Whenever you declare something a positive “right,” it implies slavery on the part of someone else to fulfill it. If we continue on the current path with health care, forced conscription of doctors is inevitable.
[Update a few minutes later]
I liked this:
Another force at work here is the fact that government intervention in health care has for years been sending doctors out of general practice and into specializations that are far removed from Washington’s interference. Obamacare will almost certainly intensify that trend, producing a surplus of specialists such as cosmetic surgeons even as the nation experiences a shortage of primary-care physicians. The legacy of Democratic health-care reform very well may turn out to be cheaper boob jobs, a fitting comeuppance for the boobs who put this program in place and the boobs who elected them.
I think there may be a few fewer boobs next fall.
Expect Baghdad Jim to show up any minute telling us why this could never happen in a million years.
Then expect it to happen in a year or two, with Baghdad Jim’s loyal support.
“The wealthy are hoarding doctors! Force them to share!”
“Doctors are refusing to provide health care to lower income people because they’re greedy one-percenters who don’t care about anyone but the rich! Health-care is an American RIGHT! Make them do their jobs by requiring them to treat ANYONE.”
why this could never happen in a million years
As it happens, my dad was drafted out of medical school in 1962, so I’m acquainted with the possibility.
If we do run short of primary care doctors there are things that could be done short of drafting doctors, such as letting in more foreign-trained doctors, and easing restrictions on physician assistants and nurse practitioners.
If we do run short of primary care doctors there are things that could be done short of drafting doctors, such as letting in more foreign-trained doctors, and easing restrictions on physician assistants and nurse practitioners.
Why would foreign-trained doctors be any more willing to remain general practitioners than US doctors? Let them in and they’ll have the same incentives to become specialists as US doctors do. It’ll also be even harder on US doctors actually trying to be general practitioners since the competition for their jobs are artificially elevated by importing supply.
As to physician assistants and nurse practitioners, it is an interesting idea for increasing supply in a market friendly way.
Jim will just point to his dad being a military doctor and claim all turned out ok. Of course, we get to see his dad’s progeny to gauge the success of Jim’s statement.
How does the Federal government deal with that problem? Well, by taking over another industry–student loans.
Read this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/26/us/politics/26loans.html?_r=0
“I think there may be a few fewer boobs next fall.”
I am sure our friends to the left are dreaming up some pretty cool racial and gender based attack campaigns as a counter.
Unfortunately, many people define negative rights with an inherent exception for the government – as they do so many other things.
So, basically, the definition becomes: Negative rights are limited to those that can be exercised without requiring something of others (e.g., transfers of income and property), except when I say it’s okay.
Initially, this is intended with good intentions. The government’s exception is there to protect negative rights. Over time the wedge inevitably widens to include anything and everything, including positive rights.
The right to a fair trial is a positive right — it compels quite a number of people to work hard to provide a legal infrastructure for the accused (and the imprisoned who are working on appeals, etc). I foresee the dastardly drafting of judges, defense attorneys, and clerks of all sorts!
The right to a fair trial is a positive right — it compels quite a number of people to work hard to provide a legal infrastructure for the accused (and the imprisoned who are working on appeals, etc). I foresee the dastardly drafting of judges, defense attorneys, and clerks of all sorts!
And jurors.
The right to a fair trial by jury is a limit on government power. It places a limit on what the government may do to people. Not a direct benefit to some people that must come at the expense of others, an exercise of government power.
That’s an idiotic analogy.
Rand: I was just teasing – I think the distinction between positive rights and negative rights is quite blurry. But Karl’s comment about jurors is illustrative, and I’m surprised you’re negative about it. The idea of drafting doctors sounds crazy and far out, but we do compel jurors — doesn’t that give your wild claim about doctors some credibility?
PeterH, the right to a fair trial is “a direct benefit to some people that must come at the expense of others” (it benefits the accused at the expense of the taxpayers). OR, you could see the right to a fair trial as a direct benefit to everyone, since it keeps us civilized. Similarly, we can view just about any so-called “positive right” in either light — maybe it benefits some at the expense of others, or maybe it benefits everyone as it keeps us civilized.
The classic example is immunization programs, which benefit everyone, not just the immunized, which is why we should offer to immunize illegal aliens and other nth-tier people. But then you can argue that education is like immunization in that it benefits everyone, and if this goes on, we’ll soon have a jack-booted evil statist prison like, um, Australia, where Trent yearns to breath free.
No one has to serve on a jury, except as a condition to vote.
If you don’t like to talk about public defenders, talk about judges. Everyone who goes to trial uses them, and their pay is extracted – at gunpoint! – from the taxpayers, evidence that the right to a fair trial is a positive right.
Consider three reasons to pay taxes: 1) the military, 2) judges, 3) healthcare. The military and health care are quite similar: both involve battling or detering foreigners who are trying to kill us. In the case of health care, we battle or deter alien species and entities such as bacteria, viruses, prions, and in the case of cancer, frickin’ mutants. (I hate mutants. Metastizing mutants must die!) Sure, no one likes paying taxes, but at least self-defense is a natural right, regardless of whether it is a positive or negative one.
In contrast, paying taxes for a judiciary is an outrage! First the government *imposes* completely arbitrary laws, and then it taxes us – at gunpoint! – to protect us from those laws. This is called “a protection racket”, and is far from a benign negative right. Harumph!
My comment showed up out-of-order. It belongs below Rand’s comment complaining that I’m obtuse.
A fair trial is not a positive right, any more than a right to not have your country invaded. It is not a wealth transfer, as welfare and free health care is.
Is a public defender an example of “wealth tranfer” in the sense that you mean? If not, how is compelling taxes to pay doctors to treat poor people different from compelling taxes to pay public defenders to represent poor people?
Because most poor people don’t need public defenders — only those that the state decides to indict. You’re being obtuse.
The right to a fair trial and a defender is something the people set up to limit what the government, specifically powerful politicians or prosecutors in the executive branches, could do to them. It was part of our heritage as English and reins in abuses by aristocrats and warlords.
George, while what you say is true, you’re not providing an argument for why the right to a fair trial is a negative right, and maybe you didn’t intend to. And you’re not addressing the fact that taxes for the judiciary are collected at gunpoint!!!1! What do you think of my argument above that it is just a protection racket?
In any case, here’s your argument recast for health care: “The right to healthcare is something the people set up to limit what foreign invaders, specifically dangerous bacteria and viruses, could do to them. It was part of our heritage as charitable Westerners and reins in ravages of ill health.” You might not like that argument, but it makes more sense than your argument, since there is no protection racket element to it.
A right to a fair trial is a negative right because it prevents the state from arbitrarily depriving you of your liberty.
Rand says “A right to a fair trial is a negative right because it prevents the state from arbitrarily depriving you of your liberty.”
Yes, but since “it implies slavery [or taxation] on the part of someone else to fulfill it,” it is also a positive right.
The definitions are not clear at all. This matters, because, as other commenters have noted, and as you certainly believe, there is a camel’s nose in the tent effect to the expansion of government.
Yes, but since “it implies slavery [or taxation] on the part of someone else to fulfill it,” it is also a positive right.
No, it isn’t. Your logic is broken. All positive rights require taxation or slavery. Not all things that require that are positive rights.
umm.. I think he’s right.. but then, I believe in polycentric law. It is the centralization of the courts which makes the “right” to a fair trial necessary at all. If the market were providing law, it would be automatically “fair”.
Unfortunately since enforcement of law involves use of force, that doesn’t necessarily work. You take your case to a court that favors you, I appeal to a court that favors me. The law on a given issue would tend to degenerate to whatever coalition of courts was most powerful.
How is that different than the situation now?
Can you give or recommend a definition of positive rights? When I visit various libertarian websites, I see variations on only this: “Fundamentally, positive rights require others to provide you with either a good or service”
That’s a pretty reasonable definition, except it could be improved perhaps by the addition of the notion that the goods or services are things that most or all people need.
Thanks. But now I’m utterly confused. Most people do not need brain tumor operations, but a right to a brain tumor operation would surely be a positive right. Most or all people do need food, but a right to food would also be a positive right. I suppose you’re dancing around the issue of poverty, but how impoverished a society is, and how expensive a need is, are quite variable: most people can’t afford certain kinds of advanced surgeries, while most people in a famine can’t afford food.
I’m also confused where compulsory juror service fits in. I think figuring out the status of the judiciary is important if you want to envision a society which emphasizes (or even has only) negative rights, because negative rights clash (for example, my negative right to fly airplane however low I want over your house, all day long in circles, is going to clash with your negative rights , and a powerful judiciary is going to be needed. I loved The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, but I never believed that scene where they have an impromptu trial, nor did I believe in the entire setup: sadly, a strongman or mafia type would have been running that place in no time flat.
Most people need some form of health care. Breaking it down to specific ailments doesn’t change things.
The purpose of the justice system is to enforce a negative-rights regime.
You’re being obtuse again, BTW, and making this a lot harder than it is. If it’s the form of “Give me free stuff!” that’s a positive right.
I loved The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress … a strongman or mafia type would have been running that place in no time flat.
Try actually reading it instead of just claiming you have. A strongman/mafia type did run the place.
Curt, It _has_ been many years since I read it, but who/what are you talking about? The Warden and the Goldskins? They didn’t really run the show – if they had, Heinlein wouldn’t have been able to illustrate aspects of a libertarian culture such as the trial scene. (I don’t recall whether the trial scene came before or after the overthrow of the Lunar Authority, but the culture and its customs had arisen long before the overthrow.)
Rand, numberous libertarian discussion sites discuss – at length – discuss the right to a fair trial. One tact is to propose that there are positive, negative, and “procedural” rights. Another position libertarians take, and I think it is the most common one, is simply acknowledge that judicial rights are positive rights, and then explain why this is a special case, using all the reasons expressed above.
For a different conversation: it strikes me as interesting that while libertarians accuse leftwingers of “wanting stuff for free”, this is exactly what the left wing says about libertarians — for example, arguments about externalities with respect to pollution, or the intent behind the poorly-worded argument that Elizabeth Warren made when she said “You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for.”, etc. (Yes, the factory owner paid taxes, but the liberal who wants to make healthcare a right is and will be paying taxes too — neither gets stuff for free.) Another time.
em>it strikes me as interesting that while libertarians accuse leftwingers of “wanting stuff for free”, this is exactly what the left wing says about libertarians
Of course it does, and of course they do.
That doesn’t make their “argument,” such as it is, valid.
Note that the White House, back in October, has characterized access to affordable health care as a “right”. So, they feel they can compel doctors, nurses, hospitals, drug companies, etc. to provide care.