The Pound of Flesh: When “Human Rights” Become Licensed Theft
A society that sacrifices the individual for the collective will eventually have neither.
The most dangerous phrase in modern political discourse is not “war” or “famine,” but “Human Rights.” What was once a shield against tyranny is the declaration that your life and body are yours alone, now this cornerstone been weaponized into a sword of expropriation. We have drifted from the classical understanding of rights as “freedoms from” (negative rights) to a modern, cannibalistic interpretation of “entitlements to” (positive rights).
This shift is not merely wordplay; it is an undoing of civilization. If my “right” to housing requires the taking of your property, or my “right” to healthcare requires the conscription of your labour and wealth, then we are no longer discussing rights. We are discussing a system of slavery with better PR!
The Philosophical Betrayal
The ancient Greek problem of the Euthyphro Dilemma asks: Is something good because the gods decree it, or do the gods decree it because it is good?
Modern statist philosophy has chosen the former. The State, playing the role of a new god, decrees that “healthcare is a human right.” Because the State says it, it is deemed moral. But this creates a logical contradiction that destroys the foundation of morality itself.
True morality is rooted in self-ownership. You own your life. Therefore, you own the product of your life: your labour and the property you acquire through it. This is the only consistent definition of a “right.” It is a boundary line that says: You may not cross here without my consent.
The modern conception of Human Rights erases this boundary. It asserts that Need constitutes a Claim. If Person A is hungry, they now have a “human right” to food. But food does not appear by magic; it is the product of Person B’s labour (farming, transport, capital investment). To grant Person A a “right” to food is to place a mortgage on the life of Person B. It forces Person B to work for Person A without consent.
This is the exact definition of a “pound of flesh.” The State, acting as the benevolent Shylock, exacts this flesh from the productive class to feed the “rights” of the dependent class.
The Consequence: Civilizational Collapse
When you strip the producer of the right to their product, you do not just commit theft; you sever the link between effort and reward. Civilization is built on that link. When men realize that they can vote themselves a living rather than working for it, the structure begins to fracture. When the productive realise that their excellence is a liability, it is a signal to the taxman and the expropriator to stop producing. Atlas shrugs.
Is South Africa on this Path?
South Africa is not merely on this path; it is sprinting down it. The political landscape of 2024 and 2025 has provided undeniable evidence that the country has embraced the “Gods Decree It” version of morality, where the State’s legislative pen overrides the natural laws of property.
1. The Expropriation Act (Act 13 of 2024)
The signing of this Act, which allows for “nil compensation” in specific instances, is the death knell of objective property rights. The State has decreed that “public interest” (an arbitrary metric defined by the ruling elite) supersedes the individual’s right to own what they have built. They have separated the right to property from the fact of ownership. This is the legal formalisation of the “pound of flesh.”
2. National Health Insurance (NHI)
The NHI is the ultimate manifestation of “positive rights” tyranny. It presupposes that a citizen’s health needs grant the State not only the right to seize the earnings of the taxpayer and the autonomy of the medical professional, but also to decree lifestyle changes in a person’s personal choices. It effectively nationalises the private healthcare sector by confiscating the “property” of medical professionals (their labor and businesses) to fulfill the “rights” of the collective.
3. The Threat to Pensions (Prescribed Assets)
The repeated flirtation with “prescribed assets” by wanting to force pension funds to invest in State projects, is a signal that the State views your future security as a public resource. They view the capital you have saved not as yours, but as a national pot of gold to be raided for “developmental goals.”
Conclusion
A society that sacrifices the individual for the collective will eventually have neither. If South Africa continues to prioritise the “Human Rights” of the consumer over the Property Rights of the producer, it will find itself with an abundance of rights and a famine of goods.
Something is not good because the Parliament decrees it. Property is the extension of life. To take the one is to attack the other. Until we return to the moral absolutes that consent is the key and no need validates theft, we are simply managing a slow decline into barbarism.
Charl Heydenrych is a retired human resources practitioner and a libertarian.
Good article, beautifully written. The people wanting "free stuff" will always grossly outnumber the people willing (or forced) to fund it.
Because the western economic system has been so spectacularly successful it has enjoyed surpluses which have allowed the productive to fund the whining classes, at little cost to themselves. I think this problem will be solved in 1 of 2 ways - socialism reduces everyone to equal poverty, or Elon Musk's suggested future makes wealth irrelevant, and even the whining classes enjoy more than they need.
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 Charl, this is such a freshly-packaged view in respect of a horrible human rights violation which was given a spin; and was allowed to be spinned in such an effective way that a large part of humanity feel guilty NOT to buy into it. It has been sold as virtuous and most people do not want to object to what seems "so good". Without proper scrutiny and unpacking of the phenomenon, as you fortunately did, us humans with our general sheepish-mentality will simply continue drifting along. Obviously, exposing the beast is contributing to the fight which must be fought against this abuse.
Tragically, however, how do you convince the vast numbers of beneficiaries or potential beneficiaries of such false largesse that an obvious benefit to themseves is "bad"? Being promised free stuff, and in fact receiving some free stuff in the form of social grants, is quite intoxicating. I would love to hear other opinions, but it seems to me the cycle of StateLargesse-SpecificVotes-StateLargesse-SpecificVotes...is extremely difficult to break. The Largesse Party is losing votes as we all know; but being able to borrow money for current expenditure and being able to run state budget deficits and pass legislation, it is not certain yet that a lot of support will not be won back in the run-up to the local government elections through all the old tricks. A few lights at the end of the tunnel are the ANC's continued internal struggles; their financial problems; the fast disappearance of funding sources like Russia and Iran; and the emergence of more choice regarding political parties which are seen as ANC alternatives. The latter is however in no way a guarantee that alternative parties will not follow exactly the same strategy the ANC successfully pursued for many years.