Are rights something you earn? A look into negative and positive rights.

Just by simply being a conscious sentient being you are endowed with the rights of Life, Liberty, & Property.

These are what are known as apophatic rights or negative rights. Meaning no one has the right to transgress upon or take your life, no one has the right to transgress upon or take your liberty, and no one has the right to transgress upon or take your property. No amount of trickery or threats or coercion or violence can ever make it RIGHT to do any of those things.

In the modern age people would like to claim that they (and everyone else in their country) are entitled to what are known as positive rights or "rights" that require actions to be done for them. Like the "right" to free healthcare for instance.

DO NOT MISCONSTRUE MY WORDS, I am a compassionate and empathetic individual that deeply yearns for peace love and wholeness for every being out there.

But, what does it mean to have free healthcare for all? Do the people in the healthcare industry have to work for free? That goes against their right for liberty (otherwise they would be slaves.) Do the working people of the country have to pay a certain percentage of their income to cover all the expenses for everyone's healthcare? That goes against the all working people's rights for property and life and liberty (forcing someone to do something, otherwise they will forced to pay more money in fines or be kidnapped by men with assault rifles and thrown into rape cages or shot for resisting is stealing of one's belongings, freedom and life respectively.)

Any positive right like "right" to have water leads to situations where someone is thirsty and breaks into someone else's house for a glass of water which goes against the right for property.

Now, if you flip it into an apophatic statement like no one has the right to pollute the water, steal water from people, or keep people from having the ability to acquire water (whether it's attaining it themselves from natural flowing source or purchasing it from a third party.)

The whole point of this is to break down the fact that we are naturally born with certain apophatic rights and that positive rights are logically inconsistent with them.

Peace, Love, & Voluntaryism,
Cody
www.googlevoluntaryism.org