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Hallelujah, was going to post the same thing. This is sad to me, because I see this so overused that it's lost nearly all its important original meaning. All t

Hallelujah, was going to post the same thing. This is sad to me, because I see this so overused that it's lost nearly all its important original meaning. All the time I see "health care is a human right", "shelter is a human right", "food is a human right" - that always drives me a little bonkers, and it's not because I don't support guaranteed assistance in these areas. It's because these things require real cost, time and effort from somebody else to acquire. Saying they're "human rights" implies that you're willing to force other humans to acquire these goods for you, for free. This is very different from things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, etc. which are the "default" state of things until someone uses violence to try to take them from you. Similarly, it costs time, effort and money to assemble information in ways so that it can be consumed online. Saying "it's a human right" just means you want it for free.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago
> It's because these things require real cost, time and effort from somebody else to acquire. What you are writing there is a frequent complaint on discussion threads on news-for-nerds sites, but it misses the point: of course those things require real cost, time and effort from somebody else, and that is why there is a longstanding distinction between positive and negative rights.[0] Yes, the prominence of negative rights is a big feature of American culture due to the 18th-century Lockean context that the USA’s Founding Fathers operated in, but a lot of things have happened in the interim, and other views on rights have arisen. And even the USA gave lip service to the positive rights enshrined in the UN’s founding human-rights charter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights
- SllX 3y ago
  Positive rights advocates have had some success in achieving the lawful creation of positive rights across the States, the most prominent examples being Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and public school systems. But those are also the most expensive line items in Federal and State budgets, massively expanded the public bureaucracies, and had variable success in achieving their stated goals and are some of the most contentious and controversial political topics, with public education in particularly attracting the full brunt of the culture war in recent years in part due to lockdown policies during the pandemic giving more parents more insight into the education their children are (or are not) receiving, and that’s just one positive right. To put it bluntly, the mere arising of new views around “rights” since 1789 is insufficient if those new views do not represent a qualitative improvement over prior thought, and positive rights advocates have not exactly covered themselves in glory. The mere conjecture of a new positive right in the way activists and advocates proceed is also insufficient; the nature of them is such that you actually do need lawful agreement, and that agreement is only binding in the jurisdiction which created it.
  - OfSanguineFire 3y ago
    Yes, you get it: with your detailed argumentation for one position you show you were already well aware of the distinction, unlike apparently the OP. But I suppose it is best that we refrain from further political battle here.
  - foolrush 3y ago
    > But those are also the most expensive line items in Federal and State budgets, https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/discretionary_spending_pie%2C_2015_enacted.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/discretionary_s...
    - SllX 3y ago
      Two things missing: 1. Non-discretionary spending. 2. 50 additional links to breakdowns of the public budgets for the 50 States.
  - atoav 3y ago
    If I look to nations that are the most bullish when it comes to positive human rights they beat most other nations in nearly every human-centric metric conceivable. Last time I have been in Copenhagen it didn't look like they were worse off for doing all that positive right stuff — quite the opposite, I'd choose Copenhagen over literally every US city every day. I know the US is good at pretending their problems are so unique that all the rational and numbers-based approaches everywhere else in the world won't fly, but in my eyes you either want to live in a society and want it to be good or you pretend you don't live inside one and deal with the consequences. The former gives me a happier life, the latter gives me dystopian vibes and a bit more on the bank account so my choice should be clear.
    - SllX 3y ago
      Sure, but Denmark does have a different culture. Even most European countries are different from Denmark. We value property differently. We value entrepreneurship differently. We are a military superpower and provide most of the muscle in NATO that both the US and Denmark are part of. We have a larger border with both of our immediate neighbors. There isn’t a North American equivalent of the Schengen Area. We’re a lot more religious despite not having a State religion. Our Head of State is not Royal, but an elected position that churns every 4 to 8 years. We’re not a unitary State, but a Federation of 50 States, each with their own laws and histories and yeah, culturally we take that seriously here. We don’t even have a single Parliament, and our legislature does not function like one. Denmark is 86% people of Danish descent, while Americans aren’t 86% anything in particular, ethnically nor racially. No matter how you slice it, the differences do define us, much like the differences between Japan and Denmark or Australia and Denmark. As I already pointed out, America has lawfully implemented some forms of what are called positive rights, but what those look like do not closely resemble the Danish analogues, and one of those differences is how much we disagree with each other as much as we disagree with the rest of the world, but hey, one if the nicer things about the world we live in is if you find a place you like more, it’s often possible to just go live there, provided you subject yourself to the requirements of the locals and there’s nothing wrong with that. :)
Tijdreiziger 3y ago
> Saying they're "human rights" implies that you're willing to force other humans to acquire these goods for you, for free. Well, sure. IMHO it's not so much an implication as it is the whole point of designating them human rights. What this looks like in practice is that government funds homeless shelters and other social programs.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tomcam 3y ago
In the USA, we take human rights so seriously that soldiers and police commit to defending the Constitution, not king and country. The Constitution and its amendments enumerate rights the Federal government is not allowed to infringe. We need to be careful about what we call rights. They cost us a great deal in blood and treasure.
atoav 3y ago
> Saying "it's a human right" just means you want it for free. No. Wanting it to be a human right in that context means I want to live in a society where people don't have to worry about that thing. Living in a society that catches people that has some humane quality to it is a value in itself. That being said, there are actual human rights. Rights our political representatives deemed so important, they enshrined them in law, be it in the Magna Carta, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention, in national laws etc. On the question of resources: It can and will happen, that your society will have to expend some resources to prevent humans from having their human rights violated. The collective pooling and use of resources is a hallmark of what it means to live inside a society. And that is not bad — a society as a whole benefits from doing this (the ones who so this most seem the fare quite well in every metric you can think of, e.g. the whole of Scandinavia). Now if you ask me, you certainly have the right to work and get rich. But you don't get to do so on the achievements of a society and then pretend that it never did anything for you, so you won't need to give back all while driving on the roads that got built during times with a 90% tax bracket. I don't know you, so don't take anything I write personal, but if this was about me, I'd rather live freely in a world where no-one around me is devastated and poor by paying my fair share, than having to spend that same money because I have to live in a gated community. The goal of life is not to earn money, it is to lead a happy life. And a major, major part of just how happy that life is depends on your environment. This is why the most liveable cities in the world are typically not capitalist hellscapes in areas of high income disparities, but in working social democracies with good social systems and a good mix of all income brackets throughout the city. When I have the choice between your right to pay a little bit less taxes and another one's right to not starve, my choice is very simple. You probably already have enough, the other one hasn't, I profit from them not starving more than from you having that money.
chambers 3y ago
The missing word from this conversation is "duty": a moral obligation to others. People pretend rights can exists without duties because, like you said, they're trying to get good things for free. They're asking for work from others and not being upfront on the price of the work. I say "I have a right to good service at the DMV", because I can't say the DMV must give me, let alone everyone, good service. In a larger view[1], a language of rights without duties undermines the broader social contract, confuses conversations with indirect terms[2], and provides the selfish with the illusion of care for their fellow man. As it so happens, the original declaration of human rights[2] specifically calls out the necessary union of duties and rights. However, the UN declaration does not do so, likely because no one, bar a few western countries, actually had the power to enforce those rights on a global scale. Hannah Arendt commented on this topic at length, though it's hard for hyper-individualists to digest[4]. [1] https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/samuel-moyn-rights-duties/ https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/samuel-moyn-rights-dut... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights#C... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Declaration_of_the_Rights_and_Duties_of_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Declaration_of_the_Ri... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt#Critique_of_human_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt#Critique_of_huma...
cam_l 3y ago
>implies that you're willing to force other humans to acquire these goods for you, for free. Or, y'know, actually that we require the costs to be shared equally... Like we do with fresh water or firefighters or the police or armed forces. Like, I don't smoke, so why should you get your firefighter for free? What good are any other human rights if you are denied access to the law, or drinking water for that matter?
analognoise 3y ago
Hah! In 2021, the USA provided 28.5 billion dollars in farm subsidies. For fossil fuels, we spend about 20 billion dollars a year in subsidies. People are ALREADY getting this stuff "for free" - it's just not you and me! This is all before we spent ~815 BILLION dollars on our defense budget - and we're at peace! Everyone gets it for free but YOU and ME, and you're carrying their water by defending this system! We give it out for free with one hand, and then pretend everyone has to work for it, and along the way there's no free food, shelter, or medical care!
ringo-ring 3y ago
> Saying they're "human rights" implies that you're willing to force other humans to acquire these goods for you, for free. This is very different from things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, etc. which are the "default" state of things until someone uses violence to try to take them from you. Copying information online is also 'default' state of things, until some government uses violence to stop it, block access, and etc. Sci-Hub does not rely on any 'violence' to operate, unless you consider 'entering library without permission' to be violence. But that concept of violence is too general: we can call 'violence' pretty much anything we do not like. Someone offended us with their opinion? Violence! (and yes, sometimes opinions hurt) > you're willing to force other humans to acquire these goods for you, for free it is wrong. One thing, is to say to other human: do something for me! that is, to force someone. But having a right to use what is already available, is a completely different thing. The two cannot be conflated.

OfSanguineFire 3y ago

> It's because these things require real cost, time and effort from somebody else to acquire. What you are writing there is a frequent complaint on discussion threads on news-for-nerds sites, but it misses the point: of course those things require real cost, time and effort from somebody else, and that is why there is a longstanding distinction between positive and negative rights.[0] Yes, the prominence of negative rights is a big feature of American culture due to the 18th-century Lockean context that the USA’s Founding Fathers operated in, but a lot of things have happened in the interim, and other views on rights have arisen. And even the USA gave lip service to the positive rights enshrined in the UN’s founding human-rights charter. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights

SllX 3y ago
Positive rights advocates have had some success in achieving the lawful creation of positive rights across the States, the most prominent examples being Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and public school systems. But those are also the most expensive line items in Federal and State budgets, massively expanded the public bureaucracies, and had variable success in achieving their stated goals and are some of the most contentious and controversial political topics, with public education in particularly attracting the full brunt of the culture war in recent years in part due to lockdown policies during the pandemic giving more parents more insight into the education their children are (or are not) receiving, and that’s just one positive right. To put it bluntly, the mere arising of new views around “rights” since 1789 is insufficient if those new views do not represent a qualitative improvement over prior thought, and positive rights advocates have not exactly covered themselves in glory. The mere conjecture of a new positive right in the way activists and advocates proceed is also insufficient; the nature of them is such that you actually do need lawful agreement, and that agreement is only binding in the jurisdiction which created it.
- OfSanguineFire 3y ago
  Yes, you get it: with your detailed argumentation for one position you show you were already well aware of the distinction, unlike apparently the OP. But I suppose it is best that we refrain from further political battle here.
- foolrush 3y ago
  > But those are also the most expensive line items in Federal and State budgets, https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/discretionary_spending_pie%2C_2015_enacted.png https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/discretionary_s...
  - SllX 3y ago
    Two things missing: 1. Non-discretionary spending. 2. 50 additional links to breakdowns of the public budgets for the 50 States.
- atoav 3y ago
  If I look to nations that are the most bullish when it comes to positive human rights they beat most other nations in nearly every human-centric metric conceivable. Last time I have been in Copenhagen it didn't look like they were worse off for doing all that positive right stuff — quite the opposite, I'd choose Copenhagen over literally every US city every day. I know the US is good at pretending their problems are so unique that all the rational and numbers-based approaches everywhere else in the world won't fly, but in my eyes you either want to live in a society and want it to be good or you pretend you don't live inside one and deal with the consequences. The former gives me a happier life, the latter gives me dystopian vibes and a bit more on the bank account so my choice should be clear.
  - SllX 3y ago
    Sure, but Denmark does have a different culture. Even most European countries are different from Denmark. We value property differently. We value entrepreneurship differently. We are a military superpower and provide most of the muscle in NATO that both the US and Denmark are part of. We have a larger border with both of our immediate neighbors. There isn’t a North American equivalent of the Schengen Area. We’re a lot more religious despite not having a State religion. Our Head of State is not Royal, but an elected position that churns every 4 to 8 years. We’re not a unitary State, but a Federation of 50 States, each with their own laws and histories and yeah, culturally we take that seriously here. We don’t even have a single Parliament, and our legislature does not function like one. Denmark is 86% people of Danish descent, while Americans aren’t 86% anything in particular, ethnically nor racially. No matter how you slice it, the differences do define us, much like the differences between Japan and Denmark or Australia and Denmark. As I already pointed out, America has lawfully implemented some forms of what are called positive rights, but what those look like do not closely resemble the Danish analogues, and one of those differences is how much we disagree with each other as much as we disagree with the rest of the world, but hey, one if the nicer things about the world we live in is if you find a place you like more, it’s often possible to just go live there, provided you subject yourself to the requirements of the locals and there’s nothing wrong with that. :)

Tijdreiziger 3y ago

> Saying they're "human rights" implies that you're willing to force other humans to acquire these goods for you, for free. Well, sure. IMHO it's not so much an implication as it is the whole point of designating them human rights. What this looks like in practice is that government funds homeless shelters and other social programs.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

tomcam 3y ago

In the USA, we take human rights so seriously that soldiers and police commit to defending the Constitution, not king and country. The Constitution and its amendments enumerate rights the Federal government is not allowed to infringe. We need to be careful about what we call rights. They cost us a great deal in blood and treasure.

atoav 3y ago

> Saying "it's a human right" just means you want it for free. No. Wanting it to be a human right in that context means I want to live in a society where people don't have to worry about that thing. Living in a society that catches people that has some humane quality to it is a value in itself. That being said, there are actual human rights. Rights our political representatives deemed so important, they enshrined them in law, be it in the Magna Carta, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Convention, in national laws etc. On the question of resources: It can and will happen, that your society will have to expend some resources to prevent humans from having their human rights violated. The collective pooling and use of resources is a hallmark of what it means to live inside a society. And that is not bad — a society as a whole benefits from doing this (the ones who so this most seem the fare quite well in every metric you can think of, e.g. the whole of Scandinavia). Now if you ask me, you certainly have the right to work and get rich. But you don't get to do so on the achievements of a society and then pretend that it never did anything for you, so you won't need to give back all while driving on the roads that got built during times with a 90% tax bracket. I don't know you, so don't take anything I write personal, but if this was about me, I'd rather live freely in a world where no-one around me is devastated and poor by paying my fair share, than having to spend that same money because I have to live in a gated community. The goal of life is not to earn money, it is to lead a happy life. And a major, major part of just how happy that life is depends on your environment. This is why the most liveable cities in the world are typically not capitalist hellscapes in areas of high income disparities, but in working social democracies with good social systems and a good mix of all income brackets throughout the city. When I have the choice between your right to pay a little bit less taxes and another one's right to not starve, my choice is very simple. You probably already have enough, the other one hasn't, I profit from them not starving more than from you having that money.

chambers 3y ago

The missing word from this conversation is "duty": a moral obligation to others. People pretend rights can exists without duties because, like you said, they're trying to get good things for free. They're asking for work from others and not being upfront on the price of the work. I say "I have a right to good service at the DMV", because I can't say the DMV must give me, let alone everyone, good service. In a larger view[1], a language of rights without duties undermines the broader social contract, confuses conversations with indirect terms[2], and provides the selfish with the illusion of care for their fellow man. As it so happens, the original declaration of human rights[2] specifically calls out the necessary union of duties and rights. However, the UN declaration does not do so, likely because no one, bar a few western countries, actually had the power to enforce those rights on a global scale. Hannah Arendt commented on this topic at length, though it's hard for hyper-individualists to digest[4]. [1] https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/samuel-moyn-rights-duties/ https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/samuel-moyn-rights-dut... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights#C... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Declaration_of_the_Rights_and_Duties_of_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Declaration_of_the_Ri... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt#Critique_of_human_rights https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hannah_Arendt#Critique_of_huma...

cam_l 3y ago

>implies that you're willing to force other humans to acquire these goods for you, for free. Or, y'know, actually that we require the costs to be shared equally... Like we do with fresh water or firefighters or the police or armed forces. Like, I don't smoke, so why should you get your firefighter for free? What good are any other human rights if you are denied access to the law, or drinking water for that matter?

analognoise 3y ago

Hah! In 2021, the USA provided 28.5 billion dollars in farm subsidies. For fossil fuels, we spend about 20 billion dollars a year in subsidies. People are ALREADY getting this stuff "for free" - it's just not you and me! This is all before we spent ~815 BILLION dollars on our defense budget - and we're at peace! Everyone gets it for free but YOU and ME, and you're carrying their water by defending this system! We give it out for free with one hand, and then pretend everyone has to work for it, and along the way there's no free food, shelter, or medical care!

ringo-ring 3y ago

> Saying they're "human rights" implies that you're willing to force other humans to acquire these goods for you, for free. This is very different from things like freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of assembly, etc. which are the "default" state of things until someone uses violence to try to take them from you. Copying information online is also 'default' state of things, until some government uses violence to stop it, block access, and etc. Sci-Hub does not rely on any 'violence' to operate, unless you consider 'entering library without permission' to be violence. But that concept of violence is too general: we can call 'violence' pretty much anything we do not like. Someone offended us with their opinion? Violence! (and yes, sometimes opinions hurt) > you're willing to force other humans to acquire these goods for you, for free it is wrong. One thing, is to say to other human: do something for me! that is, to force someone. But having a right to use what is already available, is a completely different thing. The two cannot be conflated.