When you demand the right to water, -you- demand that everyone be enslaved to -your- conscience. Sorry, but that makes you a wanna-be tyrant.
Since humans do not have the right to water (therefore are denied life), some people get to live and others do not. How do we determine who dies and who lives (how do we determine who gets water and who doesn't)?
By the way, determining who dies and lives is an act of a sincere tyrant.
In addition, the CEO of Nestle in 2005 said the same thing, that water is not a human right. Soon after the statement was retracted because a global boycott was sparked.
Nestle still says water is a human right. Personally I do not have a strong opinion on the matter but I am very interested in hearing how we determine who dies?
I'm gonna go backwards because your CEO argument is my fucking -favorite-
The fact that there was a worldwide boycott doesn't affect my opinion in the -slightest-. The fact that you imply that worldwide opinion denotes the probability of correctness leads me to believe that you're probably not possessed of the logical ability to have a substantive conversation regarding abstract subject matter, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and continue to debate this.
Next up, determining who lives and dies -is- in fact the desire of a true tyrant. I desire no such thing.
Saying someone doesn't have the -right- to water is not denying them water. This is one of the worst straw men I've seen on the board -ever-, which makes it quite a fuckin scarecrow! Your implication is that people either have the -right- to water or don't get to have it at all. How fuckin silly are you?
Do I have the right to internet access or a computer? No, I don't. Yet somehow, here I am posting political opinions on an online message board. Weird. You mean I'm able to have a computer even though I don't have the right to a computer? People are able to acquire things that aren't automatically their's by right? WHAT A CONCEPT!
The way we determine who gets to have water and who doesn't? Why, we don't determine that at all. We let everyone determine whether or not they go get their water. The ones who aren't able to acquire it will be the ones who don't have it. That simple. That doesn't require me to be a tyrant, it requires me to leave everyone to their own devices. That's the whole idea of individual freedom, which is my highest standard. By that standard, the only time we force people to behave against their desires is when their desires include the subjugation of anyone else's.
Your highest standard is collective "well-being", and the reason I put it in quotations is because it's based on your opinion of what is "good" for that collective. The problem with that desire, in my opinion, is that it subjugates the will of any individual with a different idea of what is "good". This is roughly the same value as that in the UN document, except that they probably (hopefully, for the sake of my opinion of your cognitive functions) have different opinions on the particulars of what is "good". Even as fellow collectivists, the UN's rule would likely subjugate your will to many standards that aren't your own.
You are very intelligent and I respect your cogent replies. A brief comment about your claim that I "imply" the logical fallacy ad populum: that is, that it's false. I did not imply that. I merely noted how there is universal, cross cultural disagreement with your position. I thought you should know, not that it should influence your belief. Then it is you who nicely and neatly arranges the strawman for I made no such claim or overt implication.
As your my strawman, you misunderstand the issue. I respect your position and given your current understanding of how the world works, you would be accurate. I insist however that your understanding is misguided and false. There is obviously enough water on the planet to sustain 8 billion humans otherwise there cannot exist 8 billion humans. So I want to be extra clear on my logic so let's convert this shit into syllogistic form:
If there are 8 billion humans living, then there must exist sufficient water for their living.
There are 8 billion humans living.
Therefore there must exist sufficient water for their living.
So now that we both understanding there is sufficient water on earth for humans we must ask the vital question why do people become water insecure? Maybe you were unaware that water insecurity even existed let alone is growing throughout the world. The answers are varied but a pattern emerges that people become water insecure because of the bottom line: they cannot afford it. So they loose access to this vital nutrient of life. Why can human A say to B that B can no longer access water which supported B's life? Because A owns the water and therefore is not required to make it available to anyone whatsoever.
But how did person A come to own the property of a specific source of water? He drew up a document and international courts, set up and configured by those who have interests in property, granted him legal protection upon his drawing up of this document. So now person B can be legally denied access to water that he could access hours before the document was written up.
So your whole basis for saying water is not a right is because, though there is enough water on this planet to sustain 8 billion humans, they may be denied access due to a arbitrary document that alters nothing whatsoever in the physical or natural world. This sounds to be a really specious way of denying water.
What if B instead had written the document first and had it made official? Well, it would never happen because B is not among the class of people who can do that. Thus, the distribution of water is not determined by human need but by profits. So yep, people are
de facto denied water and we determine that they are denied because they cannot afford it.
Let's turn to another vital question: why is B not among the class of people who can do claim property? Because B lacks the money. But why does B lack money? B was simply born in the wrong family and the wrong place. So according to geographic happenstance of where B was born B can be denied access to water, not because there is insufficient water to supply B, but because B has been dealt a bad hand.
I'd understand if you said B should make something of himself but you need to realize capitalism does not operate that way. Capitalism keeps wages low by having a reserve army of unemployed laborers so that when someone demands better conditions, they can fire them and hire someone who will not make that complaint. There must be a mass of people who are not doing well in order for those few, 5% can do exceptional. If you lived under a different system of distribution, I can understand you'd say water is not denied but in this system of capitalism, it must be denied because it's what the market will bear. But we know the market is an artificial creation of private property (a written deed is an artificial claim that has been made institutional) and therefore necessitates that some people will have abundantly and others will not to the point of lacking vital access to water. But being an artificial institution, it is preventing access and is made by human decision.
And the facts of the world about water back me up here in that there are indeed lots of people in the world that, though sufficient water exists, it is not supplied and therefore is denied.
"By 2025, 800 million people will be living in countries or regions with absolute water scarcity, and two-thirds of the world population could be under stress conditions."
"According to Nature (2010), about 80% of the world's population (5.6 billion in 2011) live in areas with threats to water security."
Water security - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
So my premise that water is denied because it is not a right is true. So how do we determine who gets water and who doesn't? The answer is already obvious: corporations.
So lets ask why corporations get to be the tyrants? No one can vote for corporations so this was obviously not a political act on the part of the public. So why are corporations the tyrants?
