There's no such thing as "stealing" or "property" as a natural phenomenon. It's a social construct. We have collectively decided that it's important that if people have things in their possession, they shouldn't have them taken away. We have made property into a real thing by constructing a judicial system.
We have also decided as a society (to a greater or lesser extent) that people have a right to some kind of food. We have made this right to food real by constructing a social security system.
If someone takes possession of your car do you have the right to demand it back? Society says you do, and you do it by asking the state to help and resolve the judicial issue.
If someone is going to starve to death, do they have the right to demand food? Society says you do, and you do it by asking the state to help with food / benefits.
> If someone is going to starve to death, do they have the right to demand food? Society says you do, and you do it by asking the state to help with food / benefits.
I dont think people can enter your property and take food from your fridge to satisfy their need. There is no right to food, lets not forget America also has a big issue in kids malnutrition. That is what it is today.
The problem you will always run into is that you cant use the state to give food to some without taking something else from someone else. And because the means are force, the results become quickly irrelevant. You cant get good results through bad means. If you force people to provide healthcare and not get reimbursed for it, they will not do it, or they will do as minimum as possible and litigate as much as possible. So then the state spends money fighting, and people spend money fighting the state. The state can be more efficient on many things, and its worth looking at it: but it is not efficient in healthcare, not particularly so. And it has created most of the cost drivers. That is a fact, not an opinion.
Force is not the way to get costs down, its the way to get something done at any cost.
Yes, social agreements of this type come down to the state monopoly on violence -- if I don't pay taxes I will be locked up, and if I struggle I will be assaulted by then police.
But this is a collective (if undemocratic) decision.
In my example you don't just go and take your property back, you ask the state. And the starving person doesn't steal food, they ask the state.
There's a theme of over-personalization in some narratives, and I've seen it a lot in the USA. Feeding this person means another gets less. It's just not true, unless you forget literally everything else that society does, like infrastructure, for example, ensuring property rights. If you're that precious about paying tax to live in a civilized society you can go and live in the woods, but no-one's going to help you when your stuff is stolen.
> Feeding this person means another gets less. It's just not true, unless you forget literally everything else that society does, like infrastructure, for example, ensuring property rights
It is literally true in the strict sense of the word: whoever provided the healthcare service to that person either was not paid, he worked for free. And if he was paid, then it was "kicking the can down the road".
In economical terms, what is most interesting about things like socialized solutions is that they very often have the opposite effect of their intention, even disregarding state-run efficiency. A(theoretical, dont have data for it) example of that with healthcare would be that wealthier people live longer and get more difficult diseases with age ,which in the end mean higher spending for them. As taxes are raised from everybody, it ends up being a wealth transfer from poor to rich.
This is true with free college tuition for example: it is claimed it is for the poorer, but its actually used most by middle class. And roads help people with cars more than those that can't afford cars.
Also we have to add the incredible ingenuity of people: you will quickly find ways people trade that socialized healthcare on all ends: from servicing it at benefit (turns out the new socialized top-notch hospital is close to politician's homes, and the crappy one are in the crappy neighborhoods, like what happens to schools).
Anyway, the amount of ways socialized solutions can go wrong is truly outstanding and where private markets fail, public works fail spectacularly. And they are impossible to turn around, because there is no more vested interest than state interest.
> If you're that precious about paying tax to live in a civilized society you can go and live in the woods, but no-one's going to help you when your stuff is stolen.
Right, and probably even worse, the moment you do it your very own former-country of residence might send the military to kill you and seize your claimed land immediately. Thats a real danger things like "self floating islands" and all that have to deal with.
On the other hand, submitting to that idea has no sense of proportion. There is no difference between north korea or the US: whatever the guy with the guns tells you you must abide, so it doesnt matter if 5% tax or 100% is reasonable. At least in practical terms that is not how we perceive it.
I mean it appears everything outside of physics and chemistry is a social construct (in academia they argue those are SC too).
Biological gender? Social construct! How is having ovaries or testicles a social construct?
Hierarchy? Social construct! Hierarchy appears even in non-living things, never mind most biological systems!
Property? Social construct! Why? How? Why is a solitary apex-hunter delimiting territory "natural" but when bald monkey does it, it's a "social construct"
Finally this "decided as a society..." BS! That just revels your identify with the social class that gets to make the rules. But, unless (maybe) you're Swiss, you have no real political power. The vast majority of Americans despise Trump, didn't like Hillary, and don't want Bernie either. There are more independents than either party (almost than either combined).
But somehow this representative democracy makes decisions that respects with my agency? BS!
Get this even society is not a social construct. That's right! Society arises as soon as you have a handful of people (or agents) finding their place in their interrelationships. Hierarchy will naturally arise from this.
I'm not saying the OPs point are (or aren't) abhorrent. But this social construct and contract thing is getting out of hand.
Yes, lots of things are social constructs. We are social animals, we have created and evolved highly complicated structures. But very little is intrinsic.
The hierarchy in my filesystem has a similar structure to the one in my family tree / political system / place of work. But the fact that they form a shape that has an abstract representation doesn't mean that there's some law of physics that say that humans form hierarchies. Many people form monogamous relationships. You know what else does? Oxygen atoms! Maybe there's a link!
The difference between science and religion (which is in the same ballpark as society) is that if you started from scratch you'd eventually converge on the same observations and scientific theories. Society, on the other hand, could go a very different way.
Other societies decide different things, case in point, America.
I can't be bothered to argue sex vs gender. But if you really think everyone fits neatly into two buckets in a nice bimodal distribution, maybe you haven't met enough people. That's kind of the point - inferring some kind of law, and therefore "should" from "looks like", e.g. Natural Moral Law is flawed.
I understand it's very unsettling that there aren't many certainties in the world. We construct them to make ourselves feel safe. I'm very happy to inhabit that psychological world. But I'm not fooling myself that we're not alone in a cold universe.
There's no such thing as "stealing" or "property" as a natural phenomenon. It's a social construct. We have collectively decided that it's important that if people have things in their possession, they shouldn't have them taken away. We have made property into a real thing by constructing a judicial system.
We have also decided as a society (to a greater or lesser extent) that people have a right to some kind of food. We have made this right to food real by constructing a social security system.
If someone takes possession of your car do you have the right to demand it back? Society says you do, and you do it by asking the state to help and resolve the judicial issue.
If someone is going to starve to death, do they have the right to demand food? Society says you do, and you do it by asking the state to help with food / benefits.