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Comment by vhlhvjcov | Hacker News Reader

If you don’t get paid when you are sick, you are in essence being punished for being sick.

Not being punished for being sick is a basic human right.

The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights entered into force in 1976. The human rights that the Covenant seeks to promote and protect include:

the right to work in just and favourable conditions;

the right to social protection, to an adequate standard of living and to the highest attainable standards of physical and mental well-being;

the right to education and the enjoyment of benefits of cultural freedom and scientific progress.

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> If you don’t get paid when you are sick, you are in essence being punished for being sick.

On counter side, you'll be punished for not being sick.

How? Because someone get an additional day off of the work while you don’t ?

It’s funny how I absolutely never thought about it that way. I guess scarcity of free time change perspective.

> The International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights entered into force in 1976.

Note that was never ratified by the United States

And here we are.

Note that no actual citizens voted on this supposed covenant.

Appreciate the distinction between representative democracy (a mechanism for choosing/changing the government), and the rule of law (a set of statutes and/or common law laying out how society should function). The covenant was agreed by (mostly) governments chosen through representative democracy, and signed into law (or at least given a nod in various legislation, policy etc).

Ideas like 'the will of the people' overriding established good and just law is the preserve of populists, and in extreme, of fascists. The Brexit referendum being a good case in point.

That’s how representative democracy works. Generally speaking no country has citizens vote on specific foreign policies, with some exceptions.

That’s the difference between voting and democracy. Unions are a form of democracy, as it’s the people who are determining their own rights. But yes, unfortunately rights often have to be hard fought for rather than simply voted into existence.

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