TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Jeffrey Miron provides explains why he believes rights are important:

Indeed, what libertarians really mean when they say thinks [sic] like “individual have invioble [sic] rights” is that if a society respects particular individual rights (such as ownership of one’s property and person), then other good things happen. Powell’s point 1 is just a short-hand for this claim.

But if the argument for libertarian policies is that some “rights” have better consequences than others, why not eliminate the middle man and just discuss consequences directly?

That’s absolutely false. Protecting natural rights, e.g. the right to life, liberty and property, certainly does create other benefits, but natural rights are not justified because of the benefits they create, but because they are ends unto themselves.

Miron confuses negative rights with positive rights, and this is instructive of why he thinks rights are only justified by the benefits they create. A negative right is one where I am guaranteed that something will not be done to me, while a positive right is one where I am guaranteed something will be done for me.

The right to life, liberty and property are negative rights. My right to life does not mean you, or society, must insure I am alive, but rather that you will not threaten my life. It merely demands others refrain from doing something that will physically harm me. It constrains your actions, to use Robert Nozick’s term, rather than forces you to do something.

Positive rights work just the opposite; rather than guaranteeing something will not be done to me, positive rights guarantee I will receive something. The right to an education or health care are all examples of this: something is provided to me.

It is important to understand the difference between these two kinds of rights because only negative rights are moral. Enforcing negative rights violates no one’s rights. Positive rights, however, intrinsically violate someone else’s negative right to life, liberty or property.

If I have an absolute right to health care, then someone must provide that service for me. Some doctor must work on me. But since my right to their service is absolute, they have no choice in the matter. If they do not want to provide me their service, then the government will force them to. This violates their right to liberty, and amounts to slavery: they have no choice but to work for me.

All positive rights, if taken seriously, are a violation of negative rights. And now we can see Miron’s error: natural rights need no justification, because they result from the nature of humanity. We are each individuals, distinct, inviolable, and an end unto ourselves. The right to life, liberty and property protect this. They protect us from being treated as tools for someone else’s benefits. They insure that we are treated as human beings.

Positive rights, however, do not. They do treat individuals as tools. Miron does not understand the difference.