Ethics and Politics

3. Authority & Civil Liberties (WIP)

Core Principles

Strong individual liberties and property rights with government limited to protecting sentient rights, public safety, and order. Opt-in mechanisms where possible; harsh accountability for criminals and officials; skepticism of overreach but support for effective enforcement.

  • Surveillance State (Practical application / tension with privacy; better after privacy is defined)
  • Due Process & Rule of Law (Procedural protections and accountability once the state acts)
  • Police & Law Enforcement (The concrete enforcement arm of the above principles)
  • Voting & Elections (How political authority is selected and constrained — placed last because it is more about the machinery of government than core civil liberties)

Individual Liberty vs State Power

Position

The state may use force only when it is necessary to stop people from violating the negative rights of others — mainly force, fraud, or the direct imposition of serious non-consensual harm. Liberty is the default. Any mandate, speech restriction, or surveillance power has to clear a high bar: it must be necessary, narrowly aimed at the actual problem, and temporary when the threat is temporary. Personal choices end when they cross into violating someone else’s rights, not merely when they create some diffuse or indirect effect.

Key Elements

  • Coercion is justified to protect negative rights, not to pursue broad “best interest” or social optimization.
  • Public-health mandates (including vaccines) only in severe cases with clear externalities, risk-based targeting, and time limits.
  • Speech is protected except for true threats and incitement to imminent violence.
  • Ordinary observation in public is acceptable; mass, persistent technological surveillance needs stronger justification.
  • Those who impose serious non-consensual risks can forfeit some of the protections they would otherwise claim.

Rationale

Rights are treated as side-constraints, not as goals that can be balanced away whenever a net benefit appears. The state does not get to override liberty simply because a policy is believed to be good for people overall. It acts when one person is violating, or is about to violate, another’s rights. The practical test used is simple: Is someone violating (or imminently about to violate) another’s negative rights? Is the response necessary and proportionate? If the answer to either question is no, the state should stay out.

Public-health Mandates

Vaccination or movement restrictions are justified only when three conditions are met at the same time:

  1. The disease must create a clear and substantial risk of serious harm to others through direct transmission or similar externalities.
  2. Less restrictive options - isolating the infectious, protecting the vulnerable, or relying on voluntary measures - must be shown to be inadequate.
  3. Any mandate must be temporary, targeted by risk where possible, and kept under continuous review so it can be lifted when the evidence no longer supports it.

A fast-moving, highly lethal respiratory virus with significant spread before symptoms appear can meet this standard for limited periods. The data from recent experience also show that the risk of death varies enormously by age and health. Blanket rules that impose heavy costs on low-risk groups, especially children, therefore fail the proportionality requirement even when the disease itself is real.

The claim not to be infected does not automatically cancel every other right. It can support narrow, time-limited measures aimed at reducing the direct imposition of severe risk. It does not support open-ended emergency powers, prolonged school closures with little benefit for children, or the permanent expansion of state authority after the acute danger has passed.

Severe, direct, non-consensual risk of serious harm can justify temporary coercion. Diffuse statistical risk or broad appeals to public safety cannot.

Speech

Speech follows the same logic. The line is drawn at true threats and incitement to imminent lawless action. Once the state starts policing ideology, offense, or “misinformation,” it is no longer protecting rights, it is managing thought. That is incompatible with free inquiry and a limited role for government.

Surveillance

Public surveillance sits in a middle position. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy against ordinary observation while walking down the street. Continuous bulk tracking and permanent facial-recognition databases are different; they concentrate power and change the relationship between citizen and state even if no traditional “search” occurs. Normal public-order policing is accepted while tighter limits are required on the more sweeping technological versions.

Proportionate response means the force or punishment used in reply to a rights violation should be matched to the severity and nature of the violation. Enough to stop it, deter it, and reflect the seriousness of what was done, but not wildly excessive relative to the harm.

Sources

Property Rights

Position

Property rights rank among the strongest negative rights. Once ownership is legitimately acquired, it is permanent and may be defended with proportionate force. Eminent domain is limited to narrow public-use cases with full compensation. Ordinary zoning is not treated as a taking, but regulation that eliminates the economically beneficial uses of property, or destroys the great majority of its value, is treated as a taking and requires compensation. Intellectual property is protected for practical reasons even though its foundations are thinner than physical property. As population grows and time passes, adjustment occurs through voluntary exchange, development, and new value creation rather than political resetting of titles.

Key Elements

  • Legitimate acquisition creates durable ownership that the state is obligated to protect.
  • Eminent domain is restricted to genuine public-use purposes, full compensation, and strict process.
  • Baseline zoning is allowed; regulation that eliminates economically beneficial uses or destroys most of the property’s value is treated as a taking.
  • Intellectual property receives protection for incentive and coordination reasons, subject to reasonable limits.
  • Lethal force is justified when an intrusion is violent or carries a clear threat to persons or the security of the home. Pure non-violent property loss does not authorize lethal force.
  • Population growth and the passage of time are handled through markets, densification, and new forms of value, not through periodic redistribution of existing titles.
  • Clear and stable property rights historically support higher investment, capital formation, and living standards.

Rationale

Secure property rights protect the ability to plan, invest, and build without constant fear that what has been created can be taken by force or by political decision. Evidence across countries and centuries shows that clearer, more stable ownership tends to produce more investment and higher incomes. Where ownership is insecure, people invest less, informal arrangements multiply, and conflict over resources becomes more common.

The idea that all land begins as government property until it is sold is set aside. The state’s role is to recognize and defend legitimate holdings once they exist, not to act as the original owner of every piece of territory. Once title is justly acquired, permanence is the default. Permanence does not freeze use. Owners remain free to sell, lease, subdivide, or redevelop. As population grows, rising demand raises the return to more intensive use. Land held in low-value ways faces growing market pressure to change hands or change use. Ownership protects the right to decide; it does not protect any particular use from competition.

The framework does not require a perfect historical genealogy back to the first human. In practice it operates with a strong presumption in favor of long-settled, currently recognized titles and a high bar for disrupting them. The key test is whether the current claim rests on a chain of voluntary transfers or original appropriation rather than on ongoing aggression or pure political allocation.

Eminent domain stays an exception. It is acceptable only for clear public-use projects and only with full compensation and strong safeguards. Expanding it to private economic development or general revenue goals turns a limited tool into a political transfer mechanism. That expansion is rejected.

Zoning sits in the middle. Some basic coordination rules can reduce conflict without destroying ownership. When regulation becomes so heavy that formal title remains while the economically beneficial uses of the property are eliminated, or the great majority of its value is destroyed, the regulation functions as a taking and requires compensation.

Intellectual property rests on weaker ground than physical property. Ideas can be used by many people at once, and the boundaries are conventional. Protection is still maintained because limited exclusivity gives people reason to create and helps coordinate complex production. Because the justification is practical, the length and scope of protection remain open to evidence and adjustment.

Defense of property follows ordinary proportionality. An owner may use the force needed to stop the violation. Lethal force is justified when the intrusion is violent or carries a clear threat to persons or the security of the home. Pure non-violent theft or conversion does not authorize lethal force; it is handled through restitution and scaled criminal penalties. Once the immediate threat ends, the response shifts to recovery of the loss and proportionate punishment.

As time passes and population increases, the framework does not promise every person a land allotment. It keeps peaceful acquisition and voluntary exchange open, and it refuses to treat existing ownership as a pool that may be reallocated whenever demographic pressure rises. Larger populations are supported by denser development, technological improvement, and the creation of new forms of value - all of which function better when ownership is secure. Societies that have maintained relatively stable property rights while allowing markets in land and housing have generally absorbed population growth with rising average living standards. Systems that make ownership politically revisable in the name of access have more often produced both insecurity and poorer overall results.

Strong property rights shrink the realm of political allocation, encourage investment, and support a high-trust order. Weakening them for short-term flexibility or redistributive convenience reintroduces the uncertainty the institution exists to limit.

Sources

Freedom of Association

Position

Private individuals, businesses, and voluntary organizations have the right to decide whom they associate with, serve, hire, or exclude. That right is limited only by the negative rights of others — force, fraud, or the direct imposition of serious non-consensual harm. Broad anti-discrimination mandates that compel unwanted association or police ordinary social preferences are rejected. Narrow rules aimed at genuine safety threats or clear rights violations remain available.

Markets and reputation raise the cost of widespread exclusion. Forced association can produce physical proximity without the trust that makes integration valuable. Every anti-discrimination regime still excludes - they simply transfer the decision from the rights-holder to the state. The framework rejects state-mandated segregation, permits voluntary sorting, and treats ordinary private exclusion as outside the scope of rights violation.

Key Elements

  • Freedom of association is a direct extension of individual liberty and property rights.
  • Private parties may refuse service, membership, or employment for any reason that does not itself violate negative rights.
  • Anti-discrimination law is kept narrow and tied to preventing force, fraud, or serious safety threats rather than to engineering social outcomes.
  • Public accommodations and common carriers can be held to limited non-discrimination rules where refusal would create a genuine monopoly bottleneck or direct safety risk; the presumption remains in favor of private choice.
  • Compelled association is treated as a form of coercion and requires the same high justification as other forms of state force.

Rationale

Freedom of association follows from the same negative-rights logic applied to liberty and property. If people own their labor, their time, and their property, they must be free to decide the terms on which they share them. Forcing a private party to associate, serve, or employ against their will is a form of compelled labor or compelled use of property. That compulsion is justified only when it is necessary to stop a rights violation, not when it is intended to produce a preferred social pattern.

The historical and practical case for wide association rights is straightforward. Voluntary sorting allows cooperation among people who share values, risk tolerances, or purposes. It reduces conflict, supports high-trust environments, and lets different communities test different norms. When the state overrides those choices in the name of inclusion or equity, it substitutes political allocation for private coordination and often generates resentment and evasion rather than genuine integration.

Anti-discrimination rules are not rejected in every form. Rules that prohibit violence, fraud, or clear safety hazards (for example, refusing to serve someone who is actively threatening others) fit inside the negative-rights frame. Rules that treat ordinary preference, cultural affinity, or statistical discrimination as illegal do not. Once the law begins policing the reasons for private choices rather than the presence of force or fraud, it expands beyond protecting rights and into managing social outcomes. That expansion is inconsistent with limited government and with the priority given to negative rights.

Public accommodations and common carriers present a narrower question. Where a business holds a genuine bottleneck position and refusal would leave people without reasonable alternatives for essential services, limited non-discrimination conditions can be justified as a condition of that special status. Even here the presumption remains against compulsion; the burden is on the state to show necessity and narrow tailoring. Ordinary retail, restaurants, clubs, and employers do not meet that threshold.

The same standard applies to membership organizations, religious groups, and social clubs. The right to exclude is what makes the right to include meaningful. Without it, association becomes a state-managed status rather than a private decision.

In short, freedom of association is treated as a core negative right. The state may intervene to stop rights violations. It may not intervene to force people into relationships they do not want.

Sources

Privacy Rights

Position

Privacy protects a person from non-consensual intrusion into their body, home, personal spaces, and personal information. The default is control: others, including the state, do not get access without consent or a clear, limited justification tied to stopping rights violations. Ordinary observation in open public spaces carries no reasonable expectation of privacy. Entry into private spaces, searches of persons or belongings, and collection of personal data all require either consent or proper legal process. Mass, open-ended collection of data or permanent surveillance systems that convert public presence into lasting records face a higher bar.

Key Elements

  • The home and other genuinely private spaces receive strong protection against entry and search without consent or a warrant (or equivalent process).
  • Bodily integrity and personal effects are protected against non-consensual search or seizure.
  • Ordinary observation in open public places does not violate privacy; people who expose themselves to public view have no reasonable claim to remain unseen.
  • Personal data is treated as an extension of the same principle: collection and use require clear, informed consent or proper legal process.
  • Secondary use of data beyond what was disclosed, or bulk retention of ordinary activity, requires fresh justification.
  • Privacy is a negative right against intrusion, not a positive right to conceal everything or to demand that others ignore what is openly displayed.

Rationale
Privacy, in both its traditional and informational forms, protects the ability to maintain a personal domain free from unwanted interference. Without it, agency shrinks. If the state or private actors can enter the home, search the person, or compile detailed records of private life at will, the individual no longer sets the terms of access. That is a form of control even when no physical injury occurs.

The classic core remains the home, the person, and private papers or effects. Entry or search in these domains requires consent or a specific, evidence-based legal process. General warrants, open-ended authorization, or routine intrusion without individualized suspicion are incompatible with the right. This is ordinary negative-rights protection applied to physical space and personal boundaries.

Public space is different. What a person knowingly exposes to open view, like walking on a street, speaking in a park, or attending a public gathering, carries no reasonable expectation of privacy against ordinary observation. The problem arises when technology turns transient public presence into permanent, searchable, identifiable records. Continuous bulk recording, facial-recognition databases, and long-term tracking change the character of public life. They concentrate power and create lasting exposure that ordinary observation never did. That shift justifies tighter limits even though the initial setting is public.

Informational privacy follows the same logic. Personal data is not simply “out there” for the taking. Collection by the state or by companies requires clear notice and genuine consent, or a proper legal process when consent is absent. Hidden collection, vague terms, or designs that make refusal impractical undermine the condition that makes consent meaningful. Where a service is difficult to avoid, the demand for transparency and workable choices is higher. Data-driven services are not prohibited; it requires that they rest on agreement rather than default extraction.

State power receives the strictest application. Targeted collection under warrant for specific investigations fits inside rights-based enforcement. Open-ended bulk collection, indefinite retention of ordinary activity, or repurposing data for unrelated goals does not. Once detailed records on the population become routine, the capacity for abuse grows and becomes hard to reverse.

Privacy is therefore handled as a side-constraint on intrusion. It protects the home, the person, private spaces, and personal information from non-consensual access. It does not guarantee invisibility in public, nor does it block focused investigation of actual rights violations. The practical goal is to keep control with the individual by default while still permitting necessary, limited responses when force, fraud, or serious harm is at issue.

Sources

Privacy Rights

  • Strong 4th Amendment protections.

  • Data collection only with explicit opt-in and clear disclosure.

  • Digital privacy options for those who decline sharing.

  • Public surveillance allowed; private data use requires notification and consent.

Due Process & Rule of Law

  • All accountable for actions; higher officials held to stricter standards.

  • Asset forfeiture allowed for broken contracts/debts between private parties.

  • Skeptical of bail system.

  • Expand death penalty; life imprisonment wasteful - prioritize execution for serious crimes.

  • Expand prisons; stricter judicial vetting and sentencing to prevent repeat offenders.

Police & Law Enforcement

  • Heavily fund and expand police; well-paid and respected.

  • Officers held to higher liability for misconduct.

  • Nationwide body cams mandatory.

  • Militarized policing in high-crime areas with zero tolerance.

  • Harsh penalties for theft, burglary, and erosion of high-trust society.

Voting & Elections

  • Mandatory voter ID.

  • Reformed mail-in voting with strict authentication and encryption.

  • No felon voting.

  • Voter eligibility requires passing unbiased civics/knowledge test (bipartisan).

  • Campaign finance reform: Limit to individual donations; oppose Citizens United corporate influence.

Freedom of Association

  • Private businesses/clubs free to discriminate/associate as they wish (absent direct sentient rights violations).

  • Anti-discrimination laws narrowly tailored to genuine safety/well-being protections.

Property Rights

  • Strong protections: Once purchased, land is owned perpetually.

  • Eminent domain heavily limited.

  • Zoning not treated as taking.

  • Intellectual property protected (though conceptually weak).

  • Lethal force justified to defend property from theft/encroachment.

Surveillance State

  • Facial recognition and advanced surveillance opt-in only (public areas have no privacy expectation).

  • Social credit systems opt-in only.

  • Tech-government partnerships acceptable if sentient rights and consumer protections upheld.

  • Public data use requires notification and consent beyond basic viewing.

Due Process & Rule of Law:

Reform qualified immunity? Asset forfeiture? Bail reform? Death penalty stance?

All people should be held liable for their actions. Higher elected officials and those with great responsibility should be offered more in salary but held to higher standards. Assets can be forfeited if contracts are broken or debts unpaid between private actors. I am skeptical about the concept of bail. The death penalty should be expanded and many more people should be put to death for the crimes they commit. Life in prison is a drain on society’s resources - these people should simply be expunged. Prison’s should be greatly expanded and judges should be much more stringently vetted to appropriately apply punishment. There are far too many instances of repeat offenders causing great damage - this should never happen.

Police & Law Enforcement:

Defund, reform, or strengthen? Body cams, qualified immunity, militarization?

The police should be heavily funded and expanded. The responsibilities and dangers of a police officer should be very well-paid and well-respected. If police officers break laws, they should be held to higher levels of criminal liability and punishment than regular citizens - likewise for elected officials. Body cams should be mandated nationwide. Militarized police enforcement in ultra-high crime areas, and increased enforcement in high crime areas with proper protections and punishments to destroy crime. Zero tolerance. Theft and burglary should also be treated severely. Any erosion of a high trust society with criminals and bad actors should be harshly addressed. Criminals infringe upon the sentient rights of others, their victims deserve utmost protection under the law.

Voting & Elections:

Voter ID, mail-in voting, same-day registration, felon voting, campaign finance?

Voted ID should be federally mandated. Mail-in voting should be carefully reformed for complete and total authentication of the voter and transmitted via encrypted channel with world-class cybersecurity measures. Felons should not be able to vote. Voter eligibility should not be a universal right - there should be an amendment for voters to pass a bipartisan, unbiased, thorough political and social knowledge examination. If they fail to meet a standard of knowledge of our government and the laws they are voting for, they should not be allowed to vote. Campaign finance should be reformed - money in politics is dangerous and disadvantageous to small candidates. I do not agree with Citizens United in that corporations have the voice of people - I think finances should be limited to individual donations, not organized donation campaigns.

Surveillance State:

Facial recognition, social credit elements, tech company-government partnerships?

Facial recognition should always be opt-in, never mandated, however if you are in public, there is no reasonable expectation of privacy. Social credit should be opt-in, never mandated. Tech companies and government partnerships are fine as long as sentient rights are respected, and consumer protections are upheld. Surveillance is fine in public areas - for further data mining from this surveillance data, if a company wishes to use public data, the person should be notified and their data must be opted into sharing before it is used in any way beyond viewing.