This is such a tired argument.
Every government program, every preservation of right, requires taxation and resource allocation. Unless you are advocating for the complete dissolution of government we are merely talking of degrees.
There is always a specific debate to be had around each degree of power and influence the government is granted. But if you refuse to acknowledge the reality that people are "forced" into compliance for all rights, including those you deem 'negative', it's impossible to even discuss.
You only get to exercise the right to free speech if everyone else knows there are consequences for disrupting it. (Fines, imprisonment, etc)
If no one is willing or able to act as the enforcement arm of the state, you only have that freedom so long as someone more powerful than you doesn't feel like taking it from you. That requires the 'forced' labor of police officers, prison guards, construction workers for the prisons, agricultural workers for the food, medical supplies manufacturers, medical staff members for prisons, electricians, plumbers, garbage, sanitation workers. I'm sure if I spent more than a minute I could think of more, but just understanding the scope of labor required to enforce one 'negative right' should help illustrate why this line of conversation is a complete waste of time.
You are right. It’s a sliding scale. But that scale has tilted completely to one side in the last 50 years, as I said. Everything has moved towards more generalized human rights and not towards less.
I'd like to understand how you would rank competing human rights for example? What if my human right to healthcare conflicts with your human right to not be forced to work? What if my right to have somewhere to live (for travellers, actual legal case in the UK) conflicts with your human right to own property and not have it invaded? What if my human right to not cover my face conflicts with your human right to a "germ and virus free environment".
Do you create a hierarchy of rights? Once you do that, how are they different from laws? You've just created lots of laws at this point for different people and situations.
In my world those are not rights any more. They're bullshit. A right is something, theoretically, that everyone can have. Conflicting rights by definition destroy that.
Rights conflict even with themselves. This is even true for rights seen as "negative".
Consider property rights. I rent. My landlord has never stepped foot in the house. The state enforces his property rights. But the way it would do that is by violently evicting me from the property and making me homeless.
How is that a conflict of rights? You signed a contract that gave you access to the property on certain conditions, and if those conditions aren't met, you have no right to access that property.
Life is much messier than just negotiating rights, so please don't take my dismissal of your conflict of rights argument as a claim that life is a walk in the park.
But the issue that makes it messy is almost always not any conflict of negative rights, which outside of a tiny number of edge cases dealing with the limits of what defines a person's legitimate claims (e.g. the legitimacy of national sovereignty and the rights citizens inherit from that, the co-use of public property like roads and the rules that govern that, and the rules that assign private property rights over what is arguably public property, like private ownership over scarce natural resources) they are nowhere close to conflicting, and can be understood within a consistent moral framework adopted from thousands of years of theological evolution and moral philosophy, culminating in legal and moral principles like substantive due process, and the Golden Rule, respectively.
You don't have the right to live in someone else's home for free, and so no rights are conflicting.
I think you are asking about balancing tests: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balancing_test https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balancing_test
Your rights stop when someone else's rights are infringed. But where exactly do you draw the line? This is a complex and time-dependent question with a case-by-case answer. Right now, the human right to live outweighs the human right to not cover your face. In the EU, the right to privacy prevails the right of companies to serve targeted ads -- although the discussion around legitimate interests is ongoing.
But those are not human rights under the old definition.
Human rights are stuff like the right to dignity, the right of to being compelled to work, the right of not being totured or wrongfully imprisoned.
Humans right are supposed to only include those where you do not need to weight opposing rights. If person A is being tortured that is always a violation of a human right and it is never a violation of a human right not to torture sombody.
Humans right are meant to be a baseline definition of what we must provide to every human on the planet in any situation, whether there is a surplus of food or a worldwide famine, whether we live is a super advance technocracy or a solar flare destroys all electronics.
There are many many rights that are deeply essential in our society that are not human rights
Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but your right to dignity is a violation of my right to free expression, specifically I cannot just call you things.
I could probably come up with a situation for each right that feels absolute.
The right to freedom of expression is actually about protected expressions as an extreme example artistic torture is not a protected form of expression.
I am also reclutant to include it as a human right, the corresponding human right would be "freedom not to be compelled to express" eg freedom not to be forced to profess beliefs you do not want to profess.
Personally I do not believe that screaming at people and relentlessly insulting them is a human right, nor that doing so is necessarily a damage to their dignity so I do not see a contraddiction.
Under your own definition, everyone can have:
- housing
- education
- health care
Unless you’re saying that somehow it’s impossible for a society like the UK or US to ensure everyone has access to the above?
Even for your “negative rights”, we today already have conflicts. For instance, a right to trial by a jury of your peers: this clearly conflicts with the jury’s right to work. They can’t work while they’re hearing your trial. As soon as you allow “we’ll just dismiss those for whom jury duty is an undue burden”, you’re acknowledging society is big enough to handle these conflicts without creating an undue burden on anyone.
Your right to representation and to a trial by jury are limits on government power, not positive rights. You do not have the right to a lawyer or jury whenever you want. These are the conditions required if the government wants to prosecute you. If these conditions cannot be met the government can just drop the charges against you. We've seen this happen recently during covid due to court backlogs.
> A right is something, theoretically, that everyone can have.
Under this definition, what would you consider a right?
A right of not being condemned without due process, a right to dignity, a rigth to your religious beliefs, a rigth not to be tortured or wronfully imprisoned, a right not to be compelled to work, a right not to be compelled to speak, a right not to be governed by tyrants and a few more.
> Every government program, every preservation of right, requires taxation and resource allocation.
How much does it cost to not arrest and try someone falsely?
There are situations where the injustice is the thing that requires taxes and government.
> You only get to exercise the right to free speech if everyone else knows there are consequences for disrupting it. (Fines, imprisonment, etc)
Consequences don't have to run through the criminal justice system. If some people are assaulted, they are allowed to defend themselves. The damage done to assailants in the process is tax-free.
EDIT: Besides, rights are rights whether they are enforced or not. Slavery is still a violation of rights even when it is legal.
> Besides, rights are rights whether they are enforced or not.
Then there is no reason to discuss rights at all since might makes right.
> Consequences don't have to run through the criminal justice system. If some people are assaulted, they are allowed to defend themselves. The damage done to assailants in the process is tax-free.
But how about those who don't exist in this wild west cowboy world of duels at noon for honor? How do children defend themselves? How do the weak and infirm? Because they are incapable of enforcing their own rights they lose them? How do you stop mob justice? These don't sound like rights at all if you need to personally fight to ensure that you can keep them.
Parents/guardians should be defending children.
For everyone else, I believe the answer you are looking for is: guns. Everyone exists in this world, whether willingly or not. If someone is unwilling to defend their self, then that is their problem, and hopefully not the problem of others.
This "state" you're referring to that gives us our "freedom" is essentially that "more powerful" other entity you speak of that has come around and subjugated us. We are already living in an society where "warlords" have claimed land and "enslaved" us to give them part of our labor for the "generous" protection and "rights" they have given us. The fact that we have something like voting and relative physical freedom to go wherever and not have to be physically forced to do things (debatable) doesn't change the fact that we are subjugated to something we don't consent to.
While your "state" might not be perfect, are you truly "enslaved"? I mean, there are alternatives, but they aren't better:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Wild_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Into_the_Wild_(film)
The point he's getting at is that human rights don't stem from the government. You have them because you're human, not because an emperor in his divine mercy gave them to you. With or without government enforcement, you still have human rights.
I think, zpeti's point is that human rights should be privileges (or liberties) and not claims in the Hohfeldian system (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/#FormRighHohfAnalSyst https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rights/#FormRighHohfAnalS...).
There is a conflation between "correlatives" (a privilege means that no-one else has a claim to prevent you from exercising the privilege, whereas if you have a claim, then someone has the duty to fulfill it) and enforcement which requires state intervention.
>That requires the 'forced' labor of police officers, prison guards, construction workers for the prisons, agricultural workers for the food, medical supplies manufacturers, medical staff members for prisons, electricians, plumbers, garbage, sanitation workers.
First, this is voluntary labor. The 'forced labor' is with the taxpayer that pays for this being done.
Second, a state enforcing rights is rather different from human rights. If the state doesn't enforce a human right then that doesn't mean it's not a human right anymore. You didn't forfeit your right to life just because Pol Pot came into power, did you?
The state enforcing a right is one way to resolve a conflict of somebody violating your rights, but it's not the only one. If somebody attacks you and intends to kill you, then you can defend yourself with deadly force. Society doesn't pursue you for violating the attacker's right to life. Society doesn't have to do any work in this case, but the violation was dealt with.
Also, the human right to free speech doesn't mean that anybody has to listen to you or to promote what you're saying. Nobody has to give you a platform. Now, you could have a separate right to free speech that's a right given by the state (a law) that forces a social media site to give you (anyone) a platform, but that would be separate from human rights.
If a human right requires somebody else's labor then you have an adequacy problem. At what point is the human right fulfilled? If the government treats only broken bones, then is the right being fulfilled? Do they have to give you that million dollar gene therapy? Is the government violating your human rights because it doesn't invest enough into healthcare research for future treatments?
This argument is based on the false premise that the state will 'force' the labor of a police officer (or others) to protect your rights. It does not.
See Lozito vs. NYC - an individual was attacked by a drug addict with a knife. In front of 2 cops. They did nothing until the victim subdued the attacker. They then did not try to render aid to the victim. When Lozito sued, the judge dismissed saying the police have no duty to protect anyone.
https://youtu.be/jAfUI_hETy0 https://youtu.be/jAfUI_hETy0
Many marginalized communities realize the state is not there to help or serve them. If your experience is different - it is most likely that it is more of a happy coincidence that the state's interests and your personal interests are temporarily in alignment. There is no guarantees that this will continue for any length of time.
But "Human Rights" are not intended to be "nice things that we could and should have in the current American society". They are intended to be the Universal Human Rights, valid everywhere and all the times. They logically pre-exist before any government, because they are the moral foundation on which you are entitled to resist/overthrow by force a government that violate the Human Rights of his citizens. If you say for example that free access to education is an Human Right and your government must provide it, you are not merely stating "free access to education is very important, and is a deal breaker when it comes to election". It’s saying that should your government fail to provide free education, that is a casus belli between the government and the citizens, and that you have the right and the duty of insurrection to fix the situation as soon as possible.
Human Rights are a kind of schelling points where we agree that "those roles are so Universal that as soon as we recognize a violation of them, we instantly recognize who is the Bad Guy (the one who is violating them) and who is the Good Guy and (the one who is denied his basic human rights) and EVERYTHING GOES to fix the situation". If you have to put a bullet in the head of the Bad Guy, so be it. If you say that "Housing is a Human Right", you are instantly obligated to donate all of your disposable income as soon as you encounter one homeless. If you don’t, well, any bystander is justified in taking it from you, by force if necessary.
By putting everything that sounds nice in "Human Rights", you cheapen the term. Let’s say that in 20 years Human Rights really means exactly that : housing, basic income, internet access, and so on. In the mind of everyone, Human Right violation is no big deal, like someone not having internet access. Then how do you communicate the horrors of innocent citizens getting arrested, tortured and murdered ? Are you really going to put those two realities in the same term, "Human Rights Violation" ?
Nope. Some rights require active resources to infringe upon. If I'm worshipping Satan it takes 0 active effort to protect me from government (ignoring things like protecting me from neighbours, talking government only).
It takes active effort for the government to infringe in this case. It's actually quite tiresome, requiring people to round up the satanists, and root them out. Oppression can be pretty expensive.
Then you have things like safety, security, and prosperity. I share the view that these things aren't rights. I still view things like free speech and exercise of religion as "rights", and not things like food. That doesn't make them unimportant or mean the government shouldn't try to stop people from dying. Why does something have to be a right for the government to get involved. Why water down the concept of rights, by making them about access to resources? Using government isn't a two step process, where first something must be classified as a right, then the government can act.
The role of government in these cases is very different from the first example. There they simply needed to not use resources for oppression (it's not always THAT simple, but some things really do require active effort). Now they need to ensure everyone is getting adequate resources. It's fundamentally a different concept.
> You only get to exercise the right to free speech if everyone else knows there are consequences for disrupting it. (Fines, imprisonment, etc)... you only have that freedom so long as someone more powerful than you doesn't feel like taking it from you.
You're describing the government protecting you from a third party, which is not usually how first amendment laws are used in the USA (USA is just an example here). So no, active resources aren't necessarily needed to protect free speech infringement from government. Not in the same way as with resource allocation. Yeah, courts exist, but the health of a court system is not necessarily related to resources allocated. You could have a really well funded court that rubber stamps everything.
I actually think there's an interesting conversation here, regarding trade-offs between freedom/rights and prosperity/health. You could live in a totally free society with no food and health care, but what would be the point? Or you could live in an oppressive state, devoid of human dignity, but be perfectly healthy and safe. Maybe rights and freedom are a bit overrated.