- The right to free cable TV.
- The right to have people with red hair executed.
- The right to have Nirvana playing in every elevator.
- The right to have X-ray vision.
Nobody will stop you setting up a company offering free cable TV, or doing research into x-ray vision for eventual human implants - though I suppose you might have to be sure to offer a quality product. Tell you what, I don't have a TV, but if you offer free cable to me, I'll definitely 'buy' it. Good luck. You have the right to have free cable TV, and everyone else has a greater right not to be obliged to offer you free cable TV.
Fortunately, under just about any reasonable legal system I can think of, the right to have people with red hair arbitrarily executed is vastly superseded by redheads' right to life - so there is no problem in a legal system and the law protects redheads. Likewise Nirvana and people's right to peace and tranquillity.
I'll bet if you take the core idea of law it would boil down to pretty much what libertarians would like. "Do no harm; do not threaten to harm," might be a (simplified) starting point; the rest is just making a clear, unique definition of what constitutes "threat" and "harm" such that members of society can co-exist peacefully.
b2c, your own post just here shows that people with differing opinions on what their rights should be, cannot peacefully co-exist. I realise that you are being facetious, but have you ever heard of
Poe's Law? In short: "Parodies of extremism are indistinguishable from the real thing." So *whatever* your understanding of "threat" and "harm", there will *always* potentially be someone who's understanding is incompatible with yours. Any society which has competing or conflicting members, REQUIRES a common definition of "threat" and "harm" if it is to be peaceful. If all members of a society are cooperating towards a single mutually beneficial end, in some kind of symbiotic web maybe, then law would not be required. Self-interest would be sufficient to keep things peaceful.
How's about this:
I previously wrote that libertarianism might be defined as:
1. Do no violence except to defend from imminent perceived threats to life, health or property.
2. Do not threaten or damage the life, health or property of another.
3. Honour all your contractual obligations.
I'd asked to be corrected it it was wrong but nobody did (I think), so I'll assume it's at least close.
Now, please define "
violence", "
defend", "imminent", "perceived", "
threat", "life", "
health", "
property", "
damage", "honour", "contract", "obligations", starting with the ones in boldface. I mean, you might come from a different country from me, with different linguistic conventions; you might not be a native English speaker and so misunderstand some words; your background might give you different interpretations and so on. I need them to be defined, so if I decide to move to your liberty-land, I'll know what to do and what not to do, whenever I happen to find myself in circumstances somehow not comprehensively addressed by some prior contract. Now don't reply "here's what you must do: 'don't threaten anyone' etc", please actually *define* the terminology used; use examples if you think it's necessary.