More evidence that rights-based ethical systems have flawed foundations.

[richardhutnik]

Ok, to add two more things to the mix here.

First, you have a blurring of rights being negative or positive when the interact. If I were to say that a negative right to a business owner would be that people don't tell him to run his business. That is his right. And then I can say that an individual has a negative right to have harmful smoke getting in their lungs that they don't want. Now, you put someone working in an establishment where people smoke, and that ends up turning what are normally negative rights into one person or the other advocating a positive right in that case. Smoking bans in workplaces end up coming down to this. Laws come to ban the smoking in the workplace, because there isn't necessarily work readily available for people. Also, the basis of the said right for the smoker side is an individual doing something of no value, outside of getting nicotine which has effects that is argued to help the smoker emotionally. But, they are addicted to the substance, so they can't up and quit easily. So, the entire basis of it is a person enslaved to a substance.

A second one would have to do with the uselessness from effects side of merely having a rights-based system, which uses laws and law enforcement to insure. In this is case, out of Spiderman, where Peter Parker could of stopped someone from robbing a business, but said he didn't have an obligation to do so. Under a rights-based system, he doesn't have to, particularly (as was seen in the more recent, but not most recent, original), the owner of the business scammed him out of getting paid. Story goes the criminal Peter Parker could of stopped kills his uncle later. By basing it around rights, you don't create a pro-active duty on a person. It wasn't looking after his own rights, or anyone else from that point, that drove Peter that point forth, but a duty to use his power to serve others to prevent what he saw as evil and get involved. Rights-based systems don't produce this.