Comment by ashark | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ashark | Hacker News Reader

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> Government is force - nothing more. The purpose of government is to protect our rights. "Single payer" (a euphemism for socialized medicine) by definition violates rights by forcing people to do things against their will.

"Rights" are basically just freedoms we've decided we like a whole lot and want the government to guarantee, so that's not exactly a static category. So on the one hand we can just decide whichever rights are being violated are—at least conditionally—not rights. Boom, done.

On the other hand, is there any such thing as a government that does not force people to do things they wouldn't voluntarily do? I'm pretty sure if you take that away what's left has lost the single most important trait of a government, and what's left is... I don't know, a non-profit begging for money on TV and utterly incapable of fulfilling any of the usual roles of a government? In that case, the fact that single-payer would force people to do things doesn't per se remove it from the realm of legitimate government activity.

As for the utility of the term "single payer", I believe it's distinct enough from the much broader "socialized medicine", which could include things like seizing hospitals and making doctors exclusively state employees, to make it substantially more than just a euphemism.

"'Rights' are basically just freedoms we've decided we like a whole lot and want the government to guarantee" - as I said below, the logical conclusion of that argument is not a world you'd want to live in. -- "is there any such thing as a government that does not force people to do things they wouldn't voluntarily do?" - no there isn't. That's why it should be limited to protecting other people's rights.

> "'Rights' are basically just freedoms we've decided we like a whole lot and want the government to guarantee" - as I said below, the logical conclusion of that argument is not a world you'd want to live in.

How is that not the world we live in? What is the alternative? At some point someone's deciding what's a right and what isn't. Other people may disagree. Rights aren't a law of nature, they're a fuzzy category, subject to conditions and caveats and shifting over time.

> "is there any such thing as a government that does not force people to do things they wouldn't voluntarily do?" - no there isn't. That's why it should be limited to protecting other people's rights.

But a lot of the things government does that don't fall within that narrow limit really, really appear to make my life and the lives of the people I care about much better, at relatively little cost (for a broad definition of cost). Few or none of the OECD states seem too bad, to put it mildly. None are unqualified disasters, or even close. Meanwhile a "drown it in a bathtub" government coexisting with an advanced economy (correct me if I'm wrong) remains hypothetical—indeed, I think it's fair to call mainstream the view among experts that governments' special ability to overcome coordination problems and take action to nurture markets is vital to an advanced economy—as do the effects of such a system. So it's definitely going to be an uphill battle convincing me that our government "should be limited to protecting other people's rights", without some other state practicing that and full of citizens telling me "no, really, it's pretty great".

"What is the alternative?" - a system of rights based on the nature of human beings. Human beings survive by producing the things we need to survive. We need governments to protect others from initiating force against us in opposition to our primary needs of living.

Will we ever see this in reality? No. But, the closer humans have gotten in history the better off they've been.

> "What is the alternative?" - a system of rights based on the nature of human beings. Human beings survive by producing the things we need to survive. We need governments to protect others from initiating force against us in opposition to our primary needs of living.

I'm having trouble figuring out how this doesn't still boil down to people making judgement calls on what is and isn't a right, just with a level of indirection, so maybe this other question will help me see what you mean:

> Will we ever see this in reality? No. But, the closer humans have gotten in history the better off they've been.

Do you have an example in mind of when and where we've come especially close to this ideal?

"I'm having trouble figuring out how this doesn't still boil down to people making judgement calls on what is and isn't a right" - at the end of the day we're ruled by people. But, there should be a standard by which decisions are made other than "whatever the majority decides".

> But, there should be a standard by which decisions are made other than "whatever the majority decides".

It seems like a standard is just a reason for choosing a given set of things to call rights and a given role for government, and we're all set to circle right back to where we were—the people with the power to affect government choosing those things, based on reasons (which was implicitly the case before, anyway). At some point there must be compelling evidence for selecting a given standard over any other, and one would hope that standard may change in the face of new evidence.

"Do you have an example in mind of when and where we've come especially close to this ideal?" The USA of course - though it's quickly moving away. Hong Kong (though China is ruining it). England before the Fabians took over. Japan after the war. There are many others.

> Japan after the war.

arches eyebrow

Is that not the poster child for extensive government intervention in markets and public/private partnership done right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_economic_miracle

A fair number of people would consider the right to health care a fundamental human right.

How can you logically have a right to the services of someone else? Health care is a product - doctors, hospitals, medicine, etc. These must all be produced by people.

You can't divine rights out of some fundamental logic. The only ones who can decide what rights humans have are the humans themselves, and then we structure our society to make sure those rights aren't violated.

"You can't divine rights out of some fundamental logic" - of course you can. This is the role of philosophy.

Good luck with that.

https://www.amazon.com/Objectivism-Philosophy-Ayn-Rand-Libra...

Maybe I should have been clearer: Just because you say it's derivable "from logic" doesn't mean it is. No logic system can do anything without axioms, and the adoption of those axioms is an arbitrary choice.

Axioms are not arbitrary - they simply are. An axiom is a recognition of the nature of reality.

Didn't you say this earlier, though?

The purpose of government is to protect our rights.

It sounds like you also think "you logically have a right to the services of someone else", otherwise who's doing the protection?

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