Entitlement

Inalienable rights and legal entitlements. What things do we, as humans or Americans have rights to?

We started with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Over the many decades we have added a bit of fluff and we have recently decided that healthcare should be added to the pile of rights.

I like working with absolutes. It frees up the mind from the quagmires of iffy reasoning and rationalizing. I find myself a simple rule and that is my first premise in an argument. It takes a lot of work to get around it.

My simple rules for entitlements is that, first, no one has a right to the products and services of another person. Second, making a law that says it is so doesn't make it so.

I will demonstrate my second point first and then propose a thought experiment for the first point.

Entitlement programs are not coupled with obligatory mandates. Therefore, your rights to services and products do not guarantee that said services and products will be available. Even the most assured resource available to the United States federal government is not in endless supply, tax revenue. It leaves bitter infighting between special interests groups who want their programs fully funded while there is not enough money to fully fund all programs. So, saying it is so just doesn't make it so.

For my first point, that no one has a right to another person's products or services, here are two thought experiments. You could make them real experiments, but if you are honest enough, or watch television programs like Man, Woman, Wild then you shouldn't need to try them.

Strip down a person to their skivvies and drop them in the middle of nowhere. Tadda, they have access to all of their inalienable rights. They don't seem to have welfare payments or health care though.

Now, for all the other entitlements that the legislative body of our government has seen fit to grant us, try this modification.

Drop two folks who don't know each other in the middle of nowhere. Have one individual spend two or three tough days making shelter, providing fire and hunting and preparing food. Have the other individual sit on their butt smoking weed the whole time. On the third day, when the need for munchies completely overcomes the second person, take any weapons the first person may have fashioned for hunting away from them and have the second person demand their entitled portion of whatever the first person has.

It all seems pretty straightforward to me.

Okay, classroom. For homework, read a historical account of Plymouth to find out why William Bradford, one of the leaders of the Pilgrims referred to the redistribution of wealth 'vanity of that conceit of Plato's and other ancients applauded by some of later times'.