Positive and Negative Rights

Rights don’t require the action of others.

For example, the right to life doesn’t require anyone to act, it simply requires that others don’t kill you.

Along these lines, Heathcare is not a right. Healthcare requires that someone provide a service to you. A service that the individual spent many, many years training in and hundreds of thousands of dollars to be allowed to practice. To demand this service with no intention of compensating the individual is immoral.

Food is not a right. If some paid for the seed and fertilizer, then paid for the equipment to harvest it and someone else used their skill to process it into an edible food item, you’re not entitled to it. You can trade either money or services to obtain it or if they choose to give it to you for free, that is fine, you just can’t forcibly demand someone to give it to you.

This same line of logic can follow through to just about everything else imaginable, like education, art, employment, etc. Yes, food, water, and basic healthcare is necessary to sustain life, but it doesn’t matter how rich or how poor or how many weapons you possess, it’s immoral to demand any action from anyone at any time without some sort of compensation.

There’s an argument to be made that if one individual has an abundance of an item or service that someone else needs, it’s immoral to not provide that item or service to that person in need but it is even more immoral to force the individual with abundance to give up some of their supply for free. It is in both party’s best interest to find a mutually beneficial exchange.

On an individual level, unhindered by governmental involvement, the vast majority of the world already operates in this way in a large majority of transactions. I believe that the less interference, the less expensive most goods and services can be and the more transactions can take place without violating the rights of any involved parties.

Another thing I’d like to discuss is that someone’s rights don’t end where another person’s feelings begin. In other words, let’s pretend I say something that you find offensive or makes you uncomfortable but isn’t threatening or violent. You can feel however you feel, but you do not have the right to tell me I can’t engage in that speech just based on your feelings. That would require the action of someone else, and is therefore not a right.