Identifying Rights

By: Bastiatarian

Recently, Silverfiddle and others have posted some excellent observations regarding natural rights, so I thought I would add a bit of my own input.

Many people make the mistake of conflating "wants" or "needs" with "rights." The following definition of rights provided by Joel Skousen is helpful in separating true rights from things which are not.

Fundamental rights are those rights to act, or to be, which all persons can do or possess simultaneously without compelling any other person to provide a service or tangible asset.

In other words, it is not a right if its fulfillment requires the coercion of others to provide goods or services.

Frederic Bastiat provides a simple test to see if a law violates those rights.

See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them and gives it to other persons to whom it doesn't belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

One clear example of something that is frequently called a "right" by the ignorant, but which is in reality not a right, is health care. Health care is certainly a need in many cases, but based on the aforementioned principles, the following two facts make it clear that it cannot be a right.
  1. Forcing a doctor to treat another individual violates the right of that doctor to (a) his liberty (his agency to choose his actions) and (b) his property (the fruits of his actions).

  2. Forcing a third party to pay the doctor commits the same offenses.
The only way that health care can become a right, in a sense, is through a voluntary agreement for exchange between the provider and the recipient. Even in that case, however, the right is not directly for health care, but is rather for fulfillment of the obligation stipulated in the the agreement for exchange, provided that the recipient has fulfilled his own obligation and that the agreement specifically prohibits withdrawal from the agreement.

In case there is any question, Bastiat specifically identifies our fundamental rights:

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties?

Fundamental rights, then, consist of nothing more nor less than the rights to our physical being, our liberty, and our property. Those rights cannot be revoked by others, and can only be relinquished by the individual through voluntary entrance into a legally binding agreement that surrenders such rights (indentured servitude, for example) or through the violation of the rights of others (attempting to or successfully harming the physical being of others, for example). Other than that, no individual or group of individuals, private or governmental, has the legitimate authority to remove, violate, or hinder the exercise of those rights in any manner whatsoever. The only limit on those rights is the natural boundaries of the corresponding rights of other individuals.

Comments

  1. Bastiatarian - An excellent post. You have offered compelling argument for not only the natural rights of mankind, but for the corresponding responsibilities inherent in the right.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Excellent post! Now if someone could just give me an intelligent explanation of "animal rights!" (I've never heard one yet.)

    ReplyDelete
  3. >"animal rights!"

    My right to grill and eat any animal I catch, kill, or purchase.

    ReplyDelete

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