Rights and Wrongs (Was RE: Reforming Education)

David Lubkin (lubkin@unreasonable.com)
Fri, 08 Oct 1999 11:59:13 -0400

On 10/8/99, at 8:58 AM, Joseph 1 wrote:

>Desireable for the group as a whole, and the individual members of that
>group (or at least the majority thereof). Where your right as an individual
>to remain an ignorant and unproductive member of society conflicts with my
>right as an individual not to have to support you economically, I think that
>my right should prevail.

(Being gently libertarian:) I see no contradiction between these two "rights". I can be ignorant and unproductive if I want to, and you don't have to support me. And vice versa. Can you give me examples of situations where you believe these conflict?

>Similarly, that can be applied to the group as a whole; the rights of all
>those individual members of the group translates into a collective right of
>the group, as defined by the rights of the majority of individuals.

(Ditto:) If a thing is not right for me to do or to prevent, it does not become right because a group of my friends want to do it, whether I have one friend or 100,000,000. I do not concede the existence of collective rights distinct from the exact sum of the rights of the individuals. Do you? If so, why?

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