[Phred]

Then you could have discussed them in non-economic terms. You didn't.

I discuss personal freedoms in non-economic terms all the time, in threads we both know you have participated in. Your faulty memory is not my problem.

In my opinion, you think that they hypothetically have rights, but you wouldn't actually lift a finger to help them get their rights respected.

I would expend just as much effort to help them get their rights respected as I would to get anyone else's rights respected, because I make no demographic distinctions. Individual rights are individual rights. The identity of the individual in question is completely irrelevant. How hard is that to understand?

Definition of rights:

Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.[1] Rights are of essential importance in such disciplines as law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.

Rights are often considered fundamental to civilization, being regarded as established pillars of society and culture, and the history of social conflicts can be found in the history of each right and its development. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "rights structure the form of governments, the content of laws, and the shape of morality as it is currently perceived."

See the bolded key word. A community is not a person. Nor, for that matter, is an animal.

Communities can act. Canada, as a community, acted to put public health care into place.

No, "Canada" didn't put "health care" into place. What the parliamentary representatives of the Canadian individuals did was violate (through making the action illegal) the right of a Canadian individual to pay her health care providers herself, and violate (through making the action illegal) the right of a Canadian health care provider to accept payment from a Canadian. Canadians already had health care before Canadian government legislators meddled with things. Placing restrictions on payment methods ≠ providing health care.

You seem to think that some vague denials is " a rational progression from first principles showing how communities cannot attain rights."

There is nothing vague about accurately pointing out that communities cannot act. Individuals can act, communities cannot. Since rights pertain to actions, individuals as actors inherently have them. Communities as non-actors do not.

I am using the above definition from that ever so leftist wikipedia.

Which definition says nothing about who possesses rights. Oh wait… it does. People.

As someone who actually uses Canadian medicare, I do have a right to gov't subsidised health care for all necessary procedures.

No, you don't. As a Canadian who has been trapped in the abysmal Canadian health "care" system and who has Canadian relatives still trapped in it, I know for a fact the government does not subsidize all necessary procedures. Medication used in the treatment of Horton's syndrome for one. Medication used in ameliorating post-operative infection in breast cancer patients for another. Pain medication used to make day to day life bearable for those waiting years for joint replacement surgery, for third. This is easily verifiable, by the way.

As Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin famously wrote in Chaoulli v. Quebec, "Access to a waiting list is not access to health care.”

Can you please explain why your definition is more logical than the one the rest of the world uses?

My definition is the same as Wikipedia's, although mine is more tightly worded. Rights are actions that are allowed to people: you have the right to take whatever action you choose with the proviso that it doesn't violate the rights of another. Rights are what is owed to people: the non-interference by other humans with the property they have acquired rightfully.

Then property is not a right.

Of course property is not a right, duh. Property is a thing, an existent. Your use of the English language is incredibly sloppy, whether by design or through ignorance. You have the right to acquire and keep property.

Except the ones they ask for and get, you mean.

Explain yourself.

So, in order to have rights, you need a human and sapient mind. Okay.

In order to have human rights, yes, which is what you kept repeatedly asking about. You weren't asking about antelope rights or C. difficile rights, you asked - several times - about animals having human rights.

Yes, I know you like to have Eran do all the heavy thinking, but now it's your turn.

In the same thread I said - before Eran joined the discussion - essentially the same thing. Eran did, however, go into greater depth than I did.

Here's a simple yes or no question: is having a human mind necessary for enjoying rights?

Human rights are clearly applicable solely to humans, which is why they are called human rights, duh.

Thanks to the collective violence of people in the past.

Nope. If Columbus had never landed on Hispaniola, potters just like me would be trading for clay with clay suppliers just like my farmer buddy. The individuals are different, the actions and principles governing the exchange are not.

No offense, but your ignorance as to the presence of indigenous people is not an argument.

The irony here is rich. The self-proclaimed champion of indigenes, Pants-of-dog, knows less about the indigenous peoples of the island on which I live than I do.

You seem to have ignored or not noticed the fact that the owner of the land on which the clay was found only had the right to it because the gov't kicked the indigenous people off the land.

And you ignore the fact that half a millennium ago potters were producing pots here through the exact same process I do today.

This historical fact proves Rich's point that the clay pot "was produced within a social context. A social context that required immense group violence to create."

Immense group violence is not required to produce clay pots, though. That is the point neither of you will admit.

Phred, the fact that you don't understand or want to accept indigenous rights as something separate from your culturally derived idea of property rights is not an argument as to why we should ignore indigenous rights.

There is no such thing as indigenous rights. There are only human rights. Those humans not indigenous to a given geographical location have all the same rights as those who are. You seem to labor under the delusion that being black or a woman or gay or poor or a farmer or a prole or a descendant of the first human to chase an antelope over a given stretch of grassy plain entitles the human in question to extra rights. It doesn't.


Phred

[lucky]

No, "Canada" didn't put "health care" into place. What the parliamentary representatives of the Canadian individuals did [...]

There is nothing vague about accurately pointing out that communities cannot act. Individuals can act, communities cannot. Since rights pertain to actions, individuals as actors inherently have them. Communities as non-actors do not.

This is about as meaningful as complaining that people never speak and never pee and never masturbate, it's their tongues and penises and hands that do these things. Useless semantic mumbo-jumbo. You're pretending to not understand common language, and then twisting the meaning of the words to suit an agenda. It serves to confuse rather than clarify.

[Phred]

This is about as meaningful as complaining that people never speak and never pee and never masturbate, it's their tongues and penises and hands that do these things. Useless semantic mumbo-jumbo. You're pretending to not understand common language, and then twisting the meaning of the words to suit an agenda. It serves to confuse rather than clarify.

To the contrary. Your analogy is faulty.

And no, my precision of language doesn't confuse or obfuscate, it clarifies. You will note that even Wikipedia, although not my favourite source, correctly states that rights are possessed by people, not by communities. There is a reason why they chose that word, and the reason is that the concept of rights pertains to human action, not to goods and services. Communities qua communities cannot act, hence cannot have rights. The humans residing in those communities can act, and have rights.

It is commonplace for humans to use imprecise shorthand in casual communication. See for example the almost universal tendency of even those who know better to call Western countries Democracies. And in casual conversation that shorthand will suffice. But when examining the truth or untruth of a fundamental principal underlying a philosophically-derived code of ethics, imprecision is inadvisable. You may not like my pointing out that communities qua communities cannot act, but that doesn't change the fact that they can't.


Phred

[Drlee]

One word.

Ridiculous.

[Pants-of-dog]

I discuss personal freedoms in non-economic terms all the time, in threads we both know you have participated in. Your faulty memory is not my problem.

No. You don't. This is why you are not linking to any posts that would disprove my claim.

I would expend just as much effort to help them get their rights respected as I would to get anyone else's rights respected, because I make no demographic distinctions. Individual rights are individual rights. The identity of the individual in question is completely irrelevant. How hard is that to understand?

But you don't. We have forty pages of you defending economic rights in this thread, and not one example of you defending any other right. You are not expending the same effort.

See the bolded key word. A community is not a person. Nor, for that matter, is an animal.

A community is people, which is the word you bolded.

No, "Canada" didn't put "health care" into place. What the parliamentary representatives of the Canadian individuals did was make it illegal for a Canadian individual to pay her health care providers herself, and made it illegal for health care providers to accept payment from Canadians. Canadians already had health care before Canadian government legislators meddled with things. Placing restrictions on payment methods is not the same as providing health care.

Your lack of knowledge concerning how Canadian communities organised to implement a public health care system does not show that communities cannot act. It just shows this RWL predilection for ignoring history that disproves your claims.

There is nothing vague about accurately pointing out that communities cannot act. Individuals can act, communities cannot. Since rights pertain to actions, individuals as actors inherently have them. Communities as non-actors do not.

Except that your premise that communities cannot act is wrong.

Which says nothing about who possesses rights. Oh wait… it does. People.

And communities are people.

No, you don't. As a Canadian who has been trapped in the abysmal Canadian health "care" system and who has Canadian relatives still trapped in it, I know for a fact the government does not subsidize all necessary procedures.Medication used in the treatment of Horton's syndrome for one. Medication used in ameliorating post-operative infection in breast cancer patients for another. Pain medication used to make day to day life bearable for those waiting years for joint replacement surgery, for third. This is easily verifiable, by the way.

As Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin famously wrote in Chaoulli v. Quebec, "Access to a waiting list is not access to health care.”

You're not Canadian. You don't have to make stuff up. Or maybe you do, due to a lack of logic and evidence. Let's face it. You're not going to verify any of this.

But to get back to the actual topic: it is an objective fact that Canada recognises that its citizens have a right to necessary health care that is free at point of treatment.

My definition is the same as Wikipedia's, although mine is more tightly worded. Rights are actions that are allowed to people: you have the right to take whatever actions you choose with the proviso that they don't violate the rights of another. Rights are what is owed to people: the non-interference with that which they have acquired rightfully.

Can you please EXPLAIN why your definition is more logical than the one the rest of the world uses? I don't want you to simply repeat your beliefs. I want you to support them using logic.

Of course property is not a right, duh. Property is a thing, an existent. Your use of the English language is incredibly sloppy, whether by design or through ignorance. You have the right to acquire and keep property.

I apologise. I assumed you were capable of understanding context. I thought you would have understood that I meant that there are no such things as property rights. Obviously, I was wrong.

Explain yourself.

Say please.

In order to have human rights, yes, which is what you kept repeatedly asking about. You weren't asking about antelope rights or C. difficile rights, you asked - several times - about animals having human rights.

In other words, rights are not objective. Got it.

In the same thread I said - before Eran joined the discussion - essentially the same thing. Eran did, however, go into greater depth than I did.

Eran agreed that property rights are not objective and cannot be logically deduced from nature.

Human rights are clearly applicable solely to humans, which is why they are called human rights, duh.

Exactly. Rights are social constructs. You only have a right to property because human minds decided you do.

Nope. If Columbus had never landed on Hispaniola, potters just like me would be trading for clay with clay suppliers just like my farmer buddy. The individuals are different, the actions and principles governing the exchange are not.

But Columbus did land there, so your fantasy is just a fantasy and Rich is still right.

The irony here is rich. The self-proclaimed champion of indigenes, Pants-of-dog, knows less about the indigenous peoples of the island on which I live than I do.

I know that indigenous people still live in the Caribbean.

And you ignore the fact that half a millennium ago potters were producing pots here through the exact same process I do today.

That is irrelevant. We are discussing group violence.

Immense group violence is not required to produce clay pots, though. That is the point neither of you will admit.

Of course it's not required. However, the fact is that the clay that is available now was, at one point, secured through such violence.

There is no such thing as indigenous rights. There are only human rights. Those humans not indigenous to a given geographical location have all the same rights as those who are. You seem to labor under the delusion that being black or a woman or gay or poor or a farmer or a prole or a descendant of the first human to chase an antelope over a given stretch of grassy plain entitles the human in question to extra rights. It doesn't.

Do you believe that indigenous people have the right to land that they have never ceded to colonial powers?

------------------------

To the contrary. Your analogy is faulty.

And no, my precision of language doesn't confuse or obfuscate, it clarifies. You will note that even Wikipedia, although not my favourite source, correctly states that rights are possessed by people, not by communities. There is a reason why they chose that word, and the reason is that the concept of rights pertains to human action, not to goods and services. Communities qua communities cannot act, hence cannot have rights. The humans residing in those communities can act, and have rights.

It is commonplace for humans to use imprecise shorthand in casual communication. See for example the almost universal tendency of even those who know better to call Western countries Democracies. And in casual conversation that shorthand will suffice. But when examining the truth or untruth of a fundamental principal underlying a philosophically-derived code of ethics, imprecision is inadvisable. You may not like my pointing out that communities qua communities cannot act, but that doesn't change the fact that they can't.

Communities are people.

Please provide a logical explanation for why communities cannot act.

Your claim about Canadian people individually creating medicare has not been accepted by anyone. Everyone here except you agrees that communities did this. This is probably because people organised themselves into communities who then had the voting power to effect change, which would have been impossible for individuals acting alone.

[lucky]

Phred, since you claim to not understand what it means for groups of people to act, why do you never comment in the same way in response to, say, this statement on the previous page, or many similar ones from Eran, talking about groups (communities, companies, governments) acting?

In other places and in other times there are non-government DRO's [dispute resolution organizations] that do most of the heavy lifting.

I am certain you use English the same way as everybody else yourself, but the other two guys just post more, so it was easier to find an example.

Your analogy is faulty.

Why? In what way?

I was trying to point out how insisting on reductionist language is not constructive. If you want to be more reductionist (you say "precise", but it's not the same thing), you may want to talk in terms of electrical interactions in human brains rather than saying "people think". "Canada has passed a law" contains more meaning per letter, and is also more precise, than "citizens of Canada voted to elect representatives who then pressed a button labeled 'yes' that then caused an electrical signal to a vote counter that resulted in a further chain of events with a judge in a court somewhere judging in a certain way and then a policeman enforcing a rule". You essentially claim the former statement contains no meaning, which is just wrong.

[Drlee]

As a Canadian who has been trapped in the abysmal Canadian health "care" system and who has Canadian relatives still trapped in it, I know for a fact the government does not subsidize all necessary procedures.Medication used in the treatment of Horton's syndrome for one. Medication used in ameliorating post-operative infection in breast cancer patients for another. Pain medication used to make day to day life bearable for those waiting years for joint replacement surgery, for third. This is easily verifiable, by the way.

Let us see if this is true. Truth is an absolute defense they say:

I know for a fact the government does not subsidize all necessary procedures.

Do you? Which medical school did you attend? Getting all of those specialties under your belt must have taken decades. Let's begin with the operative word in this statement, "necessary". Is medically "necessary" what the doctor or team of doctors think or what you (a potter) thinks? Nevertheless, Canadians may buy supplemental insurance. You are not against supplemental insurance, are you Phred?

Medication used in the treatment of Horton's syndrome for one.

Interesting you say this. For those who don't know, these are cluster headaches. They occur in less than .05% of the population, mostly men. The initial treatment for them is corticosteroids. These are readily available in Canada. Preventive treatment begins with lifestyle changes focused on triggers. Smoking cessation, stress control and sleep modifications among them. Then the physician looks at which prescription drugs the patient is taking looking for triggers. THEN and only then does the physician look for something other than pain meds. Verapamil (made by Sandoz Canada) is a first line drug.

But here Phred is being disingenuous with us. Why? Because drugs in Canada, (while moderately price controlled) are usually not paid for by the government. Many if not most Canadians have private insurance to cover them. If they are on public assistance or over 65 the government offers coverage with a copay system. (there are provincial programs as well as I understand.) So unless our libertarian friend is speaking of someone over 65 or on public assistance (which would open a whole new discussion indeed) then he ought to complain to his insurance company or curse his own lack of effort in preparing himself to pay for his own drugs like a good little libertarian.

Pain medication used to make day to day life bearable for those waiting years for joint replacement surgery, for third.

And "for third" strike three. Canadian patients are offered the whole range of pain medications. They are controlled substances as they are in the US and every other civilized country in the world. And Oh by the way, the longest time one would wait for a hip replacement in Canada is 173 days in Newfoundland and as short as 62 days in Toronto.

Now because my friend Phred knows less than nothing about public health and the gathering of statistics surrounding it I will point something out to him. There is a growing body of evidence that rationing or slowing access to certain kinds of surgery saves lives. In one Canadian study, 17 people waiting for non-life-threatening heart surgery died. If they had received the surgery right away 23 of them would have died from the normal complications of surgery. The "rush to surgery" has been under review in the US for decades. These data are interesting to say the least.

Canadians who need emergency surgery get it just as fast as someone in the US. Hip replacement comes up as a frequently touted bad example. Here is the question that the people whining about the wait times do not ask. How long did you wait to go to your doctor? Some people go quickly and some wait until the pain is very bad and debilitating. Comparing the ones who seek early treatment to those who wait creates a whole new set of data with a whole new set of outcomes. Of course Phred has no interest in these bits of data because he does not even know of the concept.

Finally to the preposterous claim that breast cancer patients are denied life-saving antibiotics post op. When a patient develops a post-op infection in Canada they are treated with the appropriate antibiotic at once. Canada has a robust program of monitoring and reporting on the issue of antibiotic resistant pathogens. Testing for MERSA carriers pre-op for example. Using the right rather than the most powerful antibiotic also. The use of antibiotics is not a simple thing. It is a very complicated medical decision and one that should be made with great care. Antibiotics are not aspirin and bad decisions can kill patients. You can cure the wound infection and kill the patient with a GI infection in the process. The US has a very poor track record in this regard more because we use the wrong antibiotic or too many antibiotics than because we use too few. Indeed infection rates vary wildly between hospitals and you can check out how you are rolling the dice before you go in.

Norway showed us all the way. Prescription of antibiotics in Norway is a major decision and not one the average GP makes alone and without guidelines. And look at this:

In Norway, MRSA has accounted for less than 1 percent of staph infections for years. That compares to 80 percent in Japan, the world leader in MRSA; 44 percent in Israel; and 38 percent in Greece.

In the US more people die of MERSA than die of AIDS. Mersa kills a little over half as many people in the US as does automobile accidents. Get your head wrapped around that. Add other drug resistant bugs and the number hits 23,000 people each year. Add these infections as contributing factors in deaths from other causes and the number its 100,000. That is more than the number of men who die of lung cancer.

So our friend fact-free-Phred has once again struck.

[Phred]

No. You don't. This is why you are not linking to any posts that would disprove my claim.

Yes, I do, as we are both well aware. Why you choose to lie about this is beyond my comprehension, but as I have said before, this is not my problem.

We have forty pages of you defending economic rights in this thread, and not one example of you defending any other right.

I am defending rights in this thread. As I have repeatedly stated, you have the right to do anything that does not forcibly interfere with another human's right to do the same. This perforce includes actions not related to economics. How hard is that to understand?

A community is people, which is the word you bolded.

A community is not people, any more than a corporation is people. People live in communities.

Your lack of knowledge concerning how Canadian communities organised to implement a public health care system does not show that communities cannot act.

Communities qua communities cannot act. The various denizens of communities, however, can. This is why the denizens have rights but the place where they live does not.

You're not Canadian.

Actually, I am. I have never renounced my Canadian citizenship. My passport is up to date. It is rare indeed that I spend more than six months without returning to Ottawa to visit for at least three weeks or so.

But to get back to the actual topic: it is an objective fact that Canada recognises that its citizens have a right to necessary health care that is free at point of treatment.

Canadian citizens have many of their medical expenses paid with funds seized from Canadian taxpayers, yes. But not all their necessary health care is paid for in this manner. This is easily verifiable. Telephone any Canadian pharmacy and ask them how many medications aren't paid for out of provincial budgets. See my examples in my previous post as just a tiny fraction.

Can you please EXPLAIN why your definition is more logical than the one the rest of the world uses?

It is the same as the rest of the world uses, as I explained in my last post. You don't have the right to have a house given to you, but you do have the right to pursue the actions you judge will lead you to acquiring enough resources to trade for a house. Rights is a concept that pertains to actions, not to existents.

I thought you would have understood that I meant that there are no such things as property rights.

If there are no such things as property rights, why do you get so bent out of shape about the Canadian government giving permits to oil companies to drill on certain stretches of property that the indigenes of Canada claim as their own? They (the indigenes) have no right to that property, according to you.

In other words, rights are not objective. Got it.

No, in other words, the concept of rights is a null concept when discussing the actions of non human species.

Eran agreed that property rights are not objective and cannot be logically deduced from nature.

Since when did you enshrine Eran as an infallible authority? If Eran ever stated this (link, please), then Eran was incorrect.

Exactly. Rights are social constructs. You only have a right to property because human minds decided you do.

I have the right to property in the absence of humans. In fact, my property is safer when I am in isolation than in the presence of some humans - socialists, for example. Rights are no more "social constructs" than are communication, or sex, or humor, or trade or assault.

But Columbus did land there, so your fantasy is just a fantasy and Rich is still right.

Can anyone tell P-o-d what effect Columbus's landing had on the process by which clay pots are produced?

I know that indigenous people still live in the Caribbean.

You know that, do you? Please educate the audience. To which tribe/s do you refer, and on which island/s do they live. I live on the island of Hispaniola. There are no indigenes on this island. There haven't been any for several centuries. Given that fact - and yes, P-o-d, that is a fact - please explain to the audience by what method an aspiring potter born on the island of Hispaniola can legitimately produce a clay pot.

We are discussing group violence.

No, we are discussing whether or not a resident of Hispaniola has the right to make and keep a clay pot.

However, the fact is that the clay that is available now was, at one point, secured through such violence.

That can be said of every resource available today, which makes the observation meaningless. It certainly doesn't delegitimize the transaction that took place between my clay supplier and I.

Do you believe that indigenous people have the right to land that they have never ceded to colonial powers?

Do you? It seems you don't. Does this quote sound familiar -- "I thought you would have understood that I meant that there are no such things as property rights."

Communities are people.

But they aren't. Repeating a fallacy makes it no less a fallacy.

Your claim about Canadian people individually creating medicare has not been accepted by anyone.

Canadian individuals drafted the legislation. Canadian individuals voted to make it the law of the land. Canadian individuals write the checks that are delivered to the medical practitioners. "Canada" is not a person. "Canada" qua "Canada" has no rights.

*******************************************************

"Canada has passed a law" contains more meaning per letter, and is also more precise...

But it isn't more precise. The shorthand used in the phrase makes the sentence more compact, but the concision is achieved at the expense of accuracy. "Canada" didn't pass a law, the individuals comprising the legislative body of the Canadian government passed the law. Those individuals have the ability to act - their votes are an example of such action - but Canada qua Canada hasn't the ability to act.

You essentially claim the former statement contains no meaning, which is just wrong.

I don't say it has no meaning, I just say that using colloquial and imprecise shorthand in the attempt to elucidate fundamental philosophical principles gets you nowhere. There is a reason legal documents (and scientific papers) contain the stilted language they do - to reduce ambiguity as much as possible.

************************************************************

Do you? Which medical school did you attend?

It's not necessary to attend medical school to find out that the various provincial governments don't subsidize all necessary treatments, it's just necessary to know a Canadian who has discovered that for herself. My mother, for example. Myself, for another.

Nevertheless, Canadians may buy supplemental insurance.

Please explain to the audience by what methods the Canadian provincial governments subsidize the purchase of supplemental insurance purchased from private companies. Take your time.

For those who don't know, these are cluster headaches. They occur in less than .05% of the population, mostly men.

Incorrect, not that it has anything to do with the fact that provincial governments don't subsidize necessary treatment for the condition. While there are no hard and fast numbers - most likely because of the prevalence of misdiagnosis of the condition - it is generally accepted that more than one but less than two people out of every thousand will suffer from Horton's Syndrome for at least a part of their life.

The initial treatment for them is corticosteroids.

Incorrect, not that it has anything to do with the fact that provincial governments don't subsidize necessary treatment for the condition. Injectable sumatriptan is the treatment of choice to abort an ongoing attack, with the administration of calcium channel blockers the treatment of choice for preventing further attacks. Unfortunately, as you are well aware, a very large percentage of patients respond to neither treatment.

These are readily available in Canada.

But not paid for by the provincial governments, which is my point, duh.

Preventive treatment begins with lifestyle changes focused on triggers. Smoking cessation, stress control and sleep modifications among them.

Wrong again, but that has nothing to do with the fact that provincial governments don't subsidize necessary treatment for the condition, including the treatment that has the highest reported success rate at aborting individual actives - the inhalation of pure oxygen at high flow rates.

Verapamil (made by Sandoz Canada) is a first line drug.

Verapamil, a calcium channel blocker, has a higher rate of success as a preventative than any other single drug. The provincial governments of Canada do not subsidize verapamil.

But here Phred is being disingenuous with us. Why? Because drugs in Canada, (while moderately price controlled) are usually not paid for by the government.

How is that being disingenuous? You just confirmed exactly what I said. Try to follow this chain of thought, okay?

- Necessary treatment for dozens (if not hundreds) of medical conditions is through the regular ingestion of medication.
- Medication is usually not paid for by provincial governments.

Many if not most Canadians have private insurance to cover them.

Please explain to the audience how private insurance qualifies as a government subsidy.

So unless our libertarian friend is speaking of someone over 65 or on public assistance (which would open a whole new discussion indeed) then he ought to complain to his insurance company or curse his own lack of effort in preparing himself to pay for his own drugs like a good little libertarian.

My mother is over 65. She is not on public assistance. The medication recommended by her oncologist to prevent her from continuing to contract life-threatening infections after chemotherapy treatment following her double radical mastectomy is not subsidized to the tune of even one dime by the provincial government. Interestingly enough, the manufacturer of the medication has a program that lowers the cost of their product to means-tested individuals by nearly eight per cent. As it turns out, my mother qualified. Barely. So Big Pharma in this case did more for my mother than did government.

Canadian patients are offered the whole range of pain medications.

"Offered" ≠"subsidized" .

And Oh by the way, the longest time one would wait for a hip replacement in Canada is 173 days in Newfoundland and as short as 62 days in Toronto.

Stop beclowning yourself. Just stop. My mother's best friend waited fourteen months for her first hip replacement, and over a year for her second. Her other friend waited well over a year for a knee replacement. This was maybe five or eight years ago. Both women live in the capital city, Ottawa. And wait times are increasing, not decreasing --

"In 2004, the provincial governments committed to a 10-year strategy to reduce wait times in five priority areas. Benchmarks were set for radiation therapy (four weeks), cardiac bypass surgery (two weeks to six months, depending on urgency), hip and knee replacements (six months), hip fracture repair (48 hours) and cataract surgery (112 days)."

So the benchmark set by the Ontario provincial government is longer than your nation-wide "longest time". But they don't meet that benchmark --

"In Ontario, 89 per cent of hip replacements in 2012 were performed within six months, not a substantial change from 2010. For knee replacements however, 84 per cent were done within the time frame, compared to 89 per cent in 2010.

"Despite three out of five procedures not seeing significant changes in 2012, Ontario’s numbers are for all five procedures are above the national averages."

Oops. And by the way, the Ontario provincial government subsidized the pain medication both these ladies were taking by exactly....


... wait for it....


...nothing.

When a patient develops a post-op infection in Canada they are treated with the appropriate antibiotic at once.

If they are discovered in time. In elderly women living alone sometimes they aren't. If I hadn't been able to make the time to visit my mother and stay with her during her post-operative recovery, she might not have been taken to the hospital to have the first of the two incidences of life-threatening systemic infection treated. She would have just stayed in bed feeling bad until it was past treatment. That was her plan for dealing with it. She just figured she was feeling so bad because of side effects from the chemo. She was wrong. When I picked her up from the hospital after her second three day stay to treat the infection, I insisted she spend the money to purchase the medication her oncologist recommended to prevent a recurrence after her final chemo treatment. Guess how much the provincial government put towards that medication? Exactly zero.

You know less about Canada's medical system than you know about conservatism. Do yourself a favor and bow out of the discussion before you embarrass yourself further.

To bring this back to the topic of the thread, the "right" that P-o-d claims is possessed by Canadian citizens is what Voluntarism has been charitably calling a positive "right" - it is one that government regularly fails at delivering, therefore cannot be a right at all.


Phred

[Drlee]

Of course not one thing that Phred said about the medical condition he got caught trying to fool us about is correct. I guess if you are going to BS people it is a good idea to double down.

No Phred. You tried to BS us and you got caught by someone who just knows more about this shit than you do. At least enough to know when you are blowing smoke.

Try again with a new disease. Or go find someone else to annoy.

[mum]

Of course not one thing that Phred said about the medical condition he got caught trying to fool us about is correct. I guess if you are going to BS people it is a good idea to double down.

No Phred. You tried to BS us and you got caught by someone who just knows more about this shit than you do. At least enough to know when you are blowing smoke.

Try again with a new disease. Or go find someone else to annoy.

It looks like Phred more than countered all your points on Lee's supposed knowledge on the subject. The lack of anything of value in Lee's post clearly shows he is not willing to back up his seemingly incorrect (and don't forget pointless) arguments. Lee is the one who doesn't know shit.

@POD do you internally distinguish between positive and negative rights in any way ?

[Drlee]

Here is another idea. Why don't you try to refute what I said? You can't. Yet another failed trolling attempt on your part.

[Pants-of-dog]

Yes, I do, as we are both well aware. Why you choose to lie about this is beyond my comprehension, but as I have said before, this is not my problem.

Using Google advanced search, I looked for all the pages from http://www.politicsforum.org that included the word Phred, and abortion or gay or LGBT or indigenous or native or black.

https://www.google.ca/search?as_q=Phred ... as_rights=

So, if we go through the hits, we see you supporting racial equality in one post in 2012. We have a thread from January where I introduce aboriginal rights and you ignore that to continue to ask me something that I was not discussing. We have another thread from last Decemberwhere you do not reply to my question concerning marriage rights. Another gay marriage thread where you compare homosexual relationships to incestuous ones. There are also several that have nothing to do with the topic: link 1, link 2, link 3, link 4, link 5. And this thread.

So, out of ten hits, we have one where you support racial equality, several where you oppose people who advocate for marriage equality, and most do not discuss these rights or you do not participate in the part of the discussion concerning non-economic rights.

I am defending rights in this thread. As I have repeatedly stated, you have the right to do anything that does not forcibly interfere with another human's right to do the same. This perforce includes actions not related to economics. How hard is that to understand?

I understand that you are defending rights. Like I said, you constantly defend ECONOMIC rights. You rarely discuss NON-ECONOMIC rights.

A community is not people, any more than a corporation is people. People live in communities.

Corporations are different because they are a legal fiction that only came about in the last two millennia or so. Communities have existed since the time we had tails and lived in trees. One is an economic entity, while the other is a biological fact.

Communities qua communities cannot act. The various denizens of communities, however, can. This is why the denizens have rights but the place where they live does not.

Please stop repeating your claim. Try supporting it.

Actually, I am. I have never renounced my Canadian citizenship. My passport is up to date. It is rare indeed that I spend more than six months without returning to Ottawa to visit for at least three weeks or so.

Lol. You rail against public healthcare despite having used it for most of your life.

Canadian citizens have many of their medical expenses paid with funds seized from Canadian taxpayers, yes. But not all their necessary health care is paid for in this manner. This is easily verifiable. Telephone any Canadian pharmacy and ask them how many medications aren't paid for out of provincial budgets. See my examples in my previous post as just a tiny fraction.

Drug plans are different, as Drlee already described in detail. I am discussing treatment by a medical professional.

It is the same as the rest of the world uses, as I explained in my last post. You don't have the right to have a house given to you, but you do have the right to pursue the actions you judge will lead you to acquiring enough resources to trade for a house. Rights is a concept that pertains to actions, not to existents.

Forget it. You're just gong to keep repeating this over and over again. There is probably no logical reason why rights is a concept that pertains to actions, not to "existents".

If there are no such things as property rights, why do you get so bent out of shape about the Canadian government giving permits to oil companies to drill on certain stretches of property that the indigenes of Canada claim as their own? They (the indigenes) have no right to that property, according to you.

No, you are apparently not following the conversation. According to YOUR logic, there are no property rights.

You said that a "privilege that can be rescinded or altered at any time is not a right". Since we agree that the property rights of indigenous people in Canada have been rescinded or altered, they cannot be rights, according to you.

No, in other words, the concept of rights is a null concept when discussing the actions of non human species.

Anything that cannot exist outside of the human mind is not objective.

Since when did you enshrine Eran as an infallible authority? If Eran ever stated this (link, please), then Eran was incorrect.

viewtopic.php?p=14355399#p14355399

I have the right to property in the absence of humans. In fact, my property is safer when I am in isolation than in the presence of some humans - socialists, for example. Rights are no more "social constructs" than are communication, or sex, or humor, or trade or assault.

Except that communication, sex, humour, trade, and assault all exist in nature without the human mind.

Can anyone tell P-o-d what effect Columbus's landing had on the process by which clay pots are produced?

It took the right to access the clay from the earth away from those who originally owned it through collective violence.

You know that, do you? Please educate the audience. To which tribe/s do you refer, and on which island/s do they live. I live on the island of Hispaniola. There are no indigenes on this island. There haven't been any for several centuries. Given that fact - and yes, P-o-d, that is a fact - please explain to the audience by what method an aspiring potter born on the island of Hispaniola can legitimately produce a clay pot.

Right. Shifting the burden of proof again.

No, we are discussing whether or not a resident of Hispaniola has the right to make and keep a clay pot.

So you concede Rich's point about communal violence. Okay.

That can be said of every resource available today, which makes the observation meaningless. It certainly doesn't delegitimize the transaction that took place between my clay supplier and I.

Thank you for agreeing with Rich's point. You can have your opinion on whether or not it is meaningless.

Do you? It seems you don't. Does this quote sound familiar -- "I thought you would have understood that I meant that there are no such things as property rights."

Like I said, that was your logic, not mine.

Do you believe that indigenous people have the right to land that they have never ceded to colonial powers? Yes or no?

But they aren't. Repeating a fallacy makes it no less a fallacy.

Fine. Show me a community that isn't made of people.

Canadian individuals drafted the legislation. Canadian individuals voted to make it the law of the land. Canadian individuals write the checks that are delivered to the medical practitioners. "Canada" is not a person. "Canada" qua "Canada" has no rights.

Canadian communities acted together and organised for change. The fact some individuals also did what you claim here does not change that fact.

It's not necessary to attend medical school to find out that the various provincial governments don't subsidize all necessary treatments, it's just necessary to know a Canadian who has discovered that for herself. My mother, for example. Myself, for another.

Name a single necessary treatment (not drug) that is not covered.

The only evidence you provide is for wait times, which are a problem, but are not evidence that people do not have their treatments covered by Medicare.

But you seem to have conceded the point that Canadians do have a right to it.

-------------------------

It looks like Phred more than countered all your points on Lee's supposed knowledge on the subject. The lack of anything of value in Lee's post clearly shows he is not willing to back up his seemingly incorrect (and don't forget pointless) arguments. Lee is the one who doesn't know shit.

Except that Phred did not provide a single example of a necessary medical treatment that was not covered by Medicare. Phred simply discussed drugs and wait times, which are a separate issue.

@POD do you internally distinguish between positive and negative rights in any way ?

I understand the logical distinction. I don't see the difference as being important in practice, nor do I think that RWLs apply the concept consistently.

[Truth To Power]

Definition of rights:

Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.[1] Rights are of essential importance in such disciplines as law and ethics, especially theories of justice and deontology.

Rights are often considered fundamental to civilization, being regarded as established pillars of society and culture, and the history of social conflicts can be found in the history of each right and its development. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "rights structure the form of governments, the content of laws, and the shape of morality as it is currently perceived."

This is hopelessly confused. A right is not a principle, as one cannot "have" a principle, but people do "have" rights. A right is a societal undertaking to constrain its members actions wrt each other.

You seem to think that some vague denials is " a rational progression from first principles showing how communities cannot attain rights."

There is nothing vague about accurately pointing out that communities cannot act. Individuals can act, communities cannot.

That is nonsense. Communities have been acting ever since people first started forming communities. One thing communities do as communities is secure an area of land for use by their members, which the members are powerless to do by themselves as individuals.

Since rights pertain to actions, individuals as actors inherently have them. Communities as non-actors do not.

Refuted above. And there is nothing about action that confers rights on actors. Rights are based on a societal -- i.e., community -- recognition that its members' actions wrt each other are best constrained in certain ways.

As someone who actually uses Canadian medicare, I do have a right to gov't subsidised health care for all necessary procedures.

No, you don't. As a Canadian who has been trapped in the abysmal Canadian health "care" system and who has Canadian relatives still trapped in it,

Which country's health care system is better than Canada's? The USA's? The US system is known to be by far the very worst in the world in terms of cost, no matter how measured (per capita, per patient outcome, per procedure, etc.), and far worse than other OECD countries' systems in terms of average patient outcomes. I and my family are all Canadian, and we have had uniformly excellent and timely care. The Canadian system is so much better than the US system that Americans get themselves fake Canadian medical cards in order to come here and get treatment. Even Sarah Palin admitted going to Canada for treatment rather than trying to get health care in the USA:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... anada.html

Like all other foreigners, Canadians who go to the USA are invariably terrified of needing medical care while there, because they know that no matter how little treatment they get, the US system will simply take everything they own and force them into bankruptcy. A day in a US hospital costs as much as a year in a Canadian university. That's how vicious, filthy and evil the US private industry health care system is. American hospitals simply charge you as much as they think your house is worth, and fabricate whatever charges are needed to equal that total. Was a pen used to mark your skin before surgery? Oh, the pens come in big boxes that cost $500, so bill the patient $500 for the pen. Did you use a towel after showering? Towels are $80 each -- each use, that is. Etc.

I know for a fact the government does not subsidize all necessary procedures. Medication used in the treatment of Horton's syndrome for one.

Medication is not a procedure.

Medication used in ameliorating post-operative infection in breast cancer patients for another. Pain medication used to make day to day life bearable for those waiting years for joint replacement surgery, for third. This is easily verifiable, by the way.

It is easily verifiable that medication is not a procedure.

Can you please explain why your definition is more logical than the one the rest of the world uses?

Rights are actions that are allowed to people: you have the right to take whatever action you choose with the proviso that it doesn't violate the rights of another.

Nope. That is the right to liberty, and it is not a right to act, but not to have your action forcibly prevented by another.

Rights are what is owed to people: the non-interference by other humans with the property they have acquired rightfully.

The notion that all rights are property rights is an absurd attempt to make extent of rights equal extent of property owned.

If Columbus had never landed on Hispaniola, potters just like me would be trading for clay with clay suppliers just like my farmer buddy. The individuals are different, the actions and principles governing the exchange are not.

Wrong. Before European notions of property in natural resources were imposed on indigenous people, everyone was free to use what nature provided for all. Europeans appropriated the resources as private property, forcibly removing others' liberty to use them.

You seem to have ignored or not noticed the fact that the owner of the land on which the clay was found only had the right to it because the gov't kicked the indigenous people off the land.

And you ignore the fact that half a millennium ago potters were producing pots here through the exact same process I do today.

Wrong. Back then, there was no rich, greedy, idle, parasitic rent seeker charging others for permission to use what nature provided.

This historical fact proves Rich's point that the clay pot "was produced within a social context. A social context that required immense group violence to create."

Immense group violence is not required to produce clay pots, though. That is the point neither of you will admit.

Immense group violence is indeed not required to produce clay pots. It is, however, required to deprive people of the liberty to produce clay pots unless they meet the extortion demands of rich, greedy parasites.