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On my own blog, I never got around to commenting on the post where Ezra argued against the libertarian who said:
Let's talk about health care for a minute. Health care is certainly a need, but it is not a right. And all the high sounding rhetoric in the world that says otherwise is baloney. Rights don't involve, involuntarily, the assets of others. Any 'right' to health care would make exactly that sort of demand on the assets of health care workers.Don't let libertarians get away with this. It's really hard to defend a notion of rights that doesn't involve, involuntarily, the assets of others. Consider the right to vote. For you to exercise this right, there need to be voting machines and ballots and people hired to count the ballots. Keeping a poor person from voting because he didn't have money to contribute to these things would still violate his right to vote. For his rights to be respected, others' assets would have to be deployed. Or consider criminal justice. For property rights to be respected, victims of theft need to have their property returned to them, and criminals must be punished. This process requires lots of assets which the victims might not have. In short, the libertarian restriction on rights can't be maintained.--Neil the Werewolf
