What Are Human Rights?

Great Debates
1

In the short time I’ve spent on this board I must admit the extremity of many of my positions has calmed down a bit once I’ve found them–shall we say–unsupportable.

However, one thing that still seems to get my goat is the idea of rights. I’ve seen it asserted that people have a right to freedom of speech, a right education, a right to adequate health care, and so on.

Now, these are all fantastic topics in their own way and I’ve been in threads about them. But never on one about what rights themselves are.

For example, some have considered that rights are secured by the government; thus without a government we would have no rights. This removes freedom from coercion from the picture of rights since the rights themselves are enforcable; indeed, the only way to have this right be practiced is to not enforce it, which does, admittedly, make the right seem like a load of hot air.

Rights, as they seems to be implicitly defined, belong to a man (or woman, just wanna keep pronouns straight) upon birth. My virtue of merely being born you have these rights.

Can we really consider education to be a right in any sort of free society? How does this not make other people your, at least partial, slave? The right to health care? That is, this isn’t something that is merely forced anymore but provided. I am not prepared to consider something that must be created a right.

Again, I don’t want to discuss the finer aspects of health care or education as a social structure or even obligation or practical matter, but as a right.

How can something that must be provided for by other people be considered a right? Or, can anything be considered a right under my definition?

2

I myself would probably boil down the fundamental human rights to life, liberty and prosperity – which themselves are aspects of freedom.

I’m not perfectly sure I understood that paragraph, but I think I see what you are getting at.

Rights for the human person does create a burden upon the human person to ensure those same rights for others. But as the summary of the rights is freedom, limiting this right for some to ensure this right for others is contrary to reason.

It may be a right which is not universally applied in a certain time and place, and yet be a universal, fundamental right anyway. The failure of some to take up their burdens in a respect for the rights of their fellow man damages man’s freedom, but can not completely negate it.

3

The opposite of Human Lefts.

::rimshot::

(Just tryin’ to steal Tracer’s job…)

4

Under our system, the people have the basic human rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

While these are great and enduring words, they do need to be expanded upon and clarified for the purpose of normal day-to-day government. Thus these basic human rights are interpreted by the courts (ultimately the Supreme Court) to form the other rights that you quote: education, health care, etc.

It would then seem that the inalienable human rights are these same three of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, while the interpreted rights are more correctly called the “civil” rights, as being interpreted and supported by the courts. These have in fact changed over the years - the classic example would be the denial of a right to liberty to the slave population in our history.

Of course, this only really applies under our form of society. Any “rights”, human or civil, are merely a statement of belief by someone. It is the agreement of society that a particular right exists that, in effect, causes it to exist.

5

IMHO, rights are a so-so philosophical construct but a great legal construct: among other things, they represent the scope (and the basis) that the judiciary has for overulling parliamentary majorities.

Some Definitions

There are economic rights as well as political rights. Both are enshrined in The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, although the former in practice gets shorter shrift. (Except for property rights which are covered in the takings portion of the US constitution.)

There are positive rights denoting what governments must do (eg pay for primary education and negative rights denoting what they cannot do (eg impose cruel and unusual punishment or search your home without a warrant). Interestingly, both of these have costs: negative rights are costly since they require an institutional structure of enforcement. See The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes

Well, sometimes the saying that “everyone should have a right to health care”, can be translated as “I would support a program of Universal Health care”.

Assuming this isn’t the case though, and that our advocate believes that a minimal standard of living is a human right, I don’t see any untractable problems that are posed: as soon as the number of rights exceeds one, conflicts between them will arise. Just as the right to a fair trial can conflict with freedom of the press, so the “right” to enjoy the fruits of ones labor can conflict with the right to a free primary education. It is left to the courts and on occasion our elected representatives to work those conflicts out. There are practical problems of course: among those are limited resources.

No they don’t. You quoted from the Declaration of Independence, which has no legal force.

6

aynrandlover asks;

Well, I think that because these same rights are available to all, provided by all, it would be more a cooperative than slavery. Like a barn raising, for example. If you choose not to avail yourself of these things, well that’s your right.
Holding the door for someone entering a building behind you is hardly slavery. Same thing, really.
I’m being simplistic, aren’t I?
Peace,
mangeorge

7

Have we assumed, by default, that someone has the right to have more freedom? I don’t think anyone said this, but it needs mentioning. Does someone have the right to profit or succeed at all, implying that it is at everyone’s expense? I have long asserted that this is what the New Testament was all about, asserting the right to be superior among gentiles, an issue brought about by the institution of coinage. Nature once held most inequalities and disparities in check, a person formerly could only have so much without people raiding it. Nowadays, laws or order conceivably enable one person to own the entire globe with everything in it, and now these same laws of order lamely attempt to cure the dignities they afford.

What would stop a person from owning the entire globe? Not a conception of human rights, per se, but the exact same self-conception of rights that enabled hegemony in the first place–that rights are self-determined. If a few people can make a law to guarantee power, then a majority can strip them of this power at will (and must to evolve), which would merely violate nothing because the of the general assumption that freedom exists, and its exercise, which always applies to the majority, by definition, unless not claimed by the majority. Excessive freedom for a few individuals commonly occurs because the majority blindly imagines that wealth flows from them, rather than towards them.

8

I don’t see why success needs to come at the cost of someone else’s failure. That implies that there is a limited amount of wealth to go around… and since money is more an idea than anything else, I don’t see why that would be.

Clarification, please?

9

Money is no different from any other commodity, except that money symbolizes all value. If someone stockpiles it, it is only more valuable to others in relation to how many people need/want it, meaning that it must be controlled or tightened to have any worth (interest rates, printing of more, etc). It is not a purely zero-sum game, as long as efficiency is being created along the way.

10

I’m not talking about the actual, physical dollar bills that every shmoe has in his pocket, I’m talking about the concept of “wealth”. The only reason coins and bills have any value is because people choose to give them value. If, suddenly, everyone decided that dollar bills were worthless, well, then, they’d be worthless.

“Wealth”, on the other hand, is something on which there is no limit (theoretically, anyway). A person is only wealthy if people choose to recognize that person as being wealthy.

11

I also assumed the limit to wealth to be a totality (owning the globe). But wealth becomes control at a certain point by definition. We can’t all suddenly stop in concert from recognizing control as wealth and raid the stores and warehouses (what would we do tomorrow under production control?). Also, to stop in concert would be to assume control again. Economic control is so tricky. Once it entrenches itself, it practically defines reality.

12

[quote]
I don’t see why success needs to come at the cost of someone else’s failure. That implies that there is a limited amount of wealth to go around

[quote]

But there is only a limited amount of wealth to go around. increase the money supply and you don’t increase wealth, just inflation. Wealth is all about control of the means of production and distribution of the surplus, it hasn’t got much to do with actuial money.

13

Which is exactly what I said, Ned. One can be “wealthy” without actually having lots of money.

14

Gah! A trillion apologies to the OP for the hijack!! Gah gah gah!!

That’s all I’ll say about wealth and such and such unless someone starts another thread, I swear!!!

15

Rights of all kinds are just a figment of the collective imagination.

16

Exactly.
That’s what makes rights so fundamental, and persistent.
Peace,
mangeorge

17

Rights are things you are born with; they are supplied to us by our genetic makeup, god or wherever one thinks they originated. Rights are not dependent on being nourished or provided for by someone outside an individual and are the results of a high degree of self-awareness and cognitive thought. Finally, only humans have rights.

18

If we establish a right, it is assumed to be a right for all, as opposed to privilege. I would agree that privilege is a fantasy. But rights are not. Rights are either all or none. Privileges are some or none (sometimes, a great notion comes along to specify that none can have high privileges–not talking about drivers licenses here). Note: Until 1865, freedom was a privilege in America.

19

…a purely American concept.

20

Nice try. JS Mill was a Brit. There are also numerous international human rights conventions, not all of which have been signed by the US, IIRC. http://www.unhchr.ch/html/intlinst.htm
Of course, these agreements don’t amount to much without domestic enforcement mechanisms.