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And yet despite being at the state level, all americans do have a right to K-12. Is that also forced labor?



You don’t seem to understand what is meant by forced labor here. I am happy to explain it to you.

A right is something that can never be legally violated by the government.

It is possible for a health care system run by anyone to end up with a level of resources below what it would need to meet its commitments.

If government runs health care and health care is a right, then the government is not legally allowed to fail to meet its health care commitments. Doing so would violate the right to health care, and violating rights is illegal.

Therefore at that point the government must either compel resources be increased to match the commitment, regardless of any other factors, or cancel the right.

If our plan includes the potential for raising resources to an arbitrary level in certain circumstances regardless of all other factors at that point, then at that point we would by definition need to implement forced labor.

If our plan includes canceling a right under certain circumstances, then it is not really a right, is it?


This sort of theorising doesn't seem to be very relevant in practice, and I frankly only see this from Americans. Other countries seem to be doing much better without hammering on this needless distinction. They make their health systems work by making sure it's sufficiently funded and well-organised, and don't need to account for a major party simply wanting to destroy it just to hurt people (except possibly the UK soon).


There's a difference to having the right to something and being forced to do something. For example all states give the right to a K-12 education, up to a point (usually there's age limits, and some states also have pre-k).

However just because children have the right to go to school doesn't mean they're forced to actually go and sit down (eg Wisconsin v Yoder). The courts do recognize that parents have the rights to force their kids to do certain things. Eg you can ground your child and it isn't "forced confinement", you can make them go to school and it isn't slavery, etc. Those exemptions pretty much go away once someone turns 18




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