Talk:Negative and positive rights/Negative right talk archive

message: Here's an idea that no one here seems to have thought of: research the concept of positive and negative rights. Wikipedia is supposed to be a collection of existing knowledge, not a place to present original research or a forum for political arguments/advocacy. Why doesn't one of you go to the library and find some books about the concept? Write an article describing the concepts people have put forward for the idea of "positive" and "negative" "rights". Describe what the concepts are, even if you think they are stupid or absurd. Then put in a description of how established critics have criticized the concepts—don't include your own arguments. That's how Wikipedia is supposed to be done. — Mateo SA | talk 17:28, July 20, 2005 (UTC)
:Exactly. RJII 17:38, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes indeed. Sorry for not doing my homework sooner. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 20:19, 21 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  A novel suggestion 

message: Human Rights at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
-GTBacchus(talk) 18:58, July 20, 2005 (signature added 04:57, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  a rather good read 

message: RJII, you changed the following sentence: 
:Some analyists maintain that negative rights cannot be maintained except in the presence of positive rights to their protection and enforcement.
to read:
:Some analyists maintain that negative rights cannot be maximized except by encroaching on negative liberty.
I honestly don't understand your version.  Can you explain it to me - maybe that's the same thing MT and I were saying, maybe not. -GTBacchus(talk) 00:33, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The only way you can have a society where everyone's "negative rights" are respected is one where there is no government --that is, a situation where your liberty was being protected was by voluntarily-funded institutions. I haven't read the book that's source but it looks to me like it's saying that you can't enjoy negative rights unless you have a tax-funded government protecting them. Since that requires taxation, that requires some sacrifice of negative liberty in order to to protect a larger quantity of negative liberty. The previous statement makes no sense as far as I can tell when it talks about "positive rights" in this context. Maybe you could explain that to me because I don't get it. RJII 00:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We've been over this. What is a positive right? A right that must be provided by a tax-funded government. The book makes the case that negative rights, too, must be provided by a tax-funded government and therefore there is no practical distinction between them and positive rights. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 01:02, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Saying that in order to protect your "negative rights" you should have a government protecting them for you isn't the same thing as saying you have a right to being provided with that protection. See? RJII 01:05, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: We've been over this already. Read above. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 01:10, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Time to go over it again. This is Wikipedia. It never ends. You're not seeing that that source isn't making a claim about "positive rights." Saying that you can't enjoy negative rights without protection doesn't mean to you have a positive right to that protection. RJII 01:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: The problem is that you're making the same arguments as before. Thus, I can only reply by saying the same thing I've said before. By the way, is it your custom to change your mind and reject a consensus you once endorsed? -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 01:45, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: My mind is constantly in flux, so is consensus. RJII 01:47, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

text: That might be a good idea. It can always be split up again in the future if the article gets too big. RJII 00:09, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree. That would settle all the disputes over what content should go where. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Merger in progress. I am about to make this article (as well as positive right) into a redirect. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 23:16, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Last paragraph, first sentence 

message: Perhaps we would do better to have a single article Negative and positive rights and have Negative right and Positive right be redirects? It is very hard to talk about either of these concepts without continually contrasting the other. -- Jmabel | Talk 07:07, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: That might be a good idea. It can always be split up again in the future if the article gets too big. RJII 00:09, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree. That would settle all the disputes over what content should go where. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:01, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Merger in progress. I am about to make this article (as well as positive right) into a redirect. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 23:16, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge?

message: If others choose to defend you so be it, but you have no right to their assistance. They may be morally obligated to assist you, or they may not. If you (or others) cannot force or persuade them to assist you however, you clearly have no right to their aid. The sort of collectivist entitlement POV evidenced by The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes needs to be balanced. Sam Spade 16:18, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly. Minhea can't seem to make the distinction between a need to protect liberty (in order to enjoy liberty) and "a positive right" to have liberty protected by others. Hopefully it will sink in soon. RJII 16:43, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

text: See my reply to Sam below. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:00, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

text: The thing is, you don't need any "rights" in order to defend yourself. You can defend your house or your car regardless whether you have any negative right to do so. If there are no rights at all, you can still defend yourself. And if negative rights simply mean that you can defend yourself, then negative rights are equal to no rights at all. That is my point. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:00, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: But if there is no government or some other authority to punish you for doing wrong, there is no difference between things you can justly do and things you can't justly do. The existence of justice - and therefore the existence of rights - requires some ultimate judge of right and wrong with the power to enforce its decisions. See Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 19:03, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Ah, but none of those things are universal. My God, superego, conscience and culture could be different from yours. And yours could be different from those of a third person, and so on. In order for justice and rights to exist, they must have universal (or near-universal) recognition within a certain society. Thus, again, there must be some ultimate judge of right and wrong with the power to enforce its decisions. You may think that wantonly murdering toddlers at your local primary school is wrong, but if most other people think otherwise and there is no state to punish them, there's not much you can do about it. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 20:46, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not true that "the existence of rights - requires some ultimate judge of right and wrong with the power to enforce its decisions." You don't understand what it means to have a moral right. If an individual has a moral right to live, then if you kill him, you have violated his right regardless of whether you are punished for it and even if it's legal for you to kill him. RJII 23:35, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

text: "In order for justice and rights to exist, they must have universal (or near-universal) recognition within a certain society."
This is a moral relativist presumption, not widely held. 
We (and the God within us) are the "ultimate judge of right and wrong with the power to enforce its decisions", not the state. If someone tried to commit terrorism around me, I'd take action. Citizens behaving righteously is the only real Justice these days, we certainly can't expect something like that from our courts. The Criminal Justice system may be criminal, but it rarely if ever is Just. Sam Spade 22:21, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Nevertheless, the concept of moral rights exists so it needed to be explained that Minhea was talking about legal rights. I think I took care of it with some edits. But, yes, that was the source of confusion. RJII 03:34, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Thank you, GTBacchus. We should definitely discuss existence and essence in this article - or rather, in the combined Negative and positive rights article that I intend to create later today. My own view is simple: If the real-world effects of the existence of X are not any different from the real-world effects of the non-existence of X, then X does not exist. In other words, if it doesn't make any practical difference whether X exists or not, then we can assume X does not exist. "Moral rights" fall under this category. If everyone else thinks you should be killed, does it make any difference whether or not you have a moral right to live? No - you'll still be killed regardless. Your moral right to live doesn't change anything in practice. Thus it is a phantom, a ghost, a non-entity. But that, of course, is a POV. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 14:22, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

text: I believe in God, but I do not believe God grants any rights. And the scriptures of all major religions agree with me: rights are not featured in any of them. Also, if God "grants" something that he does not enforce, then he doesn't really grant it at all. God-given rights can only exist to the extent that God enforces them. But God does not enforce any rights. Ergo, God-given rights do not exist. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 19:17, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

text: Well, that's one theory.  I believe in a much more morally "hands-off" God.  This is really getting beside the point though.  Certainly you realize that your religious beliefs constitute a non-universally held POV? -GTBacchus(talk) 20:39, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

text: They may be well cited, but they talk about (slightly) different things... -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 23:17, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  You have no rights you can't defend