Thursday 17 July 2014

More on "Human Rights"

The previous post about the EHCR reminded me of the recent fuss on the intertubes about the CEO of Nestle saying that human beings do not have a right to water. Predictably, he's been called all sorts of names, of which "sociopath" is probably one of the milder ones.

However, sadly, he's right. Humans don't have God-given rights, they only have the rights that an authority grants them. If you were in anarchist utopia and you started explaining to the man taking away your water supply that he was infringing your human rights, he would simply continue on his job, unless you were bigger and better armed than him. To have rights of any sort, you need some sort of authority to enforce them. That authority in turn will be powerless to either enforce or deny your rights if faced with a more powerful authority which has a different idea of the rights of its citizens.

So all talk of universal human rights will remain nonsense until there is a universal authority, which is unlikely to happen any time soon.

6 comments:

Mark Wadsworth said...

Agreed. But...

"That authority in turn will be powerless to either enforce or deny your rights if faced with a more powerful authority"

There is only one highest authority by definition, the 'government' and the 'water owners' are - in this instance - the same people.

Bayard said...

Indeed. People seem to forget that, until relatively recently, the only water you owned was that which you collected off your own roof. All other water belonged to the Water Boards. That's why the UK has so few working water mills. The Water Boards charged the millers for the use of their water and the millers all went out of business.

Physiocrat said...

There are no rights. There are only duties, positive duties and negative duties, "not to". My rights arise of others observing duties. It is a pity this is not more widely understood.

Bayard said...

P, AFAICS, rights and duties are two sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other, but nowadays all the talk is of rights and no-one talks about their duties.

Bayard said...

Apparently, in some states in the US, even the rainwater belongs to the state.

Ian B said...

You don't need an authority, you just need a community's agreement, which is a somewhat different thing.