system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Does the idea of having to "Earn a living" automatically imply that by default, people don't deserve to live? if a constitution have a "right of life" in it, does it automatically imply it's the responsibility of the state to not let people starve irrespective of whether they work or not?

If the alternative to work is death by starvation, do people really have the "right to life" as promised by various constitutions?
gpt
Two issue come to mind.

The first is what a “right to live” involves.

Here’s an example of Judith Thompson:

You wake up one day strapped down, with various tubes connecting you and a world-class violinist. You are told that the violinist has a rare blood disease, but your liver, and only your liver, is capable of filtering his blood and saving his life. So long as you remain attached to the violinist for X amount of time, the violinist will live. Otherwise, he will die. 

Are you morally obligated to remain attached to the violinist? Thompson thinks you are not. But, as a person, the violinist clearly has a right to life. The conclusion Thompson draws is: not every intentional act which predictably leads to a person’s death violates that person’s right to life.

The second issue involves the fact that some rights have corresponding positive obligations. Suppose all citizens have a right to vote. Okay, but to vote you have to have an election. You need a place people can go to vote and you need people to count the vote, or people to manage the machines that count the vote. So, everyone having a substantive right to vote (as opposed to a merely formal right) is contingent upon some people engaging in labor of some kind.

Now, suppose a right to live includes a right to sustenance and shelter. But, access to sustenance and shelter is contingent upon labor. So, having a right to live in a substantive sense requires that people work. Of course, we could have a society where a certain class worked and the rest didn’t, but barring special reason the second class didn’t work (e.g., they are severely disabled), this would be grossly unfair. So it would sense to have the right to live as well as a duty to work (unless you meet certain exceptions).

But, that’s looking at things on the whole. On a given occasion one may be unable to find work through no fault of their own, and refusing to provide such a person with assistance effectively dooms them, whereas providing them with adequate support (and perhaps education and training) now can mean they work later. 

So, while it is seems reasonable to me to attach a right to live with an obligation to do a sufficient amount of work during one’s life, it is not always reasonable to make access to support during a certain period of time be dependent upon working at that time.