ABSTRACT
People’s immediate rights and responsibilities are specified and reflected in a social system’s constitutional foundations. Traditionally, libertarians especially, such as classical philosophers of the Enlightenment including Locke and the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, established and justified the right of ownership as a natural right. The rights and responsibilities of free individuals are encapsulated in the fundamental idea of self-ownership. The basic notion of a partnership agreement is that everyone who works individually or jointly with others in a formalised way individually and collectively owns, manages, and controls the properties, activities, and results of this enterprise and has the same rights and responsibilities. Members of a social system can agree upon and decide whether private ownership of things and property rights exists as a legal fiction – but they cannot decide whether self-ownership and the related inalienable rights of individuals in themselves exist and matter.
