Verified:

oats Game profile

Member
648

Feb 29th 2012, 0:23:27

Originally posted by H4xOr WaNgEr:


However, health care provision is NOT a right. Rights cannot be given to you, they can only be taken away. This is because natural rights are intrinsic. You are born with them.


The thing is that you can rationalize the right to health care on the reason of cost, so only the rich don't have to worry. Then you rationalize the right to security because it is costly, so then only the rich can afford protection. Then the right to property. Then the right to food.

All those things we are not born with. It has taken thousands of years of social experiment, failure and collective growth to build and recognize the value of those safety nets as a foundation for wealth creation. When you start to let those things degrade past a certain point more of a burden is shifted to the shoulders of individuals, leaving them less energy to pursue progress and real wealth generation. There are some burdens that are shouldered better collectively with a better overall return on investment.

There is always the potential of a situation where too much energy is spent maintaining those rights. There is also a situation where our collective energy is literally being blown into the air and wasted due to bad economic management. I think the latter is in large part what we're facing. At this juncture it becomes our choice to take the hard, constructive route to create solutions or to take the easy path of fighting, blaming and finger pointing, although the two routes aren't mutually exclusive (superficially).

I don't think we should accept the degradation of our current rights as easily as some think. Maybe our current situation is unsustainable, as determined by money (which is itself a poor benchmark of sustainability). If so, then something must change. But hopefully it is toward a progressive side and not towards simply possessing natural rights (which don't matter if you can't provide security and get killed w/o a respawn point).

Edited By: oats on Feb 29th 2012, 0:32:45
Back To Thread
See Original Post