Friday, July 24, 2009

Federal Healthcare vs. Federal Military

As I have been growing a little bit more classically liberal, I have been struggling over a number of issues. One is healthcare. To be honest, there remains quite an appeal to universal healthcare to me, at least in the abstract.

The main thing I haven't been able to fully get an answer for from my classically liberal friends, who think a federally regulated military is justified and constitutes an appropriate use of government but universal healthcare is not and does not, is why defense against foreign human invaders is significantly different than defense against domestic bacterial and viral invaders and why defense of the right to life by way of destruction is better than defense of the right to life by way of healing.

I am not interested in defending my position this time - I don't actually have much of a position. I am just curious whether a federal military can be relevantly distinguished from a federal healthcare system in principle.

14 comments:

  1. Hahaha. That's awesome. But nope - not necessarily defending anything, just wondering whether a federal military can be relevantly distinguished from federal healthcare in principle.

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  2. First off: The justification and purpose for a military is the protection one's property and one's life. The principle? Something like: No one has the right to take another's property nor life.

    Secondly: The same cannot be said about the institution of a federal healthcare system. Why? There's no such thing as 'my natural right not to be killed by bacteria, etc.' There is no incongruity with the following state of affairs:

    (1) Derek has the right to life.
    (2) Derek dies because he get sicks and couldn't afford medication.

    (2) Is not a violation of (1).

    Thus, health services are completely irrelevant to the right to life. Having rights is something humans have qua their relations to other humans.

    Thus, it's misguided and/or wrongheaded to use rights rhetoric in healthcare contexts.

    No one has the right to another's property.
    Healthcare is another's property.
    Ergo, no one has a right to healthcare.

    If no one has a right to healthcare, then one's right to life has nothing to do with healthcare.
    No one has a right to healthcare,
    Ergo, one's right to life has nothing to do with healthcare.

    So, to answer your question, a federal military is instituted as a means to protecting one's rights, and a healthcare system could never protect anyone's rights. No one has a right not to die from non-human agency.

    This means that I'd have to retract my conceit about whether we have a right to not be attacked by animals. There is no such thing as the 'natural right to not get eaten by a lion.' Conceding that we might have such a right caused me to slip down a slope to make think that gov't health services protect the right to life. This is false.

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  3. “First off: The justification and purpose for a military is the protection one's property and one's life. The principle? Something like: No one has the right to take another's property nor life. “

    Why can’t the justification and purpose for healthcare also be for the protection of one’s property and one’s life? If no one has the right to take another’s property or life, surely bacteria and viruses don’t have the right to do so either! In fact, I don’t think they have any rights whatsoever, which makes it even more of a travesty that they are taking lives. At least other humans are rights-bearers at all.



    “The same cannot be said about the institution of a federal healthcare system. Why? There's no such thing as 'my natural right not to be killed by bacteria, etc.'”

    So I have the natural right to not be killed by other humans, but I don’t have the natural right to not be killed by bacteria and viruses? Whence cometh this distinction?



    “There is no incongruity with the following state of affairs:

    (1) Derek has the right to life.
    (2) Derek dies because he get sicks and couldn't afford medication.

    (2) Is not a violation of (1).”

    So, Derek has the right to life, and - I’m sorry - DEATH is not a violation of that? Please help me understand; I just don’t think I am even on the same page as you with respect to the definition of “life” (or maybe “right”).



    “Having rights is something humans have qua their relations to other humans. Thus, it's misguided and/or wrongheaded to use rights rhetoric in healthcare contexts. “

    This is interesting, and I think is more along the lines of what I’m looking for. I am not sure what it means or why you think it is so, but I am interested in hearing more along these lines.



    “No one has the right to another's property.
    Healthcare is another's property.
    Ergo, no one has a right to healthcare.”

    Doesn’t it seem like this same argument can be made about the federal military?

    No one has the right to another's property.
    Military is another's property.
    Ergo, no one has a right to military.

    Just like it would be with universal heathcare, my money is being taken from me, with or without my consent, to pay for the military that defends the lives of everyone else here, with or without their consent and with or without their monetary contribution.




    “No one has a right not to die from non-human agency. “

    Do I have the ‘right to life’, or do I merely have the ‘right to not be killed by other humans’?

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  4. “First off: The justification and purpose for a military is the protection one's property and one's life. The principle? Something like: No one has the right to take another's property nor life. “

Why can’t the justification and purpose for healthcare also be for the protection of one’s property and one’s life? If no one has the right to take another’s property or life, surely bacteria and viruses don’t have the right to do so either! In fact, I don’t think they have any rights whatsoever, which makes it even more of a travesty that they are taking lives. At least other humans are rights-bearers at all.”

    Rights are what one has over and against another. They, in a way, represent unqualified obligations. Having a right to life, then, is nothing more than your obligation not to take it from me. My right to life represents restrictions on your behavior. This is what I meant when I said “humans have rights qua their relations to one another”. Bacteria, qua bacteria, aren’t the sorts of entities that have any obligations whatever. They neither have the ability to conform nor transgress their obligations to me, since, ipso facto, they don’t have any; they aren’t agents.



    


“The same cannot be said about the institution of a federal healthcare system. Why? There's no such thing as 'my natural right not to be killed by bacteria, etc.'”

So I have the natural right to not be killed by other humans, but I don’t have the natural right to not be killed by bacteria and viruses? Whence cometh this distinction?”

    See previous comment.

    
“There is no incongruity with the following state of affairs:

(1) Derek has the right to life. 
(2) Derek dies because he get sicks and couldn't afford medication. 

(2) Is not a violation of (1).”

So, Derek has the right to life, and - I’m sorry - DEATH is not a violation of that?”

    Death is a violation of nature, of course, but the domain “violations of nature” is much broader than “possible transgressions”. Derek’s death, then, occurs in both domains, but when I die at the hands of Louis, as opposed to accidentally falling off my balcony, only in the former situation could we sensibly say my rights were plausibly violated. If you can’t tell the intuitive difference here, enter philosophical impasse.

    “No one has the right to another's property.
Healthcare is another's property. 
Ergo, no one has a right to healthcare.”

Doesn’t it seem like this same argument can be made about the federal military?

No one has the right to another's property.
Military is another's property.
Ergo, no one has a right to military.
”

    Okay okay, this is a good point.

    Both Military and Healthcare are services that count as “another’s property”. No one has the natural right to either. What’s supposed to legitimize the former and not the latter, I think, is the consent of the governed in conjunction with “protecting one’s property.” A Federal healthcare system could enjoy the consent of the governed, but it, by it’s very nature, and cannot be construed as protecting anyone’s rights.

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  5. continued...

    Well, perhaps, I hear you arguing, the consent of the governed is all we need, since it’s all we need in cases that I think are legitimate, like roads and highways. Perhaps. I don’t have a principled objection to this, other than pragmatic considerations. Surely the cost of healthcare per person is much higher than the cost of building and maintaining roads, and surely the latter, unlike the former, enjoys near universal consent, pace a few pesky libertarians.

    I guess, to be honest, this is my major beef with the very idea of universal health care: people think they’re entitled to it. They think that it’s simply a law of nature that they are entitled to another’s labor. I’ve never got any thanks for paying for someone’s surgery, despite the fact my inflated healthcare costs is what paid for them. I think it’s crazy that the gov’t can tell any goods and services provider: “If X needs your services, then you must provide them, and make all the Y’s pay for the X’s.” I think this is fundamentally a form of coerced charity, and coerced charity is nothing other than theft. Imagine that I walk into a grocery store and, being an X, I get to walk out with free groceries. But you, since you’re a Y, you not only have to pay for your groceries, you have to pay for mine too. The only justification there could be for this is:

    (1) The vast majority of Y’s consent to it.

    Surely, (1) is false in the context of groceries, and surely (1) is false in the context of healthcare.

    Pending the near universal consent that gov’t roads and highways enjoy, any government healthcare system, to my lights anyway, is nothing but a systematic violation of Y’s property rights.




    “Do I have the ‘right to life’, or do I merely have the ‘right to not be killed by other humans’?”

    These are the same thing. Perhaps you’re an entitlement victim, too?



    Another thought: if you’re willing to support coerced charity in some cases, why not make the actual healthcare providers the charitable ones? Why not make them provide free services for those in need without inflating the cost of those who aren’t? If you don’t think we should do this, then why think it’s okay to do at any level?

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  6. You have made me think in new ways and given me a lot to chew on. Most of it is irrelevant to my question. Here is the part that is relevant:

    "Both Military and Healthcare are services that count as “another’s property”. No one has the natural right to either. What’s supposed to legitimize the former and not the latter, I think, is the consent of the governed in conjunction with “protecting one’s property.” A Federal healthcare system could enjoy the consent of the governed, but it, by it’s very nature, and cannot be construed as protecting anyone’s rights [just as a military cannot].

    Well, perhaps, I hear you arguing, the consent of the governed is all we need, since it’s all we need in cases that I think are legitimate, like roads and highways. Perhaps. I don’t have a principled objection to this, other than pragmatic considerations. " (emphasis and brackets mine).

    So, to sum up your answer to whether a federal military can be relevantly distinguished from a federal healthcare system in principle: 'no'.

    Have I misunderstood anything?

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  7. Uhh. Yes, the can be distinguished via their differences concerning the protecting rights. Militaries protect rights; Healthcare does not. If you think the only legitimate form of government is both:
    (1) consent of the governed.
    (2) proetection of rights.
    Then Healthcare is not legitimate, since it fails to do (2).
    But if you think the consent of the governed alone is all that is needed, then a fed. Healthcare system could be just as legitimate as a military.

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  8. I think I understand a little more now. While you think that nobody has a right to benefit from either military or healthcare, you do think that a military at least protects rights, while healthcare does not. The reason you think this, is because you think a right is only an obligation of other humans to not do something to you. A military prevents other humans from harming you, while a heathcare system does not. Above and beyond this distinction, in America today, there is virtually unanimous consent to the funding of a federal military by taxation, while there is nothing near this level of support for federal heathcare. Additionally, you have pragmatic reasons for supporting a federal military while opposing a federal healthcare system.

    What you don't have a principled objection to, is a possible argument that all that is required to justify a social good or service is the democratic consent of the governed, and that federal healthcare may someday enjoy that (as roads and schools do now).

    Am I getting warmer?

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  9. that's it. I apologize for not making it as clear as you just did.

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  10. haha.

    question: do you think the democratic consent of the governed is all that is needed to justify a social good or service?

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  11. "What you don't have a principled objection to, is a possible argument that all that is required to justify a social good or service is the democratic consent of the governed, and that federal healthcare may someday enjoy that (as roads and schools do now)."

    Well, I do have a principles objection to it: The only legitimate purpose for government is the protection of rights.

    The problem is, though I think that this is right, I also don't mind that I'm taxed for non-rights protecting institutions and projects, (e.g., schools and roads). I suppose this makes me somewhat inconsistent. But if we do nationalize/socialize healthcare, I promise I'll stop being inconsistent, and I'll oppose all gov't non-rights protecting endeavors, including roads and schools.


    Or maybe I can find some principled limit to what kinds of non-rights protecting institutions can be legitimate. This following seems foggy, so bear with me, and perhaps try and help me out.

    Why is it a good thing that the gov't builds roads?

    - Universality: if the gov't didn't set up universal standards, each neighborhood would likely have a different road system in both kind and quality, which would make intercity travel unnecessarily difficult.

    - Relatively equal access and equal use: I'd say that your average tax payer in Los Angeles, for instance, uses roads just as much as anyone else. Given that 100% of the population gets the same access to the same roads, and that 90% use roads the same, whatever each citizen is taxed is appropriate-- there's roughly a one to one correspondence between amount taxed and amount used. Another way to put this: the range of amount taxed to amount used per person is relatively small.

    I think, in the case of Healthcare, these two virtues of the gov't are vices.

    -Universality: though I think it's good that the gov't enforce patients' rights in terms of malpractice and negligence, as it currently does, actually running healthcare institutions would destroy competitive services, which might, and often does, lower the quality of health services. Allowing for mediocrity in healthcare, unlike road infrastructure, would be stupid. Perhaps this is a debatable and minor point.

    -Relatively equal access and equal use: It's quite obvious to me that healthcare needs and use vary from person in a much more substantial way than road needs and use very from person to person. This means that, unlike road tax, healthcare tax would not roughly correspond to amount paid per person to amount used per person. Another way to put this: the range of amount taxed per person to amount used per person is much greater than it is for roads.

    This second point, I think, is the strongest. Given the disparity between amount taxed and amount used per person, a universal healthcare system begins to look like a device for the redistribution of wealth in ways gov't road infrastructure does not. What's wrong with the redistribution of wealth? It transgresses each person's right to his or her property.

    So, it seems, I can glean the following principle, a principle that allows for gov't road infrastructure and not gov't health care:

    (TAX) In order for a gov't to legitimately tax for a good or service, the quantity and quality of service provided for each person taxed should not drastically vary.

    Gov't roads meets (TAX); Gov't healthcare (would) not meet (TAX).

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  12. "question: do you think the democratic consent of the governed is all that is needed to justify a social good or service?"

    Yes, as long as it meets (TAX).

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  13. That answers my questions. Thanks.

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