David Friedman has good advice: First ask what it means. Example: “Healthcare Is A Human Right” Analysis:
If not being murdered is a human right, someone who attempts murder may be stopped by force, someone who succeeds may be punished. Applying that to healthcare, someone who fails to provide it, a doctor or nurse who refuses to treat someone in need of healthcare, may be forced to do so, one who has failed to do so may be punished. That implies that health care workers may be compelled to work for others, whether or not they are willing. I doubt that most people who use the slogan intend that implication but what else can it mean? If it is only that healthcare is a good thing, something governments should be willing to spend money on, why call it a right? There are lots of good things.
For another example of an ambiguous use of “rights,” consider the claim that everyone has a right to marry. Taken literally, that would mean that, if no woman is willing to marry me, one may be compelled to. Almost nobody believes that. Someone who makes the claim is adding an invisible qualification; the right is not to get married but to marry anyone willing to marry you. Most would add the qualification “of marriageable age,” some would, and some would not, add “of the opposite sex.”
If we interpret the right to healthcare similarly, it becomes the right to receive medical care from anyone willing to provide it to you. That is unobjectionable but not very interesting, although one can imagine special cases, such as sex change surgery or prescribing opioids as pain medication, where some would disagree.
A further problem with the slogan is the lack of quantification. A right to receive some healthcare is satisfied with an aspirin or a band aid. A right to receive any healthcare that benefits you costs more than even a rich country can pay.
The Beastie Boys once told me that I should fight for my right to party. In fact they said I had to do it. Try and figure out what they meant by that!
Also of note:
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So here's the good news… The WSJ editorialists bid An Unfond Farewell to Lina Khan.
One benefit of the recent election is this: Lina Khan soon won’t have American business to kick around anymore. This week Mr. Trump named Andrew Ferguson to replace Ms. Khan as chair of the Federal Trade Commission. She won’t be missed, except perhaps by corporate lawyers who are racking up billable hours defending against her antitrust revanchism.
The FTC lawsuit filed Thursday against Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits is a classic Khan job. She has resurrected the dormant 1936 Robinson-Patman Act to sue the nation’s largest liquor distributor for alleged illegal price discrimination. The FTC hasn’t litigated a claim under this law for more than 30 years.
Robinson-Patman says suppliers cannot “discriminate in price between different purchasers of commodities of like grade and quality.” The FTC alleges that Southern Glazer’s squeezed mom-and-pop businesses by selling them booze at higher prices than to larger chains, which it claims resulted in fewer choices and higher prices.
The FTC offers no evidence for the latter, and volume discounts are ubiquitous in retail. Most retailers charge customers lower marginal prices on products bought in bulk. This reduces prices. There’s also no evidence mom-and-pop shops have been harmed by these volume discounts. Liquor and convenience stores have added roughly 24,000 jobs in the last five years.
Trivia: The FTC's Andrew Ferguson is not the same guy as this Andrew Ferguson. (We used to link to him all the time. Fun example here.)
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… and here's the bad news. Brought to you by Jack Dicastro: Trump's pick of Mark Meador for FTC is bad for consumers.
President-elect Donald Trump announced Tuesday his intention to nominate Mark Meador as a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). If confirmed, Meador would take over the commissioner slot currently held by FTC Chair Lina Khan, whose term expired on September 26.
Meador is an accomplished antitrust litigator, but his antagonism toward Big Tech, and bigness per se, will compromise Trump's stated goals of maintaining America's economic and technological dominance.
He has long opposed big business, from Google to Ticketmaster, and regards the free market as merely a means to the end of human flourishing, not as an end in and of itself. Meador's stance on economic freedom reflects his explicitly anti-libertarian conception of freedom as "requir[ing] order and restraints upon our passions." Achieving Meador's vision of freedom apparently also requires restraints upon trade.
This is why we can't have nice things.