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I would like someone to explain to me how something that is subject to the law of scarcity can be a right.
What I mean is simply this:
Those things that are subject to the law of scarcity are by definition the purview of economics, and as such they are goods and services. We cannot, for instance, have a right to a trip to the moon, to gold, or to a cigarette boat. The law of scarcity prevents that from happening.
Rights, by contrast, are things that are universally shared. By virtue of being born, by having property, and by having life, we are granted the rights of life, liberty, and property. The only thing getting in the way of the universal enjoyment of our natural rights is not the law of scarcity, but the laws of tyrants. Tomorrow, if every government would agree, the whole world could enjoy full human rights without the exhaustion of a single resource.
Further, goods and services require person A to provide something for person B. If something is going to be called a right which is a good or service, then whoever person A happens to be would be the provider of that right.
In other words, rights, as historically understood, are seen to be endowed by our Creator, by nature, or by some universal entity bigger than man and his conventions.
Rights, as we are now beginning to understand them, are increasingly being seen as something endowed by other people, like doctors, or farmers, or most significantly, by the government.
But that's what happens when what was historically seen as rights is broadened to include goods and services.
So, if I have a right to what you alone are able to give...can you all see the dangers of this and where this is going?
The dangers of broadening this understanding of rights occurs precisely at the "Person A giving to Person B" point, because in the end, the government will never be Person A (because they are not in the business of goods and services), therefore they will necessarily have to FORCE another person, Person A, to give to Person B.
And any argument for rights that ends up with a collective body forcing a human being to be a producer of something for the sake of another is (a) immoral, and (b) doesn't work.
Why will it not work? Because in the end, Person A's mind cannot be tapped into and exploited. If we all have the right to the knowledge in Person A's mind concerning, say, treatment of cancer, we can make all the laws and use all the guns to force him to unload that knowledge for our sakes, but in the end, it is his choice. And under a system where he is forced to betray the intelligence of his profession, because it is claimed that the product of his mind is not his own, but belongs, by right, to others, he will very likely not be so keen to do so.
Where am I wrong?
What I mean is simply this:
Those things that are subject to the law of scarcity are by definition the purview of economics, and as such they are goods and services. We cannot, for instance, have a right to a trip to the moon, to gold, or to a cigarette boat. The law of scarcity prevents that from happening.
Rights, by contrast, are things that are universally shared. By virtue of being born, by having property, and by having life, we are granted the rights of life, liberty, and property. The only thing getting in the way of the universal enjoyment of our natural rights is not the law of scarcity, but the laws of tyrants. Tomorrow, if every government would agree, the whole world could enjoy full human rights without the exhaustion of a single resource.
Further, goods and services require person A to provide something for person B. If something is going to be called a right which is a good or service, then whoever person A happens to be would be the provider of that right.
In other words, rights, as historically understood, are seen to be endowed by our Creator, by nature, or by some universal entity bigger than man and his conventions.
Rights, as we are now beginning to understand them, are increasingly being seen as something endowed by other people, like doctors, or farmers, or most significantly, by the government.
But that's what happens when what was historically seen as rights is broadened to include goods and services.
So, if I have a right to what you alone are able to give...can you all see the dangers of this and where this is going?
The dangers of broadening this understanding of rights occurs precisely at the "Person A giving to Person B" point, because in the end, the government will never be Person A (because they are not in the business of goods and services), therefore they will necessarily have to FORCE another person, Person A, to give to Person B.
And any argument for rights that ends up with a collective body forcing a human being to be a producer of something for the sake of another is (a) immoral, and (b) doesn't work.
Why will it not work? Because in the end, Person A's mind cannot be tapped into and exploited. If we all have the right to the knowledge in Person A's mind concerning, say, treatment of cancer, we can make all the laws and use all the guns to force him to unload that knowledge for our sakes, but in the end, it is his choice. And under a system where he is forced to betray the intelligence of his profession, because it is claimed that the product of his mind is not his own, but belongs, by right, to others, he will very likely not be so keen to do so.
Where am I wrong?
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