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I agree. I really wish people would tweak the rhetoric just slightly - "housing should be a right" is a perfectly logical humanitarian cause to rally behind. It

I agree. I really wish people would tweak the rhetoric just slightly - "housing should be a right" is a perfectly logical humanitarian cause to rally behind. It doesn't assume the right is innate, doesn't call it a "human" right, but still says housing should be something everybody in our society is entitled to. Reasonable people can then disagree about whether the humanitarian benefits of making it a right are worth the costs, etc. Calling things that aren't innate to our humanity "human rights" is absurd - for housing, but especially for things like the internet. Should we try politicians in The Hague because they don't provide universal housing for their people? Should we impose international sanctions on countries that don't have widespread broadband? Of course not. Conflating these concepts also devalues the concept of human rights, and reduces our ability to actually focus on human rights violations. Slavery, political oppression, violence, etc. are still a very real and special class of problem in our world. People's innate human dignity is being trampled every day by oppressive, violent regimes (and, even in some cases, by liberal democracies). Let's not water down our view of these travesties by conflating them with debates about the generosity of the welfare state in rich Western democracies.

bildung 7y ago
But housing specifially is a human right, it is stated in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
- dbatten 7y ago
  Of course it's in the UN's declaration... I just disagree philosophically with the UN's declaration. Human rights, in my mind, are something that existed before the UN, and exist independent of the UN. And there's centuries of political philosophy that agree with me on that point. See, for example language like "endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights" in the US Declaration of Independence. That tradition of political philosophy sees rights as inherent to humanity (in this case God-given, but it doesn't have to be), not guaranteed by some statement of a government or group of governments.
  - bildung 7y ago
    I'm aware of the discourse in the US, and I think I can agree to everything you said in the second paragraph - though I can't see how housing not being a right can follow from rights being unalienable?
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    > See, for example language like "endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights" in the US Declaration of Independence For many thinkers in the years following the founding of the United States, precisely this language has been the fatal flaw of the “natural rights” approach. What if the world has moved on and no one can take seriously the notion that there is a Creator which has endowed men with rights? Even for the American Founding Fathers, those Deists among them were already well aware that this phrasing was a mere rhetorical flourish, it didn’t actually mean anything. In the absence of a Creator who endowed men with rights, we can only view "rights" as a convenient fiction that humankind, as a social animal, proposes for mutual benefit. And in that case, a representative democracy’s decision to see housing as a human right is pretty straightforward.
    - dbatten 7y ago
      Interesting! This seems to be the crux of the disagreement. What thinkers are you referencing? I'd love to read them. At first blush, my thought is that you could still create a secular argument for natural rights, but I'm open to being persuaded otherwise.
gbrown 7y ago
I get the impression that you’re playing pretty fast and loose with the word “innate”, to basically refer to the rights you think are most important. Shelter is definitely pretty important in, for example, Maslow's hierarchy. Obviously there are less and more fundamental rights, and the degree to which something can effectively be realized as a positive right depends on the capabilities and wealth of a society, but surely it’s worth considering what society should work collectively to provide. I also don’t think it’s at all reasonable to claim that freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, the right not to be tortured, and other basic human negative rights are at risk - ethics mist be continually improved and adapted as society changes, and the mere fact that abject suffering exists in the world should not mean we can’t decide that there are higher order human needs within the effective purview of society.
- dbatten 7y ago
  > but surely it’s worth considering what society should work collectively to provide Agreed! > the mere fact that abject suffering exists in the world should not mean we can’t decide that there are higher order human needs within the effective purview of society Again, agreed! I'm not arguing that we can't talk about universal housing. We can! We should! I'm just arguing against conflating what I see as two distinct types of rights - those that you have because you are a human, and those that governments choose to guarantee to their citizens. > I get the impression that you’re playing pretty fast and loose with the word “innate”, to basically refer to the rights you think are most important I'm not so sure. There's a big difference between a person (or government) taking away something I have by default as part of my humanity (e.g., taking away my life) vs. a person (or government) being required to provide me with something that's not guaranteed by my humanity (e.g., the fact that I will have food is not guaranteed just by virtue of me being a living creature with human DNA). In the end, I can't stress this enough - I'm not saying a social safety net is bad, or that we shouldn't create political rights where the government should be obligated to provide food or shelter or whatever. Maybe those rights should exist! I'm just saying let's not conflate the concepts.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

bildung 7y ago

But housing specifially is a human right, it is stated in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration: https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/ https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

dbatten 7y ago
Of course it's in the UN's declaration... I just disagree philosophically with the UN's declaration. Human rights, in my mind, are something that existed before the UN, and exist independent of the UN. And there's centuries of political philosophy that agree with me on that point. See, for example language like "endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights" in the US Declaration of Independence. That tradition of political philosophy sees rights as inherent to humanity (in this case God-given, but it doesn't have to be), not guaranteed by some statement of a government or group of governments.
- bildung 7y ago
  I'm aware of the discourse in the US, and I think I can agree to everything you said in the second paragraph - though I can't see how housing not being a right can follow from rights being unalienable?
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  > See, for example language like "endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights" in the US Declaration of Independence For many thinkers in the years following the founding of the United States, precisely this language has been the fatal flaw of the “natural rights” approach. What if the world has moved on and no one can take seriously the notion that there is a Creator which has endowed men with rights? Even for the American Founding Fathers, those Deists among them were already well aware that this phrasing was a mere rhetorical flourish, it didn’t actually mean anything. In the absence of a Creator who endowed men with rights, we can only view "rights" as a convenient fiction that humankind, as a social animal, proposes for mutual benefit. And in that case, a representative democracy’s decision to see housing as a human right is pretty straightforward.
  - dbatten 7y ago
    Interesting! This seems to be the crux of the disagreement. What thinkers are you referencing? I'd love to read them. At first blush, my thought is that you could still create a secular argument for natural rights, but I'm open to being persuaded otherwise.

gbrown 7y ago

I get the impression that you’re playing pretty fast and loose with the word “innate”, to basically refer to the rights you think are most important. Shelter is definitely pretty important in, for example, Maslow's hierarchy. Obviously there are less and more fundamental rights, and the degree to which something can effectively be realized as a positive right depends on the capabilities and wealth of a society, but surely it’s worth considering what society should work collectively to provide. I also don’t think it’s at all reasonable to claim that freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, the right not to be tortured, and other basic human negative rights are at risk - ethics mist be continually improved and adapted as society changes, and the mere fact that abject suffering exists in the world should not mean we can’t decide that there are higher order human needs within the effective purview of society.

dbatten 7y ago
> but surely it’s worth considering what society should work collectively to provide Agreed! > the mere fact that abject suffering exists in the world should not mean we can’t decide that there are higher order human needs within the effective purview of society Again, agreed! I'm not arguing that we can't talk about universal housing. We can! We should! I'm just arguing against conflating what I see as two distinct types of rights - those that you have because you are a human, and those that governments choose to guarantee to their citizens. > I get the impression that you’re playing pretty fast and loose with the word “innate”, to basically refer to the rights you think are most important I'm not so sure. There's a big difference between a person (or government) taking away something I have by default as part of my humanity (e.g., taking away my life) vs. a person (or government) being required to provide me with something that's not guaranteed by my humanity (e.g., the fact that I will have food is not guaranteed just by virtue of me being a living creature with human DNA). In the end, I can't stress this enough - I'm not saying a social safety net is bad, or that we shouldn't create political rights where the government should be obligated to provide food or shelter or whatever. Maybe those rights should exist! I'm just saying let's not conflate the concepts.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]