Responsibilities

Responsibilities are the duties that follow logically from agency, self-ownership, and causation. Responsibilities are the mirror of Rights. Rights name the boundaries that other agents must not cross without consent. Responsibilities name the things for which an agent must answer. Those things are the effects that their actions cause and the harm that they make without consent. They also include the property that a Contract moved to a different agent but that the first agent still holds. Responsibilities attach to individuals through causation, not through group membership, status, or a claim of necessity from authority. An agent is responsible for the actions of their body. An agent owes restitution for harm that they did. An agent must give the property that is no longer theirs to the agent who owns it. Duties that force commands without consent are not responsibilities. They are coercion. Collective responsibilities without individual causation are invalid. To accept responsibility for your actions is the declaration side of the claim of rights. Both start from the same agent, the same logic, and the same Golden Rule.