A right to water?
Posted by xthinker88 8 years, 10 months ago to News
So this is a popular meme going around facebook now. One of my friends posted it in agreement that nestle should be embargoed. We have been having the following "discussion":
Me: They don't [have a right to water]. He is absolutely right. It is impossible to have a right to anything that requires the effort of other humans to provide unless that effort is purchased by trade.
You have the right to the water that falls from the sky onto your face or your property. If it takes other people to get the water, and make it clean, and provide it for you, you have no right unless you pay for it or they choose to give it to you as a charity case (in which case you still have no right to it). They are not your slaves.
FB friend: I'm pretty sure this pertains to the drought in CA and what Nestle is doing out there, Mark. Also, some states do not allow people to collect rain water for personal us.
Me: What is nestle doing out there? Expecting pay for the effort and intelligence that goes into the water that they provide? They should.
Nobody has a right to water. They don't have a right to the labor and intelligence and capital it takes to dig wells, to pump water, to lay pipes, to treat water and store it, and to deliver it to your door. They do not have the right to enslave the people that do these things. Which is what "a right to water" means. The right to enslave all those who get the clean water to your house for those who have the "right".
California should pay out the wazoo for its dumb ass policies. Eventually reality cannot be avoided. CA has been taking more that its agreed share of the Colorado River for decades to water the desert - which is what most of Southern California is. Now it's coming back to bite them. They've allowed millions of immigration criminals to be welcome in their state. Now governor Brown complains about population. They've done everything possible to make energy production in their state as expensive as possible. Now that they need desalinization they cannot afford it because energy is the main cost of those processes.
They are paying for their stupidity, their progressive policies, and their denial of reality. Tough.
If nestle can figure out a way to profit from this mess - good for them.
Me: They don't [have a right to water]. He is absolutely right. It is impossible to have a right to anything that requires the effort of other humans to provide unless that effort is purchased by trade.
You have the right to the water that falls from the sky onto your face or your property. If it takes other people to get the water, and make it clean, and provide it for you, you have no right unless you pay for it or they choose to give it to you as a charity case (in which case you still have no right to it). They are not your slaves.
FB friend: I'm pretty sure this pertains to the drought in CA and what Nestle is doing out there, Mark. Also, some states do not allow people to collect rain water for personal us.
Me: What is nestle doing out there? Expecting pay for the effort and intelligence that goes into the water that they provide? They should.
Nobody has a right to water. They don't have a right to the labor and intelligence and capital it takes to dig wells, to pump water, to lay pipes, to treat water and store it, and to deliver it to your door. They do not have the right to enslave the people that do these things. Which is what "a right to water" means. The right to enslave all those who get the clean water to your house for those who have the "right".
California should pay out the wazoo for its dumb ass policies. Eventually reality cannot be avoided. CA has been taking more that its agreed share of the Colorado River for decades to water the desert - which is what most of Southern California is. Now it's coming back to bite them. They've allowed millions of immigration criminals to be welcome in their state. Now governor Brown complains about population. They've done everything possible to make energy production in their state as expensive as possible. Now that they need desalinization they cannot afford it because energy is the main cost of those processes.
They are paying for their stupidity, their progressive policies, and their denial of reality. Tough.
If nestle can figure out a way to profit from this mess - good for them.
Periodical deep droughts are a feature of CA climate, lack of preparation and investment, accompanied by careless overexploitation of limited resources is the mark of people having never had to think ahead, elected by other likeminded people.
At the end, all they get is more sand and no water, plus nobody where producers once used to work, but were chased away by collectivist legislation.
California is a good illustration of the decay of a great civilization once looters are put in a position of power.
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This goes back to the important distinction between negative rights and positive rights. I recently heard these referred to "liberty rights" and "benefit rights." We have a right to the pursuit of happiness (and water), but not a right to the provision of it.
Maybe instead they should just become all the more certain that they can produce enough value to survive.
They are paying for their stupidity, their progressive policies, and their denial of reality. Tough."
Sounds just like Atlas Shrugged!!!!!!
Nailed the fb person to the wall.
http://www.downsizinggovernment.org/water-west-its-complicated
That said, Objectivists have room to debate a workable theory of rights to water sources one finds in the wild--rivers, lakes, and the mega-wells we call "aquifers." And, of course, desalination projects. Which, by the way, they were talking about in the early Sixties. I used to see the PSA's for "desalting the waters of the sea" when I was five or six years old.
Jan
Jan
Jan
If a whole population should be called to answer for the acts of "their" politicians, then responsibility no longer matters and everything Rand wrote is wrong. I prefer to believe that you're the one who's wrong.
As far as water rights, where they exist (in property law) they are derived from who got there first, just like land ownership. If you don't respect such titles because they weren't "earned", then please explain how you would determine the control of resources like those, which were not produced by man.
The former Governor of California repudiating the electric bill that suddenly showed up as rate increases for the citizens of Oregon, Washington etc. TANSTAAFL. Someone always pays. Why not those responsible? I have no moral conflict with that. Especially given the waste. 300 gallons a day per individual? Why should my kids go without to fill your swimming pools? Suck it up you got what you asked for.
On the other hand I'd exempt the northern counties and set them free to joint he State of Jefferson. they are pretty good people and don't end every sentence with a question mark?
which was stupid in the 40s and is wrong, now. -- j
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The viro collectivists are trying to turn it into entitlement of results as part of their assault on property rights. Legislation periodically turns up for government control over private wells, with a large hysterical emphasis attacking Nestle and other bottled water companies in addition to small private wells. This is not new with the current mess in CA.
The anti-private property rights campaign against water is especially prevalent in the eco-socialism in the Catholic Church's alliance with the viros as expressed in the Pope's recent encyclical "On Care for Our Common Home". That document calling for asceticism and ecological worship of "God's Creation", while explicitly attacking private property rights and individualism, is much broader in scope and deeper philosophically than is indicated in the superficial commentary characterizing it as only part of the global warming climate hysteria campaign.
On water in particular it hammers over and over on entitlements to water and demands that water from areas of the planet with plenty of water, where it is claimed that water is "wasted", be provided to dryer regions as a matter of eco fairness.
That does not include filling swimming pools and watering lawns.
There is a second catch. If you move from a water rich area to a water poor area do gain or lose the right to water. And let's say you gain. Assume the affected area, for ease of math, has 10,300,000 people and enough water for 300,000. 10,000,000 move in.Note: The same applies to any species. Fine! Now go google how much water is pumped into LA and Orange and Riverside County daily. The figures are buried in spray and mirrors system worthy of thhe US Congress but 131 gallons per day per capita imported was suggested in a few places. Now they want more. Endangered species in the northern counties , Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and the Columbia river be damned - especially humans.
As far as paying for it? They haven't paid their electrical bill to the other states yet!
There is no such thing as a natural positive right. All rights are negative and reference basically being left alone. Rights TO things are actually thinly veiled claims that you have a right to another's life.
Thanks xthinker for your thread. Well said.
Our property has an artesian well and pump house. The State had us put meters on so they could measure ground water. Then they talked of adding fees. We had a second one in the basement back behind the base of the smokehouse operation which was the base of the fireplace and wood stove at ground floor level. The pump, actually just a series of pipes and valve was back behind the canned, bottled, jarred and whatever food storage shelves. Normal life back then. Hunting was anywhere outside the door. What we killed we ate. One useful skill was butchering. And so it went. Colorado is a good choice. Also Western Montana, Wyoming and parts of Nevada. for Oregon you have to bring your own money. It's Appalachia west and exports more high school seniors than any other crop Northern California much the same but then - it's California. There is hope! The State of Jefferson movement has been revived.
If someone has a link to something about what/how nestle is involved, that would be helpful to me for filling in the knowledge gap.