Re:Worst Roommate Ever
by logfromblammo on Friday February 23, 2018 @11:15AM
(#16447208)
I would phrase it more as "a human has the right to access any resources necessary to continue existing".
That includes having a place to be, and the means to acquire food, water, and medical treatment. At minimum, this would be in the form of subsistence farming, including medicinal crops. One person has the exclusive right to enough land surface area to meet all their own needs, the exact number depending on the local environmental factors.
When it is more advantageous to society at large to exclude would-be subsistence farmers from access to vital resources, it creates a duty for them to replace the products that the person would otherwise create from them. With economic specialization, this should be trivial. A thousand subsistence farms may be replaced by one industrial farm that can feed tens of thousands. It stands to reason that the industrial farmer should feed those prevented by law from farming for themselves, because if that person does not, the thousand will burn the law and take the land by force to feed themselves, and people elsewhere may starve. In the interest of preserving the benefit of economic specialization, which allows billions more of us to exist than the planet would otherwise support, those who benefit from owning property should share enough of that benefit with those who do not that they are not forced to rebel against property itself in order to survive.
The more specialized society becomes, the more critical it is that transfer of "unearned" benefits take place. Those benefits are the price that the winners must pay to the losers, for continuing to play by the rules of the game instead of cheating at it, or flipping over the game table and stomping on all the pieces.
That includes having a place to be, and the means to acquire food, water, and medical treatment. At minimum, this would be in the form of subsistence farming, including medicinal crops. One person has the exclusive right to enough land surface area to meet all their own needs, the exact number depending on the local environmental factors.
When it is more advantageous to society at large to exclude would-be subsistence farmers from access to vital resources, it creates a duty for them to replace the products that the person would otherwise create from them. With economic specialization, this should be trivial. A thousand subsistence farms may be replaced by one industrial farm that can feed tens of thousands. It stands to reason that the industrial farmer should feed those prevented by law from farming for themselves, because if that person does not, the thousand will burn the law and take the land by force to feed themselves, and people elsewhere may starve. In the interest of preserving the benefit of economic specialization, which allows billions more of us to exist than the planet would otherwise support, those who benefit from owning property should share enough of that benefit with those who do not that they are not forced to rebel against property itself in order to survive.
The more specialized society becomes, the more critical it is that transfer of "unearned" benefits take place. Those benefits are the price that the winners must pay to the losers, for continuing to play by the rules of the game instead of cheating at it, or flipping over the game table and stomping on all the pieces.