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Comment by topkai22 | Hacker News Reader

There is a large on going literature regarding the distinction of “positive and negative rights” (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights)

Personally I’m with you- generally speaking “positive rights” do not carry the same weight as negative rights and need a different term (I propose “really good ideas”) but people with our viewpoint have been losing that battle for a long time.

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Because ultimately all rights are just made up. They're only what sufficient amounts of people agree to. They're all just really good ideas.

Rights aren't made up is a founding principle of America, every immigrant who naturalizes has to agree and uphold this principle of rights being natural.

This. Might as well start saying well all men created equal is obviously BS so we need to stop acting like it’s true.

Our founders thought it to be a very useful frame to start with the idea of natural rights versus really good ideas.

Yeah, they said they're "endowed by the creator". Well there's no creator other than physics and chemistry. What now?

The way I look at it is some rights are good ideas, some are bad ideas, and some are nonsensical and unworkable ideas (regardless of whether they would be good or bad in an idealized world). Health care as a right is the last of those.

How do you reconcile calling something "nonsensical and unworkable" when it's a reality (implicitly or explicitly) in most of the developed world?

You can’t guarantee access to a limited resource so it isn’t a reality anywhere. At best they redefined the meaning of the word “right” which I am also strongly against.

My conception of fundamental human rights is based upon “what would I agree justifies a forceful intervention/war.” Without spilling far more ink then I have time for here, I’ll just say that is a very short list and guaranteed health care doesn’t meet the criteria.

Doesn’t mean I don’t society should try to provide that service, but I’m not going to support intervention in another state if they don’t.

Ed- typo

I don't really disagree with that, it's just that I want to point out that list is entirely based on your personal views and not a law of physics.

What's property?

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