Positive or Negative Rights

[Kingston]

Do you believe we should define which rights we have through a system of positive rights, or negative rights.

Definitions:

Positive Rights: Where your rights are rights which have been explicitly delegated to you.

Negative Rights: Where you have the right to do anything not specifically prohibited.

(If these definitions are too unclear, say so and I'll attempt to clear it up.)

So? What does everyone think?

[Keith Inc.]

Do you believe we should define which rights we have through a system of positive rights, or negative rights.

Definitions:

Positive Rights: Where your rights are rights which have been explicitly delegated to you.

Negative Rights: Where you have the right to do anything not specifically prohibited.

Limitations on what we can do are not rights. Rights are things that even the government cannot take away. A prohibitive list is specifically taking something away.

I think the list of recognized rights is very important, but it's just as important to recognize that the rights specifically guaranteed are not the limit of our rights.

Jefferson was against the Bill of Rights, as he feared that the expressed list would be taken as the entire list.

I prefer the most open approach possible to rights, understanding that they only extend as far as to when they start to infringe on the rights of others.

[foeofthelance]

You have no rights. All you have is a code of rules that is agreed upon by you and a collective of others to determine what is and is not an acceptable form of behavior. The only true "right" that can be said to belong to a living being is the the right to eventually fall down dead, and we're working on that one.

[Psychostorm]

The government and corporations own you. What rights you have are only the ones they feel like giving you at any given time.

[Guest Agaib]

You have no rights. All you have is a code of rules that is agreed upon by you and a collective of others to determine what is and is not an acceptable form of behavior.

That's what rights really are. You're right, there's no such thing as an objective metric by which one can determine what is a "right" and what is not. I, personally, am not disturbed by this and it has little to do with the question really.

I am in support of what we have. An odd mix of positive and negative rights. This is because positive rights are less prone to change. A system of government based solely on negative rights would likely eventually turn into a system by which the government periodically decides new rights which you don't have.

Negative rights exist because there is no list of positive rights that will forever satisfy current and future generations throughout the course of the life of a given system of government.