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I like John's ideal society as much as the next person, but I would prefer to see rights derived from a moral principle. So my challenge to John is this: Give me a principle on which rights can be based. Or, put it this way, give me a principle that leads to your ideal society.

You all know that I'm a utilitarian. I believe that the single fundamental moral principle is that we should maximize human welfare. The question, then, is whether rights can be based on that principle. Some people say that they cannot; but I think those people are mistaken.

There are different forms of utilitarianism, and I will agree that strong individual rights are incompatible with some of those forms. But not all. Philosophers commonly divide utilitarians into two groups: act utilitarians and rule utilitarians. Act utilitarians have a hard time justifying individual rights because they judge each individual act by its particular consequences. I admit that. But I'm a rule utilitarian, and I don't think there's a problem incorporating rights into my philosophy.

Some system of rights has been recognized by many utilitarian philosophers. Take John Stuart Mill for example. Here's what he wrote about justice and rights.

Justice is a name for certain classes of moral rules, which concern the essentials of human well-being more nearly, and are therefore of more absolute obligation, than any other rules for the guidance of life; and the notion which we have found to be of the essence of the idea of justice, that of a right residing in an individual, implies and testifies to this more binding obligation. [Utilitarianism, chapter V]

Mill wrote in the 19th century, but Richard Brandt, a 20th-century utilitarian, also allowed for rights. He understood rule utilitarianism to assert that the moral rightness of an act was determined not by its particular consequences but by the fact that it was permitted or required by the most desirable moral code for a society. It is the whole code that must be judged by its consequences. He added that "if we adopt a rule-utilitarian theory of the morally right and wrong, or the morally obligatory, of this type, then it seems to me clear that there is no inconsistency in claiming that people have rights...." [Richard Brandt, Morality, Utilitarianism, and Rights, p. 198-199]

Rights simply become rules contained within the best moral code for a society, and the best moral code is the one that maximizes welfare or well-being.

I think this gives us a fairly clear basis for rights to individual freedom, freedom of belief, freedom of movement, and some sort of property rights as well.