People Should Be Compelled To Work For Free

[Sternhauser]

[quote name='Era Might' timestamp='1288922929' post='2184991']
Another way to frame this is that "rights" are turned into "needs." Thus, for example, it is said that we have a right to healthcare, and the assumption behind this modern "right" is that we "need" healthcare. Thus, our "right" to healthcare inevitably means that we no longer have the right to care for ourselves or for each other (unless you're a certified doctor). Once society establishes its "right-needs," then only the socially appointed institutions are permitted to serve these "rights-needs." The same logic is behind our schooling institutions. The "right to learn" is no right at all, because it's not something we can claim for ourselves in freedom. Instead, the "right to learn" becomes a "need to learn," and thus only the socially appointed "teachers" are allowed to teach us. Eventually the "right-need" to learn is mandated (i.e., through compulsory schooling). Thus, "rights" (which are meant to be guarantors of freedom) become means of enslavement. We become slaves to the socially-defined "needs." In other words, we conceive of ourselves, not as people who are born to act, but as people who are born to have their needs filled. The "entitlement" that you refer to is the necessary consequence of an institutionalized society. Once you discredit the man who learns independently, once you discredit the man who is not certified by the system, once you discredit the primacy of community, then that leads to a society that conceives of each person as someone with "needs" that need to be filled, rather than as someone born with creativity and imagination to live life.
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That was a lot of [i]words[/i], you know? Where's my check?

~Sternhauser