If you want a system in which everyone can get enough to eat as a matter of the structure of society, you want tribalism or communism and their freedom, not liberalism and its rights.
-- Gordon
dlawbailey:
> Food is not a human right because it cannot reasonably be so. This is not
> a question of libertarianism but common sense. You have to think of it from
> the point of view of what happens when something goes wrong. Let me give
> two quick paragraphs of questions to illustrate the inevitable quandaries.
>
> Let's say that I, living in Washington State, in the U.S., am dissatisfied
> with my portion of the apple harvest. So, I go to court and claim that my
> right to food has been violated. First, against whom do I file the claim?
> Is it King County? The state government? The federal government? Is it the
> apple growers? Which apple growers?
>
> Since Washington produces so many apples, the state would have to sell a
> great many. Say they sold too many in my view. Say there was a shortage
> because a particular grower decided to sell his land late in the harvest.
> Say the government claims the money it got from apple sales was insufficient
> to buy enough beef. Now whose fault is that? The government's? Which
> government? Is the entire beef industry to blame or only those ranchers
> bringing cattle to market when Washington state wanted to buy beef?
>
> The above is why we basically have two underlying concepts of rights in the
> US and Britain: negative rights (that which people and governments must
> *not* do to an individual) and property rights - *not* so-called "positive
> rights". Positive rights turn inevitably into a quagmire. What you all are
> talking about with a "food right" only makes sense as a property right to
> food production - a civil entitlement to a government subsidy like Medicare.
> That's fine, but it isn't a right. It's a contract among parties. Within
> the contract each member has rights, but there is no general, a priori right
> informing the contract, other than the right of citizens to, through
> duly-elected legislatures, create large-scale, civil agreements amongst
> themselves.
>
> Once you talk about food production in the real world, however, you take
> the question international and then you are in the world of treaties. If we
> want to say "There should a be a world food treaty," I say that's great.
> That statement, however, is miles away from saying there is a "right" to
> food. This "right" construction is naive, silly and without value.
>
>
> Hakki,
>
> You have property rights to your well water and the fish in public waters.
> In American you could sue and win.
>
>
> Heartfield,
>
> Clearly you see the problem but I think the transition to positive or
> social rights never loses sight of the idea of contracting among free
> people. As Justin says: "You have to be able to say what the right is _to_,
> you see, or the claim
> that there is a right is empty." Claims cannot remain vague and general
> demands on government but must ultimately be delineated and specified
> between consumers and producers, just as they are in a national health
> service, for example. A national health plan is not a "right" to
> healthcare, but a broadly-based contract among providers, consumers and a
> government administrator/mediator. The only difference is that the contract
> is not forged among the participants but in the legislature, a proper venue
> for such a generalized social contract.
>
>
> Dennis Breslin,
>
> When you talk about the "vocab[ulary] of rights" you have hit the nail on
> the head, if unwittingly. This "food right" is just empty verbiage,
> vocabulary unattached to rigorous thinking. A right doesn't exist simply
> because we speak of it.
>
>
> Yoshie,
>
> The U.S. language on this stupid Rome accord seems reasonable to me. See
> above.
>
>
> Justin Schwartz,
>
> You are opening a whole can of worms with the right to money enough for a
> living. I agree with you but this is new territory. Credit money, being
> created by government and bank fiat, is indeed a commodity to which we could
> establish a general right. It is far different from food because it is
> itself a contract of sorts. This is the way down which socialism will
> ultimate travel, in my view.