The government is a protection racket. Laws against weed violate the sovereignty of hte individual. It's absurd that the primary argument is tax revenue. Really shows how whacked politics and American's conception of government is.
Rights are granted not by God, not by some internal edict. They come from the society you inhabit.
The world of sovereign individuals is wonderful in objectivist fantasies. In reality, it results in anarchy, for a brief moment before one strongman clubs another over the head, and two other people decide to team up against their neighbors.
Even casting aside the concept of civilization as we know it, you cannot reproduce in a vacuum, nor live in one. You are beholden to others for your existence, and you repay this debt by helping to ensure the continuation of the species. A morality that prizes collective rights over the rights of the individual is fundamental to our biology. Sovereignty, therefore is not a function of individuals.
Lest I be decried as an opposite but equal ideologue, I do see a necessary role for the individualists. The forces of society and government are powerful, and must be resisted: what is bad for one individual is just as likely to be bad for the whole of society. Neither side should ever presume an absolute right: in this battle there is no victory.
You also err in your definition of government. You were nearly correct: government is a natural monopoly on the use of force. The 'competitive market' for government is commonly called warfare. Government is a necessary evil as long as men are capable of violence.
It's turtles all the way down.
The concepts of "fairness" and "equality", are both fundamental to good societies. They also can only be defined within the context of a society: fairness and equality for one individual (or a sociopath) is whatever the hell he likes. You don't need the argument for individual rights in order to decry slavery, though it helps. Where societies are not fair or equal, they are not good. When individuals are not beneficial to the society they are in, they are not good. There are other measures of morality, but none so fundamental.
>> There is a point where promoting individual rights is not useful where the species is concerned.
Useful to whom? Species is just another word saying "a lot of people". I'm sure to some of these people suppressing right of some other people would be very beneficial. So what?
>>> The concepts of "fairness" and "equality", are both fundamental to good societies.
People understand very different things when they say "fairness" and "equality". Some people think it's "fair" that somebody can not work a day in his life and still get money, shelter, services, education and many other goods paid by somebody else who works 14 hours a day. Some think it's not. Some think it's not "fair" that some people have millions and live in luxury and some have trouble with paying for their basic needs - and others think it's completely "fair". Same with equality - equality of what? The only way people can be truly equal if they are identical clones living identical lives in identical circumstances. This can not happen. So equality needs to be qualified - what we want to be equal? The society can do nothing with these definition - these things mean different things for different people, and always will. Politicians use this to lure people into voting for them, but in their speeches they just mean "vote for me please".
>>> When individuals are not beneficial to the society they are in, they are not good.
Sorry, this is baloney. Individual has absolutely no obligation to be "beneficial" to other people. Treating people only as resources or sources of benefits for oneself is immoral and such treatment - if you're talking about sociopaths - is usually a sure sign of some pathology in emotional/moral sphere. It is not a fundamental measure of moral, it is a fundamental measure of immorality. This is what leads to societies where millions of people get murdered, because they were declared "not useful for society".
Can this situation be considered "good"?
If not, why not?
My argument is that ultimate good and evil are predicated on the survival of the species. If you can rate individual rights as being the ultimate good, then you are saying that the survival of the species is less good.
If you do not think that individual rights are the ultimate good, then we are just arguing about a matter of degree, not primacy. Also, from there any topic that I can relate to being necessary to the collective survival is an automatic win, but don't let that worry you overly.
>>> My argument is that ultimate good and evil are predicated on the survival of the species.
I couldn't care less about the species. Why should I? Who is this "species" I'm supposed to care and why its survival has any value to me? I care about real people, but caring about abstract "species" does not have any value for me. This approach not only weird but outright immoral - if followed logically, I should advocate exterminating or at least sterilizing genetically inferior individuals - such as ones possessing obviously debilitating genetic diseases, and advocate killing off people that do not contribute anything to the species and the survival of such. Of course no normal human being would accept that. Well, some societies tried that - like Nazis exterminating individuals that were considered inferior and detrimental to the Aryan species - but you know how it ended and how it played out before it did. I don't think you want that.
>>> If you do not think that individual rights are the ultimate good,
I think individual rights are the ONLY good. There are no any other rights but individual rights, everything else is just a metaphor ultimately reduced to individual rights or a fraud designed to trick certain people into giving up their rights to some other people in exchange for plausibly sounding lies (or, failing that, coerce them into the same). Only individuals are sentient, only individuals have feelings and reason, only individuals can communicate and interact on sentient level, only individuals can have rights. I could somehow accept the concept of animals having rights, maybe, since many of them are capable of purposeful behavior and it can be argued they possess some level of emotion and sentience, even if unlike that of a human. However, "collective rights" are either just a way of speaking (when you say "a football team went to Boston", it means members of the team went there, not some distinct "team" entity went there and the members stayed in New York) or invented and fraudulent concept.
I don't believe that eugenics automatically follow from socialism --I think you should be more explicit here in step 2.
Reproductive rights a problematic in your argument. Which is why we tend to solve the issue by considering couples as a single legal individual. Mostly.
The other flaw would be 'crimes against humanity' -- in a world where there are only individual rights, if I kill you and all of your family, that would eliminate anyone with a claim against me, no? If societies have no rights, what right do we have to punish anyone?
Further would be scenarios falling into the category of 'tragedies of the commons,' where no one person can be held responsible for e.g. pollution. If "common ownership" is illusory, then there is very little incentive not to abuse whatever real property you can get your hands on.
I'm having a hard time distinguishing the concepts of "individualist/objectivist" and "sociopath". On the other hand, I can be grateful that we do live in a world that is fundamentally socialist. Good luck with the philosophy.
Individual sovereignty was granted to you by God. You were born with it. It's a self-evident fact. Any denial of such requires you to employ your own will over your body. Any denial of individual sovereignty proves it. Your comment is the result of the ownership of your own body.
"You were nearly correct: government is a natural monopoly on the use of force."
Government does not have a natural monopoly on force because they do not sell it. To have a monopoly you need a market. Government is not a group you hire to defend your rights, instead government forces you to be their subject and pay for their protection. Forcing someone to pay for your protection is a protection racket.
I've never read Ayn Rand and I am not an Objectivist. Espousing objectivism is not a prerequisite for defending the natural rights of life, liberty, and property.
You don't require currency to be a market, but you do, in fact, pay taxes. You also pay with your productivity and everything that you do which does not benefit solely yourself. Do read up on the definitions of "market", "natural monopoly," and "sovereignty."
Really shows how whacked American's conception of government is.
How is that drivel? He's the ONLY one here saying that it's a farce that we should have to dress this up as "Save the kids from evil pot" and "Tax evil pot to make money" when it ought to be an issue of personal liberty.
Fortunately, you can't just downvote me because you disagree or can't be bothered to explain yourself. Maybe you'll choose to offer some actual thought yourself.
I downvoted him because he didn't say anything, not because I disagree with him. He didn't say anything worth disagreeing with.