I would argue that what rights there are is inherently a moral argument. “Murder is not a right” is a moral statement, for example. The government doesn’t change what rights it thinks there are without some kind of moral basis for it. Even if it’s primarily done in the legal sense, we still generally act in the legal system based on a system of morality. Another example: “Compelling people to testify against themselves is wrong.” It would be really useful for the state if they could do that, but legally speaking, the US recognizes that there is a right against self-incrimination.

Laws are written because someone, somewhere, found a moral fault in the law. It’s just that some people believe that the only morality is power, and thus anything they do is justified. That’s why we have the Bill of Rights: it’s meant to stop people from simply saying “the government needs this power so we’re going to give it that power.” It isn’t about creating rights, it’s about recognizing and protecting rights that have existed all along.

On second glance, I’m not sure it’s blood, otherwise it would be more brown-ish. (Unless that’s a very fresh print.) It’s more likely to be red ink that they got off an ink sponge or something. At least, that’s what I hope it is…

But if the government can decide what rights there are, then anything they do is morally correct, no? Unless you’re going to hold the government to a higher moral standard than themselves, in which case the government doesn’t actually grant rights; it can only protect or violate them. If we have a higher moral standard than the law, then human rights do not come from the government, they are defined by whatever that higher standard is.

I think the Nazis were an insane and utterly contemptible political party that destroyed a struggling nation to slake their own thirst for power. But if the government decides what rights there are, then they can simply legislate out of existence the rights of anyone under their jurisdiction. Thus, anything the government does to them is justified.

And my point is that it isn’t the government that decides what rights are. You started this whole “can the government decide what rights are” discussion by dismissing out of hand the right of a person to defend themselves. I’d like for you to go up to a sexual assault victim, especially one who defended themselves with a gun, and tell them “um ackshually you didn’t have the right to defend yourself because guns are evil 🤓”. Or would you only do that after the Second Amendment is deleted from the Constitution?

Yes, I do find it dishonest to say both “the government has the right to grant and revoke rights” and “there are only some laws that are reasonable”. You can’t really take a moral stance against the government like that if they decide you no longer have the right to disagree with them.

I know it doesn’t lead to any particular right being set, but your argument that rights are set by the government still leads to the conclusion that, because the Nazis were in power, they had the right to decide that Jews, gay people, other ethnicities, etc. no longer had a right to life. It would also lead to the belief that the Nazis had the right to protect those people if they wanted to. It would open the door to whatever oppression, discrimination, protection, liberty, and whatever else the ever-fickle government decided. Nobody would be right to resist it because “the government sets the rights, therefore it’s okay”.

Do you believe that Nazi Germany was justified in killing 11 million people? Because that’s the logical conclusion of your belief.

So the government can decide what rights are? If the Republicans get a 2/3 majority and amends the Constitution to say that LGBT+ people can be killed at any moment, does that make it right?

Also, let’s assume your proposal happens. What specific policies do you mean by “sane gun control”?

How do you propose we lower the number of guns in our society in a way that disarms criminals and doesn’t violate people’s right to self defense?

It would still be cheaper to drive.

They do make inhalers that are longer-lasting and intended to prevent asthma attacks, but I haven’t tried them yet. If I ever get a house that will let me keep more than one bicycle so I can have a non-ebike (those omafiets look pretty sweet but I’d need adjustable gears for the slopes around here), I might consider it.

I do, yes, but in every single gym class I’ve been in I would have to stop what I was doing completely and use my inhaler. The school tried having me use it before the exercise, but that did nothing.

I’m 99% sure that they’re joking.

That would require people to keep living with their family until they’re ready to buy a house. That isn’t always feasible. Nor is it an easy option in areas where big businesses are buying up real estate to turn the houses into rental properties, or areas with zoning laws that make new construction excessively difficult. I don’t want to do away with landlords either, necessarily, but telling people to “stop renting” isn’t too far removed from telling people who complain about excessive food prices to “stop eating.” We need places to live, at the end of the day.

It would take me about 45 minutes one way. It could work, assuming it never rained or snowed (both will absolutely happen here in upstate NY) and my exercise-induced asthma didn’t prevent me physically from doing so. Don’t get me wrong, I love my ebike for quick zips around town, but it’s no replacement for my car at this point. It can’t function in the rain or snow and, even if it could, I don’t want to risk injuring myself by riding on un-shoveled sidewalks or the slurry of death that accumulates on the sides of the road from the snow plows. Plus I have to keep my work laptop dry, and I’d be much less safe against the US’s notoriously brutal cyclist ignorance.

In my city, if I want to arrive at my office at 8AM, I need to leave my apartment by car at 7:45. If I want to be within a block or so of my office by that same time, I need to leave my apartment at 6:15 to find a bus stop and ride on three different buses. Getting home by bus after ending my shift at 5:30 (I work 9 hour shifts and get every other Friday off), I would get home about 7:15.

Consider that I’m paid roughly $35 an hour pre-tax. If I do this every day for a month, the time this costs me would be equivalent to more than a two week paycheck.

Why would I take the bus?

That would explain a lot, actually.

I mean, I get that the “forming a terrorist group” charge is probably excessive, but you’re only going to make people hate you (and by extension, your cause) by blocking highways. People literally need those, particularly ambulances and other emergency services.

Blocking airport runways and vandalizing priceless pieces of history will also make people hate you. Just Stop Oil is Big Oil’s dream activist group.

They do, but the fact remains that you can’t effectively incentivize people to work more for you personally when they’re already soul-crushingly overworked doing things for everyone else in their rotation. Trying to get more out of nurses who are in the industry already would be trying to squeeze blood from a stone. Also, you don’t go to college for several years to be a server. If people realize they’re going to have to beg for tips from their patients, then that won’t bode well for the profession.

See, there’s a crucial difference in the two professions. A server is someone who brings your food, takes your check, and generally doesn’t do much else. A nurse, on the other hand, needs to balance the life-saving care of dozens of patients at once while dealing with administrative bullcrap the whole time. People tip servers well to incentivize them to spend less time on their phones and dropping plates, and more time carrying food and recording orders accurately. You can’t do that with nurses because they can’t possibly give any more of their time. 91% of nurses experienced high levels of burnout in 2023,, and I’m dead certain that a lot of that is the insane workload. Twelve hour shifts working with uncaring staff and pissed-off patients must be soul-crushing. Then for your employer to try and disguise your looming pay cuts as “a way to give your healthcare heroes a special thank you” would probably cause an exodus from the profession; people can see through that stuff pretty easily.

You’re still assuming this is going to be an immediate industry-wide thing, too. Like I said, people will see through the corporate bs, and they’ll learn at some point that they can go to another hospital, not be expected to beg for tips from their suffering patients, and get paid more than the place that was lowballing them. Word of mouth is powerful. There’s an entire cottage industry of Canadian nurses who cross the border into America for work because they’re so dissatisfied with the Canadian system. Your scenario only works in a setting where there is only one nationwide hospital system that decides the market rate for nursing, and that people wouldn’t decide not to become nurses after seeing that they’re expected to tip them. We already see a nursing shortage because they’re being treated so poorly; trying to make it a tipped industry would only make it worse.

As for the “would you?” thing, I can speak from a degree of personal experience here. I was in the psych ward in May and I was waiting for over ten hours in there to see a psychiatrist. I was tired, hungry, bored, and scared of what might happen to me. I was in no way equipped to make financial decisions at that point, and I get the feeling that the medical field would consider taking tips from someone who was in such an emotionally frail state to be unethical at best. (Oh yeah, and they took away my wallet. Couldn’t give them cash if I wanted to.) My insurance made the cost of going there “reasonable,” (mostly because I wasn’t actually admitted,) but if the hospital expected me to tip the staff there, it would be nonsensical. How would you determine what the tip should be based on? The pre-insurance amount? That’s like $5,000 there if I’m lucky, and 20% of that is $1,000 on a bill I only paid like $275 for. One word: No. The post-insurance amount? That’s $27.50. A pittance compared to how much time and effort went into taking care of me, including the time it took to become a nurse to begin with. Furthermore, I would be so removed from the process of sending the tip that by the time the money reached the nurse(s) who helped me, they would only know me as a name on a bill at best. And again, would insurance be willing to cover the cost of a tip?