No, they aren't. They're a voluntary choice by the parties to reap the benefits of specialization and trade instead of trying to kill each other and take each other's stuff. People make that choice because they understand that they are much better off with specialization and trade; for one thing, we wouldn't be having this conversation in this medium if humans had never got beyond the "kill what I can and take what I can" stage. The regulations and legal niceties come later.
In a democratic society, property rights are no more or less voluntary than any other regulation. Nobody asks you to consent to the property rights regime at birth nor can you opt out of that regime.
Sure, you can opt out; just start not respecting other people's property rights. Yes, you'll probably end up in jail or dead, since our society treats such behavior as criminal, but that's just a consequence of your choice; it's not preventing you from making the choice.
It's true that you don't consent to the regime at birth; but you do consent to it once you're an adult and making your own living, since that means you have chosen not to pursue the alternative I described above. Sure, the choice is a no-brainer (at least for almost everyone), but that doesn't mean it isn't a choice.
If your point is that the property rights regime is the only one on offer, that's not true either; just move to, say, Somalia.
I wasn't arguing that our current "property rights regime" doesn't count as regulation. I was only arguing that that regime is voluntary; you do have a choice to opt out. That choice may not be very attractive, but it's still a choice; choices don't always have to be between equally attractive options.
In short: something can be a regulation and still be voluntary. Speeding laws are regulations, but lots of people choose to violate them.
By that logic, no law is voluntary. Yet people choose to violate laws for various reasons.
If someone is holding a gun to your head as they escort you off their property, yes, they are compelling you to respect their property rights by force. But if someone puts up a "no trespassing sign", and they are not home, and you choose to walk across their lawn despite the sign, how is that not a voluntary choice to not respect their property rights?
A "no trespassing sign" doesn't cary any force on its own. Were there no laws against trespassing on private property, then yes, you'd have a point. Whether someone has a sign or not, the law is the same, and if the police show up and then point their guns at you (whether real or metaphorical), it's more or less the same situation.
You have a choice in the case of the gun toting property owner as well. The choice is to leave, or be risk being shot and killed. As you say, not all choices are between equally desirable outcomes...
A "no trespassing sign" doesn't cary any force on its own.
It conveys the property owner's intent regardless of whether there are any laws to back it up. If you choose to disregard the owner's intent, you are disregarding his property rights, whether or not the law makes that illegal. Using signs, fences, and other boundary markers to delimit property is logically prior to any laws about property rights, and those boundary markers can succeed in defining property rights even if there are no laws to enforce them.
If you know your neighbor doesn't want you to walk on his lawn, and has a sign up conveying that intent, is the law the only thing that can keep you from disregarding his intent? If you know that the goods inside the corner grocery store, whose owner is known and respected by everyone in town, aren't yours, and you find the door unlocked, is the law the only thing that keeps you from going in and looting the place?
People can have other reasons besides laws for defining and respecting property rights. It's easy to forget that now because our system of property rights has been evolving for thousands of years. But that doesn't change the fundamental game theory involved. The fact that many people now think that the law is the only thing that keeps them from violating others' property rights is a bug, not a feature.
No, they aren't. They're a voluntary choice by the parties to reap the benefits of specialization and trade instead of trying to kill each other and take each other's stuff. People make that choice because they understand that they are much better off with specialization and trade; for one thing, we wouldn't be having this conversation in this medium if humans had never got beyond the "kill what I can and take what I can" stage. The regulations and legal niceties come later.