Positive rights can't exist. If people had a right to food, shelter...

See :>>2292202, sophist

Does a government providing the right to private property, fair trial, enforcement of contracts, maintaining a standing army, violate the negative rights of the policement, judges, lawyers, soldiers?

So, are you saying negative rights exist because no one is forced to be apart of a society, while positive rights exist because society should care for all?

I'm not being a sophist m8, I'm genuinely trying to figure this out.

That's actually a good point against libertarians. But an ancap would say yes.

If you give people the choice between having food on the table and upholding some libertard's morality spooks, they will pick food every time. "negative rights" are completely nonsensical when people don't have basic things like food and shelter, and any person who uses the former to justify the latter is fucked in the head

That are useless terms for vaporous ideals. Really they are nothing else than an philosophical justification of the abstract world neoliberals and ancaps consider true, while they are nothing else than mental exercises.
There are no rights outside those established by a society in a particular material instant. There is nothing eternal, special or inherent to the human condition that justify the existence of rights.

So why should we give everyone food/shelter/medicine? Because as a society we established this to be a sensible thing to do. Ensuring the survival of the members of the community is not done because there are rights protecting them, but because the community itself recognizes the value in doing so.

The same way a society established this baseline level it will establish how will this be accomplished. Under feudalism the community utilized its labour to satisfy the lord, under capitalism society utilizes its labour to interact through the market, under socialism labour will be utilized however the community will democratically direct it.

Basically, between division of labor and complex organization society is a massive collective effort that everyone contributes to in some way, with no particular profession being disposable. The idea behind legally guaranteed healthcare and the like is that because everyone in society is participating, everyone deserves at least those basic necessities (food, water, healthcare) for functioning in society in return.

It is interesting how people who defend negative rights over positive are those who negative rights benefit and who don't need positive rights.

Doesn't this imply some kind of subjectivity and arbitrariness? That whatever rights exist are whichever the community wants?

But if we're talking about a non-communistic society, for instance one with labor vouchers, wouldn't paying for necessities show that you are contributing to society as much as it contributes to you?

On a surface level. At the end of the day society will mold itself around the economic structure simply because that's how the power structure forms. Inevitably those with power in their hands will manipulate the community to benefit themselves. On a individual/small time frame it is indeed subjective, on a longer period the material conditions of the community will inevitably determine for the most part the social, political and legal structure of society.

That's precisely the point, famalam. Rights are social constructs. They are whatever people want them to be. "Negative rights" arose from a particular class of people who were materially comfortable but still a political underclass, so they wished to create a state that would protect their property and allow them political freedom and social mobility. And they did. It was called the French Revolution.
Read Critique of the Gotha Programme. There's no such thing as "contributing to society as much as it contributes to you". Unless you live completely by yourself you will always get less than the full value of your labour. This is because a portion of the products of your labour goes to supporting people who aren't able to support themselves. This is a prerequisite for any stable and healthy society.

This. Read Stirner.

That's a very interesting point. It's interesting how pre-Enlightenment ethics was about duty and obedience to the will of God and the will of those God has put above you, obviously a defense of Feudalism and Monarchism, while Enlightenment ethics is about respecting the property and rights of others, obviously a defense of Capitalism.
Why is it in the interests of society to contribute to those who don't contribute to it? Not meaning to be an edgelord.

Maybe I would if he didn't write with so much purple prose.

Good question. Why indeed did society support for centuries an entire class of people contributing next to nothing to society like the aristocracy. Fortunately nothing like that happens in the modern world!

That's right, we can ethnically cleanse subhumans wherever we want to but since 'human rights' are just leftist liberal garbage made up to prevent us from taking the underdeveloped resources of the third world.

Because it was the ruling class and it had the power to force others to support it. But an incapable non-productive class obviously has no power. It could be that while they're materially unproductive, they're still individuals that add value of some kind to society. Like a family taking care of their grandparents even though they can't work: they still add value to the family's life.

Maybe seeing certain individuals as unproductive, therefor unvaluable to society is just capitalist ideology we haven't realized. We trade profitability for productivity and don't realize value is more than material.

"Positive rights" isn't something we came up with, it's a strawman made up by reactionary cucks.

Because "those who don't contribute to it" include things like children, elderly, people in education and otherwise vulnerable people. These people are still important to society, even if they are unable to contribute as much labour.

Having negative or positive rights in themselves for the sake of it is a silly fucking argument. This doesn't mean we shouldn't have rights. All I mean to say is that we should extend rights to each other in society for a reason - that being it makes people's lives better. Its a basic ethics.

Why have absolute negative freedom for the sake of it? Do you really think society is better off if we allow people to go in the streets and march about how we should genocide a group of people, or should we (like many country's including mine do) limit this sort of behavior at the expense of a concept of "rights" because it makes people's lives better off? Society gains little from allowing the genocide supporters to march around and advocate extermination. Negative and positive freedom for the sake of it doesn't make much sense - freedom is not itself a virtue, the goodness that a sort of freedom brings is a virtue and that is why we adopt freedom in aspects of society.

Positive and negative freedom are good conceptions and I think Berlin did a good job of explaining it in his writings but personally I've always preferred seeing it as the distinction between Formal and Effective freedoms. Formal being it is written in law, formally, that you're free. Effective being that effectively, realistically, you are able to actually act on those freedoms. For example, formally Americans all have the right to healthcare - in a private healthcare system you are not prevented by the government or anybody from walking outside and finding a provider. But the person lacks effective freedom - they have a formal, negative freedom to choose and access a provider, but they are unable to even act on it because they have no money perhaps or have a pre-existing condition.. so while they have formal negative freedom it means nothing because they can't act on it anyways. Same idea as negative and positive freedom pretty much just slight difference, if you're referring to the Isaiah Berlin conception of course.