And interesting that the CIA world factbook rates the UK 35th in life expectancy, and the US 50th, just above Albania. Better organized universal coverage systems irritatingly top the list of life expectancy: Japan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, France, Sweden, Switzerland and Israel. Same confusing state of affairs for child mortality – inexplicable correlation between low numbers and universal health coverage. But at least the US famously gets value for its health care expenditure.

No, i am not a socialist. No more than the taxpayer funded CIA whose state sponsored publication of the state sponsored statistics quoted here…

… you still provide no way, outside of unambiguous stipulation, of how laws should be constructed.

I’ve often accepted the “utilitarian” label, and I’ll discuss what the word means in my case if you want, but it doesn’t imply “how laws should be constructed”. Ethics has something to say about what laws ought to be. How laws are constructed is politics. I have little faith in any political system, but I can tell you, always tentatively, why I favor one positive rule over posited alternatives.

You claim to follow the Lockean notion of rights, but you are a complete subjectivist on the matter.

I accept certain Lockean principles as starting points, like the propriety of a man governing (owning) his own means of production. I don’t subscribe to any deductivist ethics. I don’t believe that we know what’s ethical by positing a few simple rules of conduct and then judging all conduct following from repeated application of these rules “ethical”. Rules are means. Ethics is about ends.

You have no objective theory of rights.

Right. I don’t. I don’t use the word “rights” as you do, because your usage confuses your sense of what ought to be with established legal rights. When you tell me that Bill Gates has some “right” as a wealthy founder of the Microsoft Corporation, I understand only the positive legal sense of the word. I know nothing of any Lockean propriety, because Lockean propriety doesn’t govern Bill Gates, whether or not you or I think it should.

You have only your own “personal” ethics, and whatever arbitrary decrees emanate from whomever you recognize as “the state”.

Yes, I have my personal ethics, and I don’t pretend that it’s handed down by God or rigorously deduced from indisputable first principles. I know too little of God and too much of rigorous deduction to pretend either.

My recognition of the state is irrelevant. States exist as a matter of fact. A particular state governs me, whether I recognize it or not.

But that isn’t a concept of rights. That is a dodge.

No. It’s facing reality.

It is laziness or inability to identify a rational concept–a concept which precedes and underlies the creation of laws.

No. You’re reverence for some simple system of “rights” is laziness. You’re just like every other statesman who would impose the One, True system of forcible propriety, because you cannot or will not question your own assumptions.

You leave your ethics open to any arbitrary notion ranging from the peaceful to the monstrous.

No, I don’t. Repeating this falsehood doesn’t substantiate it. You’re just another politician peddling straw men. I’m a “monster”, and you juxtapose yourself with my monstrosity, so you must be more saintly. How incredibly simple.

You give yourself no objective way of determining what your own ethics are.

You just go on and on with this nonsense as though you have a clue what my ethics are or how I determine them, when you plainly don’t.

You HAVE your personal ethics, I’m sure, but god knows where they came from–you sure don’t.

I know their history well enough and can discuss it with you, but you aren’t really interested; otherwise, you’d ask me about them rather than presuming to tell me, only revealing your ignorance.

Rights in the Lockean sense is not “whatever the state stipulates”.

I never say it is.

It is instead at least an effort at identifying a concept derived from observations in nature–universal and objective.

Locke says nothing about “universal and objective” rights. He has a notion of “natural rights”, but I don’t think much of it. I can observe the natural world easily enough, and Lockean rights clearly are not natural. They are artificial instead. They don’t exist in the natural world outside of human culture, and they don’t even exist in human culture very much. I hardly live in a Lockean utopia.

And it is such a higher nonsubjective notion that those in this country–and certainly in the context of the founding of the USA–typically use. It isn’t always clear and consistent the way people use it, but unlike your completely subjective stipulated notion of rights, it is relevant and useful.

Regardless of your dull repetition, my stipulation of rights is not subject at all. Nothing I advocate is a “right” unless and until it is actually enacted as forcible propriety. What I call “a right” is objectively what any proper attorney at law will tell you, insofar as a rule of law operates effectively, and one does operate effectively in my neck of the woods. You’re the one with a subjective notion of “rights”, not me. Your “rights” are whatever you say they are, whatever follows “logically” from some first principles that you accept.

Enough. You may have the last word here.

I know. I’ve read what you’ve written before. And in all that I’ve read, you still provide no way, outside of unambiguous stipulation, of how laws should be constructed. You claim to follow the Lockean notion of rights, but you are a complete subjectivist on the matter. You have no objective theory of rights. You have only your own “personal” ethics, and whatever arbitrary decrees emanate from whomever you recognize as “the state”.

But that isn’t a concept of rights. That is a dodge. It is laziness or inability to identify a rational concept–a concept which precedes and underlies the creation of laws. You leave your ethics open to any arbitrary notion ranging from the peaceful to the monstrous. You give yourself no objective way of determining what your own ethics are. You HAVE your personal ethics, I’m sure, but god knows where they came from–you sure don’t.

Rights in the Lockean sense is not “whatever the state stipulates”. It is instead at least an effort at identifying a concept derived from observations in nature–universal and objective. And it is such a higher nonsubjective notion that those in this country–and certainly in the context of the founding of the USA–typically use. It isn’t always clear and consistent the way people use it, but unlike your completely subjective stipulated notion of rights, it is relevant and useful.