3 ms·

Negative rights seem to be those more amenable to guarantees since they ask little. The guarantee of positive rights assumes a bunch of prerequisites from what

• homonculus1 7y ago
  "Positive right" is just political marketing for privileges. Universality is implicit in the notion of rights, e.g. treatment that every human has a valid claim not to be subjected to and which must be observed in order to have a civil, liberal society. The enumeration of specific protections may have to change with technology, but the underlying principles do not short of radical psychological/physiological alteration as a species. If we abandon that concept then rights have no meaning, they're just a list of popular demands which can shift arbitrarily, and including privileges does just that. It's obvious why people are in favor of them of course, but we have to be honest about what it is we're asking for and why instead so we can make a rational analysis of it, instead of torturing the intellectual and moral foundations of our culture to make something outside of it fit. And it's foolish not to be suspicious that politicians' incentives have basically everything to do with making promises that get votes, and basically nothing to do with actually making the system work long-term.