Thread: Paying For Health Care

Originally Posted by Syme

Would you then argue that people have no right to, say, police protection against criminals (which is provided by the labor of policemen), or military protection against foreign invasion (which is provided by the labor of soldiers)? These are two things that even the most hardline libertarians usually accept as legitimate functions of government. Would you say that the provision of these services "certainly isn't freedom"?

Correct, I wouldn't say police protection is an inalienable right, or that we have a right to "military protection against foreign invasion." If a country were to invade I would certainly be out there risking my life to protect my freedom, but I would absolutely NOT consider it my right to have other people risk their lives for me.

I do see what you were getting at though. However, my assertion was simply that you don't have a RIGHT to someone else's labor, and I really don't see how someone can reasonably think that they do.

Originally Posted by UnreasonablyReasonable

Correct, I wouldn't say police protection is an inalienable right, or that we have a right to "military protection against foreign invasion." If a country were to invade I would certainly be out there risking my life to protect my freedom, but I would absolutely NOT consider it my right to have other people risk their lives for me.

I do see what you were getting at though. However, my assertion was simply that you don't have a RIGHT to someone else's labor, and I really don't see how someone can reasonably think that they do.

I see your point in turn, but I think that describing government-provided services as a "right to someone else's labor" is somewhat obtuse. Let's take your statement that you would willingly enlist if a foreign country invaded; if this happened, and you really did enlist, you'd be providing your own labor to other people, whether that was your intent or not. Your labor would be helping to ensure the protection of the rest of your country's citizenry, including the ones who didn't enlist to protect their own freedom. If someone becomes a doctor in a country with UHC, aren't they doing the same thing? Willingly providing their own labor when they know that it will be used by the government to serve the citizenry?

Originally Posted by benzss

Well, isn't that the difference between tax and charity?

Not sure what you mean. A volunteer soldier, and a doctor in a UHC country, are both willingly entering professions where they know that they will work for the government in order to provide services to the public. Unless the soldier is a draftee, or the doctor was forcibly enrolled in med school, their labor is not being extracted from them against their will. Whether someone else "has a right to their labor" strikes me as immaterial, since the labor is being voluntarily given. UnreasonablyReasonable seems to be laboring under the misapprehension that if we have UHC, government thugs will force doctors to work against their will because someone else "has a right to their labor".

Yeah, the taxation angle occurred to me, but his comment about having a "right to the labor of others" was in specific reference to the idea of health care being a right, and he said it's why he was disturbed by the idea of a right to health care, so I figured he was talking about the labor of doctors rather than of taxpayers. I guess we'll have to wait for him to clarify, though.

Originally Posted by Syme

I see your point in turn, but I think that describing government-provided services as a "right to someone else's labor" is somewhat obtuse.

Whoops, I apologize that it sounded like I meant that. I was just saying that having a right to healthcare translates itself into having a right to someone else's labor. I'm not saying that just because they're employed by the government that we have a right to their labor. I wouldn't say that these government programs are things we have a right to, therefore I wouldn't consider myself to have the right to the work that government employees perform.

I hope that makes sense. I'm afraid I may be very poor at articulating my thoughts.

It may translate into having a right to another person's labor, but that person has willingly decided to put themselves into a position where it's their job to provide that labor. So what's the problem? I mean, if you personally feel that you don't have a right to the labor of government employees, that's fine for you, but it's no argument against UHC or any other government program.