I occasionally hear people talk about housing and food as basic human rights, but there are some philosophical complications with this, not the least being the fact that we live in a world of specialization and that self sufficiency is largely impossible without some prior investment. The entire concept of human rights is complicated, but it’s far easier to say that certain things should never be done to you than it is to say that certain things should always be done for you.
The problem with modern state-level societies is that most people specialize in order to earn an income. This increases the productivity of the society, but it doesn’t necessarily help the individual if they are so specialized they have to outsource everything that doesn’t fall into their realm of specialization. A tax attorney might earn lots of money from his specialization, but consequently may have no clue how to work on his car or fix a leaky faucet, and so outsources this labor accordingly. And this works out well if the specialization commands a high income, but it becomes much more difficult if the specialization commands a very low income.
Most people are not growing their own food, and those who do are very rarely growing or raising all of it. When people say that food is a human right, they are not saying that everybody should have access to grow their own food, but that the food is somehow owed to people, and I think this is problematic because it makes somebody else’s labor specialization requisite. Philosophically speaking, that is like mandatory slavery. However, it would appear to be possible to provide something, judging from the sheer productive capacity of most societies, but it’s still unclear how this is a human right, although it might possibly be considered a noble goal.
Moreover, people do not choose foods based on subsistence capacity, they choose foods they like. I occasionally see some internet meme talking about the hungry and poor, but the statistics seem always to ignore levels of obesity in the United States, which would otherwise suggest that very few people are actually going hungry. Healthy food can be extremely cheap, too. Oats, rice, potatoes, and flour are very cheap, and even some meats are not very expensive, either (certainly not expensive compared to the cost of soda and energy drinks, for example). Canned vegetables are pretty cheap, last time I checked, as well as fruits like apples and bananas. But these foods do often need to be prepared, so I guess you need to have some free time.
Suppose society has the productive capacity to afford cheap $1 loafs of bread for the hungry. Cool. But what happens when people simply don’t want this bread? Or HFCS gives them heartburn (as it does to me)? What does society “owe” people in this respect? Healthier foods? Expensive organic foods? If we want to argue it is a human right, what are we arguing for, specifically?
And this applies to housing, too. Some people say that housing is a human right, therefore everybody should have it. But does society have the productive capacity to build houses for everyone? Probably not. What about soviet-style apartment buildings? Maybe. And I’m serious, too. Maybe. But we already have public housing in what are often called “the projects”, and most people don’t want to live there. Does society owe you a ritzy apartment in Highlands Ranch? Or does an apartment at Five Points count? Does society owe you a place in San Francisco? Or is Garden City, Kansas sufficient?
Who’s going to maintain those houses, or apartment complexes? How much productive capacity does that require? What is the cost of paying people to specialize in that, in order to “ensure” the “human right” of housing?
Sometimes I feel like telling the whiniest of liberals to piss off, but I also don’t think the answer is to say that society shouldn’t try anything.
For example, when it comes to worker’s right, just imagine for a moment that 90% of all jobs suck and the working conditions are terrible, but the other 10% are actually quite nice. I don’t think it makes sense to tell the people in the 90% that they should just work harder, and their goal should be to aim for a nice job in the 10% [something I mistakenly used to believe before I thought of it like this], because it would be statistically impossible for even a majority to secure a quality job under those conditions. That might actually make sense if the numbers were reversed, and only 10% of jobs sucked, so the goal should be to get out of those, but what this illustrates is that the general quality of jobs and the rights that workers experience is actually something of a public concern because the aggregate quality of jobs affects all or most of society.
But these issues are very complicated.
One of the great conundrums with housing is that the default option is homelessness, but homelessness is effectively outlawed. In other words, the default option is illegal, so there’s no true recourse. And that sucks, because societies are somewhat arbitrary in the grand scheme of things, and not all people are naturally well-adjusted to how society operates. I was good at sitting down, shutting the hell up, reading my books, and writing my papers, so I did well in school, but not everybody has that constitution, nor “should” they. For all intents and purposes, society constructs behavior, and this works well if you can adapt to it, but not everybody does or can. Our range of housing options, as well as our range of foods, are actually quite limited. But this is why I get excited learning ways to think outside the box and apply systems strategically.
I’m opening to hearing people’s ideas on what society can do better, but I quickly lose interest when people just complain about things and revert to “Socialism”, whatever they actually mean by that, as if that will solve all of the world’s problems. It’s not that easy. And, in my opinion, if your apartment is a filthy mess, society certainly doesn’t owe you a place to live that you aren’t going to take care. And a lot of people fall in that category.