Food is a Right, not a privilege.

The BBQ Pit
61

This is exactly right. Rights are better defined as things society or the government can’t take from you, not things the government must give to you. Here in the US we choose not to let people starve. However, we are so fortunate in our wealth that it is a relatively easy burden to bear. If we were all scratching for a living, those who starve to death would just be an unfortunate casualty of the circumstances.

The fact that we are so rich here in the US is in no small part to the fact that we have the freedom to make a living. If all people were as free as we are here, the world hunger problem would be a fraction of what it is now. Maybe the thing to focus on is not just feeding people, but figuring out how to make people free so that they might have the opportunity to feed themselves.

62

But this perspective doesn’t make a lot of sense in the context of an actual society. Our laws consider us to have rights to a lot of things, such as a fair and speedy trial, or a vote, that would be meaningless if we were completely isolated individuals.

Natural law theory, ISTM, is not really relevant to actual human societies where so many laws and conditions are irrelevant to some imagined state of nature or perfect freedom. It’s pointless to define a certain subset of rights as “the only true rights” if they’re not sufficient to keep society functioning as desired.

Again, this doesn’t make a lot of sense when considering things like the right to free legal defense in a fair and speedy trial, or the right to vote. Sometimes the exercise of a right means that the government does have to take action to give you something, not just stay out of the way.

63

But these are still examples of limitations on the government’s power. They can’t punish you without first giving you a fair and speedy trial. They can’t rule over you without giving you some say in who does the ruling, and how.

64

Copout. If nothing I do legally will keep me fed, then I have no such right. The law is forbidding me from getting what I need.

There is no “natural law” as you use the term. It’s all arbitrary. If your voice attracts a lion and it kills you, do you think nature will care your “right to free speech” is being silenced ? You and others seem determined to twist and mangle the term “right” until it means “something that takes me no time, trouble or effort”.

If you already have more food than you need, and you forbid me from taking any, you are killing me just as surely as if you walked up to me with a gun and put a bullet in my brain. And yes, that is greed.

This, I think is an example of the real mentality behind these kinds of arguments. “I don’t want the government to spend a few thousand dollars to rescue them. Let them freeze.” It’s this kind of self satisfied, utter selfishness and arrogance that has soured me on this country.

Except that if food is not a right, then it’s just fine if some people use that freedom to starve others.

Frankly, if the powerful can starve entire populations to death, legally, then all other rights are meaningless.

65

In your first example, the government is taking action against you, which violates your rights in the first place…that’s why we give people legal counsel. The right to vote is just another aspect of giving people freedom…they have freedom to set up a representative government.

66

And who, I now ask, is denying you of a legal means of acquiring food? Is anyone in America being forbidden from getting what they need? There is a fundamental difference between “I have a right to do whatever I have to do to feed myself” and “I have a right to be fed”. I agree with the former, and disagree with the latter. To quote Heinlein -

Our government and society is opposed to letting people starve in the streets, and so makes it so that no one has to go hungry, but that’s not good enough for you - you have to insult anyone that doesn’t agree with you and demand that someone make you a nice batch of cookies.

If I can’t count on the gummit to protect me from bodily harm, why would I count on them to feed me?

Second, what the holy hell are you talking about with sides and mass starvation? Do you actually READ the posts you respond to? Sprechen sie Englisch? What, exactly, have you done to feed the hungry? I’ve listed the charitable organizations of which I’m an active member - Your turn.

Political tags - such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth - are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire.

67

Taken on its face, this is absurd, and I don’t blame anyone who, upon reading it, thinks you’re a nutcase. But there’s a sense in which you’ve got a good point.

I’m thinking of things like the feudal lords who prevent the peasants from hunting on their land, upon pain of death, when said peasants are starving and there isn’t anywhere else to hunt.

If we lived in a primitive idyllic society in which we could all get as much to eat as we needed, by going out and gathering nuts and berries or by cultivating our own little plot of land, you wouldn’t be entitled to take the nuts I’d gathered or the crops I’d grown; you could go get your own. But if I went out and gathered up all the nuts and berries for miles around, way more than I needed, and stored them in my storehouse and didn’t let you have any, you could say I was infringing on your rights. Or if I claimed all the farmable land for myself, so that you couldn’t grow enough to feed yourself and your family, I’d be denying you your rights.

In the more complicated society we actually do live in, there are inequities, some of which are the result of people having done the equivalent of what I described above. So in that sense, I think you have a point. But it’s not always obvious or easy to pin down who deserves the blame if someone’s starving.

68

Whether they deserve it or not, I have an inalienable right to feed the hungry, which government has no authority to abridge.

69

Or in the Bible, in the tale of the rich man and the beggar Lazarus. The rich man seems to be a greedy bastard and won’t give even a crumb of bread to poor starving Lazarus.

70

Hold on there, Sparky. I didn’t say that the people should die, or that nobody should rescue them, or that the government should be prohibited from rescuing them. That was you, just now.

I just don’t think those people have a right to arrogantly stand on a mountainside and whip out a cell phone and put a large-cost burden on society, along the lines of, “Oops, I made a bad decision, now everybody is required to pitch in and bail me out.” And then afterward, they walk away without making some kind of, I dunno, repayment? Restitution? Gesture of thanks?

I’m all for the search-and-rescue teams helping people down off the mountain. I think it’s an obligation of a caring society to care, collectively, about all the people in it. I insist that they get rescued, because I would want to be rescued.

But if I were so rescued, I would also consider myself obligated to help pay for it afterward; or to thank the rescuers and donate to their fund; or to join the search and rescue teams looking for the next guy, or something.

The climbers under discussion just want all that to be provided for them for the cost of their admission ticket.

Somebody else in the thread put it better: A right is something the government cannot take away, not something the government is required to give. Semantic argument, you say? Yes: but important, to me.

71

At first read, I thought that this post was crass and uncalled for. However, upon rereading, and the more I mull it over in my mind, I have to agree.

Food is a necessity for life. that much is true. And, all beings have the right and duty to pursue the needs to sustain their life; we respect and protect that as a right in this country. But that doesn’t mean you have a right to expect to succeed in that quest. A person has the right to choose any means that respect the rights of others to get that food, be it begging or working.

And I also agree on this point: while we may feel it unconscionable to allow people to starve, and while we may see it as a duty to decent society to ensure that those whose circumstances have destroyed their pursuit of happiness get the necessities they need to continue their pursuit, that doesn’t make it a right.

That said, what purpose does this law really serve, anyway? Isn’t the basis for this law a fallacy of composition?

72

You always have a right to exist as per your own efforts unless someone retricts you, as in a communist society. In the U.S. ig you are able-bodied and able-minded you are either too lazy or too dumb. In the case of the too dumb, you might not qualify as able-minded.

What are you talking about? If a lion kills you that’s the end of your existence and whatever rights you want to attach to it. And the atheist you are should agree with the idea that nature doesn’t give a shit about you. Your just food for future life. Your last sentence gets to the heart of what a right is. It is not somehting you have to do anything to enjoy. It is part of your being. It is inalienable. Inseperable from your existence.

Nonsense. If I got hunt and gather berries and nuts and am abouty to eat them and youwalk up and want some, yoiu are at my mercy. You have no right to my food, even if I have more than I can eat at one sitting. If you wanted food you should have gotten your lazy ass out of the cave and gone earned yourself some.

Do you realize that ever time someone has to be resued on a mountain that other people often have to put their lives at risk to do so? And that people have died doing so? And that many of these people are volunteers. The more reponsible people are the less they will put themselves, and others, at risk. The idea, “Oh, I know I don’t have the right clothes or know what the fuck I’m doing but let’s go climb that mountain and if something goes wrong we’ll just gets rescued.” gets people killed. Hikers and rescuers alike. The more responsible people are the less help that is needed and the more gladly it is offered when it is truly needed.

73

Without rebutting that argument, all you have stated is that some people under some circumstance have a right to food. I don’t agree with that assessment, but it simply doesn’t deomstrate that everyone has a right to food under all circumstances. Perhpas you’d like to try again.

I don’t thing anyone here has said that people don’t have a right to eat food.

Too much ad hominem and straw in that part to deal with. No one is advocating killing someone, no one is taking a “Social Darwinist” position, and no one is calling himself a “compasionate conservative”.

The argument that I could accept about a right to food in our society is that we outlaw suicide. Since people aren’t allowed to kill themselves, one might argue that that implies a right to food. But I think a more correct way to view that is that state reserves the right to force feed individuals who attempt to starve themselves to death. That, I believe, is significantly different than claiming there is a right to food.

74

May I direct you to Articles 22 and 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Article 22.
Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.

I would say food is indispensable to dignity.

Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

That covers feeding the homeless rather well.

75

Bobo, I often find that the fallacy in a position is exposed by a reductio ad absurdam – Jessie is such an example. And it doesn’t matter where she gets the food from – Medicaid, Food Stamps, state pension, her own investments, private gift, or whatever. What I did was demonstrate that there exists at least one individual who is entitled to food without being compelled to work for it. To toss another example, I know of a nine-year-old who was serially abandoned by his parents, who happens now to be in the custody of his former babysitter/next-door-neighbor, who asked to be named guardian when the boy’s mother left. (The guardian is one of the nicest ultraconservatives in both politics and religion I’ve ever met, and we have some fun friendly arguments on both topics – which is where I know about the boy.)

I am not arguing that the perfectly able, capable of supporting themselves and in a position to do so, are somehow entitled to have all their needs met because for some reason they are unwilling to be self-supporting. I am suggesting that there’s a pretty broad spectrum – and that none of us is able to make accurate offhand judgments on where someone fits on that spectrum without knowing details.

Let me invent Jack out of whole cloth. He’s pretty much a straw man, and I’ll admit that. But like Jessie (who is real), he’s another extreme case.

Jack is physically able to work, no doubt about it. But he lived 60-odd years ago, in one of those company towns. And Jack believed in fair pay for fair work, and as a result was active in trying to organize unionization of his coworkers, who were receiving below-living wage. And (this being a straw man situation) the company fired and blacklisted him. Jack is an only child, his mother is disabled and he lives with and supports and cares for her, and he ekes out a living doing odd jobs for those who will not get grief from the company for using him. He cannot afford to pack up his invalid mother and move somewhere where there are more and better jobs. What if anything is Jack entitled to?

We have no clue who these homeless people in a Florida city park are, what makes them homeless, what their innate abilities and limitations are, to what extent they can support themselves, etc. My own experience with homeless is that for every one person who is “standing on his rights,” there are at least ten who are there by force of circumstance, fucked over by a system that perversely refuses to notice they’re falling through the cracks, and more than willing to do what it takes to help themselves to the limited extent they can, just looking for help to close the gap between points A and B.

My suggestion would be that there is an inherent right not to suffer from starvation or malnutrition, coupled with a responsibility to make an effort to support oneself to the extent possible – and that the point at which these two concepts meet is one where people supply an awful lot of their own preconceptions.

76

If food is a right, under the meaning of the International Declaration of Human Rights article 25, then what are the limits to the realization of that right? How much effort does the person have to put forward to claim his right to food? Does someone who is able but unwilling to work have a right to food? If not, how can it be a ‘human right’?

77

He’s entitled, the US, to not be blacklisted. Of course, the US doesn’t have such comapny towns, so I don’t know if that’s relavent. But even in your scenario, Jack “ekes out a living”, so it does not appear that he’s starving.

Emphasis added. That’s a mighty hefty claim, and you should be able to produce some hard evidence to support it. My experience (from having read extensively about this) is about 50% have substance abuse problems. If they are “more than willing to do what it takes”, the first thing it takes is to kick the habit. That’s the first step, and until I see them take that first step, I can’t see how you can support the thesis that they are “more than willing…”

Good point. I would add that the number of people who are not in a position to supply themselves with food in the US is a tiny fraction of the population-- probably less than 1%. (I exclude children from that equation because, as I agreed earlier, dependent children should have a right to food.)

78

The reason that the US doesn’t have company towns anymore is because workers realized it is not in their best interests. Once you let one company control not only your employment but also your living arrangements, you have pretty much lost your freedom. This is why freedom is the most essential right of all…it puts the power in the hands of the individual and takes it out of the hands of business or the government. If workers have the option to get a job somewhere else, then they control their own destiny. And John Mace has an excellent point…even if people do have the right not to starve to death, living at a subsistance level is not starving to death.

I think you are probably in the right ballpark there, and thank God in this country we have enough resources and the ability to distribute those resources, so that it is never necessary for anyone to starve to death. I certainly have to agree with the posters who say that we are obligated to help those who cannot help themselves. However, I still hesitate to call it a “right.” A right is something that must be accorded to all people equally, and as mentioned before, it requires a society that is able to fulfill that right. Because of this, I don’t think it is logically possible to consider food a right.

79

I’m sorry, are there some fucking assholes here arguing that people don’t have the right to eat and be fed? Are there some people here so enormously divorced from their humanity that they think it is valid to allow themselves to get bogged down with semantics on this issue?

Why am I surprised?

What was that I said about the Fear? Right. You fucking people are turning me religious again. God may be irrational, but at least he doesn’t defend the CRIMINILZATION OF FEEDING THE HUNGRY.

I hope some of you wake up ashamed someday.

80

sigh I guess this is what comes of trying to have a rational discussion in The Pit.

I don’t want to speak for everyone; maybe some of us are fucking assholes. But I, and I suspect most of us, believe the hungry ought to be fed and aren’t saying otherwise.

We are, however, discussing the nature of rights and what makes something a “right.” Some of us are thinking of rights as things that people have automatically unless someone takes them away. (How does it go: “…endowed by their Creator…”?) And in this view, honoring people’s “right to eat” just means making sure nobody prevents them from eating; it doesn’t involve actually feeding them.