If people aren't treated as though they're inherently equal, then why should any one person's agency or vision be respected? If I'm not willing to abide by the obligation created by the existence of others' rights, what obligation do others have to abide by the existence of my rights? And if there is no obligation in either direction, to what extent can we be said to have or acknowledge the existence of rights? I think you'd agree: none at all.
"The point of that mention of history wasn't that certain people were ready to sacrifice themselves. The point was that they were perfectly willing to sacrifice others."
You've been pointing out, throughout much of our discussion, a common definition of rights: they are both the right itself and an accompanying obligation. It's misguided to expect a moral right without any accompanying obligation to hold much water, because whether something is a right or obligation is just a matter of perspective between the two different parties who claim them. E.g., I have a right to free religion, but this appears to be an obligation for others not to restrict my religious practice, and vice versa. It's basic social contract theory, really, the only dysfunction in it arising when not all people affected by it are given equal say in its construction, hence the importance of egalitarianism and democracy.
Besides, we already have a form of voluntary sacrifice of agency which is practiced on a global scale; private property. We use private property laws because, while I may want to exercise my agency to get some of the resources someone else accumulates, I can't condone thievery and pillaging because I wouldn't want it to happen to me. So it doesn't seem totally out-there to suggest this mutual-benefit mentality could be shifted away from or extended past private property to something else (and it seems to me that we have done that quite a lot already, e.g. laws against violence or in protection of intellectual property). I'm just suggesting a new kind of property right, but I think we've talked about that particular idea enough for now.
If people aren't treated as though they're inherently equal, then why should any one person's agency or vision be respected?
I recommend observing real life and learning history. People have rarely been treated as inherently equal and yet it very often happened that "one person's agency or vision" was respected.
Do note that people's capabilities vary greatly and reality doesn't care at all about equality or fairness.
whether something is a right or obligation is just a matter of perspective between the two different parties who claim them.
Yes, this is correct, but I don't see how is this related to the willingness to sacrifice others.
Note: Originally posted in Discussion, edited to take comments there into account.
Yes, politics, boo hiss. In my defense, the topic of this post cuts across usual tribal affiliations (I write it as a liberal criticizing other liberals), and has a couple strong tie-ins with main LessWrong topics:
The issue is this: recently, I've seen a meme going around to the effect that companies like Walmart that have a large number of employees on government benefits are the "real welfare queens" or somesuch, and with the implied message that all companies have a moral obligation to pay their employees enough that they don't need government benefits. (I say mention Walmart because it's the most frequently mentioned villain in this meme, but others, like McDonalds, get mentioned.)
My initial awareness of this meme came from it being all over my Facebook feed, but when I went to Google to track down examples, I found it coming out of the mouths of some fairly prominent congresscritters. For example Alan Grayson:
Or Bernie Sanders:
Now here's why this is weird: consider Grayson's claim that each Walmart employee costs the taxpayers on average $1,000. In what sense is that true? If Walmart fired those employees, it wouldn't save the taxpayers money: if anything, it would increase the strain on public services. Conversely, it's unlikely that cutting benefits would force Walmart to pay higher wages: if anything, it would make people more desperate and willing to work for low wages. (Cf. this this excellent critique of the anti-Walmart meme).
Or consider Sanders' claim that it would be better to raise the minimum wage and spend less on government benefits. He emphasizes that Walmart could take a hit in profits to pay its employees more. It's unclear to what degree that's true (see again previous link), and unclear if there's a practical way for the government to force Walmart to do that, but ignore those issues, it's worth pointing out that you could also just raise taxes on rich people generally to increase benefits for low-wage workers. The idea seems to be that morally, Walmart employees should be primarily Walmart's moral responsibility, and not so much the moral responsibility of the (the more well-off segment of) the population in general.
But the idea that employing someone gives you a general responsibility for their welfare (beyond, say, not tricking them into working for less pay or under worse conditions than you initially promised) is also very odd. It suggests that if you want to be virtuous, you should avoid hiring people, so as to keep your hands clean and avoid the moral contagion that comes with employing low wage workers. Yet such a policy doesn't actually help the people who might want jobs from you. This is not to deny that, plausibly, wealthy onwers of Walmart stock have a moral responsibility to the poor. What's implausible is that non-Walmart stock owners have significantly less responsibility to the poor.
This meme also worries me because I lean towards thinking that the minimum wage isn't a terrible policy but we'd be better off replacing it with guaranteed basic income (or an otherwise more lavish welfare state). And guaranteed basic income could be a really important policy to have as more and more jobs are replaced by automation (again see gwern if that seems crazy to you). I worry that this anti-Walmart meme could lead to an odd left-wing resistance to GBI/more lavish welfare state, since the policy would be branded as a subsidy to Walmart.