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Comment by deathgrips | Hacker News Reader

The ability to earn a living is a human right that no government can deprive you of without a good, specific reason and due process.

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Oddly enough, in this case the local and state government does have a reason and did follow due process. A company that disagrees can sue -- more due process.

It all hinges on the reason and due process of course.

I read an amusing analogy, we have what we call the "Schrodinger's disease".

The government tries to protect me from the disease and suspects me of spreading the disease - all at the same time.

Even though I don't want that protection and I am not sick. Doesnt' matter, I have to oblige.

Yes, you do. It's honestly not that complicated.

Have you been tested? Every day? You can't confidently say you're not infectious when a large proportion of cases are asymptomatic, or very mild. By all means be gung-ho about your own life, but your rights stop at the point they risk other people.

You will never be able to confidently say you are not infectious of some disease.

Exactly. Which is why, when there is an epidemic of a dangerous disease, measures need to be implemented that assume that everybody is infectious unless proven otherwise.

No, that's not the point. If the small risk of someone dying from covid19 is enough to take away everyone's rights, what keeps your state from taking away your rights for a similarly flimsy reason, such as the risk that you will commit a crime?

Laws, constitutions, the legal system, and the ballot box.

Mature democracies should have the ability to carefully and responsibly limit some rights in times of great crisis, such as wars and pandemics.

this is like saying have you regularly proven that you are not guilty of crimes?

It is really not how it should work at all.

Assuming everyone is infected at all times is both absurd and most importantly unworkable and counterproductive. The net effect is the opposite of what it wants to achieve.

This is essentially the same principle that says restaurants have to follow health regulations to prevent spreading disease.

Depriving people of the right to earn a living regardless of their health status and regardless of their health practices (PPE, distancing in the workplace, sanitizing surfaces, air filtration) is absolutely not due process. It is the sort of arbitrary and absurd regulation which is quintessentially Californian. California has a history of depriving people of human rights without rhyme or reason; this is just furthering the trend.

> California has a history of depriving people of human rights without rhyme or reason; this is just furthering the trend.

[citation needed]

Why point the finger at California? The federal government has done so too.

Here are some examples:

* making it illegal for homeless people to exist in cities (loitering laws etc. when the homeless cannot help but break the law)

* taking away the right to bear arms as soon as black people started carrying firearms for self defense

* a long history of police brutality in the LAPD against minorities

* Los Angeles refusing to protect Asian Americans during race riots

* The California Dept of Labor refusing to enforce minimum wage laws regardless of the citizenship status of workers (only the federal government has to enforce border and immigration laws)

We're talking about California in this thread. If you want to talk about the federal government you're free to do so.

It is not a human right to earn a living.

And it is absolutely the right of a government to prevent you from working.

Many jobs requiring government approval for example a doctor, lawyer, builder.

Governments do not have rights, period. They exist solely at the consent and continued pleasure of the governed (or should at least). That is to say, every human has rights, because they are an individual human. The rights of people are self-evident and stem solely from the fact that people are human.

Governments have no rights. There is nothing that is owed to them due to their existence as governments. Were a particular set of people not to form a government, no other government could rightfully enter to assert their 'right' to govern.

I'd love to hear black or brown people adopt this as their motto.

Same

Gandhi was brown, and his policy of civil disobedience was essentially based on the premise that a government only derives its legitimacy from the will of the people to be governed by it. Leading to the act of mass civil disobedience.

"It is not a human right to earn a living."

The UNCHR has begged to differ since 1948. Article 23 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states:

"Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human...

> to just and favourable conditions

One could argue that putting yourself or others at risk of infection is not a “just and favorable condition”

>It is not a human right to earn a living.

What gives you the right to decide that?

It shouldn't, unless your only purpose is damaging that individual, which sounds to me like a not very humane purpose.

Work is one of the main purposes and goals an individual may have, together with family. Denying that to anyone is simple and plain tyranny.

Governments have no rights.

Human beings have rights.

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