If one person has a right to something he did not earn, of necessity it requires that another person not have a right to something that he did earn.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the conflict between rights and earned benefits, suggesting that unfairness occurs when one person's rights infringe on another's rightful possessions.
Walter E. Williams emphasizes the inherent injustice in claiming entitlements that one has not earned, suggesting that such claims inherently take away rights from others who have rightfully earned their possessions. This highlights a fundamental principle in discussions about fairness, property rights, and individual responsibility in society, where one individual's gain can often result in another's loss when rights are redistributed without regard for merit.
In practice
This quote can be used in a debate about welfare policies.
However, if we wish to be compassionate with our fellow man, we must learn to engage in dispassionate analysis. In other words, thinking with our hearts, rather than our brains, is a surefire method to hurt those whom we wish to help.
In a free society, government has the responsibility of protecting us from others, but not from ourselves.
What we call the market is really a democratic process involving millions, and in some markets billions, of people making personal decisions that express their preferences. When you hear someone say that he doesn't trust the market, and wants to replace it with government edicts, he's really calling for a switch from a democratic process to a totalitarian one.
The true test of one's commitment to liberty and private property rights doesn't come when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we agree. The true test comes when we permit people to be free to do those voluntary things with which we disagree.
Powerful government tends to draw into it people with bloated egos, people who think they know more than everyone else and have little hesitance in coercing their fellow man. Or as Nobel Laureate Friedrich Hayek said, "in government, the scum rises to the top".
The essence of government is force, and most often that force is used to accomplish evil ends.
Ever since then I have known that if all the values in this world are more or less questionable, the most important thing in life is kindness.
Philosophy makes progress not by becoming more rigorous but by becoming more imaginative.
Leaving your country at a tender age really rearranges the way you perceive the world. So I feel marginally attached to many places rather than deeply attached to any one place.
What we need to do is break the financial community's grip on society.
There are only individual people, different individual people, with their own individual lives. Using one of these people for the benefit of others uses him and benefits the others. Nothing more. What happens is that something is done to him for the sake of others. Talk of an overall social good covers this up.
The glory of God is a human being fully alive; and to be alive consists in beholding God.
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