Don’t get me wrong, I’m not defending the current US healthcare system, it’s horrible and riddled with perverse incentives, and should be mostly (if not entirely) nationalized. I’m just not sure how to justify the idea that healthcare is a “right”.
I know that sometimes people on the left draw a comparison to the right to a public defender. I’m not sure that argument really holds up though, because you only have the right to a public defender under the specific circumstance of being prosecuted by the government for a crime. The logic there is “if the government is going to significantly interfere with your life by arresting you and trying you for a crime, then it at least has to allow you to get legal defense from a qualified attorney, even if you need the government to pay for it.” There’s not, like, a right to a publicly paid lawyer for any and all purposes.
It's completely ridiculous on its face. We're paying Healthcare workers to do work. Nobody is being forced to work without pay. Like it's such a stupid argument that I'm kind of baffled when I hear it
Word. You want to charge 80$ for a bag of saline, make your interns work 30 hour shifts for no reason, and bankrupt people over routine surgeries? Fuck you. No doctor's license. Get the fuck out of here.
"Oh but then none of the doctors will continue to work as doctors after the revolution they'll all go on strike!" Fuck em. They're easy enough to replace and most of them will join our side when we cancel their debts and let them work sane hours without having to tell patients they're going to die because some actuary denied them a basic lifesaving intervention.
Also, I can think of plenty of situations where forcing someone to work against their will would be justified under a leftist context. Making nazis clear minefields for example.
But what if every nurse and doctor suddenly quit their job and didn't want to be healthcare workers anymore? Then you would have to force them which proves the argument!
Rights are not absolute, they presuppose a given society which has certain functions and powers it can administer at will. In our society there is not really a shortage of healthcare, only an artificial limit on distribution because private property.
Saying healthcare is a right in our capitalist society amounts to two things.
- Payment for essential healthcare is an entitlement of all people, regardless of personal financial situation.
- Healthcare availability cannot discriminate by ability to pay. Treat first, sort out payment later.
Like most of these things "healthcare is a human right", "defund/abolish the police", etc... They are nearly-meaningless catch phrases/bumper stickers that don't actually communicate the position. Not sure exactly how to resolve this, but it sucks that for many, the discussion begins and ends with that alone.
tell them to stop relying on everyone and die in the woods
being alive requires labor, those morons think without money there's no incentive to do things that keep us alive. the concept of just making food because we need it is beyond current thought.
die in the woods
relying on other peoples labor to rescue libertarians from bear attacks?
You have a right to legal representation. Are lawyers slaves? You have a right to vote- are politicians, poll workers, etc, slaves?
listing off other rights doesn't work because the only one they think is real is the right to property, and they can't imagine that their collection of guns isn't, by itself, enough to keep someone from shooting them and picking their pocket.
Conservatives want to get rid of PDs for that reason. They really are evil evil
What "rights" do not require someone else's labour? The second real life interacts with them they all do.
But you're supposed to DEFEND my right to free speech 😭
Honestly a lot of rights that do require people's labour (voting comes to mind), conservatives want to get rid of. So idk.
it's a non sequitur. "rights" aren't a thing that springs from nature. they're a product of a society maximizing good for all its members. society exists because of other peoples' labor. that's what it is. all of us depending on each other to keep the wheel turning.
they're a product of a society maximizing good
I would agree with you, with nitpicks. I agree that rights are historic products, they are created not in void and not from moral argument, but from power and class struggle which enshrined them in the concrete and specific material history we got. That there are ways to use power to not have them infringed that are codified in some way. In practice all rights are infringed constantly and no matter if "positive" or "negative" right they are socially created and mediated.
So history is more a product of class struggle than societies trying to maximize good for all its members, which is a slightly more idealistic/moralist take than I would do.
In a communist society however, when the labour and its organization is put under conscious control what you write might as well be seen as correct.
I completely agree that society exists because of other peoples' labor (ubuntu) and that includes the labour of our ancestors and material and social conditions they left over.
Love me some "Shut up nerd" with a side of "Quit being a weenie"
That argument has never made sense to me. I mean we're not talking about conscripting doctors, we're talking about prioritizing healthcare much more highly than we do and making sure it gets to the people (inside of the country, unless you're Cuba) who need it most
I don't see how it's any different than "taxation is theft" considering that all tax-funding involves paying somebody for their (or in the US, a prisoner's) labor
It's on exactly the same level as "tax is theft," and you hear this from the same Looney Tunes libertarians.
I don't see how it's any different than "taxation is theft" considering that all tax-funding involves paying somebody for their (or in the US, a prisoner's) labor
Thought experiment: Try agreeing with this statement, while also claiming that rent is a form of taxation.
Same way we refute all the other stupid arguments. Shove them in a locker and forget about them (the person making the argument, not the argument. The argument isn't real, it's just some dumb shit Americans say).
Slightly more serious - The people own all the hospitals, all the medical schools, all the medical infrastructure, etc. etc. Want to be a doctor? You're going to serve the public. Bam. Done. Moving on.
Everything requires other peoples' labor. All forms of service and products only exist because somebody else did the necessary work to make it exist. I think one angle to look at rights is that they are essentially a promise made by the state that resources will be allocated properly in order that everyone gets a share. This is fair because everybody contributes in some way to society's inputs.
Another way of looking at this could be to argue that just because healthcare isn't currently a right, doesn't exclude the fact that there are people (the bourgeoisie) who benefit from the labor of the healthcare workers' labor by virtue of being able to pay for it (not to mention by virtue of reaping rewards of all of their workers' labor, that they profit off of)
furthermore, what exactly is the crux of the argument that "healthcare can't be a right because it requires other people's labor"? Is the point here that it isn't fair? If the chief concern is fairness, then we could just gesture vaguely around at all aspects of capitalism as a sufficient rebuttal. By that measure, we should adopt policies that are merely more fair than presently existing affairs - which, universal nationalized healthcare is, relative to existing systems.
what exactly is the crux of the argument that "healthcare can't be a right because it requires other people's labor"?
I think the point of that statement is, what about poorer, less industrialized societies that don’t have a lot of medical facilities? In order for people to have a right to healthcare, there has to be healthcare. That means doctors, nurses, hospitals, emergency rooms, and means of producing medicine and medical devices. If a society doesn’t have all of that then any “right to healthcare” won’t amount to much in practice.
In order for people to have a right to healthcare, there has to be healthcare
I mean, that's not true? A right exists independent of the ability of a state to meet that right.
If a person has a “right” to something their society isn’t technically or logistically capable of providing, then that right is meaningless.
I mean, rights kind of are meaningless lol. It's just a statement of the values of a society.
gotta be careful about saying rights exist when they're inventions of relatively modern societies and pre-agricultural people probably thought killing somebody for no reason was wrong
whether rights exist is a philosophical debate that probably needs its own post
yeah unless someone was specifically advocating for corvee labour on the part of medical personell as the basis for universal healthcare then that counterargument is gibberish
Healthcare can't be a right because it requires other people's labor
As others have mentioned, the people who own the labor required are compensated for doing this, because it is, you know... their job. I would know, I am one of them. Public healthcare exists already.
This conservative argument is literally framing the healthcare worker as a slave. They can't imagine a good or service being produced unless someone is being exploited. So they concern troll you with the idea that a public service could not exist like that without you exploiting someone like they were slave labor that was forced to work that job.
I think this qualifies as the perversity thesis.
Conservatives don't care about slaves and slavery, they are quite happy to have slaves in the US, for example the hundred thousands and millions that are sentenced to slavery. They don't care about slaves, the US ensured that slavery was possible in militarily controlled parts of the world to supply US textiles cheap.
If conservatives care that no one is forced to labour then they ought to support unions and worker movements, since only the working class as actor can make it so that no working class person is forced to work.
Every modern society is based on people being forced to work. The state/police ensures that we have "official" union charters, which are mediated through laws, they force us to do work we wouldn't want to do. If police sends us away so that we don't protest fascists, we are forced to do work (moving away). Conservatives don't care about force or slavery, they care about not being privileged. Joke about them.
My lungs have to work harder every day since capitalists did pollute our air, which I did not consent too and neither did I consent to all the stuff that gets trapped in my lungs. Negative rights are as much a sham as positive rights. Discussion about rights often puts the spot light on morals, ethics and ideals, not on how the world works and that the working class is what conquers human rights.
I understand they still have, and enjoy wage slavery as well as imperialism. I meant it in the framing of chattel slavery, which deep down they still desire whether they realize it or not. They know however that openly wanting what people identify as slavery is unacceptable. So they try to strawman the position of socialized medicine as a perversion of "freedoms". My analogy is just me trying to diagnose their
.
Depending on how much of a nerd they invite you to be about it, all rights (and all life as members of a social species, really) require the labor of others to uphold and defend / perpetuate the continued existence of, but since usually this is more about some idea of doctors and nurses being forced to work without pay, usually it suffices to just point out that medical staff is still compensated in every nation with public healthcare.
More broadly though, I prefer to dodge "rights talk" entirely. "Is this a right? What about this?" I don't give a shit, rights are made up, and often the "rights discourse" serves only to distract from the more useful discussion of whether or not something would actually be good policy or not. Forget "rights", just consider: how much do you want life to suck ass to live in?
and all life as members of a social species, really)
The eco-feminist tradition goes further, and points out that not only other people's (mostly uncompensated, especially when it comes to women) labor keeps every one of us alive and healthy, but that the labor of creating and nurturing life is not reciprocated by a human species that sees ecosystems as a source of resources to be extracted.
you laugh at them because that's the dumbest fucking reason for something to not be a right
i'm guessing this is a yankee thingSame American libertarians that say shit like this will turn around and argue that it’s actually okay for them to go around being disease pigs infecting during a pandemic so frankly their opinion doesn’t count for shit. They should count themselves lucky our society isn’t sane enough to turn their dumbasses into fertilizer like they deserve
