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It seems to me that if you deny all individual natural rights, you are saying that anything is permissible -- there is nothing that we cannot do to other people. Or put it this way: If there are no natural rights prior to government, then in principle there are no moral limits on what government can do to people. 

Hasn't the 20th century taught us that this sort of thinking is disastrous? I'm not only thinking of how Hitler gassed millions and Stalin sent millions to his gulag. But here in the US we detained 110,000 Japanese during the Second World War. And more recently, on a more everyday level, consider the case of the Poletown neighborhood in Detroit. In 1981, the city of Detroit, in order to make room for a General Motors plant, virtually erased the neighborhood. According to one source, 1400 homes, 16 churches, and 144 businesses were eliminated. We must have a guarantee that this cannot happen on a larger scale.

I think this is a kind of moral reduction to absurdity directed at those who would deny strong individual rights. And it also hits hard against those who think that property is less important than other rights like free speech. Since the homes and businesses of the people in Poletown could be taken away, their lives could be ruined. Property matters. And not just for rich people.

For a more positive approach, I suggest looking at some of the libertarian writers such as Robert Nozick, Loren Lomasky, or Jan Narveson.