Political Discussion

Sonicpharmacist said:
It should be a right. Why should someone who is poor have less access to health care than someone who is affluent?
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Nothing that requires positive action on the part of another person can ever truly be declared a right. If healthcare is a right, then it requires that someone else provide it for you. To say that you have a right to something is to declare an exclusive claim to that thing. The only rights that are actual rights are what is known as a negative rights. They confer no positive obligations on others, they simply require that others not interfere with your exclusive claim.

I have a right to my life, meaning that others are obligated not to kill me. I have a right to my liberty meaning others have an obligation not to prevent me from doing as I please so long as I do not interfere with the rights of others. I have a right to my justly acquired property, meaning that others are obligated not to steal from me. Those are rights. The labor and services of others are not and can only be justly acquired through mutually agreeable terms. (Such as a fee for a service.)
 
Chucktshoes said:
It appears that you’ve got a specific axe to grind. One that I’m not fully aware of or able to suss out. So I’m not really sure what point you’re attempting to make here. Sorry.
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My point is that for people who are faced with serious or even life-threatening health problems, the experience of interacting with our private health system very much approximates the experience of having someone using the threat of violence to steal from them and abrogate their natural, God given rights as a human being.

To be clear: thankfully I have not had that experience personally. Yet.
 
Chucktshoes said:
Nothing that requires positive action on the part of another person can ever truly be declared a right. If healthcare is a right, then it requires that someone else provide it for you. To say that you have a right to something is to declare an exclusive claim to that thing. The only rights that are actual rights are what is known as a negative rights. They confer no positive obligations on others, they simply require that others not interfere with your exclusive claim.

I have a right to my life, meaning that others are obligated not to kill me. I have a right to my liberty meaning others have an obligation not to prevent me from doing as I please so long as I do not interfere with the rights of others. I have a right to my justly acquired property, meaning that others are obligated not to steal from me. Those are rights. The labor and services of others are not and can only be justly acquired through mutually agreeable terms. (Such as a fee for a service.)
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If someone is trying to kill you and a police officer is standing nearby, do you have a right to expect him to intervene?
 
Chucktshoes said:
Nothing that requires positive action on the part of another person can ever truly be declared a right. If healthcare is a right, then it requires that someone else provide it for you. To say that you have a right to something is to declare an exclusive claim to that thing. The only rights that are actual rights are what is known as a negative rights. They confer no positive obligations on others, they simply require that others not interfere with your exclusive claim.

I have a right to my life, meaning that others are obligated not to kill me. I have a right to my liberty meaning others have an obligation not to prevent me from doing as I please so long as I do not interfere with the rights of others. I have a right to my justly acquired property, meaning that others are obligated not to steal from me. Those are rights. The labor and services of others are not and can only be justly acquired through mutually agreeable terms. (Such as a fee for a service.)
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Someone had to make that gun in your photo. Isn't that a "right"? To own a gun?
 
Space Wanderer said:
My point is that for people who are faced with serious or even life-threatening health problems, the experience of interacting with our private health system very much approximates the experience of having someone using the threat of violence to steal from them and abrogate their natural, God given rights as a human being.

To be clear: thankfully I have not had that experience personally. Yet.
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Well, if you feel that you are owed something you are not (even if you may really need it), I can understand one would feel that way. It doesn’t make it so.
 
Space Wanderer said:
If someone is trying to kill you and a police officer is standing nearby, do you have a right to expect him to intervene?
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According to multiple Supreme Court cases, no. They’re not obligated in the least. I would hope they would, but they are under no legal obligation to do so.

Also, I carry a gun and train for that sort of thing. My personal safety is the responsibility of one person and one person alone. Me.
 
Sonicpharmacist said:
Someone had to make that gun in your photo. Isn't that a "right"? To own a gun?
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It is a right to justly acquire and own property free from the interference of others. It is incumbent upon me to acquire that property in mutually agreeable terms between myself and the producer/retailer of said property. In this case it was an exchange made by the medium of fiat currency I earned through the exchange of my labor to others for payment in said fiat currency. It is not the responsibility of anyone to provide that property to me.
 
Chucktshoes said:
According to multiple Supreme Court cases, no. They’re not obligated in the least. I would hope they would, but they are under no legal obligation to do so.

Also, I carry a gun and train for that sort of thing. My personal safety is the responsibility of one person and one person alone. Me.
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It’s interesting to me that we suddenly shifted from your conception of “rights” to the “legal obligations” promulgated by the violent thugs of the US government.
 
Chucktshoes said:
It is a right to justly acquire and own property free from the interference of others. It is incumbent upon me to acquire that property in mutually agreeable terms between myself and the producer/retailer of said property. In this case it was an exchange made by the medium of fiat currency I earned through the exchange of my labor to others for payment in said fiat currency. It is not the responsibility of anyone to provide that property to me.
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And if someone with a bigger gun comes by and takes your gun away, the proper remedy for you is to hope that the state does something about it?
 
Space Wanderer said:
It’s interesting to me that we suddenly shifted from your conception of “rights” to the “legal obligations” promulgated by the violent thugs of the US government.
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Well, I don’t have any right to the services of others. The police officer, being an enforcer of the laws of the state is (in theory) bound by them. So I explained both my lack of rights and the officers lack of legal obligation. (A lack of obligation that is something most people aren’t aware of.)
 
Space Wanderer said:
And if someone with a bigger gun comes by and takes your gun away, the proper remedy for you is to hope that the state does something about it?
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That’s not how guns work. It doesn’t matter how big a gun is. It matters how effectively it is used.

The proper remedy to your proposed situation is to fight to the death to protect myself and/or others to whom I feel responsible. The other party obviously is willing to do violence to impose their will. If I’m not willing to do violence to protect myself, then I am at their mercy.

The earth is a fallen place and man is irrevocably broken in this time. I can accept that and prepare the best I can to deal with it, or wish and whine it was something other than it is. I choose the former.
 
yukbon said:
I disagree that government intervention caused it; I would argue that it's private corporate interests that have caused it by interfering with government. The federal US gov didn't say "let there be a private business for us to funnel money to by acquiescing to their desires" -- the business was made without the help of the government and then it injected itself into the process, perverting it's function from a strictly medical one into a fiscal one.
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I don't think private industry or government caused this. I think it was the combination of a lax regulatory environment that decided not to enforce existing anti trust laws, along with a political class who was fine with looking the other way because they got their portfolios padded. The corporate power structure and our current government are so intertwined because the people running these institutions are more concerned with hoarding money than doing anything to benefit humans--this includes those titans of industry that have decided that paying a living wage is "too much" because expending funds to go to Mars is a more fun investment decision. It seems when we give any human or group of humans a bit too much power over others, we tend to get a bit egomaniacal and make bad decisions.
 
Chucktshoes said:
That’s not how guns work. It doesn’t matter how big a gun is. It matters how effectively it is used.

The proper remedy to your proposed situation is to fight to the death to protect myself and/or others to whom I feel responsible. The other party obviously is willing to do violence to impose their will. If I’m not willing to do violence to protect myself, then I am at their mercy.

The earth is a fallen place and man is irrevocably broken in this time. I can accept that and prepare the best I can to deal with it, or wish and whine it was something other than it is. I choose the former.
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Well, if you don’t want to be at their mercy, there is at least one option other than being willing to do violence yourself: you could get together with your family, friends and neighbors and pool your resources to help defend each others’ rights. Of course then you’d need to come up with some rules to govern the arrangement, which would naturally mean agreeing to certain limitations on everyone’s positive and negative liberties.

If you all were successful enough at it, you may just create a community that is safe and comfortable enough for some members to develop idiosyncratic philosophies about the nature of liberty and society, secure in the knowledge that they will never actually have to live in the hellscape towards which those philosophies would naturally lead.
 
Space Wanderer said:
Well, if you don’t want to be at their mercy, there is at least one option other than being willing to do violence yourself: you could get together with your family, friends and neighbors and pool your resources to help defend each others’ rights. Of course then you’d need to come up with some rules to govern the arrangement, which would naturally mean agreeing to certain limitations on everyone’s positive and negative liberties.

If you all were successful enough at it, you may just create a community that is safe and comfortable enough for some members to develop idiosyncratic philosophies about the nature of liberty and society, secure in the knowledge that they will never actually have to live in the hellscape towards which those philosophies would naturally lead.
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That works fine as long as everyone is consenting to those each and every one of those constraints on their liberties. The problem arises when someone withdraws consent, or never consented in the first place. No matter how many people get together and vote, there exists no moral authority to infringe upon the rights of others without their express consent.

No means no and I do not consent.
 
Chucktshoes said:
It is a right to justly acquire and own property free from the interference of others. It is incumbent upon me to acquire that property in mutually agreeable terms between myself and the producer/retailer of said property. In this case it was an exchange made by the medium of fiat currency I earned through the exchange of my labor to others for payment in said fiat currency. It is not the responsibility of anyone to provide that property to me.
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Those are some rather large hoops you're jumping through to justify your stance. In both situations, you're paying for that "right" to acquire the thing (the gun, the healthcare), when before this is what you said....
Chucktshoes said:
The only rights that are actual rights are what is known as a negative rights. They confer no positive obligations on others, they simply require that others not interfere with your exclusive claim.
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Chucktshoes said:
So, the simple answer to me is why don’t we stop giving them power?
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I agree with @nolalady in that issues of power is the problem, A problem in the US, but also across all human institutions. (Corporations, government and religion) Seeking control of others (for good or bad) is part of human nature. The problem I see is how do we solve that problem. So far it has been laws, rules, or policies, that seek to control behavior. I don’t think that has worked entirely, but is has worked to some degree in all of these areas of life.
 
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