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.
In America, mixed-race identity tends to invite both curiosity and suspicion, largely because few have found a way to interrogate it without centering whiteness as the scale by which to evaluate blackness.
A cat has absolute emotional honesty: human beings, for one reason or another, may hide their feelings, but a cat does not.
To be spiritually dead is to be diabolically alive
When the Englishman speaks of national wealth he means the number of millionaires in the country.
We Americans are the peculiar, chosen people - the Israel of our time; we bear the ark of the liberties of the world.
You say that your fare told you that he was a detective?" "Yes, he did." "When did he say this?" "When he left me." "Did he say anything more?" "He mentioned his name." Holmes cast a swift glance of triumph at me. "Oh, he mentioned his name, did he? That was imprudent. What was the name that he mentioned?" βHis name," said the cabman, "was Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
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