A positive right requires someone to do something. If you say, for example, that everyone is owed the right to a fish sandwich with some tartar sauce and a side of fries, you have just obligated a fisherman, a farmer, and a delivery man, to name only a few. They are now required to work so that others might receive their rightful inheritance. In other words, positive rights require slavery.
A negative right does not require anyone to do anything. If you say, for example, that everyone is owed the right to free speech, no one has to do anything. They don't have to listen. No one has the right to be heard, only the right to speak. They don't have to like it. No one has the right to be liked, only the right to say what they like. They don't have to give you a platform from which to speak, they only have to allow you to stand on your own platform.
"Away, then, with quacks and organizers! Away with their rings, chains, hooks, and pincers! Away with their artificial systems! Away with the whims of governmental administrators, their socialized projects, their centralization, their tariffs, their government schools, their state religions, their free credit, their bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their equalization by taxation, and their pious moralizations! And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." — Frederic Bastiat, The Law
Positive rights are created by man, who lacks the power to enforce them by sheer will power.
Negative rights are created by God, who is omnipotent and fulfills them according to His will.
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