>when they agreed that people had a right to medical services ... It was self-imposed slavery...
We've had rights to medical services in most of the developed world outside the US for decades. Doctors have high salaries and reasonable conditions for the most part. Funny version of slavery.
The use of the term "slavery" here is pretty standard rhetoric used for emphasis by the American libertarian movement; its use descends from the vocabulary developed by the body of anti-Socialist thinkers in the early to mid-20th century.
A more sophisticated rhetorician would argue that the various bodies of your society (those who pay for the universal medical services via taxation, those who partake of the medical services offered, those who actually provide the services (i.e. the doctors), and those who administer and regulate the provision of service) have all internalised and unconsciously accept a worldview which debases and discredits the right to free action of individuals in society. You may not be slaves in the classical sense of being enslaved by a third party, but from the perspective of someone with a "strong" view of personal liberty, you are in a sense enslaved to your own lowered expectations and faith in liberty.
So while you might all claim that you are perfectly content with your current system, your critic would view your opinions as hopelessly biased, and point to what they would classify as numerous instances of the poor results of socialised healthcare (incessant arguments about over-spending and budget problems, claims of corruption in service administrators, complaints of high wait time and low quality of service, low morale and satisfaction among service providers) as evidence to strengthen their claim.
Freedom is not a rhetorical device as you charge. It is an important social principle with a specific meaning and how we understand social issues. By your method the fundamental principles of physics like causality or conservation of energy, etc. would be "mere" rhetorical tricks not means of understanding the world.
Wow. It absolutely astonishes me that someone would downvote this. Since when is clarifying a use of a term, then demonstrating what a contrary point of view would look like - without once stating my own personal opinion - downvote-worthy?
This is just disgusting behaviour to see on Hacker News.
And how long will this system last when the doctors are extremely unhappy now and things will get worse as the govt takes more control away from the doctors? It should give you some concern that 2mur's sentiment is common today among doctors; "There is no chance I would do it again". Do you think doctors can be replaced by govt bureaucrats following the Code of Federal Regulations? Good luck with that but its where we are headed.
Let me ask you a question: If the doctors went on strike and refused to work, what do you recommend that we do? Do you support the doctors and their right to trade their services on their terms or do you support the demand of the public's "right" to their services?
All socialist interventions weaken the marketplace and require further such intervention. They all require progressive restrictions of liberty and the logical end result in each and every case, no matter how benign the beginnings, must (as you have suggested) be outright slavery.
We've had rights to medical services in most of the developed world outside the US for decades. Doctors have high salaries and reasonable conditions for the most part. Funny version of slavery.