[thrance]

(1) is a negative liberty: freedom from being forced to eat a certain diet. (2) is a positive liberty: actual ability to eat a certain diet. Western society is still mostly blind to the latter type of liberty.

Similarly, everyone is free to own a home, but ensuring everyone has the means to actually do so is just not something politicians will even talk about, and is often labelled as "communist" or some other kind of thought-terminating label. Everyone is free, some people are just freer than others.

[spwa4]

Well of course. If you want to know what a "right" is, legally, you need to reverse it.

For diet it is quite reasonable: a duty for certain products to be available for purchase (it does make clear that this right does not exist. A few vendors go out of business and your right to eat vegan goes with them)

For owning a home, this would be a duty for everyone else to build you a home, satisfying your requirements. One thing everyone agrees on is that other people do NOT have the right to force you to work. But that is the only way governments would be able to guarantee a right like this.

And, of course, one of the rights people demanded is the right to not participate in any right or duty that goes against your beliefs ... it is, of course, totally impossible to have this right and either of the other ones in society, or your rights would become very brittle indeed.

[thrance]

> For owning a home, this would be a duty for everyone else to build you a home, satisfying your requirements. One thing everyone agrees on is that other people do NOT have the right to force you to work. But that is the only way governments would be able to guarantee a right like this.

That's not how it works. The state isn't forcing doctors and nurse to cure you, it's collecting taxes from everyone to pay willing doctors and nurses to cure the population. Similarly, they could hire construction workers or buy homes and provide them for the general population.

[spwa4]

Actually where I'm from the state has indeed decided budgets have priority over rights. In other words it works exactly as you say, as you suggest. So first BIG caveat in right to medical help is that only X people get treated for particular things, as budgeted. Even if the equipment and doctors are available (but of course those are getting "right-sized"). Even goes for access to GPs (there's a massive shortage of GPs, but the government is lowering the number of doctors)

You are number X+1 that needs treatment? Sucks. There's a waitlist. Which in a few cases is pretty bad. You have had a stroke and the doctor wants an MRI, to check for bleeding. The MRI machines are being synergized (meaning a bunch of smaller hospitals only have access by moving patients to a bigger hospital). They can't book a surgeon without confirmation of bleeding (well not without entering the waitlist at the end, without priority, and with a stroke in progress you might as well just book an undertaker). In the best case now you're being moved (you pay for this), potentially with a ripped artery. Best of luck.

There's also more temporary accidents, such as refusing to hire foreign doctors, even where that means parts of the country have to do with insufficient capacity in certain departments or even (in the mountains for now) zero capacity. In theory anything with a waitlist over 2 months is considered insufficient capacity, but if you take that definition, close to 40% of all departments have insufficient capacity. And it's getting worse (Ukraine war, tarriffs, EU lending, Iran war, ... all resulted in extra savings and less capacity)

The same is happening in schools. The law clearly states you have the right to kindergarten < 2km from your home, primary school <10km and secondary <20km). For "special needs" education this has become a total joke, even in parts of the capital this is no longer available. But even in normal schooling none of those are still reality. Or other issues, like the fact that the government guarantees temperatures in schools above 18 degrees, and below 32 degrees (heat index, not pure temperature. Essentially it's 32 degrees at 100% humidity, goes up with 1 degree for every 10% humidity drops). Kids have that right in education. Aside from the free school for EU expats' children in Brussels there isn't a single primary school with air-conditioning. Not even the one the royal family uses for their children. The temperature hit 40 degrees, apparently over 45 degrees in some classrooms. They did discipline some teachers for teaching in the grass outside of the classroom after parent complaints, of course.

That's also a way to look at rights, I guess. Namely that they are "weak guidelines" and you don't have any way to enforce them against the government and everything just completely erodes over time.

I guess it's true what they say: you can pay market price or you can have shortages. Pick your poison.