No. Government funded police services aren’t a right, they’re a method to enforce the right. Getting robbed means that someone has violated your rights, getting heart disease does not.
Do you even bother to read the stuff you write?
If I call the police, they will come to my house, how is that not me demanding individual treatment?
If there is grounds to believe my house will be attacked, the police will in fact, extend to me individual protection. If I fear for my life, with justifiable cause, the police will protect me.
See the way it’s based on an actual NEED. Not a made up need, not a wishful hope, but need. If my house is being burglarized I have the right to demand a police response.
Extend this to health care. If I am having a heart attack, I should have the right to receive the required care as established by the American Medical Association. No more, no less. if I want a private room with a big titted nurse, I’ll have to pay extra for that. If I want a battery of unrelated and unnecessary tests, I’ll have to pay extra for that too.
Now, if I simply think I’m having a heart attack, and the triage nurse realizes it’s bullshit, I can’t DEMAND care. I have no right to care I don’t need.
Ditto for fire and schools. When my house is on fire, hell, even when there is just smoke, I will get the full services I am entitled to. House not on fire, no service. House on fire, service. My kid gets the same education every other kid gets. I can’t demand a private classroom. I can demand equal services.
OK, but it seems to me that we have provided free public eduction up to what you should get until you are an adult-- ie, a high school diploma. But, college? No. Because you’re an adult. Now, we do subsidize certain post-secondary eduction (state schools), but it isn’t free.
Still, we have decided, as a society, that we want to give kids an education. They don’t have a right to that education. We just decided we’re a better society making sure they get it.
But it’s an important point. As has been repeatedly pointed out, there is a difference between rights you have inherently, and benefits we have decided to give you as a society-- benefits that will be provided for you whether or not you can afford them.
Education is one of these benefits. You’re right to free speech is not a benefit-- no on has to give you anything.
Actually, it doesn’t. Again, if there is no money to be had for a police force, how are you going to obtain the right to one? There is a fundamental difference between the right to do something without interference and the right to be given a service that other people have to provide. We decide to institute a police force because it is more efficient than everyone hiring their own bodyguards, and because we prefer to allow the government to have a monopoly on the use of violence. But we don’t allow the government to use that violence to kill us, without due process of law. That is the right to life.
If we, as a society, decide to do that, fine. But it isn’t a right in the same sense as a right to free speech or the right to life. No one has to give you those last two. And just because we decide for the government to do “x” to protect us, doesn’t mean we must decide to let the government do “y” to protect us.
So maybe we’re evolving into a new and smarter system where we recognize that there were rights that involved doing nothing, and that was good. Now we recognize that there are rights that involve us doing something, which can also be good.
It took a long and violent revolution before the founding fathers decided there were self evident rights–for white land owners.
It took a civil war to give some rights to African Americans.
And then a long and lengthy battle to give women the right to vote.
And at each stage of the game there were a small but vocal few that insisted things stay the same, and that the previous way was the only right way. How do you think your side is going to look in 30 years? “Grandpa, did you help make sure we have the best health care in the world?” “No Jimmy, I thought we’d be better off with a crappy system.”
Now we grow up a bit, look around, and realize that every citizen has the right to health care, what the entails exactly I’m not sure. Maybe it’s UHC, maybe it’s equal access to insurance.
If you were a poor country, with a poor population, maybe you’d have a case to be made. But neither of those are true. You currently spend more per capita on health care than any other country, and for what? You have one of the highest per capita GDPs. There is plenty of money available to make sure no one dies from an easily treatable condition, and to do that in a sane an orderly manner.
Addressed already:
Expand the meaning of the work “right”, and we just need another word to mean the kind of rights that don’t require anyone to give anything to you. There is still going to be a distinction between those, whatever you call them.
Police are there to enforce the fundamental right to life we enjoy. So are firemen. Are you any less dead if you die from a preventable heart attack rather than a killer? Do you have any more money if you spend it on hospital care to stay alive or are robbed? I’m all for personal responsibility; if someone spends it on cars or gambling, tough. But many people do not bring heart problems on themselves.
So, for instance, black children in the South had their rights violated by the government keeping them out of schools, but they did not have their rights violated by being banned from theaters and lunch counters. That is a very narrow view of rights, much like Goldwater had. In this view the government has no responsibility to do anything, just a responsibility not to do things like ban speech. Government can fold its hands and let its citizens be slaughtered. It would be inconvenient, and might hurt the economy, but no rights would be violated.
Which brings me to where rights come from. Since neither of us believe they come from any sort of deity, do they come from some sort of reasoning from basic principles, or do they evolve by decisions by the people? I rather think the latter is the case, since we can all argue to different levels of rights from first principles, and there is no real way of determining who is correct.
You might want to read the cite, which points out that you are wrong. You do not have any such right.
Again, read the cite. You do not have any such right. See also DeShaney v. Winnebago County. My first Wiki cite mentions that there is a long string of cases in which
If you are relying on the notion that you have some right to demand police protection, and then want to extend that to demand a right to health care, you aren’t going to get very far - you have no such right in the first place, and therefore cannot extend it.
Regards,
Shodan
Can’t disagree with any of that. So, you say we have a right to UHC, and I say we don’t. I’ve given my reason and you’ve given yours. I’m just saying that at the very least you need to recognize, in your scheme, that there are 2 types of “rights”, and in my scheme I don’t. You need to invent a new word, and I don’t. You claim that there are some rights that, under certain circumstances, are impossible to have. I find that rather meaningless.
This sounds a lot like the same sex marriage issue. “sure, you can get hitched, you just can’t call it marriage, that’s our word, we like it, so come up with a different word.”
I took a look at the thread title and noticed it says should be a right. We’re talking about adding to the list of rights our benevolent dictators decided were self evident. So yes, the meaning of the word is going to evolve to match the reality of the world we live in.
When they said we have the right to bear arms, they were talking about single fire muskets. It never occurred to them that we would have guns capable of shooting down an airplane, which they also didn’t have back then. Things change. Get over it.
They also meant for those rights to cover white land owners. The concept that an African American slave had the right to free speech was laughable. That’s not what the term “rights” meant. The right to vote didn’t include women, why would it? That’s not what the right to vote means. I would point to early court decisions showing African Americans didn’t have the right to do something, but I can’t because they didn’t even get a say in court.
All of yours and Shoden’s arguments were used just as feverishly to deny rights at each stage of the game. You aren’t coming up with anything new. Just like lots of other countries realized slavery was wrong, the US just needs a bit more time.
If it’s a right, how do you (hypothetically) guarantee this right in a country too poor to pay for it? Freedom of assembly costs nothing, freedom of speech costs nothing, but access to health care for everyone is an expensive proposition.
Not relevant. My example has nothing to do with due process, for one thing. I’m also referring to rights that are fundamental that would inspire the Constitution, not rights derived from the Constitution. Third. I’d accept that a person who suffers because 911 did not respond in a timely fashion did not lose his rights, but that is a different story from government washing its hands of its obligation to protect its citizens.
If we go back to basics, and you read your Hobbes, it is clear that it is absurd to say that the only rights we have are from government, since governments were formed in most part to protect us from each other. If government does not have that obligation, it has no reason to exist. We do not have to fear abuses from a non-existent government.
Again, no, it is not an expensive proposition. If the society is too poor to pay taxes that would provide a basic UHC system, the society is ALSO too poor to pay for the medical bills they’d pay without a right to UHC. It’s the same cost, not a fanciful made up one. We’re not talking about the right to a private room at the Mayo, that is a strawman, we’re talking about the right to a shared room in a good hospital with a competent and board certified doctor who performs medically necessary procedures.
And all of those other rights require a stable society with a functioning police force to let you have those rights. Apply your logic to most of the third world, you don’t get free speech or peaceable assembly if an armed militia can easily take it away from you. If the royal family can shut you up. Rights have to be protected, that protection costs money. Countries too poor to provide UHC also don’t have the rest of the rights we take for granted.
If it helps, I have what I call the Desert Island Test, or DIT, for short. If you’re shipwrecked on a desert island, and need the police to make sure you have a right, than it isn’t free. Free speech only works if the other kids let you have the conch. Otherwise you’re just the fat kid getting pushed around.
We’ve created a system where a segment of the population is not free to get health care. If you can’t get a job at certain companies, you can’t get a group health plan, no group health plan means you die of an easily treatable condition.
I see them as equivalent. As I just mentioned, governments are formed in order to protect us from each other, not from a previously nonexistent government. People banded together to protect themselves from that tribe over the hill or from that occasional sociopath within the tribe, thus to preserve their right to life. Once they did that they eventually recognized that the rights that caused the establishment of government could also be violated by government, and thus government power needed to be limited. Between the time government was established and this recognition government gave another justification for its existence, establishment by a deity, but I think we can agree that this isn’t the actual origin of government.
But, whichever of us is correct, rights are given by the people to themselves.
I don’t know what that means.
it must be your strawman then, because I sure didn’t mention it.
For the sake of the argument, I will accept your premise (although I don’t necessarily agree) but even granting it, so what? Are you suggesting that it is the mandate of the police to let me have rights? Or is it more likely that the mandate of the police is to apprehend and arrest criminals?
The fact that the police, in doing their job, sometimes protect my rights by means proves that they are a requirement for same.
Exactly. The only rights that humans have are the rights that they assert, attain, and defend. The kinds of rights I’m talking about come at no cost to anyone else.
Cite?
The police are the representatives of the people. Inasmuch as they protect my rights, they do so as my agents. Our society is a bit more complex than Lord of the Flies.
They also don’t get free food, free water, free transportation, etc. etc. etc. At least not as a guaranteed right. And yes, starvation is an easily treatable condition.
I have access to health care, I just can’t afford it. I am most certainly free to get it. No one is stopping me.
Here, try that on slavery:
How could a poor country, who’s main source of income is sugar cane, that relies on slave labour to harvest the sugar cane, AFFORD to grand slaves the right to freedom?
Surely the loss of free labour would bankrupt the country and drive up the price of sugar for everyone!
You know what, you convinced me, we should have slavery, it’s just too expensive not to, I NEED cheaper shirts.
Neither does internet, television, automobile or oral sex. What does that have to do with anything?
It seems to me there a few conflating arguments here.
1) Is access to health care a right?
Well, it could be assumed as such even though it isn’t enumerated. Anyone can buy health care if they have enough money, just as anyone can buy a gun or publish a book.
2) Should the government provide the services to meet that right(UHC)?
That is a choice the nation as a whole needs to make, just like other governmental services, such as military protection, housing for the homeless, drinking water, roads and so on. While that is certainly an issue for debate, I don’t think the allocation of resources is a ‘right’ in and of itself.
3) Feudalism means something other than what it means.
Come on, not this crap again. At least use ‘fuedal-esque’ if you don’t mean Feudalism as everyone else understands it.
Without police and military protection, you have no rights. Which said another way means that someone has to provide them for you, all of them. The right to free speech isn’t as passive as some would have you believe. I don’t need free speech if I’m talking to myself. As soon as someone has the power to shut me up, that right is gone. The right to free speech is probably our most expensive.
There is a huge cost. You have the right to vote. Who is paying for the polling station? Who is paying to keep it safe? There was a country recently that had a military take over, and their army disbanded, I think it was in the Middle East, I’ll look it up and get you a cite. When it came time to vote, armed militias were able to prevent segments of the population from voting. Where was their right to vote? If it was free, and passive, surely they should have been able to vote.
Somalia
Uganda
Rwanda
Sierra Leone
would you like more?
That’s right, you need the police to have rights. Police aren’t free. No police means no rights. If we only had a system of private police only the rich would have rights. If it was a system where the government controlled the police instead of tax payers, only the government in power would have rights. Rights aren’t as free and passive as you think.
Nobody said free, I said accessible. Water is available and accessible. Food can be foraged or grown (assuming you have the right to land), etc. Good luck repairing your heart.
There are places whee water is controlled by a corporation, if they wanted to, they could raise the cost of water to what ever the market will allow, which would price out people at the bottom.
Thankfully we don’t have that, well, except for Maui, and water flows freely in public parks and water fountains.
In a few years, when the cost of food (for survival) matches the cost of cancer treatment, we’ll have this discussion again.
If you aren’t given the opportunity to get it, you aren’t free to get it. If you can’t get it on minimum wage, or from the employer you work for, you aren’t free to get it.
We are not talking about remotely the same thing, then.
How much do I have to pay on site to vote? That’s the question. The question isn’t whether “government costs money.”
I’ll wait for the cite before I answer.
I’m looking for a cite that countries that are too poor for UHC are *necessarily *too poor for basic human rights. That was your assertion.
Where were the police in 1776?
How free and passive do I think they are?
Do you know what access means? Who in this country does not have access to health care?
Let me get this straight. Police protection has an associated cost, but public water does not? How are the treatment plants maintained? The system of pipes and pumps?
So now it’s not that it costs something, but how much? You will excuse me if I find it hard to take you seriously.
Of course I am. Who is stopping me? This imaginary military coup d’etat?