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"I do not beleive you are free to use what you do not own. Can I use your body to extract precious live giving, pure essences, ala General Ripper?" No. You can't do that, because it would both cause me physical harm and restrict my freedom of movement, and would thus be an initiation of force against me. This has nothing to do with ownership. You are presupposing the concept of ownership when you say that I am "not free to use what I do not own". What am I asking you to do is give a philosophical argument for why ownership should exist in the first place. While libertarians often frame the right to life and liberty in the context of "owning" your body, in fact the concept of ownership is not necessary for these fundamental rights. A person and their body are inseparable; I can't sell my body and get a new one. To do anything to my body I don't want done, you must first restrict my movement, which is to direct force against me. "How can property ownership be a negative right and a violation of a negative right?" It can't. I said in my original post that I didn't understand why property ownership was characterised as a negative right and that I don't believe it is. For a simplification, imagine two people dumped out of a helicopter into a limited-size Eden-style wilderness. Suppose one of those people immediately claims exclusive ownership of the entire area and everything in it. Has the other person had their rights violated?
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