[pfannkuchen]

Health care requires other people’s labor though. If you make that a right you risk needing to implement some kind of forced labor system (sure it can be obfuscated as much as you like).

Not taking guns doesn’t require anyone’s labor, so you don’t run into this hazard.

I’m not particularly pro gun, I just don’t think positive rights are practical from a design perspective.

[dragonwriter]

> Health care requires other people’s labor though. If you make that a right you risk needing to implement some kind of forced labor system

Whether that's true or not depends on the exact parameters of the right, and, in any case, the US has compulsory civic labor notwithstanding the 13th Amendment (jury service actively, conscription historically). Jury service direct relates to a positive right.

It also has positive rights which require labor but which somehow are not achieved by forced labor (voting, for instance, requires supporting labor.)

> I’m not particularly pro gun, I just don’t think positive rights are practical from a design perspective.

And yet, the US has positive rights, and the system hasn’t collapsed (e.g.,.the right to assistance of counsel in criminal cases, for instance, in addition to others previously listed.)

[refurb]

Voting is voluntary.

Jury duty places a large burden on many people. I served on a jury and there were people who missed out on work and made $20 per day.

[dragonwriter]

> Voting is voluntary.

Exercise of all rights is voluntary. Voting requires someone else’s labor (ballot preparation, vote counting, etc.), which is the attribute that you said makes positive rights impractical.

> Jury duty places a large burden on many people.

And, yet, trial by jury is a right.

[s1artibartfast]

After reading your comments last night, I think there's an argument that some of these these things are process operational constraints on how the state can operate. For example, the state doesn't have to charge someone in court, but if they do they must also provide the option for trial by jury.

I think the construction of if the state does X, it must also do Y sets it apart from a universal positive right.

I'm not a lawyer, but I believe the state can refuse to provide a jury trial for a citizen initiated legal action, like a civil suit by declining to hear the case.

I think you could find a similar framing for voting as well.

[refurb]

Exercise of all rights is voluntary.

Sure, but having a place to live is not voluntary, everyone needs it.

[foxyv]

You don't need to force labor.

As always, you simply need to provide people with a living wage and they will do things. A right to health care would simply become a national health system that is adequately funded. Then the only argument would be, how much do we need to fund that health care system to fulfill our obligation to provide people with a right to health care.

People become medical practitioners for many reasons and will happily practice medicine as long as they can make a living off of it without being coerced or manipulated. A few want to be able to afford a Ferrari, but the vast majority just simply want to help people and be able to thrive.

[derelicta]

Clearly letting poor folks die is the most moral option.

If positive rights make you so uncomfortable, I'll let you know they are very much widespread in today's constitutions. My canton's has many economic rights enumerated, including the right to a proper shelter. And I don't hold it for a nasty totalitarian dictatorship (yet?)

[pfannkuchen]

A government constitution should be designed to be robust. It should be assumed that no rights will be removed under any possible circumstances.

The inclusion of positive rights simply reduces the space of possible circumstances the government can traverse without removing rights, and depending on what sort of positive right we are taking about it does so drastically. Giving the government the ability to remove rights is dangerous for obvious reasons (they aren’t really rights at that point, are they).

If the medical system is ever mismanaged to the point of insolvency, should the government have the ability to violate a constitutional right to get things back in order? If they are allowed to violate that right, presumably they are able to violate other “rights” in the same class depending on the circumstances as well.

No one is saying constitutions with positive rights are totalitarian. I am just saying that they are fragile and should be avoided for that reason.

If what you want is a government health care system that can be modified or canceled based on circumstances, then that’s fine, but you can’t call it a “right” since you aren’t treating it as one.

[derelicta]

"If the medical system is ever mismanaged to the point of insolvency, should the government have the ability to violate a constitutional right to get things back in order? If they are allowed to violate that right, presumably they are able to violate other “rights” in the same class depending on the circumstances as well."

Well yes?

Some rights may be absolute. Some others may be limited. Things are rarely absolute. Democracies are more than their respective constitution. They also rely on their political culture and how healthy it is. Even if your constitutional norms are supposedely "weak", does it matter in the end? It's not a bench of judges who are gonna protect your rights, but citizens as a whole.

That's why this whole argument that positive rights being displayed as "flaws" doesn't make much sense to me. And why guaranteeing access to proper healthcare sounds to me like a well balanced risk.

What is more likely? Than the State will turn you into a slave through this positive right to healthcare, or that you will end up dead by lack of said guaranteed access to healthcare ?

[mcv]

> No one is saying constitutions with positive rights are totalitarian. I am just saying that they are fragile and should be avoided for that reason.

You may say that, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. If we look at how this works out in practice, are constitution with positive rights really more fragile? There's nothing fragile about Switzerland, for example; that's probably one of the most stable countries in the world. The US, on the other hand, seems to be constantly teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and/or authoritarianism. Government institutions frequently seem to violate the law with impunity, and now Trump, a major presidential candidate, seems to want to get rid of the constitution.

Political culture is probably much more important than the distinction between positive and negative rights, and I don't think a culture of hurting people or letting people suffer, is good for any country.

[lapcat]

> Not taking guns doesn’t require anyone’s labor, so you don’t run into this hazard.

Of course it does. Labor is always required to protect your legal rights. Government, military, police, courts, those are all labor.

This labor is the difference between actually having enforceable legal rights and living in the Hobbesian state of nature, the war of all against all.

[ztrww]

Income tax? Publicly funded education? Innumerable (in a comment) other things especially including Medicaid and Medicare?

> Not taking guns doesn’t require anyone’s labor,

It does. Somebody has to take care of all the bodies. Mass shootings and homocides in general are pretty expensive both directly and due to lost future productivity.

[pfannkuchen]

None of these are rights and they can all be modified without violating the constitution. What is your point?

[naravara]

> Health care requires other people’s labor though. If you make that a right you risk needing to implement some kind of forced labor system (sure it can be obfuscated as much as you like).

You have the right to an attorney. The state hiring and assigning public defenders isn't "forced labor." I don't know where this canard came from. It makes no sense if you spend more than 10 seconds thinking about it.

[reaperman]

Welp. Guess we can't have taxpayer funded roads then cuz all the forced labor needed for free roads. Guess we also can't have a right to K-12 education.

[Rebelgecko]

You don't have the right to roads. Similarly education is mostly implemented at the state level, there's nothing legally preventing a state from saying that public school is now K-8 only. Laws requiring people to go to school are kind of a mixed bag, and compulsory education laws usually only apply to children (and in some cases only to pre-teens). AFAIK there's no legal forms of adult forced labor, except prisoners who are exempt from some rights.

[reaperman]

And yet despite being at the state level, all americans do have a right to K-12. Is that also forced labor?

[pfannkuchen]

You don’t seem to understand what is meant by forced labor here. I am happy to explain it to you.

A right is something that can never be legally violated by the government.

It is possible for a health care system run by anyone to end up with a level of resources below what it would need to meet its commitments.

If government runs health care and health care is a right, then the government is not legally allowed to fail to meet its health care commitments. Doing so would violate the right to health care, and violating rights is illegal.

Therefore at that point the government must either compel resources be increased to match the commitment, regardless of any other factors, or cancel the right.

If our plan includes the potential for raising resources to an arbitrary level in certain circumstances regardless of all other factors at that point, then at that point we would by definition need to implement forced labor.

If our plan includes canceling a right under certain circumstances, then it is not really a right, is it?

[mcv]

This sort of theorising doesn't seem to be very relevant in practice, and I frankly only see this from Americans. Other countries seem to be doing much better without hammering on this needless distinction. They make their health systems work by making sure it's sufficiently funded and well-organised, and don't need to account for a major party simply wanting to destroy it just to hurt people (except possibly the UK soon).

[Rebelgecko]

There's a difference to having the right to something and being forced to do something. For example all states give the right to a K-12 education, up to a point (usually there's age limits, and some states also have pre-k).

However just because children have the right to go to school doesn't mean they're forced to actually go and sit down (eg Wisconsin v Yoder). The courts do recognize that parents have the rights to force their kids to do certain things. Eg you can ground your child and it isn't "forced confinement", you can make them go to school and it isn't slavery, etc. Those exemptions pretty much go away once someone turns 18

[pfannkuchen]

You are hopefully aware of the difference between a right granted to all citizens and a project funded by the government?

[reaperman]

I am. But you dont make sense. All Americans have a right to K-12 education, it's funded by the government. How is that different from all Americans having a right to healthcare, being funded by the government? If someone doesn't wanna be in healthcare anymore they can still switch to whatever they want to. They're not forced labor any more than teachers are.

Perhaps you'd like to sign a petition to lower forced labor fed by high false-conviction rates in Louisiana? https://promiseofjustice.org/end-plantation-prisons

[pfannkuchen]

There is fairly well developed theory in this area, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb here.

Americans do not have a “right” to education in the same way they have a “right” to e.g. free speech. The government can reduce or even eliminate state funded education without violating the constitution. If not enough e.g. teachers will work for the state (for the pay offered, based on tax revenue available, etc), the state can respond to changing circumstances by reducing or eliminating the education services provided. If education were to be added as a “right” then this reduction or elimination in service would not possible, unless you make that “right” so flimsy as to be basically meaningless (i.e. if the government is able to meaningfully remove it, it is not really a right).

I don’t believe in forced prison labor at all, so yes I’d be happy to sign that petition. I’m not sure what it has to do with this discussion.

[reaperman]

This didn’t convince me that federally funded right to healthcare would be forced labor any more than federally funded anything else.

[dragonwriter]

> Americans do not have a “right” to education in the same way they have a “right” to e.g. free speech.

OTOH, they do have a right to trial by jury, a right to counsel, and a right to vote in the sense that they have a right to free speech, and each of these rights require someone else’s labor.

[pfannkuchen]

Technically true, though not really a risk due to minuscule resources required to implement these. What percent of GDP do public defenders account for?

[dragonwriter]

> All Americans have a right to K-12 education

Federally, no, they don’t.

They may have a State Constitutional right, though.

[reaperman]

Okay. But all Americans do. Is that also forced labor? How does that line of logic hold any water?

[refurb]

No, Americans don’t have a “right” to K-12 education unless you pervert the definition of “right”.

The government can easily change what public school is offered and the courts aren’t going to intervene and say “no, you have to provide K-12 education as guaranteed by the Constitution”.

[mcv]

I think the issue here is that most countries don't have to deal with a major political party trying to destroy their healthcare or education system, while the US does. Everybody may have a right to K-12 education, but what if states underpay teachers and make teachers criminally liable when parents get upset about their child getting taught from a normal school curriculum? I wish this was a ridiculous hypothetical, but it's basically what's going on right now.

A toxic political culture can lead a government to sabotage things it's legally required to provide. That said, that same toxic culture can also lead it to violate negative rights. The real problem isn't the distinction between different classes of rights, but the fact that one political party is eager to destroy or at least compromise those rights.

[ok_dad]

I seriously don’t understand people whose ethics accept that some folks will just die because they don’t want to pay an extra few dollars in taxes. You grew up here, your success or failure depends on the health of our society in many ways, and our society is falling apart because opportunistic capitalists drain all of the productivity with very little gain for the average person since the 70s. I guess we can keep playing Wild West until our country falls apart from malignant cases of not caring about your fellow human.

[pfannkuchen]

This is a great example of why discussing politics on the internet is annoying. People assume others’ positions and yell past each other.

Not making healthcare a “right” does not preclude having a government run health care system. Why would it?

[Sakos]

Because generally the argument of "it doesn't need to be a right" is coupled with arguing why universal healthcare is bad.

Your comment is a great example for how people try to muddy the waters and distract from the issues at stake.

[pgwhalen]

Fwiw, I am strongly pro universal health care, but agree with pfannkuchen’s framing of what a right is. I see it as clarifying position, not a muddying one.

Healthcare requires resources, it doesn’t happen just because everyone agrees upon it. We must structure our society to provide those resources, so all its members can be provided healthcare.

[ok_dad]

Well if it’s not a right but everyone must get it, what’s that called? A right is pretty close.

[laratied]

Exactly. Just the typical incredibly out of touch, childish and highly privileged view often expressed on this forum:

"The smart people can work remote in Bali for 2x the median USD salary. If your not one of the smart people then you can bath and wipe old people's asses all day while being exposed to all kinds of pathogens for the median salary. The reason we don't have more of this is because of capitalism and whatever politics I don't like".

Variations on this theme in pretty much every topic with over a 100 replies.