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Thats just positive versus negative rights, although people often frame positive rights as "freedom from", i.e. "the freedom from starvation", which is just the

Thats just positive versus negative rights, although people often frame positive rights as "freedom from", i.e. "the freedom from starvation", which is just the positive right to food. Positive rights of course directly imply slavery so it makes sense people wish to frame them as negative rights.

RIMR 1y ago
How exactly does the right to food "imply slavery"?
- kristianbrigman 1y ago
  Where does the food come from that you have the right to?
wredcoll 1y ago
> Positive rights of course directly imply slavery so it makes sense people wish to frame them as negative rights. I think you're probably a better person than this.
- samdoesnothing 1y ago
  Hmm, let me explain and then you can be the judge of that. All rights that a person possesses implies obligations that everyone else must meet. For example, if I have the right to not be assaulted, that implies the obligation of others to not assault me. The difference between a negative and positive right is that the obligation for a negative right is inaction, but for a positive right it's action. If you're forced to act in a specific way, you're robbed of your agency and ownership of yourself. What else would you call that?
  - zestyping 1y ago
    Are you able to understand the difference between taxes and slavery? If you can, try your hand at explaining why taxes and slavery are different. I'm am not merely asking rhetorically; I'm serious. It's a worthwhile exercise because it reveals something about your underlying model of the world.
    - samdoesnothing 1y ago
      Well, I suppose we should define what we mean by "slavery" first because one could simply argue they aren't the same by definition. If it's something like "someone captured, sold, or born into chattel slavery", than obviously a tax payer is not a slave. But under a loser definition, it's fairly obvious that an entity which takes part of the results of your labor under the threat of violence at least partially owns you, and thus it's reasonable to consider tax payers as slaves to their government. I'm actually more interested in your argument for why they are mutually exclusive concepts.
      - wredcoll 1y ago
        > But under a loser definition, it's fairly obvious that an entity which takes part of the results of your labor under the threat of violence at least partially owns you, and thus it's reasonable to consider tax payers as slaves to their government. This is the difference between what I might call philosophical, or perhaps semantic, and practical discussions. We can define slavery to mean anything we want, up to and including being born. Every human has to eat and breathe to survive, does that mean they're slaves in that way? Sure? Maybe? Who cares. The practical discussion is how we want to live our actual lives and structure our actual systems of power. When people talk about "positive rights" (and really, all rights) they are aspirational. Merely creating a law does not change reality. We can create all the laws we want saying that people should not be murdered, but people will in fact, still be murdered, even though it is now against the law. Similarly we can create a law saying that people should have healthcare access or food, but people will still be unable to see a doctor or get food when they need it. Neither of those laws imply putting anyone into slavery. At a practical level, human life is better when we band together in larger and larger groups and contribute to the common welfare, however you want to phrase that. We can, of course, quibble over the size and type of those contributions and how we use them, thats how society should work, but it is incredible bad faith to accuse people who want to use those contributions for, say, healthcare access, of wanting to enslave people.
        samdoesnothing 1y ago

RIMR 1y ago

How exactly does the right to food "imply slavery"?

kristianbrigman 1y ago
Where does the food come from that you have the right to?

wredcoll 1y ago

> Positive rights of course directly imply slavery so it makes sense people wish to frame them as negative rights. I think you're probably a better person than this.

samdoesnothing 1y ago
Hmm, let me explain and then you can be the judge of that. All rights that a person possesses implies obligations that everyone else must meet. For example, if I have the right to not be assaulted, that implies the obligation of others to not assault me. The difference between a negative and positive right is that the obligation for a negative right is inaction, but for a positive right it's action. If you're forced to act in a specific way, you're robbed of your agency and ownership of yourself. What else would you call that?
- zestyping 1y ago
  Are you able to understand the difference between taxes and slavery? If you can, try your hand at explaining why taxes and slavery are different. I'm am not merely asking rhetorically; I'm serious. It's a worthwhile exercise because it reveals something about your underlying model of the world.
  - samdoesnothing 1y ago
    Well, I suppose we should define what we mean by "slavery" first because one could simply argue they aren't the same by definition. If it's something like "someone captured, sold, or born into chattel slavery", than obviously a tax payer is not a slave. But under a loser definition, it's fairly obvious that an entity which takes part of the results of your labor under the threat of violence at least partially owns you, and thus it's reasonable to consider tax payers as slaves to their government. I'm actually more interested in your argument for why they are mutually exclusive concepts.
    - wredcoll 1y ago
      > But under a loser definition, it's fairly obvious that an entity which takes part of the results of your labor under the threat of violence at least partially owns you, and thus it's reasonable to consider tax payers as slaves to their government. This is the difference between what I might call philosophical, or perhaps semantic, and practical discussions. We can define slavery to mean anything we want, up to and including being born. Every human has to eat and breathe to survive, does that mean they're slaves in that way? Sure? Maybe? Who cares. The practical discussion is how we want to live our actual lives and structure our actual systems of power. When people talk about "positive rights" (and really, all rights) they are aspirational. Merely creating a law does not change reality. We can create all the laws we want saying that people should not be murdered, but people will in fact, still be murdered, even though it is now against the law. Similarly we can create a law saying that people should have healthcare access or food, but people will still be unable to see a doctor or get food when they need it. Neither of those laws imply putting anyone into slavery. At a practical level, human life is better when we band together in larger and larger groups and contribute to the common welfare, however you want to phrase that. We can, of course, quibble over the size and type of those contributions and how we use them, thats how society should work, but it is incredible bad faith to accuse people who want to use those contributions for, say, healthcare access, of wanting to enslave people.
      - samdoesnothing 1y ago