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Tags: libertarian rights writer's block health care
Published : 2 months, 1 week ago (Wed, 24 Sep 2008 04:03:22 PDT)
Searched: libertarian
http://balcerzak.livejournal.com/8029.html 0 links
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In order to properly answer this question, a little bit of investigation into what it means for something to be a right is certainly in order. After all, one can't very well present an arguement when the basic terms and principles are unclear. Consider if we will the basic Lockean rights: life, liberty, and property. Think for awhile on particularly that last one, the right to property. Does this imply that one is entitled to property, without putting forth the effort to obtain it in fair trade, among equals, in the free market? Certainly not. Rights do not imply entitlement, by their very nature they are something entirely different.
If you don't like that example, then consider the right to life. I have often seen people try to argue that, health care, should be folded into and considered as a subset of this right. To a degree, they're absolutely correct there. However, in many cases, they tend to draw the wrong conclusions from this perfectly sound deduction. I've seen them conclude that since health care, pursuant to keeping an individual alive, is a right, then that it must certainly be supplied to a person, regardless of their circumstances. This conclusion is errant, in my opinion. Food, and shelter are also pre-requisites to life, yet one is not entitled to receive enough food to live, nor a home to reside in. Who would provide such a thing? On whom does the obligation lie?
Defining a right as an entitlement is fundamentally flawed, as entitlements must always be provided by somebody. Defining rights as entitlements is equivalent to assigning a duty to someone, or a collection of someones, to provide you with whatever is associated with that right, be it food, shelter, health care, or what have you. It is requiring someone else to keep you alive, basically delegating your life into the hands of another. It is sloppy thinking, lazy, unethical, and immoral.
However, I still believe in rights, I still believe that, to a degree, health care is a right, just not in the way it seems to be commonly bandied about in contemporary political discourse. I find that it is more useful to think of rights not as entitlements, but as instead a sort of injunction of non-interference. One's right to property, for instance, does not convey the entitlement of being accorded property by others, but rather once property has been acquired, it is an injunction that others may not take that property from you. Similarly, the right to life. No obligation exists on the part of others to keep you alive, but rather they may not deprive you of such things necessary for life once you've obtained them. In the context of health care, health care as a right means, to me, that once you've obtained a prescription, say, you should not be hindered in getting it filled. Or that if you and a doctor have come to an agreement about a treatment, some third party has no grounds to interfere in its completion.
Of course, there are bound to be areas where rights come into conflict. If, for instance, you and a surgeon have agreed that you need a liver transplant to live, the right to have that not interfered with may collide with the rights of whoever is to supply the liver. To resolve such issues, I defer to the libertarian position on the non-initiation of force (or fraud). Your right to not be interfered with in receiving your liver is annulled as soon as you initiate force (or fraud) to obtain that liver from an unwilling donor, as are your other rights. If in a struggle of self-defense said donor kills you, interfering with your greater right to life, above and beyond the right to health care, they are not at fault, as you initiated the force (or fraud) against them. |
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