One of then central problems of economics, of religion, and of society, is that it is made up of individuals who through only being capable of seeing the world through their own eyes, are either rationally or even irrationally selfish; which means that they will generally favour their own self-interest over any concern for others.
Granted that people will develop some kind of moral sense, and from there form rules and guidelines for proper conduct and morality but even these rules and guidelines still based upon the central premise that are inherently selfish. The reason why hard law needs to exist is that really people are no better than the beasts and have a tendency to revert to acting beastly to other people, because they are rationally or even irrationally selfish. Religion might come to a set of codified set of rules, which it arrives at based upon the assumption that there is a higher order power and a higher order force behind that power but even religion still can not escape the central problem that people are selfish.
I would argue that human selfishness is the dark puppet master underneath the two sliding scales of authoritarianism/libertarianism on one axis and collectivism/individualism on another and that most people's view about economics and politics is still shaped by that notion. When if comes to talking about human rights, selfishness which is the beast that shouts "I" at the heart of the world, is still right there.
The provision of goods and services, is in some respects an economic question which asks what, where, for whom, and who shall, produce things; but it is also a political question because those same questions are answered through the enactment of policy. Policy is nothing more than the formal arrangement of plans for the future; which plays with those two slider bars of authoritarianism/libertarianism on one axis and collectivism/individualism on the other.
The following post was in relation to a assertion that health care is a human right:
How can a human have a right to a service provided by another human?
You can certainly have a right to access it. But you can’t claim a right that demands the other party provide that service at the price, place and manner of your choosing.
- via Twitter, 4th June 2023 (name withheld).
As with so many of these discussions, people make statements with only a vague understanding of the terms therein. It is one thing to say that health care is a human right. However any further discussion on the issue is futile in a lot of cases unless you define what a "right" actually is.
Put simply, a "right" is the ability to:
- own a thing
- do a thing
- command a thing
- get a thing
...at law.
Most people understand property rights because a person owning a thing, which might be a small thing like an object or a very big thing called "land", is a pretty natural conception of the world. It is not hard to imagine that in the kosmos, objects have owners.
Even the thing itself does not have to be real. A person can own some land but in most cases does not own what's under the ground. The right to extract what is under the ground are held in rights such as mining rights, which are in effect the right to do a thing (mining). Mining rights are the ownership of an abstract concept; namely the ability to do something. Mining rights, patent and design rights, rights to abstract notions such as the franchise, and rights to intangible things such as citizenship, are all instances of where owning a thing happens when the thing isn't real.
Usually attached to property rights, is the right to command other people to leave. Various enclosed lands acts and crimes acts will rule the act of trespass as either a civil misdemeanor or a crime but still attached with the ownership of that property is the right of the owner to tell unwanted trespassers and miscreants to go away and "get off my land". This is different to merely owning a thing or doing a thing because this is the right to command a thing.
Our friend who obviously lives in the United States which is a nation which still hasn't really moved on from its eighteenth century conception of what its telos is, asserts that people do not have the right to healthcare because they do not have the right to command another human to provide a thing. This is where we find the basic and very deliberately cruel fault in logic from so many people.
Curiously, healthcare is a right which the individual should be able to demand that the other party provide that service at a proper price and place. Healthcare should be a right because you should be able to get it from the state as part of their responsibility to the citizenry. It actually has nothing to do with your ability to command it from a human but rather the state itself and quite frankly, the argument that it is dependent on a human is cruel and stupid. Stupidity is not a matter of intelligence but choice. Stupidity is the act of choosing to do a thing which actively harms one's self or other people. Choosing to deny healthcare to someone as a matter of public policy, can be viewed in no other terms and to do so is dishonest.
Perhaps the nearest equivalent to this is whether or not a child can demand to be looked after by their parents. Only very cruel and stupid people would argue that a child does not have the right to be looked after by their parents. However their right does not stem from their ability to demand anything but rather that the child's parents have the responsibility to look after their children. Any failing in this respect is in not way the fault of the child but the absolute fault of their parents. Likewise, to suggest that the health of the citizens of the nation is not as much a responsibility of the state as law and order, or education, or defence, is cruel and stupid and put forward by equally cruel and stupid people.
For almost every nation state in the world, that nation state is a legal person which has been established by constitution. There are only a very few places like the United Kingdom or New Zealand where there is no single constitution but rather a raft of planks which together make up constitutional framework. No matter, in every example that I can think of, the nation state is corporation sole which has been established by constitution.
Depending on the legal fiction employed, the nation state is either corporation sole which is bootstrappy in that it owns itself, or is corporation sole which is owned another corporation sole which is named something like the "Crown" or "The People" in plural. Citizens generally have voting rights (which again are the ability to own, command and do a thing - the franchise), who then elect what amounts to board members and executives in parliaments and cabinets. It is by no accident that the head of state of republics (that is 'res public', a public thing), are called usually called Presidents because they preside over the board of directors of the nation state.
Healthcare should be a right not because you can command it from the nation state but rather that you can get it from the nation state because the nation state has the responsibility to look after its citizenry. The nation state like every citizen and other corporations, has not only rights to own, do, command and get things, but also responsibilities. I would very much argue that the defence of the health of the nation is as much as responsibility of the nation state as is the military defence, or civil defence and law and order, and fire safety defence of the nation. It is also reasonable to expect that the nation state should provide those things which are reasonable to allow a reasonable function within the nation state, such as education, water and sewerage services, parks, et cetera.
The question of healthcare as a right, that is the right to get seen to by a doctor and have one's health maintained for the proper functioning within society, is in part the deliberately wrong way to look at it. The right to get a thing or command a thing, is far less important than a person's responsibility to do a thing.
The expression of the attitude that someone thinks that the nation state should not have the responsibility to see to it that the health of the nation is maintained to some proper and reasonable standard, actually gives away their belief that they think that the other citizens of the nation state are beneath them. Granted that people naturally tend towards selfishness and there is also a natural tendency to look after one's own family before other peoples' (which is fit and proper as one has responsibilities for one's own family), but selfishness extended to the running of the nation state cussedly raises a middle finger to the public of 'res public' and the common of a 'commonwealth'. I am very much prepared to say that a nation state which refuses to look after its own citizenry, is a cruel and stupid populated by equally cruel and stupid people who choose that for their nation.
Suggesting that healthcare is not a right, is to demand that as public policy. It only stems from someone favouring their own self-interest over any concern for others. Yet again, we end right back at our old friend selfishness.
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