Another loaded question...

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

So after 400+ comments I'm back for more, things like "Human rights" and "moral imperative" get thrown around an awful lot but nobody really seems to agree on what such things actually entail so with that in mind I ask...

What exactly are we all entitled to?

I freely admit that my own answer is bleaker than most. In my mind anything beyond conscious and ambulatory tends to get logged in the bonus column. As a result, I find it difficult discuss things like "Health-Care" and the so-called "Living Wage" because my concept of "neccesity" is pretty much limited to oxygen, water, food, and a place to sleep (in that order). As far as the moral imperetive aspect is concerned the only real entitlement I recognize is the right to be left alone if you so desire.

Discuss...

Comments

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety. -George Mason, via John Locke and others.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

They talk a good game but what does that actually mean?

"Liberty" is a delightfully meaningless term, and an entitlement to life could covered by oxygen, a 10x10 ft cell, and a glucose-vitamin IV drip.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

I can see where your coming from here. I agree with Max Stirner that most of the things people take for "rights" are actually "spooks in the mind", immaterial phantom entities people create with no concrete reality. But how could there be? Likewise people speak of freedom, but it is also true that unless freedom is "allowed" (not "granted" as if by some higher authority but actually "not contested") by other people or defended with the appropriate force to ensure it will remain if someone tries to challenge that freedom, it cannot exist. I see that as the nuts and bolts of freedom--either avoiding people so they can't challenge it, a general mentality existing among people to respect it (preferred), and/or deterrent force to defend it should it be attacked or threatened.

So assuming that this freedom has been secured. I would wager that people then have the "right" to do whatever they want, but yet that freedom ends where another person's freedom begins. For example, to aggress against another or defraud them somehow would go against those peoples' freedoms. At the same time when an individual wishes to do something that would affect, potentially negatively, more than just than them, than those who would be affected should be part of that process and/or entitled to resist the thing being done should the individual go against that refusal (an assault on their freedom). For things which only affect the individual (like what substance they wish to smoke for example, or if they want to have a consensual gay romance, or if feel safer going about their business with a pistol in their belt or a rifle across their back), no one can force them to do otherwise. But yet we know that they actually can. A community can pressure an individual to conform or leave--and in some cases, such as a serial killer who is, by definition, depriving people of their freedom, that would be justified--but in this case it isan assault on personal liberty. So what to do with that? Well, I think that naturally leads to the freedom of rebellion or the freedom of secession--the right to, along with others who feel their freedom under attack by an oppressive order, to either band together and, through their preferred tactics (we hope they practice prefigurative politics and do not use methods which make them no better than the tyrant they're against, i.e. the Bolsheviks) OR the freedom to escape an association that no longer is in their self-interest and settle elsewhere (assumes there is open land available somewhere).

Finally, knowing that communities have that potential for abusing their members by enforcing conformity to a standard of mere preferences or bigotry than actual social need, some theorists have suggested that communities draw up a general "statement of principles" or something and then each community and individual who wishes to be part of the free society is pledged to it so long as they wish to remain so that core things like respecting freedom, voluntary organization, etc. are concretely safeguarded. But at the same time I see that as having the danger of becoming just another authoritarian constitution over time, and also the fact that it's unlikely everyone could be involved in writing, yet it would be expected to apply to everyone who came, so probably better to find another way (fighting homogeny, gentrification, and authoritarian evangelical, not just christian mind you, religion would probably help a lot there).

Wow that went longer than I expected. Well, those are some of my theories on having a free society.

[its-anya.livejournal.com]

Question is, why is the entitlement to be left alone more valid than any other?

[badlydrawnjeff.livejournal.com]

Mainly because it doesn't require anything of anyone else.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

As Jeff pointed out, it's the only "entitlement" that completely self-contained (does not require anything from any one else).

It also ties into my own personal basis for morality, namely that coercion is wrong.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I think the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/) is a pretty good list.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

Ugh, not AT ALL!

Did you miss the mantra repeated over and over again throughout the articles in that document?

"These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations."

Sorry, that's not freedom. Those are privileges granted by an authoritarian body which can be altered or redacted at any time as they pretty much desire or can conveniently justify. And all such bodies will naturally act primarily in *their* self-interest, not ours.

Know your rights!

[russj.livejournal.com]

Rights and entitlements are very different concepts ...

HUMAN Rights can be protected by government, but they are natural, and are not given to us by government. (Of course CIVIL rights do not exist without government.)

Entitlements are provided by government, and though they may be called 'rights', they do not exist in the [presumed] state of nature.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

In that case, we don't need "government" to protect our "rights" then. We can do that ourselves.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Have some kids and think about it.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Children have no right to my labor. If they want to eat they need to show their value in the free market.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

> the only real entitlement I recognize is the right to be left alone if you so desire.

This is a commonly valued ethic.. Though It's my opinion that the degree to which this ethic is valued has much to do with population density. When people start living on top of each other, it becomes increasingly impossible to leave each other alone in any absolute sense, and other ethics which might have seemed more intrusive become more valued because of their utility in preventing conflict.

I think this is the major reason behind the values divide between rural and urban cultures.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Also, I realized I didn't answer your question.

> What exactly are we all entitled to?

In what context? Our rights are spelled out or more or less known within the contexts of the various organizations we belong to. Do you mean, Outside of any artificial context, what are we entitled to naturally?

That's easy. Nothing.

The universe doesn't know or care that we are here. We invent our ideas of rights, and we invariably do so within artificial frameworks.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

So...logically the only freedoms we really can have ("rights") are those with which we can successfully assert, usually requiring appropriate force, general agreement from other people, or living in isolation?

[zebra24.livejournal.com]

human rights - nothing about "water, air, food, lodge, and medicine"

Human rights is all about freedom.

Right to own yourself, your property, right to sell/buy things and make a contracts without using a violence.

So you shouldn't have rights to request from anybody - water/air/food/lodge/medicine for yourself, but nobody should be able to forbid you to make a money (without a violence) or tax you without your agreement.

[vehemencet-t.livejournal.com]

Property is theft.

That is all.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

What exactly are we all entitled to?
Whatever a sovereign democracy says we are by the force and rule of law.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

So if a sovereign democracy decides that a certain ethnicity or political-class should be eliminated by the force and rule of law you're ok with that?

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

Rights are a human construct often abstracted by a governing body. Whatever rights we have are defined by said governing body and if we want to increase or reduce them, we are free to do so democratically. Anything else is pure absolutism.

[meus-ovatio.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm always mystified when conservatives trot out the "It isn't in the Constitution" line of attack when dealing with rights. There's so much Orwellian double-think about rights going on it is dizzying.

[yes-justice.livejournal.com]

What exactly are we all entitled to?

Death.

We fight for and build everything else. For good or ill.


the right to be left alone

We don't have that right. Virus and bacteria wont honor that right.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

you might want to also include parasitic and/or semi-parasitic situations, no?

[oslo.livejournal.com]

I think posing the question this way is already misleading, because no one in mainstream public discourse (or almost no one) seriously argues for social welfare programs on the basis that they accord with some true moral "entitlement" that every person has to have their basic needs met. Not even people who make a moral case for social welfare programs typically focus on the duties of society or its well-off members owe to those less well-off, not on anyone's "entitlement" to such assistance.

Similarly, no one is really arguing that, because we may not be truly entitled, morally, to social welfare programs, we should dismantle those programs we have until we're left with only those (if any) to which we're entitled.

That we've come to refer to (some, and I guess now all) social welfare programs as "entitlements" has entirely to do with politically-driven language-smithing. The word "entitlement" isn't even a particularly good way to describe those things that we commonly refer to as "entitlements," since they are often contingent and could theoretically be withdrawn at any time.

So, I don't think this is a particularly useful or interesting question. If we want to have a helpful discussion about how we should structure our political and economic society that actually has some relationship with our general intuitions about the appropriate relationship between morality and the content of our law, I think we ought to focus on our duties, and in particular our duties to one another. A mutual duty of non-interference is a fine place to start but we may have other duties.

I'm not going to go too deep into that question just now, but it's worth noting that you won't find many moral theories in the history of western civilization that completely reject the possibility that we might have moral duties to others - to look after their well-being, health, etc. Not until, perhaps, you reach the twentieth century and the ignominious philosophy of Ayn Rand. So I would be hesitant to reject, out of hand, that we have really no duties to one another, apart from the duty to leave one another alone. It doesn't seem to be a highly reflective kind of opinion.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

I think posing the question this way is already misleading, because no one in mainstream public discourse (or almost no one) seriously argues for social welfare programs on the basis that they accord with some true moral "entitlement" that every person has to have their basic needs met.

I disagree, when people describe medical care as a "human right" or demand a "living wage" that is exactly what they are doing. Afterall, nobody applies for a job if they don't think the money is worth it.

[il-mio-gufo.livejournal.com]

...get thrown around an awful lot but nobody really seems to agree on what such things actually entail

it is all so very simple ~ you see, that's because all things are relative.

[rasilio.livejournal.com]

Problem with your wording.

Entitlement means possessing ownership of, this is too tied up in legalism to have much meaning as you are entitled to whatever the law says you are entitled.


Your question should be "What SHOULD one be entitled to, which boils down to the question of "What rights should a society recognize to be considered a Just and moral society?"


Honestly I don't know that there is one universal answer to this because concepts of justice and morality are so impacted by culture


That said, as a rational anarchist I am relatively unconcerned by this. Society will have it's rules, both legal, and cultural social conventions but I do not find myself to be bound by them. I recognize them, and understand power those rules hold over me and may therefore chose to obey them even when I disagree with them out of a simple cost benefit analysis but in the end I recognize that I and I alone am responsible for everything I do and therefore only I can be in the position of deciding which courses of action I will take and if that violates either the law or social convention then so be it.


This of course ultimately leads to my preference to some sort of government that would be considered more libertarianish or classically liberal because it gives everyone more freedom to decide for themselves what moral systems they wish to follow and who they wish to be and I also recognize that value of such a system from a purely utilitarian view but if that is not the way society goes then so be it, I will still live my life according to my own rules.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

As an American, I have the right to be arrested. All other rights are an illusion.

As a resident of San Francisco, I have the right to walk to Marin (unless the sidewalk is under construction).

[paft.livejournal.com]

Are you serious? Your concept of human rights is limited to just enough food and water to keep body and soul together and a place to sleep?

Using that rationale, Nazi work camps and Soviet gulags were not violations of human rights violations. Neither is child labor. Or slavery.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Thus the purpose of the question, clearly there must be other variables in the equation but what are they?