I somehow ended up reading
an article on why healthcare is not a right (!!) but rather a good. The sickening idea that someone who happened to lack money to pay for his own health care ought to be left to die in the streets in case he has a health problem, would not be something to be seriously discussed if there were no voters that sincerely believed that the supposed "right" of the rich not to give a negligible portion of their income is greater than the right of the people to live.
Before I elaborate the reasons why the notion is not only sickening but technically wrong too, I should clarify something:
there are some things that can never be approached with pure reason. All those who have bothered to read psychology, cognitive science, or even serious economics (e.g. Daniel Kahneman & Amos Tvertsky) are very familiar with this notion; humans are inherently irrational beings, and their perception about right and wrong is not, and can never be, based on pure rational reasoning.
A typical example, extensively studied by psychologists researching on the impact of rational argumentation on how we perceive right and wrong,
is sexual intercourse between siblings. Suppose that two siblings -a brother and a sister- decide to have a sexual intercourse. If you are like most people you find it unthinkably disgusting; and if you are like most people too you can't point out a reason why.
No matter how you rationalize your disgust, one can find rational counterarguments based on the "individual rights" of the two siblings, yet you will never find it normal and your disgust won't be weakened no matter the rational arguments. It just doesn't feel right.
Well, that's the case with some social issues too, people dying in the streets being one of them. Go elaborate your theories about healthcare not being a right to an orphan dying from leukemia because there is no one to pay for its' therapy. The notion of healthcare being a good one ought to pay for is not, and will never be, normal, no matter the pseudorational "argumentation" about "individual rights" -just as the notion of two siblings having sex will never be OK no matter the "argumentation".
Biological evolution has hard-wired our brains into getting disgusted with the notion of a brother having sex with his sister, just like it has hard-wired our brains to feel empathy towards other human beings -especially who we consider to belong to "our" group. If you sincerely believe that your compatriots should be left dying, you lack a normally functioning brain and I'm ready to bet that you find it OK for two siblings to have an intercourse too. You are horribly anomalous, profoundly disgusting, utterly unsuitable for a society, and natural selection should have wiped out your problematic genes long ago. But I won't talk about it -not now, at least.
One of the most typical "arguments" against taxation and free healthcare is a supposed right not to have portions of your money taken away from the government. I'm not going to elaborate to a libertarian that what we call individual rights are nothing but an arbitrary group of notions designed to sound so good that you would accept any tyrant promising to protect yours. Instead, I will point out that "your" money is merely a means to exchange goods that is not
technically yours, belonging actually to a central bank or a government, depending on the economic system. No matter how starkly you fantasize you are entitled to it, it belongs to them.
As a Greek living in Greece during the economic recession, I know first hand that no matter who you are, the buying power of "your" money -which is the essence of a currency and the very reason why it exists- is decided by others. If those "others" decide to devalue your currency or switch it to a weaker one (as in the threat of Greece exiting the eurozone and returning to the Drachma), you end up poorer. "Your" money does not belong to you, by default. Keep it in mind when speaking of economy. But for the sake of conversation, I will suppose that it actually belongs to you.
To be a part of a society means to abandon some of your supposed individual rights in order to enjoy the benefits of belonging to it. If you want to retain your individual rights, you can go high up in a mountain and live alone and like an animal. To be surrounded by other people and drawing the benefits of it means per definition to sacrifice some rights of yours.
It is just like being in a relationship: you abandon the right to date whomever you want, the right to dress up however you want to, the right not to take a bath, the right to spent all your money for yourself (mainly men), among others. If you want your right to date everyone you like and the right to dress up like a prostitute, well, don't get in a relationship. It is not differential topology; it is so simple that even a fourth-grader could grasp.
Among the rights you abandon by being a member of a society is the right to live for yourself. That includes the right to keep "your" money. Your economical situation is a result of your interaction with the society, and taxation is a way to ensure that it works properly. Providing free healthcare to your compatriots is the way of thanking them for working for you and buying your products, but first of all it is the right thing to do, and that can never be justified with rational explanations.
At this point I would like to strongly discourage those who agree with me, from supporting their beliefs about taxation using capitalist terminology. Yes, we could claim that it is an "investment" in which you give money to your compatriots so that they will buy your products and services, thereby returning you what you spent for taxation. We could also claim that to provide free healthcare to your compatriots is to help them stay alive so that they will keep buying your products and services.
But every Human (that is, with both a heart and a brain) should develop the strongest aversion to explaining such things in economic terms. It is not about economy; it is because that's the right thing to do. We are inherently irrational, and owe no explanations to those who disagree with what is universally considered moral. Just like we don't owe explanations to those who want us to accept intercourses between siblings. There are things that can never be approached with pure rationality, and if they do, the explanations sound disgusting.
Would anyone seriously bring up the argument that we should provide free healthcare to the poor so that they will stay alive to work and consume? Perhaps some "libertarian" (capitalist), but no one with both a heart and a brain.
Free healthcare not a right?
Well, there is no rational argumentation about what constitutes a human right in general. All of the so-called human rights -the right to free speech, the right to an education, the right to live-
are completely arbitrary and with no path of purely logical thinking leading to them. We are nothing but valueless structures of cells and microbes, not really worthier than any other life-form in our ecosystem, living on the remnants of a star due to a series of accidents, and
everything concerning our "rights" is just what we'd like to hear.
But since all of our rights are fundamentally irrational, along with many of our beliefs,
why should there be a rational justification about free healthcare being on of those rights too? The sole reason is that the taxation necessary for free healthcare threatens the profits of the rich, and that's why they demand elaborated argumentation about it.
We will not come up with a completely rational argumentation about the right on a free healthcare before capitalists give us a completely rational argumentation about the right of private individuals to own the means of production.
