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Having more than one right (i.e. "rights") entails contradictions between competing rights. That's how the real world works. Even if you view rights as "freedom

Having more than one right (i.e. "rights") entails contradictions between competing rights. That's how the real world works. Even if you view rights as "freedom from," the right to "freedom from harm" immediately conflicts with speech, gun ownership, and whatever else. If you don't think there's a right to freedom from harm that competes with those other rights, I don't know what to tell you. The real work of governance and legislation requires carefully negotiating trade-offs between competing priorities in an ever-changing world. Beyond that though, it is reasonable in our world for citizens of a state to view affordable access to a minimal standard of medical care as a bedrock right afforded to all citizens, and to build their state around this assumption. The same can be said of access to education, or legal representation or access to clean water and energy. It is then incumbant upon the legislating body to provide for those rights, which enter conflict the second there's a budget to consider. The fact that positive rights are "leftist" in some parts of the world reflects a degree of deep ideological incoherence and immaturity in those parts, more than anything, I think. Also I can't for the life of me understand why we'd craft policy in some kind of timeless vaccuum. We don't live in a timeless vaccuum. Some of us are fortunate enough to be born into states with stable, well-established educational, judicial, transportational, financial, medical (etc. etc.) infrastructure that is substantially owned and operated by the state or state-regulated monopolies. It's pretty natural to view fair and equitable access to these as baseline rights.

pdonis 2y ago
> the right to "freedom from harm" immediately conflicts with speech, gun ownership You don't have a right to "freedom from harm" if that means not hearing any speech you don't like. You do have a right not to be shot, but "gun ownership" by itself does not conflict with that right. Being shot by someone who owns a gun does, but then the rights violation is the shooting, not the gun ownership. > If you don't think there's a right to freedom from harm that competes with those other rights, I don't know what to tell you. Your position, that all rights are inherently in conflict with each other, means nobody really has rights; what you call "rights" are really just at the mercy of the legislature: > The real work of governance and legislation requires carefully negotiating trade-offs between competing priorities in an ever-changing world. No, the real work of governance and legislation requires protecting the basic rights that everyone has to have to have a free, civil society, and stopping there. A government that has more power than that has too much power. Your position reminds me of the old saying: no one's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. > The fact that positive rights are "leftist" in some parts of the world reflects a degree of deep ideological incoherence and immaturity in those parts, more than anything, I think. It reflects a degree of deep ideological incoherence and immaturity on the part of leftists who advocate for such "positive rights", yes. That's a recipe for eternal conflict. Which is indeed what leftism of that variety leads to.
- jknoepfler 2y ago
  If you think there's an inviolable set of Ur rights that aren't intrinsically in conflict, then articulate them. Your inability to articulate them cogently suggests that they don't exist... not that every argument to the contrary is false because they must exist. Refusing to think critically and insisting "muh absolute rights must be real" isn't an argument, it's a (peculiarly male, American, sad) fantasy. Yeehaw, cowboy fantasy land.
  - pdonis 2y ago
    > If you think there's an inviolable set of Ur rights I made no such claim. Of course any right can be violated, since rights aren't laws of physics, they're agreements that citizens of a civil society make with each other in order to be able to build wealth through cooperation, specialization, and trade. And people always have the ability to violate agreements. That doesn't mean they should, it just means they can. And of course there are always people who do. But that doesn't mean there has to be conflict between the rights themselves. It just means there are always at least some people who refuse to respect other people's rights, and we have to have some kind of plan for dealing with them. > Your inability to articulate them cogently I don't know where you're getting that from, since the old saying I mentioned already contains the basic answer: life, liberty, property. (I might also add the pursuit of happiness, from the Declaration of Independence.) But it's true that it's easy to misunderstand what those rights mean, particularly "liberty", and to think that they must be in conflict because, for example, my "liberty" has to include the right to take your life if I feel like it. But that's nonsense, and there is plenty of literature in philosophy, ethics, and political science expounding a proper concept of "liberty" that includes the obvious point that your right to liberty does not include violating the rights of others. > Refusing to think critically Is exactly the problem with people who can't understand how there can be a set of basic rights that aren't in conflict, because they can't, for example, imagine any concept of "liberty" that isn't "I can do whatever I feel like".
    - sprucevoid 2y ago
      > a set of basic rights that aren't in conflict Do you have a reply to the arguments in these linked texts that property is inherently coercive? https://mattbruenig.com/2015/10/01/capitalism-is-coercive-and-creates-patterns-of-deprivation-as-explained-by-libertarian-blockquotes/ https://mattbruenig.com/2015/10/01/capitalism-is-coercive-an... https://mattbruenig.com/2014/05/07/property-and-conflict/ https://mattbruenig.com/2014/05/07/property-and-conflict/

pdonis 2y ago

> the right to "freedom from harm" immediately conflicts with speech, gun ownership You don't have a right to "freedom from harm" if that means not hearing any speech you don't like. You do have a right not to be shot, but "gun ownership" by itself does not conflict with that right. Being shot by someone who owns a gun does, but then the rights violation is the shooting, not the gun ownership. > If you don't think there's a right to freedom from harm that competes with those other rights, I don't know what to tell you. Your position, that all rights are inherently in conflict with each other, means nobody really has rights; what you call "rights" are really just at the mercy of the legislature: > The real work of governance and legislation requires carefully negotiating trade-offs between competing priorities in an ever-changing world. No, the real work of governance and legislation requires protecting the basic rights that everyone has to have to have a free, civil society, and stopping there. A government that has more power than that has too much power. Your position reminds me of the old saying: no one's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session. > The fact that positive rights are "leftist" in some parts of the world reflects a degree of deep ideological incoherence and immaturity in those parts, more than anything, I think. It reflects a degree of deep ideological incoherence and immaturity on the part of leftists who advocate for such "positive rights", yes. That's a recipe for eternal conflict. Which is indeed what leftism of that variety leads to.

jknoepfler 2y ago
If you think there's an inviolable set of Ur rights that aren't intrinsically in conflict, then articulate them. Your inability to articulate them cogently suggests that they don't exist... not that every argument to the contrary is false because they must exist. Refusing to think critically and insisting "muh absolute rights must be real" isn't an argument, it's a (peculiarly male, American, sad) fantasy. Yeehaw, cowboy fantasy land.
- pdonis 2y ago
  > If you think there's an inviolable set of Ur rights I made no such claim. Of course any right can be violated, since rights aren't laws of physics, they're agreements that citizens of a civil society make with each other in order to be able to build wealth through cooperation, specialization, and trade. And people always have the ability to violate agreements. That doesn't mean they should, it just means they can. And of course there are always people who do. But that doesn't mean there has to be conflict between the rights themselves. It just means there are always at least some people who refuse to respect other people's rights, and we have to have some kind of plan for dealing with them. > Your inability to articulate them cogently I don't know where you're getting that from, since the old saying I mentioned already contains the basic answer: life, liberty, property. (I might also add the pursuit of happiness, from the Declaration of Independence.) But it's true that it's easy to misunderstand what those rights mean, particularly "liberty", and to think that they must be in conflict because, for example, my "liberty" has to include the right to take your life if I feel like it. But that's nonsense, and there is plenty of literature in philosophy, ethics, and political science expounding a proper concept of "liberty" that includes the obvious point that your right to liberty does not include violating the rights of others. > Refusing to think critically Is exactly the problem with people who can't understand how there can be a set of basic rights that aren't in conflict, because they can't, for example, imagine any concept of "liberty" that isn't "I can do whatever I feel like".
  - sprucevoid 2y ago
    > a set of basic rights that aren't in conflict Do you have a reply to the arguments in these linked texts that property is inherently coercive? https://mattbruenig.com/2015/10/01/capitalism-is-coercive-and-creates-patterns-of-deprivation-as-explained-by-libertarian-blockquotes/ https://mattbruenig.com/2015/10/01/capitalism-is-coercive-an... https://mattbruenig.com/2014/05/07/property-and-conflict/ https://mattbruenig.com/2014/05/07/property-and-conflict/