At 8:45 AM -0500 11/2/09, Charles Bennett wrote:
>I usually argue that it is not actually a right, but a decision by
>society to provide a service.
>
>The difference, in my definition of a right, is that actual rights
>incur only negative obligations.
Sure.
But all this amounts a great big semantic argument. You don't
think anyone has an intrinsic *right* to health care.
Well, sure.
But once you accept that it is a good idea for the government
to want to get involved in the issue of health care (which seems
pretty much a no-brainer), due to being concerned with the welfare of
its citizens, then its citizens have a right to expect they will not
be discriminated against in its provision, and so on.
So yeah, it is not a right per se, but a decision to provide
the service, and a right to expect that service will not be provided
in a discriminatory way, or something. What exactly does that get you?
>Health Care? How does that work exactly. You make a claim on my
>production to give you something that you personally can't afford?
>By what "right" do you make this claim?
By the social contract that says we pay taxes and spend it on
things of common benefit. Just the same way you don't have a "right"
to have roads to drive your car on. I gather you personally can't
afford too many miles of road?
And you also personally can't afford public health campaigns,
stopping the spread of infectious disease in your community, and so
on. Yet you benefit.
>If I have a right to housing, the I want to live at the Kennedy
>compound.
And clearly a right to housing doesn't give the right to live
in whatever you would like, any more than a right to free speech
entitles you to a Pulitzer. Either you are an idiot, or a man who
likes to make straw man arguments in political discussion. I'm pretty
sure its the latter.
>If I have a right to health care then I want the level of care that
>Teddy is getting.
>If we followed Dashel's book, Teddy would be declare too old to
>deserve any experimental treatments since the "cost benefit" would not
>be there.
>
>But I guess some are more equal than others, eh comrades?
>
>We can choose, as a society, to provide that service, for now, and for
>as long as we can afford it, but I argue that it is not a right in
>any real sense
>
>You (society) cannot actually FORCE me to produce anything.
>
>These, so called, rights depend on the willing participation of the
>producer.
>
>If I refuse to work, you simply cannot obtain whatever it is that you
>would declare to be a right without enslaving me.
>
>Therefore, it is not actually a right.
Sure, we can't force you to actually work to pay your taxes.
And if everyone didn't work, and we got no taxes it would be an
issue, but until then, the distinction between intrinsic rights and
common goods provided by the government to its citzenry exists only
in Randian fantasy land.
Cheers
David
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