No man is an island, Chuck...
I'm not going into a big reply, except to highlight a point you touched upon; living in a society confers privileges, and requires concessions in return. e.g. taxation, agreeing to abide by laws etc. The disputes arise over the interplay and quantities within those myriad rules, concessions, rights etc. As you point out, people have choice. If you think your rights are being infringed by an increased taxation burden to pay for unemployment benefits to lazy people who will not move to get work, you are free to move somewhere else. Is that irony not lost on you? Not lost on me at all...I have been a non resident of Australia for over 22 years
Sometimes, paying people more than a subsistence can be in your interest, Chuck, lest a majority of people decide to shift some of the parameters of the society, and you find more than your ability to speak your mind is 'trammeled'. If you get my drift. I think i do but contemplate the moral hazard society faces when when a large % of the population are paid MORE than they earn and subsequently become convinced this is their 'right'.
Australia has a remarkable ability to oust the government if the pendulum shifts too far one way or the other. I hope that continues.
Me too ferris...but what happens to the political process and ultimately civil society when the majority of people are voting to maintain perceived rights that are actually privileges that carry responsibilities? If I am convinced that I have all these spurious 'rights' then I will vote for the person who protects those spurious rights with no sense of responsibility to the society that I expect to provide them. That is the moral hazard I speak of above...and Australia is very far down that hazardous path.
If
everything is viewed through a prism of the few basic, inalienable, individual rights it gives great moral clarity. It repairs that sense of absolute moral right and wrong that the Left denies exists and the right claims is only conferred through religious mandate.
When society has a clear understanding of right and wrong it solves a great many of the problems we face today. It puts
responsible political power back where it belongs...with the people.
As just one example of a 'problem' that would be fixed by people insisting on their moral, basic, inalienable, individual rights and
demanding that those same rights apply self evidently to all people, take 'illegal' immigration/boat people.
If I believe that ALL people have a basic right to Life, freedom of thought/words/movement/actions and Property then I must accept that people born in places that forcefully deny those rights have the RIGHT to leave and go somewhere where they CAN lead their lives using their own best judgement based on rationally looking at the world around them and deciding how they will use those rights to make them 'happy'.
Instead of society spending billions on stopping people, on risking their lives (something no govt or individual has the
moral right to do) we instead welcome them and use those billions more productively.
But people will say "look at all the problems uncontrolled immigration causes...look at the gangs in western sydney...they will destroy our standard of living because they work for less $ etc"
No, these problems arise because the left has convinced immigrants (or more accurately their children) that they have rights they do not actually have.
For starters we have no 'right' to a minimum wage so if an immigrant is offered employment by an employer and accepts that employment NO-ONES rights have been infringed...by seeking to forcefully stop them we, as a society, are infringing their rights.
If instead we sat new immigrants (and every Australian born child) down in a room and outlined EXACTLY what rights they have and DO NOT have and the ABSOLUTE requirement to defend and respect those same rights in ALL other people and the results of them NOT so doing, as deemed appropriate by our democratic society, then few problems would exist...and Australia would benefit.