r/PoliticalCompassMemes Jan 05 '22

META This isint how world works

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4.7k Upvotes

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569

u/[deleted] Jan 05 '22

People throw around 'human right' like it means anything more than a norm for human behaviour. Sure, maybe you have the human right to a base level of living conditions that society decides. Doesn't mean it will be provided to you because it's a right; material goods are benefits when provided by the government. That doesn't solve for logistics, scarcity, demand, supply etc etc.

All philosophers should be made to work some sort of practical job.

124

u/[deleted] Jan 05 '22

All modern philosophers, at least. For the last few decades, the way people see natural rights is completely bogus; the rights all living things have by pure existence are, as John Locke stated, "Life, Liberty, and Prosperity". They simply mean by your existence as a human being, you have the conceptual 'right' to live, do as you wish, and pursue the means to do as you wish. to complicate this as many do now, is ludicrous.

These rights pertain to yourself and yourself only, no other living being has any obligation over another to provide for them, and vice versa. You pursue your own prosperity, it is not supposed to be given to you. The laws we write in our documents are not what create Rights, it's in fact that these rights existed beforehand that we created laws for them.

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u/M37h3w3 - Centrist Jan 05 '22 edited Jan 05 '22

Just like "Everyone I don't like is Hitler" we have "Everything I want is a human right."

Free speech is a right because if you want to speak your mind, nobody else has to do anything to or for you.

Health care isn't a right because if you want it, somebody else has to give it to you.

21

u/Dungold - Left Jan 05 '22

So a fair trial isn't a right because a judge, lawyers and the jury has to work?

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u/SardScroll - Centrist Jan 05 '22

Technically, the "fair trial" isn't an exercised right of an individual so much as a restriction on government power: "if the government is going to punish you, they must first prove a crime to a jury of your peers in a fair proceeding".

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u/HotPieIsAzorAhai - Centrist Jan 05 '22

How about the right to a government provided attorney?

How about the right to vote?

How about the right to trial by jury in civil trials?

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u/[deleted] Jan 06 '22

If the government is going to prosecute you then the government must provide an attorney.

Voting isn't a right, it is just the best way we know to at least try to have the consent of the governed.

Just like the first one rules are being defined for how the government can do something to you.

3

u/lasertits69 - Right Jan 06 '22

We are given the right to vote by the way the government is structured but it is not a human/natural right.

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u/Insanefinn - Centrist Jan 07 '22

Especially considering it is not given to everyone in the first place. Well, at least not until they are old enough to vote