Water is not a human right?

Hypoxia said:

But I digress. The un-watered will soon become the un-alive. It's not funny. Do you have a right to life post-partum?

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Water, or more correctly, the lack of or access to, is a big deal here. Irrigation quotas are worth gold.

BotanyBoy said:

Licence = regulation.....if there are licences it hasn't been left unregulated smart guy!



Capitalism is anti-licencing, it's the leftist who insists on making sure only elites get to make money via "sensible regulation" who are all about that selective licencing bullshit.

Then you turn around and bitch about the 1% being so unbelievably rich after making sure they are the only ones who are allowed to access a laundry list of markets.

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Put on your seat belt, Tucker.

srgreene said:

Air too is subject to the tragedy of the commons. Capitalism is the only economic system capable of sustaining liberty among large groups of people. Free minds and free markets!

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Since I suspect you can read, I'll recommend you read about commodity fetishism.

BoyNextDoor said:

Put on your seat belt, Tucker.

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Mmmmhmmm....that's what I thought.

srgreene said:

Air too is subject to the tragedy of the commons. Capitalism is the only economic system capable of sustaining liberty among large groups of people. Free minds and free markets!

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The Tragedy Of The Commons has been widely cited -- and widely debunked as a call to kill the public domain, ignoring that humans are social critters who thrive in cooperation.

BTW 'liberty' requires responsibility, unlike 'freedom', doing what you want and fuck the consequences. Your liberty requires respecting the liberties of others. Unregulated capitalism is toxic. Adam Smith in THE WEALTH OF NATIONS (the free-marketer's bible) demanded close regulation to avoid corruption. Mussolini defined it: capitalism owning gov't is fascism.

Hypoxia said:

I put this piece in the Politics forum. I'm certainly aware that nature doesn't issue rights -- but political structures attempt to. Thus policies and laws may embody rights to speech, belief, privacy, voting, etc.

My question for political discussion: Is water, and thus life, a human right? The USA Declaration of Independence states a right to life but that's not a legal document. What good is a legal right of speech without a right of survival? If you lack a right to water, you effectively lack a right of life also. How to deal with this?

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Politically, I believe that all things necessary for survival should be rights. But that will never happen as long as human nature remains unchanged.

Hypoxia said:

My question for political discussion: Is water, and thus life, a human right? The USA Declaration of Independence states a right to life but that's not a legal document. What good is a legal right of speech without a right of survival? If you lack a right to water, you effectively lack a right of life also. How to deal with this?

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Before you can answer this question, you have to figure out what you mean by a "right to water"?

Do you mean that when you are born you have some sort of legal claim on others to provide you with water, so you can survive?

Do you mean that you have some kind of right, or easement, in sources of water? So, for example, you don't have a legal right to demand that someone give you water, but you have a right to prevent them from interfering with your access, whatever that access is?

The latter would be consistent with traditional US property concepts; the former would not.

If I have a piece of property with a well, and my neighbor pollutes the groundwater, damaging my water supply, I should have a right to stop what he's doing. That's one sort of right to water. It's consistent with longstanding property concepts.

But suppose my well runs dry through no action on his part. Do I have a right to go to him and demand that he give me water? How would that work? Can I point a gun at him and make him do it? Can I secretly drill a well on his property and take his water? Can I go to court and make him do it? It's not clear what it means to have a right of this sort. You have to define it before answering the ultimate question.

It's not quite correct to say that if you lack a right to water, you lack a right to life. To say that confuses two different concepts of what a right means. Traditionally understood, the right to life is an extension of the concept of negative liberty, i.e., you have a "right" to stop somebody from taking away the liberty that you already have, through force. But you don't have a right to demand things from them to remain alive. It doesn't make the right to life meaningless -- people in the past have fought wars to protect this sort of right, and they've risked everything they had to try to obtain it. But it does mean that a right to life in the narrow sense isn't going to give a human being everything he or she would want. Other things matter besides the things in which we assert we have rights. These things may be vital to human survival. But there may be better ways of ensuring that people get them than by asserting that people have rights in them.

I hold no delusion that "natural rights" exist. I see that all 'rights' derive from human thought and action. One view: Rights are granted by society as legal or moral models. Another view: Rights are never granted, only seized. American have rights because we struggled for them.

Yes, the question: what are 'rights'? Wikipedia sez:

Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people, according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory.

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And what are the sources of rights? Wikipedia sez:

Natural and legal rights are two types of rights. Natural rights are those that are not dependent on the laws or customs of any particular culture or government, and so are universal and inalienable (they cannot repealed or restrained by human laws). Legal rights are those bestowed onto a person by a given legal system (they can be modified, repealed, and restrained by human laws).

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"Natural rights" are arbitrary and ideal, not necessarily realistic. An actual 'right' is whatever rule a legal or other enforceable system declares it to be.

A society or state may specify the rights of its people. The US declared "inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." But those rights aren't specified in the Constitution. Many social-legal rights ARE specified. But I'll argue that if a person born hasn't a legal right to live, all other rights are irrelevant. The system is a sham.

Rights are "rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people." Does society owe us a right to live? Are we allowed to live only at society's whim?

Hypoxia said:

I hold no delusion that "natural rights" exist. I see that all 'rights' derive from human thought and action. One view: Rights are granted by society as legal or moral models. Another view: Rights are never granted, only seized. American have rights because we struggled for them.

Yes, the question: what are 'rights'? Wikipedia sez: And what are the sources of rights? Wikipedia sez:
"Natural rights" are arbitrary and ideal, not necessarily realistic. An actual 'right' is whatever rule a legal or other enforceable system declares it to be.

A society or state may specify the rights of its people. The US declared "inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." But those rights aren't specified in the Constitution. Many social-legal rights ARE specified. But I'll argue that if a person born hasn't a legal right to live, all other rights are irrelevant. The system is a sham.

Rights are "rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people." Does society owe us a right to live? Are we allowed to live only at society's whim?

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My point, if that's what you were referring to, wasn't based on natural rights theory. I was assuming, for the sake of argument, that a society decides what rights people have, for any number of reasons.

My point was that it's not enough to decide that something is really, really important to decide that it's something one should have a right to. One has to figure out what one means when one says that a person has a right. That's a lot trickier than just saying it's something you have a legal entitlement to.

Negative rights, like the right to life and liberty, seem incomplete, but they have the advantage of being fairly easy to understand. You have a right to swing your fist, but not into my face. You have a right to live your life the way you want to, and I have a right to live your life the way I want to, so long as neither of us interferes with the other.

Positive rights have the advantage of seeming more comprehensive. You're right -- the theoretical right to liberty doesn't mean a lot to a man who's starving, or who's trapped in a cave. So, intuitively, it seems appealing to expand rights to include more things, such as, perhaps, food, health care, clothing, shelter, etc. The downside of conceiving of rights in this way is that it's not clear what they entail. You can't have an absolute right to shelter, for example -- it depends a lot on what kind of shelter a community has available. Plus, asserting positive rights conflicts with the assertion of negative rights. If you are a doctor and I have a right to health care that allows me to compel you by force to treat me, then that interferes with, and diminishes, your negative liberty. In a system like this, the lines between peoples' different rights are much more uncertain and harder to draw, and almost certainly will change a lot over time.

People can disagree about the extent to which positive rights should be recognized, but it's not accurate to say that a system that recognizes only negative rights is a "sham" -- for most of our country's history we really didn't recognize positive rights; yet negative rights still were valued, and had a valuable role in promoting the country's welfare.

the_kuntess said:

Water is so easily controlled. Access to oxygen is pretty much free.

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Aren’t these so called zero emissions charges a tax on oxygen?

Is access to water a human right? Is freedom a human right? Is life it's self a human right? Or death for that matter? A big ol' NO to all of those. Take death for example. We will all die some day, that isn't a "right" per se, only a fact. When you can be incarcerated and made to live out your life in confinement, when we wish to die but are prevented from it, death is not a right. Life is the same. History is full of instances of people being deprived of their lives. If life was a "natural human right", that would not be so. As far as water, again history is rife with instances of one group depriving another of it.

If a group declares a basic human right for all within their sphere of power, and will fight to make it so, then it is so. On the other hand, if a group decides such a concept as basic humans rights does not exist, and that some with in their sphere should not have such, then for those who do not have it, it becomes a privilege and not a right. Yes, the members of the first group will say the second group is depriving a number of their own of their "rights", but if they don't have them then they are, as I said, a privilege and not a right.

All that said, the ONLY rights we have are those devised and implemented by the societal group we live in. Those rights can be granted by an authoritarian government or ruler, or declared for all by a free populace. In the first instance, as long as those in charge have the power to stay in power, they can hand out those "rights" as they see fit, which transmutes them from aright to a privilege. In the second, to maintain support for that "right" and make it work, everyone that desires it MUST offer it to ALL members of that group. By giving such to all, support for it becomes universal in that group and becomes a "Right".

There is plenty of water. Even in drought ravaged areas in the US. It is a choice. Water the golf course...water the yard...use water irrigating water demanding crops...or have water to drink. It really isn't a hard choice...but only those wasting it seems to be the ones making the choice for those that aren't wasting it.

If it was a basic right...we wouldn't have Flint Michigan would we?

Countries have gone to war over water supplies. Many countries in the world have areas that are short of water, and/or only have access to dirty polluted water.

What we have in the developed world is not common elsewhere. Be grateful for what you have.

I have to pay my water company for the water supplied to my house. Unless they do something drastic soon, water will be rationed locally as we are in one of the driest parts of the UK yet estates of houses are being built everywhere. They might not be enough for them and local agriculture.

There is a large greenhouse facility nearby. All their water is recycled or is run off from the roofs. Their lighting is from solar panels. They do not need water from the water company, nor electricity from the National Grid. That might be the future of all local agriculture.

Dribble said:

There is plenty of water. Even in drought ravaged areas in the US. It is a choice. Water the golf course...water the yard...use water irrigating water demanding crops...or have water to drink. It really isn't a hard choice...but only those wasting it seems to be the ones making the choice for those that aren't wasting it.

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Water, yes. Easily accessible fresh water, not so much.

Comshaw

BoyNextDoor said:

Since I suspect you can read, I'll recommend you read about commodity fetishism.

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Lit got a forum for that?

oggbashan said:

I have to pay my water company for the water supplied to my house. Unless they do something drastic soon, water will be rationed locally as we are in one of the driest parts of the UK yet estates of houses are being built everywhere.

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How can such a rain-soaked country have any dry parts?

I recall a scene in Bertie and Elizabeth where Princess Elizabeth shows her grandmother Mary the new black line around the bathtub, limiting the amount of water the bather is allowed to use under wartime rationing. I couldn't make any sense of that. The reasons for wartime food rationing are obvious, but how could Britain have a shortage of water?

Gaining and keeping any right usually starts with a fight, sometimes a war. The western states may have water wars, by state governments, angry mobs, and crime cartels. Bottling plant owners may get fast lessons in who to pay for protection, or fail to learn. The plant operators and guards may learn faster.

Obviously we can have a high-faluting discussion about what 'rights' are and if they exist at all.

But when the UN talks about water as a human right what it means that government has the responsibility to ensure that everyone in their country, without discrimination, has access to sufficient, safe, acceptable, physically accessible and affordable water for personal and domestic use; (which includes water for drinking, personal sanitation, washing of clothes, food preparation, and personal and household hygiene).

This means it should be a big deal if factories pollute the only source of drinking water for a community.
This means it should be a big deal if adult and young children (often disproportianately female) have to walk miles every day to get access to clean drinking water and miss out on employment or educational opportunities.
This means it should be a big deal if prisons don't provide their inmates with proper facilities for them to maintain a good standard of hygine.
This means it should be a big deal if an emergency means a community is suddently short of water then the government should provide assistance, even if it is a minority community.
This means it should be a big deal if hundreds of citizens are suffering from serious bowel diseases every year due to an a lack of basic standards in the water system.
This means it should be a big deal if one country dams a river denying citizens in another country of their traditional water supply.

This means that governments should be working to sort that shit out - and developed nations should be helping developing nations when they are struggling with it.

Now there is a certain mindset on this forum that says people don't want no government, and people don't need no government, and if you can sort your own clean water out for yourself, then good for you and good for being self-sufficiency. And equally, yes, if someone insist on living in a tent in the middle of a desert when there is fresh water everywhere else in the country, then there's an argument that he's waived his right to water by being a dumbass.

But, no, it's not an extreme position.

pecksniff said:

How can such a rain-soaked country have any dry parts?

I recall a scene in Bertie and Elizabeth where Princess Elizabeth shows her grandmother Mary the new black line around the bathtub, limiting the amount of water the bather is allowed to use under wartime rationing. I couldn't make any sense of that. The reasons for wartime food rationing are obvious, but how could Britain have a shortage of water?

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Water supplies require power to get from the source to the consumer. But the main reason for the black line was the cost and energy needed to HEAT water.

pecksniff said:

How can such a rain-soaked country have any dry parts?

I recall a scene in Bertie and Elizabeth where Princess Elizabeth shows her grandmother Mary the new black line around the bathtub, limiting the amount of water the bather is allowed to use under wartime rationing. I couldn't make any sense of that. The reasons for wartime food rationing are obvious, but how could Britain have a shortage of water?

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My area of the UK has a microclimate which means we have some of the lowest rainfall - comparable to Libya. At present our water comes from underground aquifers which can become very low in long dry spells. The water company, for the last thirty years have been proposing a local reservoir to keep water from winter months, and/or a pipeline from areas which have more rain. Neither is yet started.

I got lots of water. Maybe too much. When the Mississippi floods, too close even...

Comshaw said:

Water, yes. Easily accessible fresh water, not so much.

Comshaw
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But this number...2.5%... has remained constant for centuries. Pollution is easily solved just as reallocating existing water to beneficial uses. It is a choice that once again...societies have failed

In the UK we have the WaterAid charity which provides clean fresh water for communities in Africa. But everything they do provides clean water to very few people compared with the need.

One of my friends is a popular quizmaster for Wine and Wisdom events. His fees (and any donations) are used for him and his friends to travel to Africa each year with a Landrover mounted drill to make wells. Each season they drill between six and eight wells and add the pumps and pipework, The request for them to provide more wells are in the hundreds. He will be long dead before the task is finished.

Chernosoth said:

Bottling plant owners may get fast lessons in who to pay for protection, or fail to learn. The plant operators and guards may learn faster.

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A water raid on a bottling plant is a bit . . . difficult to picture.