rights of bodily and property
integrity.

Of course (and here I'm back to addressing another Prescott objection),
the Randian approach says that there *is* an inconsistency in not
upholding rights, but the normative substance and justification of this
comes from her egoistic ethics.  (The Kantian-formalist-rationalist
approach suffers from the problem of answering *why* it is wrong to
uphold contradictions.  "You should not uphold contradictions" needs
justification as to the grounding of the "should," otherwise the
alleged fact-value gap remains.)  Rand makes the rhetorical move in
Galt's speech between its being *right* that one exercise one's mind to
one's having *a right* to exercise one's mind.  While Rand is often
criticized for this rhetorical maneuver, it is actually essentially
correct when spelled out.  One would be guilty of incoherence in
affirming, on one hand, the rightness (paraphrasing Galt) of using
one's mind, of acting on one's own free judgment, of working for his
values and keeping the products of his work, but then not recognizing,
on the other hand, the implications of this as it applies to
inter-personal interactions.  It's a simple matter of fidelity and
commitment to oneself and one's own.

Finally, I note in emphasis one passage of Jim's argument.  Regarding
the white slaveholder's claim to ownership over a non-white:

"My theory handles this situation
neatly. He possesses no right over his own body -- so you may kill him
to
set yourself free! -- precisely /because/ he has /refused agreement/ on
the
principle that each person's body must belong to himself."