re: The Law by Frédéric Bastiat

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SlowFlowPro

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Why are you arguing with your alter?

Being intellectual is a bit of a stretch for you.. I mean you seem to have some capabilities, but an analogy is, some guys throw an easy 95 mph fastball while others are max effort to get there.

You appear to be the latter and that's not sustainable.

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Possession is not ownership and vice versa.

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Ownership is perpetual possession.

That’s the social construct/made up part.

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Power begat laws begat religion begat rights

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The order of this seems off to me.

Force begat power begat governance begat rights.

I think religion is separate.

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Society learned pretty early if you combined the threat/power of the state with threat/power of religion is was much more effective in ruling over people.

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This is really religion as a form of government though. I can see how religion can be viewed as a type of government, because it tends to contain rules to live by but they are not imposed through threat of force (here at least).

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Ownership is perpetual possession.

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Hardly

An owner can lend, lease or bestow onto someone else who would then posses.

The concept of ownership would have been first articulated when the use of a name came into practice.
“MY name is Grok!”

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Power begat laws begat religion begat rights

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Where, then, does the right to self-defense enter that chain?

Human survival presupposes agency. Agency gives rise to reason, and reason is man’s fundamental tool for survival. In a state of nature, man possesses a basic right to survive; and if survival requires reason, it follows that he must also possess the right to protect his capacity to reason.

From this, it follows further that the conditions necessary to preserve that capacity (life, autonomy, and freedom from coercion) are themselves fundamental, a priori rights.

Thus the sequence is better understood as:
survival -> reason -> rights -> laws.

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Religion is only a reinforcement within the structure of government, in that system

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Seems to me that the more appropriate comparison is that government is a form of religion.

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Well yeah. Toddlers have a concept of possession. Possession isn’t perpetual though. Ownership is a made up concept.

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Yet, you're quoting The Law?

Plunder Violates Ownership
“When a portion of wealth is transferred from the person who owns it-w/o his consent & w/o compensation, & whether by force or by fraud-to anyone who does not own it, then I say that property is violated; that an act of plunder is committed.”

What is Plunder?
"That a man may live & satisfy his wants by seizing & consuming the products of the labor of others. This is the origin of plunder."

These concepts aren't made up. You're wrong. They're real. But why don't people like you don't like that. And why? Because “The proper purpose of the law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work.”

But that isn't what the law does any longer. “As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder.”