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This hijacking of the definition of human rights in the last 50 years is a catastrophy. A human right should only be a negative right, something that I cannot b

• ChrisSD 5y ago
  Say I try to force you to do something. Who is to stop me doing that? It requires government and taxation to run a justice system. I.e. a ton of "energy".
  • AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
    Me and my firearms will do that nicely.
    • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      If you're not packing heat you can't expect your rights to be observed? Man, orphan babies are screwed.
      • anticristi 5y ago
        Also: Women in Kabul. :(
  • higherup 5y ago
    > Who is to stop me doing that? me.
    • SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
      ... Batman?
      • higherup 5y ago
        Sad place you live if you need to be batman to take care of yourself.
  • zo1 5y ago
    It's a great exercise to see if you can come up with a system that can function to provide such safety in a voluntary manner. I would argue it's possible. Definitely not easy, though. But just because it's hard doesn't mean the answer is "government".
    • ChrisSD 5y ago
      Well if we're talking hypotheticals then why not add a volunteer healthcare system? After all, if we can somehow manage a volunteer police force, judiciary, etc all without government then it should be possible to add healthcare to the mix. In any case, my point was the distinction made in the OP is silly. Any "right" is only a right in so far as it can actually be put into practice and that costs someone, somewhere "energy".
  • eadmund 5y ago
    Enforcing rights takes energy, but respecting them takes none.
    • ben_w 5y ago
      Laws, and legally created rights, are far too complicated and numerous for mere respect to be enough. This is why corporate lawyers exist, and why trade unions can win things for employees without having to go as far as a strike. Ignorance of the law must not be an excuse, but it definitely can be the actual cause.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • contravariant 5y ago
      Well in that case we can at least all agree to respect human rights in the broad sense. As doing so wouldn't cost any energy and so wouldn't be in conflict with the 'negative' right or anti-duty that OP is talking about.
• temp8964 5y ago
  We should celebrate "right" is the only word ruined here. Wait till the word "human" means nothing.
  • eplanit 5y ago
    That "man" part of human is problematic. I only wish that was just a headline from The Onion or The Babylon Bee.
    • analognoise 5y ago
      Hopefully that's sarcasm, but you never know anymore.
      • eplanit 5y ago
        Hence the reference to the onion, etc. The responses prove my point; and yes that's sad.
• AlgorithmicTime 5y ago
  Agreed. Fundamentally, when you say you have a "human right" to, e.g., food, you are saying that you have the right to take, without compensation, the time and energy of farmers, ranchers, food packers, etc. When you say you have a "human right" to healthcare, you are saying that it is right to enslave doctors, nurses, etc., to your needs. This is all wrong. Rights are freedoms, not entitlements. You're free to speak your mind. Free to gather with others. Free to bear arms. Free from unwarranted search and seizure. Free to seek work. Free to live.
  • dane-pgp 5y ago
    > Rights are freedoms, not entitlements. Then a starving man should have the freedom to take a loaf of bread from a grocery store without paying. It is only the government's (or the grocery store's) infringement of his rights (by fining, assaulting, or imprisoning him) that prevents him doing this. By starting from the premise that private property is an inherent reality of the universe, rather than a legal fiction, you force a distinction between the "right" to free speech and the "entitlement" to food, when no such distinction exists. The real question is how best should a government administer the right to property such that people's right to food is also protected.
• brnt 5y ago
  It's increasingly tiresome to have to explain to Americans that thinking and literature on this subject did not end in 1776, and that it would do them tremendous amounts of good to try and understand some of it. I don't even know where to start with a comment like this. Human rights were never meant to be static, and no good cause for them remaining to be static exists (based on the simple premise that the human condition continues to evolve), or that writing human rules/laws/guidelines could even be without contradiction. I find it a ridiculous requirement. Laws should not be a mechanical thing, and never completely absolve man from having to think about particular situations. That is not and must not be the point.
  • zpeti 5y ago
    Laws should not be mechanical. I agree. That’s what they are for. Human rights by definition should. Of course they haven’t been for a long time. I’m not American btw. Just someone who understands how ridiculously fragile our current political system is.
    • brnt 5y ago
      > Human rights by definition should. What basis exists for us being able to claim that we have arrived at the final set of rights sufficient to describe what a human needs to be free?
      • dudul 5y ago
        Rights don't describe what you need to be free, they just say that you do have the right to be free. Then laws are put in place to try to protect your right.
        • brnt 5y ago
          I thought we were discussing human rights, and therefore I use text of the Declaration. This text is certainly more specific than stating that humans are free. It also describes positive rights, for one.
      • 5y ago
• kcatskcolbdi 5y ago
  This is such a tired argument. Every government program, every preservation of right, requires taxation and resource allocation. Unless you are advocating for the complete dissolution of government we are merely talking of degrees. There is always a specific debate to be had around each degree of power and influence the government is granted. But if you refuse to acknowledge the reality that people are "forced" into compliance for all rights, including those you deem 'negative', it's impossible to even discuss. You only get to exercise the right to free speech if everyone else knows there are consequences for disrupting it. (Fines, imprisonment, etc) If no one is willing or able to act as the enforcement arm of the state, you only have that freedom so long as someone more powerful than you doesn't feel like taking it from you. That requires the 'forced' labor of police officers, prison guards, construction workers for the prisons, agricultural workers for the food, medical supplies manufacturers, medical staff members for prisons, electricians, plumbers, garbage, sanitation workers. I'm sure if I spent more than a minute I could think of more, but just understanding the scope of labor required to enforce one 'negative right' should help illustrate why this line of conversation is a complete waste of time.
  • zpeti 5y ago
    You are right. It’s a sliding scale. But that scale has tilted completely to one side in the last 50 years, as I said. Everything has moved towards more generalized human rights and not towards less. I'd like to understand how you would rank competing human rights for example? What if my human right to healthcare conflicts with your human right to not be forced to work? What if my right to have somewhere to live (for travellers, actual legal case in the UK) conflicts with your human right to own property and not have it invaded? What if my human right to not cover my face conflicts with your human right to a "germ and virus free environment". Do you create a hierarchy of rights? Once you do that, how are they different from laws? You've just created lots of laws at this point for different people and situations. In my world those are not rights any more. They're bullshit. A right is something, theoretically, that everyone can have. Conflicting rights by definition destroy that.
    • UncleMeat 5y ago
      Rights conflict even with themselves. This is even true for rights seen as "negative". Consider property rights. I rent. My landlord has never stepped foot in the house. The state enforces his property rights. But the way it would do that is by violently evicting me from the property and making me homeless.
• ajuc 5y ago
  > Human rights should only exist as long as they can't conflict with each other. That's an empty set then. See trolley problem for why.
  • dudul 5y ago
    Why do you think the trolley problem applies here? As far as I understand the thought experiment, it is more about ethic than human rights. True human rights are essentially very few specifically so they don't conflict with each other. There is a reason "freedom of expression" is a human right, but "not hearing things I don't like" is not for example. Anyway, I'm genuinely curious about how the trolley problem applies here if you don't mind expanding a bit.
    • ajuc 5y ago
      > Why do you think the trolley problem applies here? Well, the right to live is usually considered a human right, and a trolley problem is a conflict between this right for 1 person and another. So if you want human rights that can't get into conflict you can't even get the most basic ones. And you can create similar conflict for any particular right you can imagine, so if you want human rights that don't conflict - you will have no human rights at all. Another example - siamese twins with 1 set of necessary organs. Threatened pregnancy depending on your views on abortion. Necessary self-defense. It's impossible to create non-conflicting rights. As for freedom of expression - it gets into conflict each time 2 people try to speak at the same time in the same place. Same with right to protest (what if 2 groups with opposite views want to organize protests at the same time and place - a common occurrence during LGBT parades in my country).
      • dudul 5y ago
        You're talking about the same human right creating conflicts between 2 individuals. I read the original comment as conflicts between 2 distinct human rights, ergo my brief example. I still find the trolley problem like a bit of a reach, but the other ones make sense. Thanks.
• asoneth 5y ago
  I'm curious what "negative rights" you have in mind that do not cost energy/money and do not create a conflict between people's free choice to live their lives?
• cblconfederate 5y ago
  Thats not very productive way to think about it. It could be stated as "No entity can prevent people from communicating electronically", and the market would adapt around it. The big tech's market dominance stems from a) exclusive rights to telecommunication bands and b) IP and copyright laws , and those are both granted by the state, i.e. the public. An alternative would be for people to decide to abolish those exclusive rights.
• efa 5y ago
  Yep. Also a right can't be guaranteed if there is a limited resource needed to provide it. If healthcare is a human right, and half the country dies due to some plague, who will provide the healthcare that is guaranteed. This is just a semantic argument over the exact meaning of "right". It's not a moral discussion. It's fine to say everyone should get healthcare, just don't call it a right because words have definitions (or should).
• SerLava 5y ago
  You only say that because you already have access to food, water, health care, and security. Your ideal society would break down into feudalism. The modern state is an effort, however flawed, to organize people away from feudalism.
• swiley 5y ago
  Rights and responsibilities are always coupled. That’s why people don’t like giving other people rights.
• commandlinefan 5y ago
  TFA is pretty vague, and you could interpret in two (completely conflicting) ways: 1) The internet is a human right therefore it must be taxpayer-funded so that everybody can use it "free" of charge. That seems to be how you interpreted it, and in that case, I feel the same as you do - just because something is important doesn't mean it should be collectivized. 2) If you're going to provide internet services, you should work to make them as widely available as possible. This is the "Twitter and Facebook banning conservatives" concern. While I'm sympathetic to the "wait a minute, you can't force Twitter to let Donald Trump use their platform if they don't want", we did see this work farther down the stack when AWS banned Parler because Parler allowed Donald Trump to use it. If the author is suggesting that a distinction should be made between platforms (Twitter) and infrastructure (AWS, ISPs, routers), and the infrastructure operators ought to choose to be as agnostic as possible, on the other hand, then I absolutely agree with him.
• drewcoo 5y ago
  You seem to see individuals but don't want to see the society. All of us are social beings and live in the context of a group of other humans. You seem to see everything as rights absent obligations. We have things that we need to allow or even duties to perform as members of the society. It is laughable that in the last 50 years of neoliberalism the definition of human rights has been "highjacked." Quite the opposite, human rights have been eroded. This has happened because neoliberalism ignores social obligation in favor of profits, as if "the market" can somehow determine justice.
  • zpeti 5y ago
    It’s literally called human rights. Not society rights. A comment above is amazing, we should call these new human rights citizenship rights, because that’s what they are. They’re not human rights which should be undisputable rights that every human has.
• contravariant 5y ago
  > Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction. At least the Universal declaration of human rights sidesteps this issue. The slightly more concrete EU's declaration is mostly about how these rights should be protected by law and to what extent. An international treaty to respect those rights and try not to make legislation that directly violates them seems like a reasonable approach to resolve most of he conflicts you named.