4 ms·
I'd modify your "people innately have rights" to "there are freedoms which benefit both individuals and the communities they're a part of, which should be treat
by unalone 14y ago
I'd modify your "people innately have rights" to "there are freedoms which benefit both individuals and the communities they're a part of, which should be treated as innate rights." A bit wordier, but useful in defining what, specifically, entitles us to any particular right.
Personally, I think our right to health is more precious than our right to property or wealth. I'm not opposed to wealth by any means, and entrepreneurialism is a wonderfully fun enterprise, but they are lesser concerns than whether or not people are dying for preventable reasons. Ideally, a government encourages both health and entrepreneurialism by finding ways to pay people searching for more effective healthcare, then by rewarding the people who find it, but that's not what we're debating here.
The answer to "Should the government take my money to pay for somebody else's flu shot, if they cannot afford it?" is a near-unequivocal yes, for me, with the one condition being that I have enough money to afford that flu shot for them. Some people can pay for many more flu shots than I can, and I do believe that it's moral to request that they do so.