[Avodah] Rights in halakhah

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:

> My belief is that duty-to-another based law can too easily decay into
> totalitarianism
> and that rights-based law too readily decays into a culture of
> entitlement. (Because a culture of getting guaranteed rights naturally
> leads to wanting more and more things guaranteed.)

Except that in rights-based philosophies, at least those in the category
of "natural law", recognise only negative rights; i.e. each person has
the right *not* to have anyone else do certain things to him, which is
the same as imposing a prohibition on all others from doing those things
to anybody without their consent.  This has limited potential for getting
out of hand.  To get to your scenario one would have to introduce the
idea of positive rights, i.e. an obligation on all others to do something
for a person, or to give him something, which essentially turns all others
into his slaves.


-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher