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Comment by ErikVandeWater | Hacker News Reader

And I don't get exactly what it means to declare water a human right. There are certainly people in the world not getting the clean water they need. But how do you solve this? You set up an international agency to acquire water for them. But where do you get the funding for this agency? If it really is a _human_ right, is this agency above local laws? What are the restrictions on this agency? Can this agency ban the building of a dam that would deprive even one person of a suitable source of water?

It's weird because other rights are what others _can't_ do to you, but this right is what others _must provide_ you. Who and how just aren't clear.

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I don't get exactly what it means to declare water a human right

It's not particularly meaningful to say that water is a human right. Far better to talk about obligations. Who has the obligation to provide people with access to clean water? That is where the discussion can begin.

I would argue that whoever controls access to clean water should be the first to answer the question of obligations. If those who control water refuse to provide it to those in need, why should we allow them to control water?

Positive rights are very much a thing - we have a positive right to at least some education in the first world.

They exist, yes, (and I've even heard some ridiculous ones like the human right to internet access), but how do you make the "rights" a reality?

I personally distinguish between 1)Human Rights, 2) rights as a member of a specific society, and 3) simply things that are "right" to do for peoples in the moral sense.

1. Something that can't be taken away by someone else.

2. A contract between an individual and the country/state with which they are a citizen. In return for paying taxes and following laws, they can expect services, utilities, military, education, etc.

3. These things are not something you're entitled to morally (like water, as there's no one to sue if you don't have water in your region), but societies should recognize the need for water, and thus it is moral and right to help ensure that all people have access.

If you do that you're using words differently than many other people, the UN included. By your definition the right to a fair trial isn't a human right (which isn't a particularly widely held opinion).

But even still, the right to a fair trial is an explicit check on someone (i.e. the government) doing something bad to you (e.g. imprisoning you).

Positive rights are very much a real thing, but they're very different from negative rights, and they have very different implementation issues.

Using your definition, there's no such thing as human rights.

Life, liberty, and property are all things that are only guaranteed by societal standards and enforcement. Murder, theft, and enslavement is the norm where the rule of law and enshrinement of rights are absent.

Much of the US enslaved human beings for hundreds of years - liberty is clearly only something we get by being a member of a specific society.

Well my assumption is that liberty, life, and property are things that can be taken away.

edit: I may have misunderstood your comment. I mean that human rights are things that are violated by taking them away, not failing to give them to you. So while life can be taken from you, doing so would violate human rights. Whereas arguing that internet is a human right doesn't work with this model, because the current violation of that 'right' doesn't just result from someone taking something away, but from someone failing to give it to you.

You've got it backwards. Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness are inherent in being human. Governments can only take them away, they do not confer them.

> Life, liberty, pursuit of happiness are inherent in being human.

<Citation needed>.

The conventional Enlightenment-era arguments for natural rights, like those which inspired the American Founding Fathers, claimed that those natural rights were endowed by a Creator. Unfortunately, over the following two centuries-plus, fewer and fewer people accept the existence of a Creator that can endow such rights. Meanwhile, the study of homo sapiens as a social animal has proceeded apace, and it is clear to many – if not most – people today that “rights” are a rather arbitrary thing that human beings in groups posit for utilitarian reasons, but they have no foundation beyond that.

I agree that they are inherent, but it's not just governments that take them away, it's other people in general.

You could live in a totally government-free society and somebody, somewhere will eventually come along and fuck your shit up. Then you are just fighting to keep your rights, which for many might be preferable than trusting a government to do it for you.

The question is are you more likely to retain those rights under a government than without one? If so, what kind of government?

Exactly. I often hear this whole "water a human right" argument from the left and when asked about what would change they really can't answer that. I think everyone knows how water is essential for the human life but declaring it a human right won't change anything. After all what would we do the next day after making it a human right?! Send the US Army to Malawi bearing Super Soakers?

The next day, we'd severely punish entities whose profit-seeking actions denied people fresh water.

Capitalist institutions like the US Army can't deliver what the human needs, only another social system can deliver it.

As a Marine, I delivered food, water, shelter, medical supplies, and even entertainment to refugees. I'd then aid in their defense.

It's not a long-term solution but it was effective.

Hopefully to avoid situations like Bolivia's where their water system was privatized (in a move that was mandated by the World Bank), and the private company increased water to $20/m for people who made on average $100/m. That company went so far as to send in paramilitaries to intimidate anyone who collected rainwater.

It is a push because where water isn't a human right, they've made it so it's illegal to collect rain water.

It's not like some made up non-existent issue, it's in direct response to corporations privatizing water, then calling all water illegal.

> Send the US Army to Malawi bearing Super Soakers?

When you put it like that it, of course, sounds silly but try to see it the other way around: Take all the money spent on wars, where lots of infrastructure (usually among the first targets) and environment ends up being destroyed, and imagine it's instead spent on infrastructure projects helping the actual civilian population.

Yes it's naive, yes it's very unlikely to ever happen, but I still like to think that the US Military acting as a demilitarized "global infrastructure building force" would have done far more good for humanity than constantly waging wars on barely defined things like "terrorism", leaving destroyed wastelands and lot's of disgruntled people in their wake.

We have to end this system based on profits and create other institutions based on rights and how to achieve those rights for everyone. Capitalism has failed!

Not according to Nancy Pelosi... why..<Laughing> this is OUR system my dear, and its the best so just stop talking about it.

It's their system. The Baby Boomers, and it is an abject failure.

We can create something better Hackernews. We just have to give a shit.

It's really easy, you take your relatively enormous salary and donate $30 a month to help organisations build infrastructure they need. Imagine if everyone did this?

Oxfam would be a good place to start https://www.oxfam.org.au/

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