Entrepreneurs recombine natural and human resources in novel ways. They do so to respond to forecasts of future needs, or to observations of failures and shortcomings of current products or services. Entrepreneurs are professional - though usually intuitive - futurologists. This is a valuable service and it is financed by systematic risk takers, such as venture capitalists. Surely they all deserve compensation for their efforts and hazards they assume?

Exclusive ownership is most ancient type of such remuneration. First movers, entrepreneurs, risk takers, owners of wealth they generated, exploiters of resources - are allowed to exclude others from owning or exploiting same things. Mineral concessions, patents, copyright, trademarks - are all forms of monopoly ownership. What moral right to exclude others is gained from being first?

Nozick advanced Locke's Proviso. An exclusive ownership of property is just only if "enough and as good is left in common for others". If it does not worsen other people's lot, exclusivity is morally permissible. It can be argued, though, that all modes of exclusive ownership aggravate other people's situation. As far as everyone, bar entrepreneur, are concerned, exclusivity also prevents a more advantageous distribution of income and wealth.

Exclusive ownership reflects real-life irreversibility. A first mover has advantage of excess information and of irreversibly invested work, time, and effort. Economic enterprise is subject to information asymmetry: we know nothing about future and everything about past. This asymmetry is known as "investment risk". Society compensates entrepreneur with one type of asymmetry - exclusive ownership - for assuming another, investment risk.

It is a fundamental principle of most moral theories that all human beings have a right to life. The existence of a right implies obligations or duties of third parties towards right-holder. One has a right AGAINST other people. The fact that one possesses a certain right - prescribes to others certain obligatory behaviours and proscribes certain acts or omissions. This Janus-like nature of rights and duties as two sides of same ethical coin - creates great confusion. People often and easily confuse rights and their attendant duties or obligations with morally decent, or even with morally permissible. What one MUST do as a result of another's right - should never be confused with one SHOULD or OUGHT to do morally (in absence of a right).

The right to life has eight distinct strains:

IA. The right to be brought to life

IB. The right to be born

IC. The right to have one's life maintained

ID. The right not to be killed

IE. The right to have one's life saved

IF. The right to save one's life (erroneously limited to right to self-defence)

IG. The Right to terminate one's life

IH. The right to have one's life terminated

IA. The Right to be Brought to Life

Only living people have rights. There is a debate whether an egg is a living person - but there can be no doubt that it exists. Its rights - whatever they are - derive from fact that it exists and that it has potential to develop life. The right to be brought to life (the right to become or to be) pertains to a yet non-alive entity and, therefore, is null and void. Had this right existed, it would have implied an obligation or duty to give life to unborn and not yet conceived. No such duty or obligation exist.

IB. The Right to be Born

The right to be born crystallizes at moment of voluntary and intentional fertilization. If a woman knowingly engages in sexual intercourse for explicit and express purpose of having a child - then resulting fertilized egg has a right to mature and be born. Furthermore, born child has all rights a child has against his parents: food, shelter, emotional nourishment, education, and so on.

It is debatable whether such rights of fetus and, later, of child, exist if fertilization was either involuntary (rape) or unintentional ("accidental" pregnancies). It would seem that fetus has a right to be kept alive outside mother's womb, if possible. But it is not clear whether it has a right to go on using mother's body, or resources, or to burden her in any way in order to sustain its own life (see IC below).

IC. The Right to have One's Life Maintained