And... 'First, Do No Harm

"I can even accept that there's some logic in the proposition that negative rights are better than positive rights because they're the easiest to enact and to enforce."

LOL

"Enact" and "enforce?" What part of self-restraint and passivity involves the enforcers?

"That's a far cry though from claiming they have some kind of intrinsic value. Just because something is easy doesn't necessarily make it right. Didn't we learn in elementary school that the easiest solution is not always the best?"

Despite your facile attempt to create an equivalence between inaction and action in terms of energy distribution; there is nothing necessarily easy about adhering to the principle of "First, do no harm." This is particularly difficult when people have been conditioned to believe that there is always a remedy that the authorities can provide.

Switching from witch doctors and faith-healers to "secular" authorities doesn't lessen the impulse to believe that action in the face of a problem is better than inaction. And when the resources are "public" it is easy to believe that there is "no cost" ( as the resources were already allocated to be spent on SOME public good anyway [ this thinking leads directly to the pork barrel. ] )

But regardless of whether or not the "remedy" does ( or even can ) work, there is already a cost in sending out goons with cudgels to beat "contributions" from the "donors."

I leave it to the Statists to argue just how much collateral damage can be brushed aside with a "too bad, so sad," and whether the methods become just when the ends are ours, and unjust when the ends are theirs.

But there is nothing easy about telling the person who demands a panacea that it doesn't exist. Or that the action they demand you take might harm without helping. Folks who tell this unpopular truth often find that their "client" will shop around until they find a quack ready to dispense the "cure."

Dante