She lives in NYC, where a quarter of the buildings are abandoned. Solving the city's homeless problem should be a snap, but someone still owns those overpriced husks of real estate. I can see where she's coming from on that because it's nonsensical when you look at the numbers.
Funny (political, religious) pictures
- Thread starter strawman
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I believe his position is only one of guaranteeing the right to be ALLOWED to live, rather than any kind of subsidy.
That is, no one will take away your life, but you will not automatically be furnished the means to live...that is something you will need to attend to on your own.
There is currently no incentive which encourages you to allow people to occupy housing you are not using when those people cannot offset the expense of their occupancy. Things would be different if there were, but until then the property owners would rather let the buildings rot (because that can be claimed on insurance) rather than offer charity (because that can't).
--Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
And how is that any different than the right to free speech or the right to bear arms? You have to supply your own platform for speech, and buy your own gun, but they're still rights. Yet Gas said, in the same paragraph he noted guns aren't supplied free, that shelter, food, and healthcare are not rights.
I'm not seeing the conflict, here. The right to live confers no explicit nor implied guarantee you will receive the means to live, that part is up to you.
Now my personal belief is that there's no point in making life a Right without also somehow providing some minimum amount of means to do so, because enforcing such a Right without also providing support leads to things like: forcing people to carry babies to term but then abandoning them (and their parents) once they're born, or forcing hospital emergency rooms to take in starving homeless people but then eject them right back onto the streets once they've stabilized where they will be starving again in just a few days IF they don't die in the interim.
This is also why I detest the "unfunded mandate" in all its myriad, stingy, inadequate forms. If you are going to mandate something, then it is on you to make sure such a mandate can be achieved, else your edict deserves to be immediately rejected as both worthless and useless.
--Patrick
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figmentPez
Staff member
So, you're saying the government could ban food (all food), and that would not conflict with the right to life?
EDIT: I'm not arguing with whatever you think I'm arguing with. I'm disagreeing with the statement that shelter, food, and healthcare are not rights, because I'm pretty sure they're implied rights. Implied by our right to life.
This is a thought experiment. I know the government would never just ban all food. However, let's ask the question of what would the courts rule if they did. Because I think the answer is pretty clear, the SCOTUS would take one look at a blanket ban on all food and say "No, you can't do that, people need food to live, and they have a right to life. You can't just take away a necessity of life. Their right to buy, sell, keep, and eat food is garaunteed by the right to life."
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Right, but until and unless they do, it is currently perfectly legal to lend to people you know perfectly well will never be able to pay you back, or force teachers to purchase required job supplies with their own individual post-tax earnings, or charge two different people wildly different insurance rates just because they live 2 miles apart, or any of hundreds of other things that can (and do!) disastrously impact a person's ability to provide basic needs for himself/herself, let alone anyone else who might rely on them. And can these subsistizens actually do anything to improve their situation? Highly unlikely, since the amounts of time and money they can devote to bettering their conditions or influencing policy are almost nonexistent once their needs have been met.
--Patrick
--Patrick
A right doesn't mean that you have to take something from someone else to have it. The right to life doesn't mean that you have to take someone else's life to have yours. Right to bear arms doesn't take somebody else's gun to allow you that right. The "right" to food would be taking food from someone else that did something to have food, farmers/ranchers have to grow/raise the food. The "right" for healthcare means you would have to take the time (money) from a doctor to receive said care. Our basic economy is based on earning your way, not having it given to you. Very basic, early morning getting ready for work thoughts.
figmentPez
Staff member
And how does any of that invalidate what I actually said?
For an article that says the same things, but is more exhaustive, what you gave here is a good two-sentence summary of Negative and Positive Rights. From wiki:
The "classic" positive right is the right to council (though I like the idea of police protection, i.e. you don't need to HIRE the cops for them to protect you). The government WILL PROVIDE it if you can't afford it. The "classic" negative right, as mentioned in the quote and already by others here is free speech. The government is not obligated to provide you a platform, but is (or at least should be) forbidden from imprisoning you (or giving you other governmental consequences) of your speech. Note my bold there, that is government only, not everybody else on that particular one. The difference between government-mandated freedom of religion versus private is also another aspect I find fascinating about above.
As mentioned above, when somebody says "right to housing" or "food" or (especially) "health care" they are referring to something they believe should be provided to them, almost-always free of charge.
In summary though @figmentPez I would say that a governmental guarantee of the Right to Life encompasses only that the government will not kill you, and will not tolerate OTHERS killing you either. It does not encompass them providing the necessities of life to you free of charge. Others here (you may be included in this, you may not) almost certainly disagree with this interpretation, but regardless of that, your example of banning all food would clearly IMO fall under the government attempting to kill you.
figmentPez
Staff member
Nothing I have said has in any way implied that I don't already know all of that. I'm fully aware of how the politics around the issue generally play out. However, that still doesn't make me wrong. Just because people generally bring up these issues in politics in an attempt to make them a positive right, does not change the fact that they are already a negative right. It is a right, and a right guaranteed by the ethical structure that our government is built on. It's sham to debate if food, shelter, and healthcare are a right or not, because they already are. What should be debated is if they are a positive or negative right, but that's not what happens, and that's exactly why I'm making a stink here.
EDIT: If food, shelter, and healthcare weren't basic human rights, we wouldn't have to provide them to prisoners.
Because the government is denying them the ability to get them by themselves (via imprisoning them), you must then provide them. But otherwise, the government does not have a responsibility to provide them to the "average" citizen. IMO they are only "rights" in so far as Negative rights via the Right to Life is a Negative right.
If that's what you're saying Pez, please be less ambiguous. It sounds like you're arguing that they're Positive rights, but I'm uncertain.
figmentPez
Staff member
You took my edit completely out of the context of the rest of my damn post. I don't know how to be less ambiguous than I was. Currently food, shelter, and medical care are negative rights, but they are rights, and the fact that we have to provide them to prisoners proves that they are rights. I fully acknowledge that our current system has them as negative rights, but not everyone in this thread does. This all started because Gas said:
That's what I'm arguing against. The statement that food, shelter, and healthcare are not rights at all.
@figmentPez chill a bit man. I am being extra-specific and extra-pedantic because it's WAY TOO EASY to take somebody "agreeing" that "X is a right" and then everybody saying that they meant their own interpretation of that phrase. I would just like you to say instead of "basic human right" to always be specific of positive or negative. when it comes to things like this. Otherwise, it's really hard to pin things down, that's all.
I doubt anybody here has ever argued that food or shelter are not Negative rights. This is not the same discussion with regards to the right to bear arms. But the discussion started with an image (and a candidate) talking without modifiers and the implication one way or another with regards to housing. That's why it's important to be pedantic sometimes, that's all. I don't want us to devolve (even more) to the point of arguing about agreeing.
I doubt anybody here has ever argued that food or shelter are not Negative rights. This is not the same discussion with regards to the right to bear arms. But the discussion started with an image (and a candidate) talking without modifiers and the implication one way or another with regards to housing. That's why it's important to be pedantic sometimes, that's all. I don't want us to devolve (even more) to the point of arguing about agreeing.
figmentPez
Staff member
It's NOT? Because Gas sure as hell brought up the right to bear arms:
Right after declaring food, shelter, and medical care to not be rights, he goes right on to talk about how Guns are rights, but that doesn't mean we get free guns. He affirms the negative rights to guns, while denying that we have any rights to food, shelter, and medical care.
From your own quote of him, when talking about housing, he's clearly indicating: "requires someone else to PAY for it for you, which is what she means by a right to housing" He is arguing against housing being a "provided" aka "positive" right.
This is exactly what I meant in my last post. Both you and him (you no longer have an excuse) are playing with what "right" means, and which are which. You're saying he's arguing against housing being rights, which he is, but only about the "positive" interpretation. And he's arguing guns are a "negative" right, which many here argue against vehemently in BOTH interpretations.
Just look at these statements (and responses), in isolation, said by "anybody" or "nobody" as you wish:
"Americans have the right to guns" "That shouldn't be a right!"
"Americans should have the right to housing" "That shouldn't be a right!"
Both are super-ambiguous on LANGUAGE ALONE, but almost everybody reading it who's paying attention "knows" what they mean. The first is clearly arguing for and against the Negative Right which you already have in your constitution. Few argue that the government should issue each citizen a gun for free. The second is just as clearly arguing for housing to be provided for any that can't afford it, enshrining it as a positive right, and the counterpoint is arguing against such. But you already have negative rights for housing, you can go out and buy shelter if you have the means.
I'm just saying everybody should be a bit more explicit, and not to say "they argued X!" when it is EASILY interpretable which they meant. Stop trying to demonize people who don't agree with you 100%. Chastise for not being clear perhaps, but I think you're going beyond that Pez.
This may be true, but money is not like food. You are physically limited in the amount of food you can consume, but there is no physical limit to the amount of money a person can accumulate. To properly make the food analogy, it’s like saying one person is allowed to eat their fill and also to accumulate a vast stockpile of food they aren’t eating, and in fact could never eat within their lifetime. At some point, there’s a good argument to be made that someone who amasses such a stockpile IS somehow forcing others to have to go without.
As far as prisoners go, when the State removes a person from the economy (as a punishment), it’s not so much that the person has a “right” to shelter, food, etc., so much as that the State now has a responsibility to provide their basic needs the same way that a child has no “right” to food or shelter, it is the parents’ responsibility to provide those.
—Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
Oh look, another person denying that food is even a negative right.
Where each pretzel is an accurate representation of a an Alternate Earth's USA. What we're seeing are the timelines where Ben Franklin had built a Futurescope, allowing the Founding Fathers to view what their nation would become in the year 2020. The 6 northernmost states said "fuck that shit, we're joining this Canada place."got to keep it political.
Hey now, that isn’t the way *I* want it to be, either. I don’t believe food is a right, but that’s not the same thing as saying I think it shouldn’t be a right. But I count myself as one of those below that line where one has enough resources remaining to influence decision-makers after I make ends meet.
—Patrick
figmentPez
Staff member
The US is signatory to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; we haven't ratified it yet, so it's not binding, but we recognize it as something we support. One of the rights enumerated by this covenant is a "right to an adequate standard of living, including adequate food". To be pedantically clear, this is a negative right, but it is a right recognized by the United States as a signatory to this document.
Moreover, beyond if the United States (or any country) recognizes it as a right, it is logically, ethically, and morally a right based on the right to life. If you believe that people have a right to live, intrinsic to our nature as human beings, then it must follow that we have some level of a negative right to food. Above and beyond rights given by governments, these inalienable rights are intrinsic, and they exist independent of government recognition. A person in North Korea has a right to life, even if the dictator there claims they do not. These intrinsic rights are the foundation of why we enumerated certain rights in the Constitution.
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GasBandit
Staff member
Sorry guys, I was working all day, and didn't get to participate. But here's my position.
It could be argued that you DO have a "right" to these things, of course... you have the same right to them that you do to any purchasable good or service. The government can't prevent you from obtaining all the housing, food, or healthcare that you can afford. Not so different from guns after all, I suppose, from one way of looking at it.
The right to life, as in "Life, Liberty, Property, Pursuit of happiness, etc" only means that your life cannot be taken from you (without just cause, of course, as we do execute people convicted of certain crimes). However, one thing you can NOT say is a "right" is something that belongs to someone else - their time, or their assets. If you lay claim to a "right" to be provided food, shelter, or healthcare, you are in fact asserting that you have a right to the time and possessions of someone else. That is anathema to the functioning of a society where liberty and property rights are recognized. The "right to housing" that this candidate is espousing, much like those who assert the "right to healthcare," really are saying they want someone else to pay for them.
It could be argued that you DO have a "right" to these things, of course... you have the same right to them that you do to any purchasable good or service. The government can't prevent you from obtaining all the housing, food, or healthcare that you can afford. Not so different from guns after all, I suppose, from one way of looking at it.
Hey, guys, you heard him, he's ok with making guns so expensive no one can afford them, and that's not infringing on the 2nd.
And there's obviously no difference between taking houses away from other people (taking away someone's 99th house is terrible) and making sure that housing is affordable for everyone.
And there's obviously no difference between taking houses away from other people (taking away someone's 99th house is terrible) and making sure that housing is affordable for everyone.
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GasBandit
Staff member
As long as it's market forces solely doing that, and not taxation or other government meddling. That constitutes "infringing."
Yes. And when that infinitesimal yet vastly influential minority is allowed to accumulate goods/property/resources/etc. unchecked until they own literally everything, technically nobody will be "slaves," since the workers will be doing the oligarchs' bidding "of their own free will" (since the alternative is literally to starve to death).
I mean, I would hope the Guillotines would come out before that point, but what with them being so restricted and all...
--Patrick
This was literally a joke in Rick and Morty.
"This sounds a lot slavery, Rick."
"No, you see... they buy goods and services from each other, so it's okay!"
"That sounds like slavery with extra steps."
GasBandit
Staff member
Eek Barba Durkle!
TIL, non-government individuals can't infringe your rights... aka it's only murder if a government employee does it.
So rich people buying up all the guns to drive up prices so that regular people can't afford them any more and then sit on them as an investment wouldn't be an issue for you...
Also, you really need to get this idea that "market forces" can't be interfered with by anyone except the government.
EDIT: what happened to the pic i posted in the previous post?
Post automatically merged:
Anyhow, here it is again:
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