Sunday, February 17, 2013

There Are No Such Things as Positive Rights

There are no such things as "positive rights". Rights, by definition, are universal, meaning that everyone can exercise them, even simultaneously. But since exercising a "positive right" means coercing another to provide one with a specific good or service, everyone attempting to exercise a "positive right" simultaneously results in no one being able to exercise it, since where everyone wants to take, there is no one left to take from. Thus, "positive rights" are either logical contradictions or disguised privileges.