negative versus positive rights
Topics: Theory
27 Mar 1994
From: ervan
> [ There are two distinct kinds of rights:
> Freedom from government.
> Freedom from other kinds of interference. ]
You have said that you do not see medical care, education, etc.
as rights. That would seem to contradict the above? Of
course, you have danced around the issue of whether or not there
are any rights at all. Are you lumping freedom of speech and
AA both into a pseudo-right basket? My answer to the
distinction follows (without any intention of implying your
position).
Freedom from government interference is exactly what a right
means. Rights exist. That is, I believe in natural rights.
Governments cannot grant them, they can only take them away.
These are negative rights in the sense that the government is
prohibited from doing anything.
So called positive rights mean that the government must do
something on your behalf. Presumably this is what you meant by
rights of the second type. "Freedom from nongovernment
interefernce" would seem to mean something different. Having a
'positive right' to take money from someone else is quite a
different thing than having a 'right' to not be burglared. Did
you really mean to confound these?
I do not grant that 'positive rights' is a meaningful phrase.
It rests on this fiction that the government is something other
than the people it coerces; that the government is a first
class entity in its own right. It is not. To say that one
should have a voice in government is to say that one should
have a voice in coercing other people. To say that the
government grants some 'economic opportunity' as a right is to
say that one has a 'right' to confiscate someone else's
property. That is, one has a 'right' to enslave others. Such
a thing is not a right. It might be an 'entitlement' or a
power that you have, but it is not a right (okay, short of
believing in the divine right of kings, or some such).
Fundies say they have a 'right' not to live a sin free world. In
other words, they think they have a 'right' to control what you
do in the bedroom. You don't have any corresponding 'right' to
run their lives of course. A 'right' to economic opportunity
is on no sounder philosophical ground.
As a further discourse, this all depends on property. You have
a right to your body (so long as you don't interefere with
someone else's equal right), a right to the labor you produce
with your body, a right to whatever you trade that labor for
(again, assuming no force or fraud), etc. That is, property is
a natural right. The classic rights of free speech, freedom of
religion, & freedom of conscience are an immediate consequence
of this.
Just because you like something or just because you derive
value from it does not make it property. Lots of businessmen
think their market is their property (and often get the
government to help uphold that fiction). It's not. That Mr. X
gets to mow your lawn once does not in anyway constrain Mr. Y
from having the same chance. Californians are particularly
grievous in deciding that the view of someone else's property
is their property because they enjoy it. It's not. Zoning
decides flat out that someone else's property is yours because
you would be better off to control it. Property never means
the ability to reach and control someone else. In the same
way, internal emotional states are not property either. That's
the end of the philosophical part of the PC debate based on the
absurd notion of a 'right' to be free from offense.
Some liberals have this idea that freedom means ability.
Unless you can do X you are not free. I do not grant that this
has any meaning either. To say that one should have 'the
freedom to enjoy good medical care' is just as nonsensical as
saying one should have a 'right to not see offensive
billboards'. Again, it may be an entitlement or merely
something you can extract by force but it comes only at the
cost of curtailing someone else's real freedom by stealing the
value of their labor.
To put this another way, the socialists are not upset with
capitalism. They are upset with reality (and blame
capitalism). For instance, does the 'right' to medical care
mean the 'right' to a lithotripter for kidney stones? If so,
where was that 'right' 30 years ago when lithotripters did not
exist? The objection is to reality. In an attempt to overcome
this 'defect', that reality does not give everyone everything,
socialists settle for theft.
Contrast this with negative rights which refer simply to what
the government cannot do. They are timeless and meaningful
regardless of the current economic or technological situation.
> [ Rights against some government actions must be protected. ]
Natural rights exist. It's only a question of whether or not
the government is tyrannical enough to take away rights we
already have. I don't know what you mean by 'protect'. That
we should fight for the ability to exercise such rights? Yes.
That constitutions should explicitly forbid governments from
infringing them? Yes.
> [ They require little to implement. ]
Yes, exactly, a negative right.
> [ Economic rights may be protected where possible and where it
> leads to a general increase in liberty. ]
It cannot. As I have argued, the taxpayer strictly loses
liberty and the recipient gains not liberty, but income. Okay,
that's just a semantic game but you did phrase it as a matter
of liberty. If instead we ask the question as: is there a
general increase in happiness (liberty be damned)? The answer
is still 'no' but it becomes a matter of analyzing the
particular mechanisms.
> [ Affirmative action can be an economic right. ]
Philosphically, it's a 'postive right'. On a pragmatic level,
why do think it is that a majority of the population is
sufficiently anti-racist to elect a government to 'do
something' and at the same time a majority (?) of the
population is sufficiently racist to cause real hardships for
blacks?
My answer is that, regardless of how unfair the current level
of discrimination is be it minor or pervasive, the government
can only aggravate the problem. That is a racist majority will
force by law the non-racist minority to conform to their racist
view. The Davis-Bacon act is the perfect example of this.
That the government found the political will to do something
shows that the country is no longer that racist and remaining
disparities represent rational (in the economic sense)
decisions. Again, utopia is not an option, regardless of
whether we are talking about technological progress or tolerant
personal views.
> [ "Equal protection" becomes relevant in some bad implementations. ]
Yes, it does. There is also an important 'takings' argument. Just
like the tax code can never be fair, an interventionist
government is fundamentally incompatible with the 14th
amendment.
-------------------------
So, why defense (including certain aspects of policing)? Just
because property is a right, its protection is not automatic.
We can either sacrifice all property to theft or sacrifice some
property to the cost of protecting against theft. The goal is
to keep that cost, both monetary and in terms of civil
liberties, as low as possible. The truly ugly thing is that
even the honorable are forced to coerce third parties. Put
another way, given that property rights will not be respected,
a certain amount of redistribution of the total amount of
disrespect is in order (i.e. taxation instead of invasion).
> [TB & AIDS]
Dumping pathogens on someone is theft of the property they have
in their body. Government intervention may be philosophically
tolerable depending on the facts of the case. I have serious
doubts about AIDS since you pretty much have to agree to accept
the risk of contracting it. The new wave of TB is caused by
bad government policy in the first place, namely locking up
junkies (not to mention making their habit so expensive as to
make them destitute). If there were some pathogen such that:
1) It was airborne.
2) It caused real damage.
3) People could not take responsibility for spreading it.
4) People manifestly fail to control it of their own accord
or in their own communities by charity (perhaps because its
peculiar pathology makes this difficult).
Innoculation may be justified on the same grounds that taxation
for police protection is, to prevent further destruction of
property. But, this is not to be confused with the 'oh,
wouldn't it be nice' argument.
I realize this opens the door to the whole panalopy of save the
poor as a means of reducing crime arguments. They fail to fit
the mold for essentially the above four reasons. The guilty
can be held responsible is the most important difference. The
second is that such things do not succeed (at least on this
reason).
> Roads? Police departments?
Already addressed.
> [ With private fire departments, insured houses burnt while
> rivals argued over turf. ]
I'm confused by your example. Do you mean that insured houses
burnt while fire departments argued over getting started? Or
do you mean that uninsured houses just burnt while fire
departments sat idle? Well, in either case, I don't see the
problem. There is the interesting question of prior
restraint. If your house catching on fire generates a
significant risk for mine, can I merely sue afterward (and
effecively lose since you'll be bankrupt) or can I require you
to take precautions (e.g. fire department insurance)? Whatever
the resolution to this, it has nothing to do with the main
argument in this post.
------------------
(*) By controlling other people's behavior I mean when they are
not interefering with you. For instance, shooting someone in
legitimate self defense is not 'controlling their behavior' in
this sense.
---Ervan
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