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My 101st Debate: Universal Health Care

Thanks Bsh! I would like to start by giving my sincere apologies to both my opponent and the voters for a mishap with sources that occurred last round. I claimed that France spends 40% of its GDP on healthcare, but that is actually false; in my rush to complete my argument in time (about an hour), I somehow managed to mix up tax revenue with GDP. Please disregard that figure entirely. Also... due to 1) the fact that I already made a case for the economic harms and ineffectiveness of UHC within my rebuttals to Pro's case, 2) the self-sufficient nature of my theft contention, 3) my infinitely greater passion for philosophy over healthcare policy, and 4) a lack of character space and time, I will be using this round solely to defend my first contention (and framework) from Pro's rebuttals. My utilitarian case against UHC is of lesser importance, and it was much more of a pre-emptive rebuttal to Pro's case than it was an opening argument anyhow. FRAMEWORK Pro, again, makes the paradoxical claim that because governments cannot be biased towards any one ethical system, they should default to utilitarian calculations. He claims that this "cost/benefit analysis" is not a "moral ideology", but merely an "objective, measurable criterion for decision-making". This does absolutely nothing to amend the self-contradiction I noted in my argument. Utilitarianism also rests on an "a priori moral principle"-- it assumes that maximizing utility (i.e. net benefit) is inherently good and should be valued over all other factors of ethical relevance. Thus, my opponent's approach of "cost/benefit analysis" is every bit as much of a moral ideology as my libertarian ethical system. Pro claims that utilitarianism is amoral because it prescribes that which is 'rational' rather than that which is 'moral', but that proves nothing, as all ethical systems claim ultimately derive their moral claims from rationality. So, unfortunately for Pro, he cannot get out of providing an actual ethical justification for utilitarianism so easily. If I can successfully answer all his objections to libertarian morality, my framework is preferable by default, which automatically negates the resolution (following the reasoning provided in my opening argument and my conclusion this round). 1. Moral Dilemmas Here, Pro attempts to 'debunk' libertarian morality by showing how it conflicts with our ethical intuitions in extreme hypothetical situations. ALL ethical systems will fail in that sense if we test them in absurdly implausible scenarios. For example, consider the hypothetical utility monster, which gains infinitely more happiness from consuming resources than anyone else on the planet; if such a monster were to exist, utilitarianism would morally obligate us to sacrifice everything we can, including ourselves, to it for the sake of maximizing net utility. Obviously, this is completely counter-intuitive and we would think that we should instead just kill the ravenous monster. This monster is no more unlikely than the scenario Pro has described (regarding scratching a finger to save the world). In other words, Pro's objection is non-unique. 2. Self-Property Pro argues that since self-ownership allows you to sell yourself into slavery, and thus it is immoral. However, slavery very specifically refers to *forced* labor; the coercion factor involved in slavery is what makes it slavery-- that is what makes it 'immoral' to begin with. With someone who 'sells himself into slavery', that coercion factor is completely absent, so it can hardly even be called slavery anymore. Pro does not explain why we should still consider it immoral if the person being "enslaved" is giving up ownership over himself with *full consent*. The fact that such an action is likely to be detrimental to his health in the long run represents a problem with his own decision-making skills, rather than one with the ethical system which allowed for him to do so. Pro's objection here is, at best, an appeal to emotion. 3. Non-Autonomous Humans Pro claims that there are other ways to derive human moral value than personal autonomy, but he never explains how, and as such, that claim should be rejected. Pro goes on to ask how babies, people with severe mental handicaps, and comatose individuals can still have rights under libertarian morality. In the case of babies and the mentally disabled, they do have a limited degree of personal autonomy, and thus do have some basic rights such as the right to life, but obviously they do not have as much autonomy as everyone else. However, this does not imply anything outside of how we already treat such individuals... even we as a society don't grant them the same rights as everyone else; young children and the severely disabled are considered to be under the authority of their parents/caretakers and do not have the same degree of freedom that we do. In the case of the comatose, those individuals are obviously still the same individuals they were before entering the coma, and since they did not give up their autonomy before entering the coma, we can presume that their autonomy extends throughout the duration of their unconscious state. It is no different than why someone who is asleep would still have their rights... Pro's objection fails because libertarian morality does not treat these "non-autonomous humans" any differently than how our intuitions would dictate that we should. 4. No Justification I find it interesting that Pro makes this objection when he himself has done literally nothing to justify his utilitarian framework. In fact, I have justified both self-ownership and the natural rights that stem from it... I spent entire paragraphs on it in the previous round. To re-iterate: "From this concept of self-ownership, we can derive all the major natural rights possessed by humans: life (because life is the most essential component of the self), personal liberty (because that is the definition of having 'ownership' over oneself), and possession of rightfully acquired property (because the self is the ultimate source of its labor and should thus own the products of that labor)." Naturally, if self-ownership is absolute, then the rights that are derived from it are absolute as well. 5. Souls Pro's objection relies on the bare assertions that "a thing cannot own itself". I see no reason to accept this. The definition of ownership is basically the state of having complete control over something and the freedom to do what you wish with it. There doesn't seem to be anything inhibiting a being from having this sort of control or freedom over itself. 6. Rewarding Luck Pro is basically just saying that life isn't fair with this objection. So what if some people are born into better environments and have genetic advantages that others don't have? I fail to see how this is a fault of libertarian morality; it seems to be more of an objection to the nature of reality itself... C1) THEFT I. Pro claims that since human societies used to be communal in nature, property rights do not exist. However, this is incredibly fallacious. Just because humans at one point did not recognize the existence of property rights is no reason not to recognize them now. Humans also at one point did not recognize the immorality of slavery or brutal methods of torture, yet it is absurd to suggest that we shouldn't do so now. Property rights are a logical extension of self-ownership, and Pro has done nothing to refute that. Taxation which does not return benefits to the tax payer violates the role of government, and is ultimately a form of theft. II. Pro claims that individuals are bound by communal obligations. This may be true on a very local level, but it simply doesn't hold true on the national level. The average person has not interacted with or received any benefits whatsoever from the vast majority of the people in their country; to claim that they are somehow obligated to pay for the healthcare of complete strangers on the basis of imaginary "communal obligations" to them is simply absurd. It is especially absurd when we consider that a substantial portion of those strangers require healthcare as a direct result of their own choices; poor lifestyle choices like smoking, drinking, risky behaviors, and unhealthy eating habits are the cause of many of the most prevalent health conditions [http://www.cdc.gov...]. CONCLUSION None of Pro's objections to my libertarian moral framework hold up; each one is independently flawed. Moreover, my opponent has declined to justify his utilitarian framework at all, making my libertarian morality preferable by default. And under such a deontological framework, it doesn't really matter that a policy is beneficial if it violates the rights of the citizens; a mild eugenics program can also be construed as having a net benefit, yet implementing one would obviously be unethical. The UHC should be rejected on the basis that it requires the government to engage in unjustified acts of coercion, forcing people to pay for the healthcare of others. Leaving healthcare to private insurance companies and non-profit groups is ethically preferable.