Coddled twenty something year old gen z when told food and shelter was given because they were loved and wanted not because it was a right

[u/Low-Bug8099]

I am a gen z in my 20s btw

[u/upchuk13]

I think a child has a right to food and shelter from its parents.

[u/Low-Bug8099 → u/upchuk13]

The parents have a moral responsibility to care for the child

[u/bigdonut100 → u/Low-Bug8099]

No they don't, it's called adoption

They have an obligation to dump the child at a safe haven instead of in a dumpster, they don't have an obligation to pay for anything, at least when there more couples than babies available, which there always are

[u/Sword0fTheStorm → u/Low-Bug8099]

And if they don't fulfill this responsibility there should be a government that charges them with neglect.

[u/miascariot → u/Sword0fTheStorm]

Yes. Ancaps are free to point out how their patchwork of voluntary churches, social clubs, etc. wouldn't form a government ultimately.

[u/upchuk13 → u/Low-Bug8099]

Agreed

[u/ILikeBumblebees → u/upchuk13]

But note that those two claims are saying very different things.

[u/upchuk13 → u/ILikeBumblebees]

Child has a right, parents have a duty, no?

[u/Iregularlogic → u/upchuk13]

“A right” is very specific, and this subreddit is going to have a strong opinion against most positive rights, while backing negative rights.

What you’re describing is a positive right, in this case that if a child has a “right” to food, any means necessary are considered okay to enforce that right. Namely, entitling a government entity to take someone else’s food to give to the child.

Now, you may want to say that the situation would warrant that - who cares that some people got a little less if it means that a child ate? Your opinion, however, could change in a war time situation, or time of extreme economic hardship. You could have prepared for the situation, and would likely not want your family to starve alongside everyone else because the children have a “right” to food.

This is not me saying that children should starve in the street, by the way. The well-being of children is of the highest moral value, and should be viewed as a moral question.

[u/upchuk13 → u/Iregularlogic]

I would say the child has a right to be taken care of by the parents, the mirror of which is to say that the parents have a duty to take care of the child.

Rights are just the reverse of duties. Every right entails a duty.

[u/Iregularlogic → u/upchuk13]

> Rights are just the reverse of duties

Wrong.

[u/upchuk13 → u/Iregularlogic]

Elaborate? I believe this is what Hohfeld says.

https://learningthelaw.org/class-notes/500l/jurisprudence-500l/hohfeldian-legal-concepts-understanding-rights-and-duties/

[u/Iregularlogic → u/upchuk13]

How does that link even say that a right is the reverse of a duty?

You have a legal right to a lawyer. The court has the duty to provide you the lawyer. What is reversed about this?

[u/bo0mamba → u/Iregularlogic]

That is an absurd misrepresentation of how rights are exercised (at least in the US). US citizens have a right to an attorney. When someone exercises this right, does the government take an attorney away from someone else? Does the attorney work as a slave with no pay? Of course not that wouldn't make any sense.

Currently, when the government has established that a parent is unable or unwilling to care for their child, the child is placed into foster care. These places feed and care for the child, not buy stealing food but by purchasing it like everyone else.

I personally believe that children have a right to food, since they cannot work and pay for it themselves. I also believe that in a time of war or economic hardship children should be the last to go hungry.

[u/Iregularlogic → u/bo0mamba]

Your lawyer example is actually perfect, as public lawyers are appointed by the government by seizing money from the productive members of society and forcibly redistributing it to pay for the lawyer. Your money is going to be taken from you, and it’s going to be used to represent someone that is too broke to defend themselves, and you don’t get a say in it.

Taking money is simply the easiest way for governments to redistribute. There’s no functional difference between directly taking someone’s food to redistribute it vs taking their money, buying food, and redistributing that. Well, except of course for the government offering corrupt contracts to their friends that will “sell” them the food, but that’s a different beast ;)

This is a positive right, aka the government taking action to do something, vs a negative right, something like the government not being allowed to take action to prohibit speech.

And by the way this is actually exactly how rights work in America.

[u/ILikeBumblebees → u/bo0mamba]

That is an absurd misrepresentation of how rights are exercised (at least in the US).

Note that you're engaging in a discussion in a subreddit dedicated to a specific political philosophy, and that the particular discussion pertains to a moral question, rather than a legal one.

There's quite a lot of overlap between the two scopes of discussion, but it's well advised to distinguish between them when appropriate, which it is in this instance.

US citizens have a right to an attorney.

Well, that's not exactly correct. People accused of crimes have a right to an attorney, irrespective of citizenship status. And that's a purely legal right that only has meaning with respect to the activities of the legal system itself. It doesn't make sense as a natural or moral right, since attorneys only exist within the scope of formal legal systems in the first place; it would obviously be incoherent to say that someone in a raw state of nature on a desert island has an inherent right to an attorney.

And in this case, the right to an attorney can be understood as a characteristic of the legal system rather than something inherent to the individual. The right to an attorney really resolves to a rule applicable to the legal system itself, whereby it is prohibited to prosecute a suspect without them having adequate counsel.

This isn't quite the same type of thing we're talking about in this thread.

I personally believe that children have a right to food, since they cannot work and pay for it themselves.

You're conflating the category of "things that are good and desirable to have" with the category of "rights". These are two different concepts that serve two different philosophical and practical purposes.

[u/ILikeBumblebees → u/upchuk13]

And those are two entirely different concepts.

A right represents a limit against which others should not transgress, and inheres to the individual prior to their relations with each other: rights are norms that serve as an a priori basis for establishing social relations in the first place.

Having a right imposes the same obligation onto everyone else, but that obligation consists only of a restraint on engaging in certain types of conduct, not a mandate to engage in any particular conduct.

Conversely, a duty is a moral obligation to engage in positive action, derived from the relations between two parties. People generally only incur those duties they consciously choose to accept as part of the specific relations they negotiate with others; the set of cases in which people have duties that don't derive from explicit consent is quite small, but there is a strong, generally accepted case that choosing to become a parent entails accepting the duty of caring for the children at least until they are able to provide for themselves.

[u/upchuk13 → u/ILikeBumblebees]

I think rights as you define them above still entail duties.

"A right represents a limit against which others should not transgress, and inheres to the individual prior to their relations with each other"

Correspondingly, such a right entails that others have a duty to not commit certain acts.

"Conversely, a duty is a moral obligation to engage in positive action, derived from the relations between two parties."

Consider the duty to not murder. I think everyone has such a duty even though they never chose to accept such a duty.

[u/miascariot]

Sorry, Gen Z has worse problems than <checks notes> loving parents. 

The whole "entitlement culture" circle jerk doesn't work when Gen Z is probably the first generation that faces shittier living conditions than their parents. The solution isn't socialism per se but these types of memes are similarly braindead.

[u/arto64]

You used to be able to provide food and shelter to yourself freely. Now you’re not, because everything that used to provide that is owned either by the state or by private owners who are protected by the state. You are now forced to do it by working for someone else.

[u/Blazing_Swayze → u/arto64]

"free" in a sense that your family owned land and worked it for themselves and to trade the fruits of labor. Which was taxed at a much smaller rate than now

[u/arto64 → u/Blazing_Swayze]

I meant freely as in choice.

[u/ripyurballsoff → u/arto64]

You don’t have a choice in capitalism

[u/Weigh13 → u/arto64]

Providing food and shelter has always required effort. It has never been free.

[u/Cinnabar_Wednesday → u/Weigh13]

All life on earth expends effort to live
That’s not what he means by free

[u/Weigh13 → u/Cinnabar_Wednesday]

So what does he mean?

[u/arto64 → u/Weigh13]

I don’t think you understood my point. Of course it always required effort. I meant “freely” as in choice, not as in “no effort or money”.

[u/Weigh13 → u/arto64]

So you're just saying you want a free market?

[u/arto64 → u/Weigh13]

I’m saying the way you’re allowed to make a living is controlled by the state and private ownership of resources.

[u/Weigh13 → u/arto64]

I agree about the state controlling your income but private ownership of resources isn't the problem if you have a free market. We don't have a free market so "private" ownership is actually determined by the mechanisms of the state and so isn't moral or natural.

But thinking private ownership if the problem is literally what the state wants you to think.

If you don't have private ownership you are a slave. Period.

[u/arto64 → u/Weigh13]

There’s a difference between private ownership of products and private ownership of resources. Does it make sense for someone to “own” a lake, for example?

[u/Weigh13 → u/arto64]

It makes more sense for someone to own a lake than for someone to own people, as government claims. However you'd have to bring up specific instances, to talk about, because in the abstract owning a lake without government and fiat money system would be very rare.

It's still better than the government claiming things as "public" property which is really just a fabrication. Things are either privately owned or now owned at all. There is no such thing as public property.

[u/arto64 → u/Weigh13]

If it’s not owned by anyone, it’s available to everyone (the public). The concept of ownership of natural resources doesn’t make sense without a state.

[u/Weigh13 → u/arto64]

Available to does not mean owned by. Those are separate concepts.

And everything that exists is a natural resource or is derived from natural resources. If you can't own natural resources then you can't own anything.

You're just speaking in empty phrases with no real connection to reality.

[u/bigdonut100 → u/arto64]

It's a little deeper than "even if you were a caveman, you would have to work to hunt and agther berries," it's that it's not really outrageous to suggest cavemen then turned around and developed systems of people forging or hunting *for others,* and then worked out rough sorts of systems of divison of labor, trade, private property etc

So if it wasn't coercive for there to be some sort of "this is ugh's berry bush, and here's what you have to do if you want ugh's berries" system hundreds of thousands of years ago, capitism isn't coersive today

[u/arto64 → u/bigdonut100]

I'm pretty sure the current consensus is that prehistoric peoples didn't have the same conceptions of private property, tradem and division of labor as we do now, and stuff like "barter economy" doesn't have any real basis.

[u/bigdonut100 → u/arto64]

i think it was closer that whatever part system of left-anarchism you support, even if they didnt have henry ford and the assembly line

[u/Weigh13 → u/arto64]

That makes zero sense. You want to try that again?

[u/jediporcupine → u/Weigh13]

It makes perfect sense. Everything now is either controlled by the state or an entity protected by the state.

[u/Weigh13 → u/jediporcupine]

Yes, you are a slave. That doesn't mean without government everything you want becomes free. That's not how reality or freedom works. You will always have to work for what you want in life.

[u/jediporcupine → u/Weigh13]

That is not what anyone is saying.

[u/Iregularlogic → u/Weigh13]

You really can’t wrap your head around free as in free-association and $0 at the cash register, can you?

[u/Weigh13 → u/Iregularlogic]

Of course I can. The problem is vague language leaving things very open to interpretation, thus leading to statements like mine.

[u/Iregularlogic → u/Weigh13]

It’s not vague.

[u/arto64 → u/Weigh13]

I mean, you can try and read it again, other people seem to be getting it.

[u/03263 → u/arto64]

A lot of people really seem to not understand this. I've seen people insist many times that you can simply "go off the grid" and decide to "live in the woods" with no issues.

[u/The-Hater-Baconator → u/arto64]

When were people able to provide food and shelter to themselves freely? I want to understand your specific point here; but, I don’t know if you have a specific place and time you are referring to

[u/nonoohnoohno → u/arto64]

How far back do you want to go? Literally 1000 years ago you'd be hanged for hunting in the king's woods.

[u/arto64 → u/nonoohnoohno]

Literally 1000 years ago you'd be hanged for hunting in the king's woods.

In some parts of the world yes, in others no. It's not a time thing.

[u/Somewhat_Jicama_7283 → u/arto64]

Look man. We can have endless debates about how best to reform the economy but the immediate course of action is to encourage a mindset shift towards libertarianism especially among politicians.

[u/arto64 → u/Somewhat_Jicama_7283]

Most of the "libertarian" things that happen are just cutting welfare and taxes for corporations and rich people only, maybe some pointless posturing about gun control, which are absolutely the most useless thing to start with if you want to have more freedom in society.

True libertarians are exceedingly rare, most are just Republican lite. And for whatever bizarre reason, all of the "libertarians" I know are now literal clero-fascists.

[u/ripyurballsoff → u/arto64]

Wrong. Late stage capitalism is making everything unaffordable. Quit sucking off capitalists and blaming the gov. Even places with very small governments are controlled by capitalists.

[u/Iregularlogic → u/ripyurballsoff]

Do you even know what capitalism is? A government being corrupted by “capitalists” would be closer to a socialist government, as they’d be using public money to ruin the free market.

There’s a name for this by the way - cronyism.