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Comment by Latteland | Hacker News Reader

I'm sure an active lifestyle leads to less money spent on medical care, but the much larger reason would be the expected youth of their members. All the photos were of apparently younger healthy people. When they start getting older, medical issues will show up and the cost of medical care would skyrocket. Now it's pretty clear to me that in the us we should provide medical care as a basic human right for all citizens. Their annual cost of $686.82 per person is probably less than my monthly cost for a small family.

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> basic human right

You mean "entitlement". In the US, "rights" are inherent and natural things; those outlined in the constitution are "negative rights" in that they are prohibitions on the government infringing upon them.

As such, "medical care" doesn't make sense as a right, because it's a service provided to you, not inherent to you in the sense that speech or association between individuals.

Of course, "entitlement" as a word comes with a negative connotation around here, but that's also because most or all entitlements are means-tested and not available to everyone.

As for you the cost, you're spot on. Insurance for myself and my wife is roughly $1000 / month (paid for by my company of 8 people). An active lifestyle won't compensate for things like pregnancy, Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, glaucoma, arthritis, or any other of the innumerable ways that our bodies have yet to catch up with our lifespans.

"Rights" is the correct term. A right is an entitlement. To my knowledge, the differentiation in law is Negative and Positive rights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

Privileges and rights are the terms I was taught in place of positive rights and negative rights, respectively, in your link.

I think they are better terms. Privileges impose an obligation on others. Rights do not. Positive right is very similar to the equivalent alternative term (privilege) but negative rights unnecessarily confuses the conversation. Is there an impact on others and is it really negative? It appears to simply be used in the opposite of positive right but the adjective negative is misleading.

I am not convinced that there is any meaningful distinction between "negative" and "positive" rights. Take property rights, the classic example of a "negative" right. But what are property rights but an entitlement that the government will protect your property? What use is the right to fair trial without an entitlement that the government will provide you a lawyer and select an impartial jury? What use is a "negative" right to liberty or free speech without an entitlement that when someone tries to infringe these rights, the government will protect you?

The intellectual meaning of rights and rights-philosophy is long gone everywhere, today the law is nothing but the will of the powers that be. Keeping that in mind, i can tell you from memory that property rights and it's philosophy in the US are based on the British definitions and those are based upon Lockean principles, based on a believe in natural rights. In a nutshell the fruit of your labour and being the first to appropriate creates your rightfull property. Legally having property therefore does not mean the government will protect it per se. People who are against Lockean definitions tend to mock saying "Planting a flag ( first appropriation ) allows me to rape and pillage a country", something the british did with lockean arguments to justify the behaviour. We're lucky to note however that in most schools of rights philosophy; there is a monopoly on violence owned by the state, not it's citizens.

its philosophy

The problem with the Lockean conception of rights is that merely improving some natural resources doesn't necessarily entitle a person to claim ownership. It doesn't factor in any externalities resulting from the appropriation, nor does it factor in the inherently communal nature of human life and the fact that no human can practically be reared to maturity without a community, and that therefore our appropriation of limited resources (property) affects our surrounding community in potentially negative ways.

It's a little more complicated than that. To take an extreme example, in some cases you can use force (even deadly in some states under certain circumstances) to exclude trespassers from 'your' property. Thus, the right to property is not only a right to have the gov't protect it for you, but also a restriction on the government from prosecuting you for certain acts taken by you on your property.

>As such, "medical care" doesn't make sense as a right, because it's a service provided to you, not inherent to you in the sense that speech or association between individuals.

Guess we'd better scrap that whole "right to an attorney" portion of due process, then.

IANAL but isn’t that a right to have a lawyer if you can afford to hire one? I know you’re not going to be provided with a lawyer at the state’s cost in civil cases though that’s not true in criminal cases. If you can’t afford one you’ll get a public defender. IIRC Peter Thiel said that if you have less than $100 million your access to the courts is more theoretical than actual. Hulk Hogan certainly couldn’t have afforded to bring Gawker down by himself and it’s not like he’s poor.

Fix: Allow people to sell, or sell shares in, their right to sue.

I didn’t even know Gawker shut down, but apparently they did since 2016.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollea_v._Gawker

http://gawker.com/how-guilty-should-i-feel-1785565192

This already is allowed in many places, including "most US jurisdictions" according to Wikipedia[0]. There's even a YC company that does it, which was discussed here when they were looking to fund lawsuits against Equifax[1]. The practice is called champerty or litigation funding.

The fact that this is not more popular suggests that litigation is not efficient for the rich, either. In the end it only enriches the lawyers.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_financing [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15249825

> Guess we'd better scrap that whole "right to an attorney" portion of due process, then.

"You have the right to have an attorney. If you cannot afford one, one will be appointed to you by the court." is the language intended to be used in the Miranda warning; and it is not so much that you have a right to an attorney, but that your right to a speedy and public trial (...and to have the Assistance of Counsel for [your] defence) combines with the state's mandate to prosecute your case to produce a mandate to provide you an attorney.

The "right to an attorney" is a colloquialism for referring to the state's obligation to fulfill the requirements of a constitutional trial if they want to try at all, which in practice either means the state hires public defenders, or the state can not try you (though this wasn't done in practice until it was interpreted this way in court).

There are other legal colloquialisms such as "jury nullification", which is an emergent behaviour rather than an explicit one.

The government provided attorney is part of the cost of prosecuting a case. They can always cut back on law enforcement if they don't have the money. People are going to have medical problems no matter what so public defenders and doctors are not a proper comparison.

>The government provided attorney is part of the cost of prosecuting a case.

Exactly. The "right to an attorney" is actually intended to be a check on government power and it's not an economic entitlement like food stamps. One can see in the Declaration of Independence that the complaints included a "right to a speedy trial" and "right to a trial by jury" because the monarchy government was abusing its power and throwing people in prison on arbitrary whims. That's where the right to have an attorney came from. We should note that the USA does not provide government-funded lawyers for suing your landlord, incorporating your company, or filing your patent application. (Maybe the government should but that's a different conversation.)

If the government is the adversary in criminal prosecution and they can take a citizen's life & liberty away via prison sentence or capital punishment, that is the limited case where the government will provide an attorney. When the government is the opponent in other departments such as the IRS disputing taxes owed, or SEC investigating financial disclosures, there is no "right to an attorney" in those cases to help the citizen fight them in court -- unless it turns into a criminal prosecution.

The right to an attorney is more complicated. It isnt a free attorney. Only the poor get one provided. If you can, you have to provide your own.

I also hesitate to describe any right at a check on power. That suggests planning, an overall design. There is no grand master plan. We have a series of rights rooted in history and tradition. Religion has played a large part. The system has never been designed. Even the founders writing of the constitution was really just a tweeking of some longstanding ideas.

The percieved "balance" is fiction. Other countries have very different rights and do not tip into chaos. Canada lacks the right to a jury trial, and yet somehow isnt a lawless dictatorship. The UK has a very different concept of free speech, yet the BBC is probably the most trusted source of news on the planet. Other systems work, perhaps better.

"I also hesitate to describe any right at a check on power. That suggests planning, an overall design."

I suppose you don't consider a sort of grand, overarching code of laws, as constituting any sort of plan? And if there was a plan, would you imagine that there would be sort type of foundational precepts of that plan - a sort of legal "constitution," as it were? And if there was any type of plan, do you think there would be any group of people, or maybe men specifically (if it were a centuries old plan), who founded it?

The claim isn't that the constitution was wholly novel out the time, or that it is the only type of legal system that can (or even necessarily does) lead to a long running stable government. The claim isn't that the plan is immutable, or tightly controlled by a singular central authority. The claim is just that the US legal system was, literally, planned.

Arguging that the BBC (or really any singular news source in 2018) is "probably the most trusted source of news on the planet" is a hyper-contentious claim. And this is the UK's "freedom of speech" -

  Article 10: Freedom of expression

  1. Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers. This Article shall not prevent States from requiring the licensing of broadcasting, television or cinema enterprises.

  2. The exercise of these freedoms, since it carries with it duties and responsibilities, may be subject to such formalities, conditions, restrictions or penalties as are prescribed by law and are necessary in a democratic society, in the interests of national security, territorial disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, for the protection of the reputation or rights of others, for preventing the disclosure of information received in confidence, or for maintaining the authority and impartiality of the judiciary.

This faux freedom of expression is most importantly non-foundational, and explicitly provides several extra-legal restrictions against it, which is manifest by the UK's continuing tradition of censoring art and prosecuting people for things like making unthreatening jokes on Youtube.

edit: added and emphasized that the UK's freedom of expression is not a foundational part of UK law

Its article 12 of the UN's International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights as adopted in 1976 by the USA and 160 other countries.

Fwiw, the USA signed but did not ratify it, so it not adopted by the USA.

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

but the much larger reason would be the expected youth of their members. All the photos were of apparently younger healthy people

I agree the photos seem to be of young people. But some of them are at a distance etc. So I wouldn't assume this is accurate.

When I was 48, someone who thought I was the older sister of my adult sons -- and pegged their ages accurately -- guessed that I was 30. I have been repeatedly mistaken for their older sister.

If you remain physically active, you can appear younger than you are. This doesn't guarantee that you don't have health issues. (I have a serious medical condition.)

They say that half their active members are under 30 on another page.

>if you remain physically active, you can appear younger than you are.

I think it's just the rest of us look older )

The average age (for adults) at Twin Oaks is about 45. At Acorn it is about 35. I have not been to East Wind for a long time, but it is likely somewhere between these two ages.

East Wind, like most members of the FEC [0], has a joint self-insurance pool for catastrophic healthcare costs. This limits administrative overhead.

There are a combination of factors that limit outlays for the community: As you note, the demographics skew young (in any given year, there is usually a sizable older cohort, but a lot of people move to Twin Oaks [1] as they get older).

Additionally, almost everyone is low-income, and thus people are eligible for subsidized routine health care through the state (although Missouri is pretty stingy).

Finally, mostly people just don’t choose to consume much healthcare.

  [0] http://thefec.org
  [1] http://twinoaks.org

I investigated living in a similar commune. They used public assistance for major medical, which everyone qualified for because their pretax income was so low.

That sounds great.

If you can keep your income low and lifestyle high; you benefit and don’t need to contribute to things like wars you don’t like.

Also, since insurance is now required, best to qualify for the free version.

Living below the poverty line with luxury is essentially the world that folks want to achieve with UBI and robotics / AI.

Perhaps it’s possible now.

It's only possible for them because of the population cap. Things would degenerate swiftly with a larger community.

Sure, but you could have a network of affilited ~100 person groups.

Twin Oaks does this quite a bit, East Wind didn’t so much, historically, mainly because Missouri is much more stingy than Virginia.

The FEC’s self-insurance fund generally covers major medical expenses, but communities are expected to get the best deal they can for medical expenses, which includes exploring self-insured discounts and public assistance where available.

>> Now it's pretty clear to me that in the us we should provide medical care as a basic human right for all citizens.

If that is a right, then someone has an obligation to provide it. "The government" isn't a provider, some doctor is and they aren't forced to work for free.

The way our right to an education has resulted in a million teachers volunteering for no money? Or the way our right to an attorney has resulted in the complete collapse of the criminal defense attorney sector? The government can be a funder without being a provider.

They're been running since the mid-70s; wonder what they do with the old people

They probably send them off to watch some lovely videos and hear some lovely music in a little room, before being turned into crackers.

Is that supposed to be funny?

It's a reference to the film 'Soylent Green'.

ok, sorry, I missed it.

The cynic in me says that they rejoin normal society. You don't see many old counter-culturals.

Often people do leave, for a variety of reasons, many of which I’d categorize as a combination of “tired of the young messy loud communards” and “East Wind deliberately has very limited filters on membership, and I’m tired of dealing with the mentally ill/people’s alcohol abuse”.

Many of the older folks who leave go to Twin Oaks, which is much more restrictive and thus tends to have less drama.

But many people have chosen to live out their golden years at East Wind. It’s a great place to get lots of youthful energy, and avoid the isolation of modern American culture.

There are a good number of members at East Wind in their late 50's and 60's.

There are also a good number of long term members with memberships of 20,25,30, and one with 40 years.

At East Wind there is retirement after 25 years "on the system" as well as medical retirement.

We keep them. Twin Oaks first built a clinic space connected to the residence which is designed to handle mobility and other age related issues. Then we built a hospice. In the 20 years i have lived at Twin Oaks, only a few people over 65 have left the community to live elsewhere, the significant majority have stayed with us until they died.

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