Employment is a specific, literal contract.
...A contract that can have many terms, conditions, and requirements, or a part of a larger, still more complex contract.
Not a "price you pay for living in a free society social contract" BS.
There is no price for living in a free society, by taking part in it and taking advantage of the fruits provided by it, you are signing a contract to adhere to that society's laws.
An example of people discovering they can vote themselves money from the treasury, basically.
The horrors of democracy, to be sure. [/sarcasm]
Either it takes the form of any other contract which includes negotiation of terms, offer and acceptance/denial, or it takes the form of welfare.
You seem to be hung up on the idea that because I can refuse employment, or there can be stipulations to becoming employed, it cannot be a right.
This is a bit like assuming that free speech can't be a right unless it exist in some absolute form, free of any sort of interference or moderation.
This is false.
Employment cannot take the form of a right to passively receive it from the external.
You've yet to really actually prove this point.
Yes, I can see that you are having immense difficulty computing the ways in which employment is inherently different than a positive right. In general, the only people with positive rights in this country are children. Not even welfare programs make what they hand out an actual positive right.
How silly of me. I didn't think to consider welfare.
...Or not.
Whether you have a right to a job or not doesn't hinge on what is considered a right at this very moment in society, shown by what people now consider to be a right and what they merely consider to be a form of government charity.
They can "mandate" whatever they want...
And they can even codify such a mandate as a right, which the government must provide if requested.
Glad you agree.
Positive rights are just a philosophical construct, same way natural rights are a philosophical construct.
...Legal construct, actually.
They don't exist in any literal sense...
Er, yes they do. They exist in the way people behave towards one another and how a government behaves towards and approaches it's citizenry.
So what we're doing right now is presenting our own philosophies and insinuating the other's is stupid.
No, what
I'm doing is explaining to you that what does or doesn't make something a right is people agreeing this is or isn't, and then showing how employment can be a right because of this.
What you're doing is desperately trying to hold that, for some strange reason, the fact that a right is not absolute (that is to say, that it comes with terms and conditions) no longer makes it a right.
Bizarre logic on your part, to be sure.