Positive rights contradict the very notion of rights. If positive rights to food exist, then my negative right to not be enslaved must not exist. But if a negative right to not be a slave does not exist, then rights by definition do not exist, and we’re left with a world in which might makes no wrong. The law of non-contradiction proves conclusively that, therefore, either rights do not exist at all or that only negative rights exist. Either way, positive rights cannot exist.

You can accept voluntaryism or ethical nihilism. There is no middle ground.

There are no such thing as negative rights except the ones you believe you are entitled to defend yourself against someone else who’d take them away from you.

^What he said..

Owen,
You are wrong because the need of consumers is for survival but the need of a supplier is for profit.

Unless you are able to poll every living human being, there is no way you can know the motivations of consumers. You are simply assuming that consumers consume merely for survival. As well, you cannot know for sure the motivations of suppliers.

The fact is that both consumer and supplier are actually relative terms, since a consumer can also be a supplier, and a supplier is definitively a consumer.

Still cannot see how minimal redistribution works. It takes a minimal amount from everyone in order to help those less fortunate.

Owen, this statement begs the question – define “minimal amount”, before trying to argue.

It only requires a proportionate relinquishing of property rights in order to achieve minimal redistribution.

The problem here, Owen, is in defining what a “proportioned” relinquishing of property rights is supposed to be. Who sets up that proportion, and why?

Apart from this all property rights are intact.

This statement is illogical, Owen. Intact means not touched, and a “proportional relinquishing” of my property rights means that my right is NOT intact. A person either has a right to keep his property, or he has not.

Owen,
Which supplier they trade with may well be a choice but their fundamental need for the good is not voluntary.

This is incorrect – a person can make a choice, even if that choice means going without satisfying a need. “Involuntary” means that the person is not acting, merely reacting, like a robot.

This is important when you consider that food, water, electricity and housing are some of the most regulated parts of our economy.

The reason they are regulated is entirely political and stems from expediency, nothing to do with the need itself.

Maybe western governments decided that the fundamental need for these goods makes them involuntary and therefore the trade is not voluntary at a fundamental level so there must be safeguards in place to prevent market failures.

Owen, your statement is illogical – first of all, you are begging the question by assuming that a need makes a transaction involuntary, but it does NOT – an acting person can choose. “Involuntary” either implies programming (like instinct in the case of animals) or direct coercion from an outside force. A person may need food or water but that does not mean a person is forced to purchase or forced to get food or water. The second part makes even less sense: how can regulation or safeguards prevent market failures?

Basic necessities are fundamental rights according to the conception of rights in each person’s head.

Which renders the concept meaningless, if it can be whatever each person wants. You avoided the issue one time, by calling me names, remember? I asked you to define “basic necessities”, because what I think is basic for ME may not be for you, and so on.

On the other hand, just because you name something a “basic necessity” does not mean ipso facto everybody is entitled to it: Someone has to be willing to produce it. There are things you might call “basic necessity” that did not exist before someone produced it, so how can someone be entitled to have it?

It just so happens that Western governments currently conceive basic necessities as fundamental rights

That is irrelevant.

Have a look for yourself, or else why do they tax the rich to feed the poor?

Governments do not tax the rich to feed the poor, that is a lie or a fantasy. Governments tax people to pay for government, first, and to dole out favors, second.

Valid theories are only right or wrong inside the head of each person.

Owen, this is not true. A valid theory must be either rational or tested against reality, depending on what the theory is trying to explain. If it depends on what a person guesses, then it is not a theory, it is an opinion.

There is no universal set of human rights that are immutable.

Owen, there are: the right not to be killed, the right not to have my property taken by force, the right to be free. All stem from rational deduction from the self-ownership principle, and not merely wishful thinking.

The sets of rights that currently underpin national laws in countries are closer to my set of rights than yours, so you could say that I am more ‘mainstream’ than you.

Your argument is fallacious – just because you believe your thinking is mainstream does not mean your beliefs are valid or correct. You are making an error called arguing from popularity. By the way, laws have little to do with rights – laws exist to limit or prohibit, whereas rights are not prohibitions, but human conditions. People can enact laws to protect rights, but laws themselves do not confer a right to a person in a rationally valid way. If a law gives entitlement of something to someone, it does it by coercion alone and not by reason.