Only a Communist would say that humans need water.

Wow, this is the first mean thing i've ever heard of a Canadian do. And on such a grand scale too, I'm shocked.

Maybe it doesn't count as a right in Canada unless it involves ice and sticks and fighting?

Meh, old news. But still.

I don't understand how access to a product constitutes a human right. could not a right to water subsequently entail "rights" to health care, a house, etc

Tell me how you can live without access to water and then pretend that you support a right to life in any meaningful sense. And who "produces" water, again?

This is old news. I was momentarily confused as to why the article stated the Liberal Party's position, (ie, the position of the third party), and failed to state the NDP position on the matter (ie, the official opposition) but then I saw the article was from '08. Still curious about the NDP position though.

Yeah I realized it was old as soon as I posted it. Oh well. The UN passed the resolution last year.

Very old news, but I can understand it. Access to water is a need, but if it were taken as a right, then that would mean anyone selling water would be guilty of selling rights. Therefore, any economic device based on the sale of water would be destroyed.
Take a look at water rights as they're written up in different states of the US. There is no "right" to water, but you have rights to water.
I hope that made sense.

Tell me how supporting a "right" to water actually helps anything? What is supposed to happen to insure this "right" is fulfilled? But more fundamentally, does establishing a particular right to a particular product then mean it becomes ethical to co-opt another's property right to ensure this "right" to water? Isn't it possible that the institution of a human right destroys individual liberty by superseding the right to property?

That's conservatism for you, more concerned about protecting golf courses and swimming pools than the 2.6 billion people in the world who lack access to sanitation or the 1.5 million children who die each year from water & sanitation related diseases (more than AIDS and malaria combined). If callous disregard for human life, if despicable greed were a sport, then the right would win gold medals.

The resolution works by providing a means by which people deprived of clean and safe water & sanitation can hold their government to account, as it is legally binding.

@Putin33 Thanks for the daily dose of class warfare garbage. Is "greed" earning your own money through your own hard work, and wishing you could keep what you rightfully owned? And just because one doesn't support redistributive and socialistic policies doesn't mean they are disregarding human life. There is an ethical and moral right to ensure that those around the world in need are provided assistance, but if you can give me an ethical argument in which one can forcibly redistribute one's property for the benefit of another, I'd like to hear it.

By "hard work" I assume you meaning leeching off the workers who actually produce stuff. Or by sitting around making money off of interest and dividends. The people who work for a living get paid a pittance, while the owners of the world do nothing of value. It is indeed class warfare, a war the rich have been waging against the rest of us mercilessly, especially recently.

Your "property" is stolen from the backs of those who you pay to do your work for you. It is not yours. And water sure as hell isn't your "property", neither is the land that you stole. None of these resources are the result of the "hard work" of the rich. You don't have the right to hoard precious resources while billions suffer and millions die.

If that's your only view of conservatism, then I'm sorry you haven't had proper exposure to conservatism. Now, I won't argue that many on the right do worry more about business than anything else, I just don't like such broad statements. I mean, churches across America and the world for that matter fund projects such as the drilling of wells in Sub-saharan Africa, buying sheep or other farm animals for villagers, raising money for UNICEF, etc.

I'm on your side here, but I just don't like the sweeping judgement that the right is evil businessmen.

^^meant at Putin

@jpgredsox - That argument would only be valid in the case that unlimited resources existed and one could show a consistent relationship between hard work and wealth, that did not involve coercion or appropriation of resources from the less fortunate. Please tell me you're not so naive as to believe that this is actually the case.

Your anger is making you incoherent and making you spew hatred. Ask yourself who the true "leechers" are: the "rich" who in your world apparently do nothing but live off the labor of workers, or the government and government subsidized entities, whether they be corporations or individuals, that in the real world live off the stolen property of not just the rich, but all middle-class taxpayers. More fundamentally, it seems you believe that "the rest of us" can do the work that the successful people in this world can do, when in actuality it is not labor that makes industries successful, but rather a man's mind. A construction worker couldn't possibly be a CEO because he is simply not intelligent enough, which is why he is a construction worker. Should we punish the more intelligent who grace the world with the fruits of their mind? Should we punish Steve Jobs, or Bill Gates, should we have punished Edison? All these men developed world-benefiting technologies.

also putin, take for example a farmer that works his own land. He happens to live near a river, so he self irrigates, and uses a modest amount of water. He grows enough crops to sell the excess to people who don't grow crops, but provide some other service, be it education for his children, or development of technology, or whatever. Do you begrudge either of them for producing something the other cannot or will not, and for striking a bargain in which both gain what they want?
Now, say that a new year comes around, and the farmer needs help with his farm. So he hires someone to assist him in the work. Now, because the new person is simply assisting, is it right for him to expect a 50-50 share of the profits of the work? No. He didn't work it in the past, and he didn't make a contribution of any kind to the work on the land before he assists the farmer. Perhaps the farmer is actually doing him a favor, offering him a means to feed his family without having to live close enough to the river to have his own farm. Is it really wrong for the farmer to benefit from doing that? Do you really think that anything extra that our farmer in this scenario doesn't need at that moment, should be free to anyone else who may need it? And who should be the one to decide who gets what and how much of it? I hold to the idea that no one should have that power. Just take a look at the failed socialists and communists of the past and you can see the same pattern time and time again.

Sorry if I'm rambling on now.

1. How much socialist literature have either of you, jpredsox and Warden Dresden, read?
2. Stalinism (or Marxist-Leninism) isn't the only socialist school of thought (despite what we are told).

Yes, it is right for him to share 50% of the profits. The farmhand produces and gets paid for a fraction of the work he has done, the farmer makes the profit from the unpaid labour the farm hand has done.

Should the construction worker be punished because he not as smart (maybe only in business acumen), should he be exploited for that? What if he has natural talent, but unfortunately he wasn't able to afford a decent education?Was Edison rich? Did he Own factories and business, did he hire workers to make his products and then sell them for a profit?

Was Edison rich? Yes! Did he have workers that didn't share fully in the profits of his inventions? Yes! I fail completely to see your point with him

I had no idea, I know very little about Edison. As he was a businessman, then yes, he should be 'punished' (what ever you mean by that).

Well if you knew anything about Edison at all you'd know his real talent lay in plagiarism and in taking advantage of other people's work.

Do you really honestly believe that Bill Gates is necessarily smarter than any/all construction workers?

Intelligence? It didn't take 'intelligence' to rip off the design of another product and produce a crappier version of it at a cheaper price. Bill Gates didn't develop a single thing, and the world hasn't "benefited" from his buggy operating system that he forced people to buy with bundling and unfair monopolistic practices. He didn't develop the personal computer, he didn't develop the GUI, he didn't develop the mouse, he didn't develop squat. He ripped it off, lied to his business partners about ripping it off, and then made billions because he happened to allied with the largest PC developers in the world because he lied to them about having developed DOS. Bill Gates is a grade-A pirate, liar, thief, and con-artist. He's also conning the world right now to thinking he's some kind of humanitarian and philantropist, and deceives people into thinking his "foundation" is anything but an investment scheme. He invests most of his foundation's money into a veritable who's who of the worst of the worst in terms of corporate business practices, including tobacco companies.

Steve Jobs is another classic example. His company ripped off a design for a GUI that was developed by low level engineers at Xerox, whose company executives were too stupid to realize had a goldmine in their pocket. That's the "intelligence" of CEOs for you.

Edison died broke because the genius (who notoriously ripped off Tesla and then tried to trash the latter's reputation at every turn, the latter being one of the geniuses of the modern era and far more intelligent and humane man than Edison) invested in bad real estate deals. These are the capitalist heroes whose boots we're supposed to lick? Better think of better examples than these three con-artists.

So Gates isn't a philanthropist? The man who has pledged to give his entire fortune away (essentially) when he dies isn't a philanthropist? Please tell me then, who is?

I still don't see where the farmer has to pay the man he hired 50%. Its the farmer's land, the farmer's tools. The worker is replaceable, the farmer is not. I'm sure other people would like to work for him too. That creates a higher supply of workers, thus he should be paid a lower wage due to simple supply and demand. I think JPMorgan's standard of the boss being paid no more than 20x his lowest worker's salary is something in the middle we can all agree on, right? Not a 50-50 split, but better than what's in the world now.

Lets say though even that the construction worker is just as smart as the CEO, the CEO paid money to go to school, get an MBA, work his way up the company, and earn the trust of the Board of Directors. Why shouldn't he be compensated more? Its not about punishing the lower level workers, its about rewarding the people who clawed their way to the top. I mean, to be CEO you have to be knowledgeable about EVERY aspect of your business, while a construction worker has a very limited focus area.

Here's a summary of many many examples of the Gates Foundation's dubious practices.

http://techrights.org/2010/09/08/gates-foundation-activities-explained/

As for a better capitalist, how about Walt Disney? I'm sure you'll turn up something bad about him though. Other ones, how about Henry Ford?

"A lot of people also know that Coca-Cola murders union organisers."

I read that and stopped there, I'm sorry. That website is trying to say that giving an NGO that promotes clean water $5 million is a bad thing, and privatizing agriculture in Africa (which will increase efficiency and production in an area that goes through frequent famine) is an evil scheme.

I think you're missing the point that the foundation's money isn't his, and he's giving away his billions when he dies.

Disney was a spy for HUAC, anti-semite and union buster while Ford was an avowed Nazi sympathizer.

Are you suggesting that Coca-cola does not murder union organizers?

What's wrong with being a union buster? Unions are killing this country, as evidenced by the difficulty state and local governments are having keeping a balanced budget right now.

Are you suggesting you actually believe half of that crap? Propaganda goes both ways. Don't be overly-critical or overly accepting of information just because you agree or disagree. Now, maybe Coca-Cola does murder union organizers, but until I see a police report and a trial, I'm not going to believe it just because its on the internet. Come on now, you don't expect me to believe secondary (or in this case tertiary) resources as soon as I see them? I'm going to bed, but I look forward to reading your response in the morning

Another publicity stunt to deflect attention away from his work privatizing Africa and making millions for horrible inhumane corporations. Every act of "charity" is coldly calculated and his pays off the media to give him excellent PR. He does an anti-tobacco campaign while investing in big tobacco. He does a "clean water" campaign while investing in the biggest opponents of clean water. He does a "end hunger" campaign while investing in banks which are driving up the price of food

http://techrights.org/2010/09/07/banking-interests-in-africa/

"What's wrong with being a union buster?"

I'm done with you.

"the CEO paid money to go to school"
No, his parents did. This is the only reason I oppose capitalism actually. Because some people start off with a disadvantage because their parents were a bunch of lazy turds. (or their parents were lazy and so on). Assuming everyone started with equal resources, I would be fine with people exploiting each other as much as they want. But that's not the case. Some people are born into this world with no chance of being a CEO, while others have everything set up for them.

So. let me just get this straight, Putin. You really believe, that it is wrong for a person to profit for supplying a need to others? And that such supply should be given freely simply for the good of said others?
I'm sorry, but that's a utopian idea and simply irrational in our world. It isn't practical in any way whatsoever.

What is a "human right"? That concept has never made sense to me.

Walt Disney notoriously jumped onto stories the moment they became public domain. In the case of the Jungle Book, he had so much of it ready to go the minute it became public domain that it's clear that he claim jumped at least a little. With Peter Pan, he tried to get out of paying royalties to the rights holder...which was an orphanage.

"Because some people start off with a disadvantage because their parents were a bunch of lazy turds. (or their parents were lazy and so on). "

Tying it to laziness is an easy way to make a person and/or their ancestors culpable for everything...what if their ancestors (or them personally) were discriminated against or various other ways that society can hold someone down through no fault of their own? I mean, there's no doubt that slaves worked very very hard, harder than anyone today could imagine. But once they were free, they ended up in positions where they got only slightly more compensation than they had before, and it was difficult to rise up out of that position, even generationally.

I would say that some of the poorest people in the country are very hard workers. And their children are likely to also be hard working poor people.

the concept of a human right is pretty simple.

We declare that certain things are universal rights of all humans, and then complain when others who didn't agree in the first place violate those rights.

things like :"Article 10: Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him."

This gives a standard to which we can hold others accountable.

If nation-states sign up to these ideas then breach of them can be held accountable under international law...

and yes education is a right: "Article 26: Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory."

@orath

Yeah, I understand how it works in the real world, it just seems like a "right" implies a moral absolute, of which there are none. Whenever I hear someone say they have the "right" I think "no you don't, you can only hope that other people are OK with you doing that thing."

i think the point is these 'rights' are minimal standard of living which should be upheld if possible.

And that it is inherently immoral to withhold these rights from a human (and there are those who would extend a lot of these rights to other apes) I do not think that they are claiming these rights are absolute, just immoral by cultural standards which we live in today.