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Originally Posted by Zeraph
Money will always buy you stuff,
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Look at the Ruble in the 1990s and tell me that. In 1988 $1US = 4p. In 1998 $1US = 8000p. Holy crap, right?
But anyway, what I was meaning to say is that rights, like money, are only as real as the people think it is, and they're both surprisingly fragile and are subject to change. Look at what happened to the US$ and Habeas corpus in the last 8 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zeraph
but rights only protect you as long as people either agree on them or (the important part) someone can get away with taking advantage of your rights. Although I could definitely make arguements that money isn't real either...the US dollar isn't even backed by the gold standard anymore but that's getting off topic.
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Actually, that does sort of speak to what I was saying. Money is only real as long as the market and the consumers think it's real. It's not backed by anything substantial. Similarly, rights are only real as long as the government and the people think they're real. They're not backed up by god or some objective natural laws.