For those who believe everyone has the right to life, health and education, the uneasy question remains: How much... that is, how much of these-life, health or education is everyone entitled to? As soon as we put our minds to trying to answer this question, we may begin to discern or prescribe differences, however slight at first these may seem: We may presume (or feel confident) that health should have no bounds. As long as someone is alive, they should be as healthy as possible. It doesn't sit straight with us if we thought that some of us should be healthier than others-even if this were just a frequency probability calculation, not specifying for us who the favored ones and who the unlucky ones are to be. But a government planner in a democracy may not be as ready to pronounce such a sweeping sentiment when it comes to education. Quite the contrary, he may strongly feel it is for the good of society that not everyone should be as educated as possible. For, if we should all be as educated as possible just as we should all be as healthy as possible-the down-to-earth argument might go-who then will look after our garbage and fix our pipes? Or who will type down the great thoughts of the planner, and fix his schedule?

Life, itself a precondition for both health and education, and for many other things besides, surprisingly occupies a middle ground in our thoughts: while on the one hand it does not have the full-backing health gets as a must for all (consider euthanasia, capital punishment, extra-judicial killings, etc.) it does not, like education, have that dubious honor or role of being a differentiator for the good of the 5 whole-being made available or accessible just in varying degrees, even if to all.