In response to one of my posts ("A Potential Problem With Universal Insurance") I received the following comment:

[...]There will be problems regardless of which health care plan we have. I prefer to take the problems that go with single payer universal health care though. That is because of the principles involved. I believe health care is a right, not something to be earned with money. Of course the people who provide health deserve to be paid.

I believe that we have an individual responsibility for ourselves and a corporate responsibility for others. Here, the problem I see on the left is a tendency to reduce responsibility for one's situation solely to one's environment while the problem that the right has is to reduce responsibility for one's situation solely to the individual. The problem with both views is the word solely[...]

By now it should be obvious I would have many objections to the argument presented, but I plan to address just two of them. First, I would like to examine the supposed right to health care. Second, I would like to address a related mistake, the idea that there is any approach to politics other than the individual.

The problem with postulating a right to medical care is that it is in that they are a variety of positive rights. There are basically two categories of rights, or at least things people claim are rights. There are negative rights, which simply demanded other refrain from doing something, such as the right to life, or property, which just demanded the state and others not kill or steal, and positive rights, which obligated others to perform some action, such as the rights to housing or education or health care.

Negative rights are fairly self-explanatory, and I doubt there is any theory, left or right, which denies them. Some schools of thought may limit them, or add exceptions¹, but I can't think of a school of political philosophy, at least none acceptable to civilized thinkers², which completely denies the existence of these negative rights.

Positive rights are another matter. While much of modern thought accepts some subset of the possible positive rights (for example, the right to education is accepted by most on the left and right), those of us of a libertarian bent would argue that such supposed rights are in reality not rights, but impositions upon individual rights by the state. In fact, if one were to consistently apply these supposed rights, one would eventually be required to abrogate the traditional negative rights in order to fulfill them.

How so? Let us look at these positive rights.

First, how does one obtain health care or housing or education which is one's right? In the case of traditional negative rights it is obvious how they are enforced. I have a right to property. If my property is taken from me by another, I have the right to retrieve it, or to have my deputy the state do so. Similarly, as I have a right to life, both I and the state have a right to take steps to prevent others from threatening my life. In these cases, there is no obligation on others except that they avoid taking my goods or killing me.

But positive rights require that others actively do things. To get housing or education or health care, someone else must provide it. Oh, modern society hides the truth by using monetary exchanges, but at its base, we get these services for those entitled to them by forcing someone to provide them. We may not openly enslave the doctor or teacher or builder, forcing them to work for the state, but we still tax individuals to pay the doctor or builder or teacher, and in so doing we basically tell the individuals that some part of their work is not for their own benefit but for the state. In other words, some part of each individual's life is spent slaving for the state to pay for these supposed rights.

However, as we are regularly taxed for so much, many do not get upset by this simple truth, so let me point out a bigger problem. Let us suppose that events happen as I described in "", and our national insurance scheme leads to full nationalization. Let us farther assume that working conditions for health care providers are so bad that within a generation we find our medical and nursing schools only one third full or less and within a short time we lack the staff needed to provide even minimal care. At that point, how do you provide for the supposed right to health care? Do you force people into medical school? Do you force retired doctors back into service? Without someone to provide the "right", how does one fulfill the right?

And that is the problem with supposed positive rights. You need someone to do something, and so long as you recognize individual liberty an individual always has the right to say "no". Which is why, in the end, the fictional rights embodied in these positive rights end up violating traditional negative rights. Any supposed right which demands that another provide a service or a good will inevitably end up violating either the right to liberty or property of someone. Which is why such "rights" are nothing of the kind.

And now, let me turn to the second half of this argument, the question of whether the right is "too focused" on the individual in all things political.

I could answer this any number of ways, but let me start simply. You belong to any number of groups, you are a citizen of a nation, perhaps of a state or province withing that nation, maybe of a city or town or village, you belong to a race, to a religion, to a family, you are an employee of a corporation, and so on. You belong to countless groups in addition to being an individual. And we can politically think of you as either an individual or as a component of one of those groups.

However, from your perspective, how much does it benefit you if one of those groups benefit? For example, if I want to help, say, black children, and so I send ten more "representatives" to college, how much doe sit help you (provided you are black). If you aren't one of the ten, does it help you that another black child went to college? Does it matter to you if a seat in college is filled by someone black or white? Can you learn with the eyes of another just because you share a group? Or let me say I want to feed a group of which you are a member. Unless you get the food yourself, does it help you? Can you eat with their mouths?

The fact is, while we may conceptually belong to a group, we are nothing but individuals. We cannot benefit "as a group", we can benefit only in the sense of being an individual. Groups are a conceptual fiction. They may have greater or lesser validity for specific purposes, but, despite some sort of neo-Hegalian claims, we each live and die as individuals. And to try to deal with us in any other way is simply to create injustices³. For example, if we establish racial quotas for access to some service we end up providing for some who did nothing individually to merit those services, while we deny others who did nothing wrong. And the rest? Well, the "favored" group does not benefit, except for the handful who got access. We may pretend that affirmative action, for example, helps "minorities", but it really only helps some minorities who actually get the benefits, the rest are helped no more than anyone else.

There is one way that groups are beneficial, and that is for politicians. When dealing with individuals they need to bribe each and every voter. However if they can convince voters to think in terms of groups then they can bribe only a handful of group member and yet get the support of the entire group. And that is one of the biggest reasons groups have persisted in political thought, they are very convenient for politicians who want to buy votes on the cheap⁴.

However, if we want to look at political questions realistically, there is nothing beyond the individual. As soon as you can lift with the hands of another, or see through his eyes, eat with his mouth and speak with his tongue, then I will accept that groups are more than a convenient fiction. Until then, I say that we are born and die as discrete individuals and we must view ourselves as nothing but. To do otherwise is to take an analogy, a category useful in other contexts, and wrongly apply it, with predictably unpleasant results.

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1. I would personally argue that limitations on rights would mean that one no longer viewed them as rights. But as exceptionalism seems to be so widespread, I won't bother arguing here that rights must be absolute to be rights. I will refer interested readers to "My Vision of Government Part II", "Smaller Government , Fair Weather Friends and Special Cases" and "Inescapable Logic".

2. I suppose some supposedly daring political scientist still adopts a purely Hobbesian theory, or perhaps some college professor trying to be "bold" argue sin favor of some form of Nazism disguised as Hegelian theory. Maybe a handful of truly consistent theoretical communists accept the logical conclusion of Marxism that individual lack any rights. But by and large, in civilized society we reject political philosophies which refuse to grant the individual any rights at all. In recent times even outright dictators have begun to make a show of respecting individual rights, no matter how hollow a gesture it may be. So I think it safe to say that negative rights are accepted by the vast majority of systems, even if they are provided with so many exceptions as to make them meaningless.

3. I am going to ignore here the myth of "group rights", as they are an even more absurd proposition than individual positive rights. Groups cannot and do not have rights. Individuals are the sole owners of rights. If I get enough complaints about this comment, perhaps I will write an essay on why group rights do not exist, but for now I will assume it is clear to most readers what an absurdity group rights are.

4. I will grant some people may feel "pride" in the accomplishments of those in the same group, but that too is a fiction. Why should every American feel pride because Michael Phelps is a fast swimmer? What part did they play in his success? Yes, it is a convenient fiction for them, as it gives them some unearned merit, but does that mean it is a legitimate basis for political theories? The truth is individuals are discrete units, which suffer benefit or ham as individuals and not as members of groups. (See postscript II to address one likely objection.)

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POSTSCRIPT

These positive rights end up creating other problems which I did not mention here. For example, how do we handle those who traditionally have provided for themselves? Do we have them continue to pay while only the indigent get free provision as we do with the right to health care, at least under most universal insurance schemes? Do we provide a free option for all, but allow people to opt out, as we do with public and private education? Or do we nationalize the whole thing and deny any opt out, as was proposed under some HillaryCare plans? These questions will always arise with such fictional rights, and each answer brings with it a host of problems.

Another issue is that by making something once a good into a right we create endless room for politicization. Just look at the debate over the content of public education, the debate over evolution and creation and ID. Or the debate over when and how to teach sex education. All of these are because of the public provision of education. If education were wholly private this would not be an issue. But once we create a right, and public provision for even a handful of individuals, we open up these and similar political battlegrounds.

I could continue to list other problems, but you get the idea. Not only do "positive rights" cause us to eventual violate true rights, they also create a number of other problems along the way.

POSTSCRIPT II

One objection some will raise to my argument against groups is that individuals will sacrifice for their group, or will find joy in the successes of that group. However, that is not an objection. The truth is, as an individual, they have valued success for their group (be it family or nation) more than individual success. It is a private valuation, arrived at as an individual. For it to be a group attribute it would have to be imposed upon them by group membership, which is not the case. The fact that some individuals may value group loyalty more than individual success does not prove groups are valid political actors.

To address one other complaint, I am not arguing against patriotism. One can obviously find the success of his own nation beneficial. In fact, often it is a rational position, as the security of my nation is my own security, the stability of that nation is essential for my own success. However that is different from the Hegelian type argument that sees membership in a volk or a nation-state as a primary datum. In other words that you exist as a German or a Pole first, and only secondarily as yourself.

The truth is, if you think about it for even a moment, you will recognize that you are an individual no matter what. Were you suffer a head wound which removed all your memories and wash ashore in a strange land, you would lose your nation, your religion, maybe even your race (it can be hard to tell with certainty in many cases, just look at Mariah Carey for an example). However, even then it is obvious to all that you are an individual. And that is the basis of my argument. You are an individual, and always will be one. Everything else is a chosen category which does not change your nature. And so, when thinking of politics, the only significant category is the individual.

POSTSCRIPT III

As soon as this was finished, I realized I had made the second argument against the wrong point. While arguing for individual as the sole unit of political thought I had misread the argument presented and argued against any sort of group-based analysis in political thought. It is a valid argument, just not the one I needed to respond to the comment.

So, I think I will need to reply to the original comment with another post, this time arguing about what sort of obligations our social existence imposes upon us, which is, I believe, the point the original comment was making (and which seems confirmed by a second comment posted as I was finishing this essay). Still, as it is a valid point, I am going to leave my original reply, even if it is a reply tot he wrong question.