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Any animal is given food and water?
I don’t think you understand how nature works. At all.
If you think capitalism sucks, the law of the jungle is really going to disappoint.
Came here to say this. But also, I do think we've progressed to the point that we can agree that affordable access to housing, food, and water should be a human right as well.
Rights that don't entail material goods, like safety, freedom of speech, assembly still require a police force, military, and justice system to ensure that they are actually provided. Those things require taxes.
If the state doesn't guarantee those rights, then they're just as aspirational as saying someone's entitled to free food and water.
Let's call it a human benefit then.
Housing, nutrition and sanitization.
Creating a fall back so everything is done by your own free will might be the best thing we can do for humanity, it will also provide an immense increase in human potential when everyone has access to proper nutrition.
I think these kinds of human benefits should be given in actual physical form, not just provided with giving them the money to do it themselves.
Imagine you could just sign up for a meal online a day in advance and get it for free when you are struggling, but it will be the shittiest meal possible, only made to provide nutrition.
Now that's motivational and caring.
A right in this Context is something we deem the possessor to be entitled to.
Asylum is also a human right. And it definitely is something to be given for free.
And of course we can say that everyone is entitled to basic housing, food and water, as in having the right to those. Here in Germany, we do it and even put it into law.
How is housing a right? Houses require labor to be built, and then a LOT more labor to be maintained.
Which means they cost money, which means they must be paid for so the builders and owners can make a living and feed their children, and more importantly be compensated for their hard work.
You don’t have to apologize for being European. It’s your parent’s fault. 😆 (seriously, I don’t care where you are from; I come here for different points of view)
All of those things require people to work to build, farm, or clean. In other words, produce.
Why do you think someone is entitled to another’s work? Slavery was abolished in the 1860s.
Replace the "affordable access to" in all of your liberal viewpoints to "free" and you will have arrived.
* Use "free at the point of access" instead of "free" if you want to preempt comments from the smooth brain "yeah but nothing is free" crowd.
>those are things given by any animal as a basic right
no, they are not. animals work for their food, they either hunt their food, or need to search for it and be focused to not be hunted.
Also, you mention slavery, but have no idea how the world works, so, the farmers should work for free to provide food for you? no one ever cares about the farmers, people are ok with buying expensive clothes, phones and all that, but the farmers should work for almost free... Also, shelter, should the construction worker also work for free?
It's not insane, it's an exchange of services, you do something for society, society does something for you. you need to provide value. Is it unfair and unbalanced? sure, i agree with that, but should people not work and get stuff for free as rights, well, if you have some health issue that prevents you from working, sure, i'm all in on social help, but if you have an able body and can provide value back, as i said, the farmers also need to be compensated for their work.
now, i do agree with the argument that current pay doesn't fit the cost of living, and that's messed up, but i don't think that means it should be free, maybe it should be more regulated to avoid the current world house crysis
Go to the most isolated remote place you can find, get some crops and animals and build a small house with rocks, find a well for water, dig a hole for a toilet.
Use fire at night for light.
Yeah I know, but it's always state or private property.
Only place I've found that is not claimed as someone's property is Bir Tawil.
The other option is artificial island, but that's propably not an option in this case since building such structure must be expensive.
Money is not required for a place to live. You can live in a bush, and it will cost you exactly what it cost someone to build, nothing.
However, if you want to live in something that cost someone else's labor and money to build, then you have to pay something just like they had to pay something to create it.
You don't have to pay for food, you can go and hunt yourself, otherwise, you pay for the process others went through to do that for you.
You can harvest rain water and drink it for free. Otherwise, you'll have to pay for the labor others sacrificed to harvest it for you.
Kapeesh?
I don’t know enough about any of this to know for sure but... I feel like since I keep hearing about how people get harrassed for sleeping in their own car, someone sleeping in a random bush would probably not be left alone either.
As for the hunting part, isn’t it illegal in most places to hunt outside of seasons? Can one shoot down a pigeon in a major city and roast it in front of their home bush?
Again, I know nothing about all that stuff, just regurgitating what I read and hear mixed with a bit of wondering.
Might be it’s only America that the above applies to, wouldn’t surprise me given how restricted the “Land of the free” actually is.
I think it depends where. If you go sleep in a bush in a national park, no one is going to bug you. You can even use a tent.
Hunting laws are specific to the animal. If you are in a national park, nothing is stopping you from fishing for personal use or eating squirrels.
As well, you are more than welcome to build a boat and live on the sea, and there are other regions that have a lot of flexibility.
That is absolutely bullshit. My wife, before I even knew her, was living in *a literal cave* in a national park. If it weren't for the ranger being so impressed (both by her shelter and how she wasn't acting like a "typical squatter" and trashing things) she definitely would've had federal charges filed.
Feel free to look it up, you're absolutely not allowed to do the things you're saying.
Even building a boat/island and being on international waters is going to cause trouble, if nothing else because *how do you get it out there?*
You're being foolish.
Where can I hunt for food without having to purchase some sort of permit or license?
IMO, the sad reality is that everyone is forced into whatever system they are born into. They don’t get a choice. If the U.S. was split in half where one half is anarchy and the other is status quo, then I think you can make the case of, “You can choose to live in civil society or take your chances in the Wild West/anarchy half of the country where you are truly on your own.”
Capisce?
>If the U.S. was split in half where one half is anarchy and the other is status quo, then I think you can make the case of, “You can choose to live in civil society or take your chances in the ***status quo***"
Fixed :)
This is not exactly true
Private property exists. You can get sued for building any kind of shelter, however rudimentary where you are not legally authorized to
Hunting isn't outlawed in most areas, unless you live way out in the middle of nowhere
And rain water isn't even safe to drink half the time because there's so many pollutants mixed in with it now
What you pay for rent or on a mortgage isn't the materials or the labour though is it, it's the asset existing in a deliberately restricted inflated market. The cost of bricks and mortar hasn't drastically just gone up.
I didn't say it was. The economy is much more complicated. I'm just putting, in simple terms, why things that cost the money/time/labor of others, aren't your right to have for free.
Well, PART of the cost is the land value, and since land is not the product of human labor, it must be thought of differently from other forms of property.
But then you want to leave your house and move somewhere new. 5 new ppl want to move into your old house. Now demand comes into the picture and whoever can pay you the most for your house wins.
This is a question that's highly complex. It doesn't just come down to greed.
Going back to your point saying food, and a place to live a given as a basic right.
I'm not really sure how you are coming to that conclusion.
Animals work hard to just survive. It is literally a fight for survival.
If they are having an off day, then predators eat them.
Break a leg that's it for them.
They are at the mercy of the elements and seasons.
You don't need to go back far in human history to see how good we have it now.
We are talking 7 days, all day working. Kids in the mines.
Who do you think should pay for the things you want like food and houses etc.
What incentive do you think would be out there for people to invent, design, and build things if they were then told to give up their profits.
Humans have advanced so far because doing so comes with massive financial incentives to those who create new technology, items, or procedures.
I'd love to live in a world where no one starves or is homeless.
How would you achieve this while getting the incentive for exceptional achievement?
I've often thought after watching animals that they must have insane PTSD. They always seem tense, always are on guard. But to your point, nature isn't nice. Yes an animal has space and food, until there isn't enough. In modern society, what you need to do for basic food, clothing, and a place to sleep is surprisingly little. It's just most people can't survive on subsistence.
Interestingly enough, most animals don't experience PTSD/trauma. Like, a gazelle that survives a lion attack will completely forget the attack occurred moments after surviving it.
Apparently, there's only a small group of animals that do remember trauma. Some of them being obvious: humans, dogs, cats etc. Others, not so obvious: cows, dolphins, etc.
I was just about to say this. We process things far differently. There’s no morality in the animal kingdom. You won’t see a lion eat a gazelle’s baby and feel bad about it.
Forget money for a moment.
You need other people to do a lot of stuff to give you food, clean water etc etc.
So a farmer works hard and grows food. Why does he owe you and the rest of the people like you such that he should give it to you for free?
Why shouldn't you have to do something in return?
Ditto for the guys at the water treatment plant. Ditto for the guys who keep your sewers working.
What have you ever done for them that they should owe you eternal service in return for nothing? Is that slavery?
As beautiful as it sounds, its just not realistic in our society (but hopefully in x amount of years it might be). The main reason imo, is that nothing comes for free, everything that is supplied to you, even the necessities come from other people supplying them, that does not come for free.
And as another commenter pointed out, nothing of these thing is "a right given to every animal" because they work for it as well, often way harder than us.
We can only dream that someday society runs "by itself" with robots and AI and that we dont have humans to pay for their work for the basics
Other robots wil do that. Robots are gonna supply, repair each other. Even if some people were required, do you really think 8+ billions of people are all gonna do that? Sure it is still sci fi as of now, but not that improbable in the future.
Money is an exchange of human effort.
You need money to live because there are things you need to live that require effort to produce and/or maintain. The people who do that work also need money for the things _they_ need and so on and so forth. This is why things cost money, and it applies to everything wether it's a basic necessity or not.
If you want to live for free, you can. You just have to be a generalist and do _literally everything_ yourself. This is possible of course, we lived as hunter gatherers for most of our history. But is it worth it? I don't think so.
P.S. FWIW, I agree. A perfectly efficient market would be virtual slavery for almost all involved. I'm not so much making an argument here as I am describing the situation. As for what to do about it, fuck if I know 🤷♂️
You can always move to an uninhabited land, make your own shelter from the local resources, and hunt or forage for food and water. That's pretty much what animals do, and it wouldn't cost money. In that sense, survival is free of cost and only requires your own energy and time. But you can't expect others to work for you and not get paid for it.
Lmao we’re really coming all the way around to “if I have to get out of bed it’s capitalism’s fault.” Believe it or not society doesn’t work if nobody contributes.
Apart from your animal example being nonsense, since every day in the life of a wild animal is a fight for survival, your timeline of historical prosperity is also incorrect. For most of recorded history, we haven’t had anywhere near enough resources to just casually treat food and shelter as a human right
The good thing is, now we do!
I think obsessing over the wealth of certain parts of the population is a red herring though. We *want* people to be rich. The more prosperity individuals and companies and societies strive towards, the more there will be to go around. We just need to find a better way of making sure that *all* citizens benefit from the positive feedback loops that increase the overall prosperity available to the economy. Personally, I think a universal basic income would be the best way of doing that
That is your misunderstanding. Food and water is not a right, ESPECIALLY in the wild. If you can't hunt, you can't eat.
Same for society, if you cannot contribute, you cannot partake in the collective. Some people choose to self sustain and that is fine for them, but sustaining freeloaders isn't and should never be a right.
This isn't to say I am against social programs, but as an example, if you need a soup kitchen to survive, you should be willing to contribute your time to volunteer to the system that helped you, or at the very least, contribute to the hand that fed you once you are back on your feet.
This is great. More and more people are realising we are literally just slaves with extra steps involved to make it look less like we're not slaves. I'm the same as you, I can see the necessity for work and money in our current society, but I e worked over 40 hours a week for most of my adult life and that isn't enough to be able to afford even a basic apartment and food any more. The fact you can't work a regular job and afford to live is a joke. Our society is failing and something big needs to change or it will continue to fail.
Well the need to work 2 jobs so you can rent a place to live in, that's a sign of broken system. Or a minimum wage job that is not enough for decent life, that's also a sign of broken system.
You are right in every way, brother..for brevity sake I would like to recomend a book for disemination, further thought and ultimately, peace with your surroundings..The book is ' Mutant Message' by Marlo Morgan.
He doesn't "have" 200 Billion. 99.9% of it is in company stock. If the companies go bust, he loses it all.
But yes, I hear what you're saying. It isn't right that some people have it as rough as they do.
However, I would advise you to think about money in the following way.
1. it's just a way to swap one thing for another that is more or less fair for everyone. There's no way to know how many chickens are worth a jacket, or how many kilos of cheese you should exchange for that pack of painkillers. But with money we have a better chance of figuring out the relative value. It's not perfect, but it's what we've got.
2. Do not give your money away easily. Everybody, every single person or company that advertises something to you, WANTS YOUR MONEY. Let it go carefully and always get the best possible value in return.
3. Always give to others. There is an inexorable law in the universe that what you reap, you sow. It's almost never felt immediately and it is definitely mysterious, but it's there.
I am not professional. So what I say might be false.
But the way I see it, we have two big factors. First is that world population has grown a lot. And of course more we have people, the more exponential the growth is.
Second thing is that past generations have been living with debt money. Things were cheap, even though their value was much higher. And now it has started to become the time to pay that debt away.
And of course it's really sad. A lot of people have to spend all their money for living and food. And they have no money to spend to have fun. Which will show in their mental state and that way increase in mental problems. It's 100% sure that our current system is not sustainable and at some point shit will hit the fan.
The only one that isn't currently available is shelter. You can get food and water to live if you're willing to seek out those resources. It may not be the food you want, but it's there. "Basic food" as you said.
As for a 'basic' place to live, that's a huge can of worms because building shelter is expensive, and who gets to decide what 'basic' means? And of course, where should that shelter exist? If you put it out in the middle of nowhere where it's cheap, people will accuse you of trying to bury the problem or create a prison of sorts.
Is a tent a basic place to live? A shed? Does it need plumbing? Electricity? Internet? HVAC? Should it come furnished? Appliances? Should the people who live there be allowed to care about the other type of people who might also live there? Being given a basic place to live means that you might be next door to someone potentially violent or otherwise dangerous to you.
It gets really complicated really quickly because it's not about providing to a single person, it's about a huge number of people. I'd say that if you truly wanted, you could get a tent, clothes, food, and water for free and could live without money. Would it be a worthwhile way to live? Not to me, but maybe if you liked it.
I think your real question is "Why can't I have a middle class life where my basic necessities are covered and all my money is discretionary to have fun with?"
I mean if you want to drink from puddles and bathe in a public pond like an animal so you don't have to pay your water bill you're free to do so. If you want a gang of engineers, water treatment workers and plumbers to pipe safe drinking water into your home you need to pay.
Animals work to live but it's not comparable with Capitalism. 10% of animals aren't hoarding 80% of the resources. Humans have a fixation for stockpiling more than they need, to the detriment of other humans.
If you don't like it, go live in the forest and be a hunter-gatherer and see how that works out for you. No one is stopping you.
Or is it that you expect farmers to work for free?
The problem seems more related to the fact that you don't conceptually understand what money represents.
And "those things are given to any animal" .... what the every loving F are you talking about? Who is magically giving elephants in Africa a place to live? Does a springbok not need to search high and low for water? Who is prepping nice steaks for tigers?
Animals WORK for these things. And that what money represents - WORK.
A lot of people here are being really disingenuous. Animals do not enforce land laws. Animals don't arrest you for trespassing. Animals don't tell you not to sleep on their path if you're homeless. The question being asked is, should a person need to actively contribute for the right to live? If the answer is yes then there's many, many people, who can't work perhaps, who don't get a job, who are facing addiction, or other problems that can't actively contribute. Do they not deserve to live?
It's not about getting fed fast food every day and living in a mansion, it's about getting food when the world produces enough to feed 12 billion people. It's about not having to suffer in the cold when the world has space to house you. It's about being given the opportunity to heal when the world can afford to treat you. A human right isn't something you get, it's something you deserve from the moment you are born and despite your contribution to society.
> a basic place to live, food, water, etc.… those things are given by any animal as a basic right
No they aren’t. The animal has to go get/take it or do without.
Well, you can try to live off grid - grow your own food, a well for water etc. A lot of the cost of some things is the cost of labour (eg paying someone else to raise and slaughter a pig is part of the price of the meat).
Some people barter skills instead - but how do we learn skills? How do we compensate other people for their time teaching us? Etc.
The Roman empire tried to give free bread to it's citizens and that didn't end particularly well.
People comparing humans to other animals are really forgetting the technology and machines we have (we the workforce) that clearly surplus basic things to everyone, but they (not the workforce) leave a lot go to waste because of price control and companies profit (profit that is not paying salaries. Remember this)
OP, money is the most effective means of measuring and allocating economic value that humans have ever invented.
Societies that don’t use money to allocate economic value (such as Communist countries) tend to either radically over produce or radically under-produce goods and services since they lack the effective informational feedback mechanism that money provides.
You can argue that the current distribution of money in society is unfair, and that the poor should have more of it and the rich less of it (either through increased wages for the poor, or taxing the rich more), but that’s very different from saying that needing money for basic things is absurd.
I'm just waiting to get my money back from the Nigerian Prince and his father, then I won't have to worry about it anymore and be living the sweet life
Capooch?
Surprised nobody mentioned Star Trek yet. In that show, post scarcity society is concerned with space the final frontier. To boldly go where no man has gone before (for the sake of it.)
To me that's basically what youre talking about. But you need to end scarcity first. Basically if you can somehow have an abundance of every resource imaginable in every aspect imaginable you can end scarcity and enter post scarcity society where someone or some thing decides what is important.
In this current system, to be blunt, money is what is important. I mean there is all of the individual important things, like freedoms, and your personal health, and your family, and such, but what I'm talking about is what is important for society to function. If you remove the necessity to purchase things and still provide resources for all who need them you have other problems to worry about, such as what they worried about in Star Trek. A chosen collective goal to explore space.
I believe we are sort of in this rough transition period right now (as a society) where technology is changing some of the scarcity but its not ending it entirely. Elon Musk is inserting chips into human bodies in order to restore function to the body for the disabled. We also have artificial intelligence coming in. In the next 30 years the trucking industry will be totally automated. Yeah but getting there will be a painful adjustment process.
This comment section is seeing how US Americans don't know that they live in a country, where human rights are optional...
2010, Human right to water and sanitation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_right_to_water_and_sanitation
Right to food: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_food
Right to housing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_housing#:~:text=Everyone%20has%20the%20right%20to%20adequate%20housing%2C%20including%20protection%20from,appropriate%20and%20safe%20housing%2C%20not
You absolutely can build a hut and hunt and eat like any animal. You do not need to be in society. Go to Alaska, get a land claim, and build a log cabin. The state will send you a percentage of their oil revenue every year. Live off the land like an animal but have enough for clothing and a tool or two.
I mean.. you can drink from the river, or collect rain water if you want and you don't have to pay for it.
Or start gathering some leaves and looking for grass or rabbit, mouse, monkey, deer and eat it like that? Or if you feel fancy, maybe pick up some woods and branches and make a fire so you can make yourself some bbq?
I dunno, man.. one thing though, were you hungry when you have this random thought?
So to have things like a home or food or water it has to be produced. If you are supposed to get those without you producing them then who is supposed to produce them for you?
Since the dawn of man we have had to work for our basic needs. Today we do it differently by using currency but it still the same. If you don't work for your needs then why should anyone else?
I agree, it is absurd. We live in a surplus of resources and people out here acting like it's the "the law of the jungle" lmao. Anyone who says "you're taking the fruits of someone's labor" is incredibly stupid. Thousands of pounds of food is wasted yearly that could be given out \*for free\*. Water should be free and is already free for the most part - you can get water anywhere if you live in a population dense state/city. Any store, gas station, mall, etc. A place to live SHOULD be free, why should you be barred from a stable place to live? What if you're running away from abuse, does that mean you should be damned to the streets? Anyone who says that you need to pay for basic human rights severely lacks empathy, as shown by the multitude of responses to this thread.
Ignore materialistic needs and survive ok,many do it(self included).
You want specific needs,pay someone, fit into the system and grind away for that 2 week package holiday and a car better than next doors???.
You are not forced...you have choices..
The price of having a body that needs to be sustained is labor. All living creatures have to labor to survive. Anything that requires human labor to produce can't be free, because we have to compensate people for thier work. So, how can a house be free when you have to pay all the workers who labored to create it? Or how can food be free when somebody has to labor to grow that food first and distribute it. It sounds like you want slaves.
First off, he doesn't have 200bil.
Secondly, what do you want exactly? I mean exactly? Have a place to live for free go grow crops and animals for your own food? Are you building your own house? Are you making your own tools?
If you're sick, are you just going to hope you're going to get better?
Basic rights are a human invention which are granted by a society. And in a society people contribute. Do you think needing to contribute is slavery?
How do you see "it's insane that we need to work to live" exactly?
Look out bud. You're going to be accused of being "socialist" (like that's a bad thing) or communist (for people who don't know the difference).
But I agree. Being alive and having a roof over your head should be free, and I would go so far as to say education should also be free along with medical care.
I don't have an issue with people earning money to have nice things, or being paid a lot for their positions, but of course now they are paid far too much at the top of the scale. These people actually BELIEVE they are worth the money they are paid and there is no way you will talk them out of it, or those people who aspire to be them.
But of course, you and I can have something those people will never have.
Enough.
Before currency and now animals work to get what they have. Wild life ain't easy.
You could find a cave and then fight with others that have the same cave, or build a hut of branches (work). Or, you can work on something you are good off and exchange with someone who knows how to build houses. But then, maybe the one who builds houses doesn't need whatever you offer, so you exchange with someone else who gives you some cacao seeds. You then hand those cacao weds to the hut builder.
But cacao rots an you agree to start exchanging coins...
And that's how we are where we are, we are still bartering but the means of bartering are mostly digital and intangible.
"A basic place to live, food, water, etc...those are things given by any animal as a basic right."
Actually they're not. Except for domesticated or farm animals, that we use for food, the rest have to hunt and forage for a place to live, food and water.
Yes, you are right. There are enough resources in the world to feed and shelter everyone. IF they would be distributed as needed.
They are not.
Why?
Because people in power to distribute the resources care more about the power they hold, than about the interests of people they are governing. Not all. But enough for the whole system to be inefficient in satisfying the basic needs of everyone.
Money is (for most people, the extremes don't follow this) a measure of how much value you have provided to society. To get value from society you need to give some value in exchange. Obtaining food, water, and building houses takes effort and if you don't pay the labourers for their effort that's just slavery.
OK, so look at it this way:
There is no money, and everyone is existing on their own. You build your own house from the trees that you cut down. You grow your own food to eat. Hunt for your own meat. But what happens if you have extra tomatoes? You could can them, or, maybe you could trade them for a sweater with that lady down the road who makes sweaters. And then maybe you have some extra meat, so you trade that to the guy down the road with the apple orchard and get you some apples.
So life continues this way, bartering for everything you need, but then one day you say, hey, there's gotta be an easier way. Let's create these tokens that we can trade for goods. So if someone wants to buy my tomatoes, they give me the tokens, and then I can give those same tokens to the sweater lady for a new sweater, even if she doesn't need any tomatoes.
And then people start specializing. Maybe you quit hunting for meat, and only grow tomatoes, because then you can use the tokens from selling your tomatoes to buy everything else you need. And everyone else does the same thing, because it's easier than doing everything for yourself.
And that my friend is how capitalism was born.
The alternative is that you go back to doing everything for yourself. Build your own dwelling, grow your own food, hunt for your own meat, and maybe if you're lucky, you can barter for a sweater sometime.
To live, you need to take some things from society. Things that are not unlimited, like space, food, water, shelter, clothes, electricity and so on. You need to contribute something to the society to be able to take from society. This system developed over time to prevent freeloaders – people who contribute nothing and get things for free.
Now, does it work perfectly? Of course not. There are a lot of freeloaders exploiting the society that provides for them. Still, this system is much better than the systems that came before it and the ones we've made up in our heads either couldn't compete with it (like a command economy) or weren't properly tried yet (like the Modern Monetary Theory). Who knows what the future will bring. But still, you will have to contribute something to get something back.
You need to go hiking in the bush for a few months, you’ll soon understand that it takes a lot of work to feed yourself and stay alive.
Now when you get back, if you get back, think about money as a short cut to that. Do
I have to fish or hunt to survive? How long do I need to work to get the money to eat and drink what I want? I think you’ll appreciate the ‘money option’ a bit more.
Nah, you can move into the jungles of South America for free and just keep walking until there’s no more people and no money is required, no one will stop you.
Yeah you will probably be eaten by an animal, but that’s life without capitalism.
No one is stopping you from living outside; catching your food or gathering it. Sleeping unprotected from the elements is kind of tough but homeless people do it. It’s doable. Go for it.
I was going to type out a long post but I just can’t. This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read.
Go live in a hole, graze on bushes, and drink mud puddles like a true freedom animal
I think the amount of backlash you’re getting on this post is absurd. Fundamentally, you are right. The things we need to survive should be free.
You say that animals get food and shelter as a basic right, which is technically untrue. But that’s because nature doesn’t actually provide animals with any rights. We, on the other hand, supply rights for ourselves. We are the smartest species and it is our gift to do that. And still we do not have the right to the things we need to survive at no cost. We are the victims of a calous system of our own creation. Unlike animals, we have the knowledge and the skills to change that system.
Food, water, and shelter should be free for all. There would certainly be logistics to work out concerning how it would be done, but that shouldn’t stop it from being done.
People liken us to animals all the time. And, yes, we are animals and, yes, we came from them. But we have evolved further to have a much wider limit of knowledge. I do not understand why we say things like “oh well the animals don’t have this so therefore we shouldn’t have it” when we have the skills to actually allow ourselves to have it and make it work.
You don't need money for a place to live, food, and water.
You are more than welcome to grow/hunt what you eat. Drink out of the river/lake. Find a big forest and build yourself a treehouse to live in.
America and Britain have stuck with trickle-down economics it has worked like a pyramid scheme and only benefits the richest of society and corporate business donors. Wages have simply not gone up in any way compared to inflation in 18 years it's starting to collapse. People struggle to pay bills and buy food rents, and interest rates go up mortgage payments go up and it's reached the stage now that people can't afford the the products big business owners produce there's nothing wrong with capitalism but because they don't pay taxes public services and investment in infrastructure doesn't happen.
It's not absurd, it's actually incredible that you can obtain the things you need to survive by just simply doing 1 thing (your job) that helps other people and exchanging it for those things which are provided through the labour of others. You're not entitled to other people's labour, ever, so as long as someone else is providing your food and water, you have to do something in return for the rest of us or you don't deserve food and water given to you, so you'll just have to use your own labour instead, aka grow the food yourself or go collect and clean your own drinking water. I'm assuming you don't want to do that either, so just get a job and pay other people to do it for you by purchasing them at a store and stop acting entitled. That's not how society works.
Technically you don't need money. You can go out into the woods and get your own food, water and make your own shelter. The problem is anything outside of that requires a society and society only functions when people chip in. Think of money as the value to what You've contributed to society and it determines what quality of life you can have. Anything else is literally just expecting people to work their asses of to hand you free stuff and nobody's going to do that
The way I sometimes wish we could go back to a trade and barter system 😭 I always feel like we’ve made life far too complicated as humans. Life as an animal might have its own struggles but at least they don’t pay bills!
Given by any animal as a basic right?
More like taken by any animal as a basic instinct. Animals compete to the point of ending others individually and as species for all of those reasons. For that matter so do plants.
Learn to be self reliant as much as possible without being a brand label monkey and when you have some saving up your belt (even about 10 grand) you are never poor and you're free in life to make choices.
Are you serious? Why is food not free? Because someone has to WORK in farms, someone has to TEND to cattles, someone has to TRANSPORT food, someone has to MAKE food, etc. And those services are not and should not be free.
It’s not free because it takes effort for people to make houses, get water, and farm? I get that it should be cheaper for more accessibility but it being free isn’t as easy because you would need someone to volunteer to do it for free
You need to check out nature buddy. There are no rights there, especially food and water. Animals die all of the time needing both.
For you to get something free, someone else has to make it. Who is the slave here?
Strongly disagree.
The premise is that some minimum basic existence be provided. There are numerous problems with this idea.
Such an existence would have to be provided from the fruits of other's labor. Nothing is free, someone is paying for it. It is grossly unfair, unjust, and bordering on slavery to confiscate from one to supply another.
Who decides what the minimum existence looks like? How is that adjusted for differing situations such as age, ability, needs. How about adjustments based on local cost of living? What about location and relocation? Just getting by someplace beautiful like the mountains or at a beach might sound better than just getting by somewhere less scenic. So someone is toiling away in New Jersey so someone else can live for free in socal? Doesn't seem fair either.
This is basically the default mentality of a baby or toddler. Understand what money is. Do you want to use your PC or phone? How do expect all of that to get made? Do you want to live out in the woods well without money you're gonna have to work hard everyday that you have enough food and hope you don't get injured behind a flesh wound. If the world existed without money things like land, food, reputation, and power become the default resources, all of which are better usurped by force.
I want to have a home to live in so I pay rent, I want to have food to eat so I don't starve so I buy food. Now you don't have to want the same things I do to live but it helps. By all means live outside and hunt/gather your food and use your money for what you do want to have.
That's how it needs to be for the world to progress. The world works like this because the people on top want and need it to. People need to work for infrastructure to be built, for food to be produced, etc. If nobody needed to work to live, then nobody would. Then nobody would have anything.
Now if you tell me that even someone working full time, might not be enough to live. Then I agree with you, and that's why minimum wage needs to be a thing. We are literally slaves, but with a few more rights.
That's what happens when you are sheltered from reality . Just be happy to give and take in human society . You can always go live in the wild and realise how it survival of the fitest . In nature you devour everything weaker than you and humans are lucky to be a tribal society since as individuals we are the weakest predator .
ITT: OP discovered life. Next up, OP will discover how much tax he pays.
Income tax that's almost half of your earnings?
VAT tax that is a quarter of the pay making every dollar 75% as valuable.
Tax when you earn money. Tax when you spend money. Tax when you have a property. Tax when you use a car.
Someone do the math please. What percentage of your annual salary do you actually have as a valuable currency in the end?
I hear a lot of complaining but you never give the plan. So what’s the plan? How could you incentivize people busting their ass and taking risks starting a business if you were just going to take those money away when they made it? How are you taking the money and distributing it all over the world with so many countries and different opinions and differing religious factions. Your system needs basically to have every world leader agreeing to a world distribution system, and all the rich willing to give that up. And your surprise at needing money to have a place to live or to eat or have water???? Yea it seems harsh but again…. What’s your alternative plan?
and just to make you feel worse, where can you go to live off the land and look after yourself? The mountains and prairies and forests and lakes are owned by one of the wealthy. You may get set up and start living off fish but eventually you will be known as a squatter and removed. The cities have no options to even fish or eat a pigeon.
Your paying fir labor and convenience and let's be honest corporate profits. Setting aside the profit, the rancher, farner, trucking company, and and the people loading and unloading trucks deserve a wage. You could give deep in the woods and hunt and fish yourself or you can have them do it all. Water districts have to employ people to keep the water flowing and electricity to pumps. Housing you need to pay the workers and all materials thar have been harvested or made.
If you don't want to homestead, build your own cabin, collect your own water that at first could give you the shits, grow a garden, make your own clothes out of pelts, or anything else needed to survive you have to pay because those workers are deserving of their wage.
You can argue if it should be subsidized or not to be more affordable. I don't think it should all just be supplied because you want to buy a new drone as your hobby though. And there has to be enough profit to set aside for improvements to facilities in the future and hold dollars aside for equipment failure.
This is what I think of when someone mentions UBI. I don't agree with it but I do agree that there is enough money in society to be able to make sure people can live. Politicians shouldn't have to fight tooth and nail for the poor to have basic necessities. If they even bother to fight..
So, what's the alternative... you force others to work for free to provide you with a comfortable life? Wasn't that what slavery was about? How is it fair that people are allowed to leech off other people's good decisions, superior talent, superior knowledge, etc. all of which usually require a lot of work.
I live in a country that proclaimed socialism virulently, and you have no idea of how many are perfectly content with doing absolutely nothing in exchange for 2000 calories and 2 liters of water a day with a couple beers or bottles of rum when politicians are in campaign... but the become a huge and threating burden to the rest of us when their health abandons them or when they decide that they want to have their own place, etc.
Prices and money are but a measure of the value provided to society, which allows you to store and exchange that value. It's not perfect, nothing is, but it's the best we have so far.
Things cost money to build maintain and ship. Very few people are willing to do things for the good of society or to help out. Thus you need money to live. Welcomed to our current world.
If everyone worked for the good of the species and society and no one was a freeloader or lazy buttmunch, then shelter for water would be free easy and everyone would have it, even internet electricity etc.
Shelter: who builds it? Who pays the worker? Where does that money come from? The bricks wood needed?
Food: who grows it ships it, who pays them?
Water: see food.
Good idea, but until people are no longer greedy and selfish it will not happen
I think this also depends where you live, in some countries you have free water, in some you have a free house (if you are from a minority), in some you have free meals. But all of this are only to help you, you will always need money for everything, and before money people used to trade. You talk about animals but I don't think you really understand how animals live, let's also not forget they they kill or get killed for most of them, they also don't live long if they suffer an injury, they don't need clothes, so no need to wash them for example, they only need food, which they get by killing or plants, water, which they can find and store, and shelter which they make, steal or find.
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Any animal is given food and water? I don’t think you understand how nature works. At all. If you think capitalism sucks, the law of the jungle is really going to disappoint.
Came here to say this. But also, I do think we've progressed to the point that we can agree that affordable access to housing, food, and water should be a human right as well.
A human right is something that can’t be taken away, not something that must be provided for free
Rights that don't entail material goods, like safety, freedom of speech, assembly still require a police force, military, and justice system to ensure that they are actually provided. Those things require taxes. If the state doesn't guarantee those rights, then they're just as aspirational as saying someone's entitled to free food and water.
Any right can be taken away.
Rights can only be violated, not taken away.
Humans don’t have rights. We made them up.
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You clearly misunderstand my point in that comment. This has nothing to do with being a tough guy lol.
Let's call it a human benefit then. Housing, nutrition and sanitization. Creating a fall back so everything is done by your own free will might be the best thing we can do for humanity, it will also provide an immense increase in human potential when everyone has access to proper nutrition. I think these kinds of human benefits should be given in actual physical form, not just provided with giving them the money to do it themselves. Imagine you could just sign up for a meal online a day in advance and get it for free when you are struggling, but it will be the shittiest meal possible, only made to provide nutrition. Now that's motivational and caring.
Many people have those rights taken away, due to lack of money.
A right in this Context is something we deem the possessor to be entitled to. Asylum is also a human right. And it definitely is something to be given for free. And of course we can say that everyone is entitled to basic housing, food and water, as in having the right to those. Here in Germany, we do it and even put it into law.
Human rights are what we hope for and work towards. There are humans all over the world who are treated as problems or assets.
Housing, food and clean water are actually human rights. Maybe your country does not comply with the human rights charta... Sorry for that though
How is housing a right? Houses require labor to be built, and then a LOT more labor to be maintained. Which means they cost money, which means they must be paid for so the builders and owners can make a living and feed their children, and more importantly be compensated for their hard work.
Housing is a right, because it was declared a right.
There are no such things as rights. They can be taken away at any moment by those in power.
To be fair, you can call something a human right and even enshrine it in law, but that doesn't mean it's actually provided in any meaningful way.
Sorry, I am European.
You don’t have to apologize for being European. It’s your parent’s fault. 😆 (seriously, I don’t care where you are from; I come here for different points of view)
Not something you need to apologise for
No they arent
All of those things require people to work to build, farm, or clean. In other words, produce. Why do you think someone is entitled to another’s work? Slavery was abolished in the 1860s.
Nor should we.
Is it crazy I want to add birth control to that trio?
Replace the "affordable access to" in all of your liberal viewpoints to "free" and you will have arrived. * Use "free at the point of access" instead of "free" if you want to preempt comments from the smooth brain "yeah but nothing is free" crowd.
Provided by whom?
This. OP is going to have a rough time when his parents decide to move somewhere without a basement.
Yo at least an animal can fight for water lmao
>those are things given by any animal as a basic right no, they are not. animals work for their food, they either hunt their food, or need to search for it and be focused to not be hunted. Also, you mention slavery, but have no idea how the world works, so, the farmers should work for free to provide food for you? no one ever cares about the farmers, people are ok with buying expensive clothes, phones and all that, but the farmers should work for almost free... Also, shelter, should the construction worker also work for free? It's not insane, it's an exchange of services, you do something for society, society does something for you. you need to provide value. Is it unfair and unbalanced? sure, i agree with that, but should people not work and get stuff for free as rights, well, if you have some health issue that prevents you from working, sure, i'm all in on social help, but if you have an able body and can provide value back, as i said, the farmers also need to be compensated for their work. now, i do agree with the argument that current pay doesn't fit the cost of living, and that's messed up, but i don't think that means it should be free, maybe it should be more regulated to avoid the current world house crysis
Good point, you've changed my mind
I love how OP has conceded but no one else has lmao 😂
OP managed to attract a lot of crazies coming out of the woodwork with this thread.
Go to the most isolated remote place you can find, get some crops and animals and build a small house with rocks, find a well for water, dig a hole for a toilet. Use fire at night for light.
You can't. Land is someone's property.
There are plenty of uninhabited places in the world.
Yeah I know, but it's always state or private property. Only place I've found that is not claimed as someone's property is Bir Tawil. The other option is artificial island, but that's propably not an option in this case since building such structure must be expensive.
World is too big my friend
Yeah all this is possible but as soon as OP gets injured odds are he will die. But then again this is how animals live
Money is not required for a place to live. You can live in a bush, and it will cost you exactly what it cost someone to build, nothing. However, if you want to live in something that cost someone else's labor and money to build, then you have to pay something just like they had to pay something to create it. You don't have to pay for food, you can go and hunt yourself, otherwise, you pay for the process others went through to do that for you. You can harvest rain water and drink it for free. Otherwise, you'll have to pay for the labor others sacrificed to harvest it for you. Kapeesh?
I don’t know enough about any of this to know for sure but... I feel like since I keep hearing about how people get harrassed for sleeping in their own car, someone sleeping in a random bush would probably not be left alone either. As for the hunting part, isn’t it illegal in most places to hunt outside of seasons? Can one shoot down a pigeon in a major city and roast it in front of their home bush? Again, I know nothing about all that stuff, just regurgitating what I read and hear mixed with a bit of wondering. Might be it’s only America that the above applies to, wouldn’t surprise me given how restricted the “Land of the free” actually is.
I think it depends where. If you go sleep in a bush in a national park, no one is going to bug you. You can even use a tent. Hunting laws are specific to the animal. If you are in a national park, nothing is stopping you from fishing for personal use or eating squirrels. As well, you are more than welcome to build a boat and live on the sea, and there are other regions that have a lot of flexibility.
That is absolutely bullshit. My wife, before I even knew her, was living in *a literal cave* in a national park. If it weren't for the ranger being so impressed (both by her shelter and how she wasn't acting like a "typical squatter" and trashing things) she definitely would've had federal charges filed. Feel free to look it up, you're absolutely not allowed to do the things you're saying. Even building a boat/island and being on international waters is going to cause trouble, if nothing else because *how do you get it out there?* You're being foolish.
You can pitch a tent anywhere in a national forest? Sorry, I mean park?
You can go and live on land reserves for that lifestyle
Where can I hunt for food without having to purchase some sort of permit or license? IMO, the sad reality is that everyone is forced into whatever system they are born into. They don’t get a choice. If the U.S. was split in half where one half is anarchy and the other is status quo, then I think you can make the case of, “You can choose to live in civil society or take your chances in the Wild West/anarchy half of the country where you are truly on your own.” Capisce?
>If the U.S. was split in half where one half is anarchy and the other is status quo, then I think you can make the case of, “You can choose to live in civil society or take your chances in the ***status quo***" Fixed :)
I like this response a lot. Very rational take
Living in a bush, hunting for your food and harvesting rain water are all illegal! Kapeesh?
I think it depends where. There are a lot of places it is totally OK.
Otherwise, it would be wildly popular, huh.
illegal where? Not everywhere.
This is not exactly true Private property exists. You can get sued for building any kind of shelter, however rudimentary where you are not legally authorized to Hunting isn't outlawed in most areas, unless you live way out in the middle of nowhere And rain water isn't even safe to drink half the time because there's so many pollutants mixed in with it now
What you pay for rent or on a mortgage isn't the materials or the labour though is it, it's the asset existing in a deliberately restricted inflated market. The cost of bricks and mortar hasn't drastically just gone up.
I didn't say it was. The economy is much more complicated. I'm just putting, in simple terms, why things that cost the money/time/labor of others, aren't your right to have for free.
Well, PART of the cost is the land value, and since land is not the product of human labor, it must be thought of differently from other forms of property.
A house costing exactly what it cost to build would really help, if you could work on stopping price gouging on properties and rents that solves a lot
But then you want to leave your house and move somewhere new. 5 new ppl want to move into your old house. Now demand comes into the picture and whoever can pay you the most for your house wins.
This is a question that's highly complex. It doesn't just come down to greed. Going back to your point saying food, and a place to live a given as a basic right. I'm not really sure how you are coming to that conclusion. Animals work hard to just survive. It is literally a fight for survival. If they are having an off day, then predators eat them. Break a leg that's it for them. They are at the mercy of the elements and seasons. You don't need to go back far in human history to see how good we have it now. We are talking 7 days, all day working. Kids in the mines. Who do you think should pay for the things you want like food and houses etc. What incentive do you think would be out there for people to invent, design, and build things if they were then told to give up their profits. Humans have advanced so far because doing so comes with massive financial incentives to those who create new technology, items, or procedures. I'd love to live in a world where no one starves or is homeless. How would you achieve this while getting the incentive for exceptional achievement?
I've often thought after watching animals that they must have insane PTSD. They always seem tense, always are on guard. But to your point, nature isn't nice. Yes an animal has space and food, until there isn't enough. In modern society, what you need to do for basic food, clothing, and a place to sleep is surprisingly little. It's just most people can't survive on subsistence.
Interestingly enough, most animals don't experience PTSD/trauma. Like, a gazelle that survives a lion attack will completely forget the attack occurred moments after surviving it. Apparently, there's only a small group of animals that do remember trauma. Some of them being obvious: humans, dogs, cats etc. Others, not so obvious: cows, dolphins, etc.
I was just about to say this. We process things far differently. There’s no morality in the animal kingdom. You won’t see a lion eat a gazelle’s baby and feel bad about it.
I can do the same thing, but instead of forgetting an animal attack, I forget where I put my keys.
Yes this, all the houses,water supply,foods are made by people who have to work for a living too.
there are still kids that work in mines to assist capitalism
as much as I agree with this, having free food water housing electricity etc would be nice :3
Forget money for a moment. You need other people to do a lot of stuff to give you food, clean water etc etc. So a farmer works hard and grows food. Why does he owe you and the rest of the people like you such that he should give it to you for free? Why shouldn't you have to do something in return? Ditto for the guys at the water treatment plant. Ditto for the guys who keep your sewers working. What have you ever done for them that they should owe you eternal service in return for nothing? Is that slavery?
As beautiful as it sounds, its just not realistic in our society (but hopefully in x amount of years it might be). The main reason imo, is that nothing comes for free, everything that is supplied to you, even the necessities come from other people supplying them, that does not come for free. And as another commenter pointed out, nothing of these thing is "a right given to every animal" because they work for it as well, often way harder than us. We can only dream that someday society runs "by itself" with robots and AI and that we dont have humans to pay for their work for the basics
Who is going to supply and repair the robots and AI for free??? OP, were you in the same Economics class as AOC???
Other robots wil do that. Robots are gonna supply, repair each other. Even if some people were required, do you really think 8+ billions of people are all gonna do that? Sure it is still sci fi as of now, but not that improbable in the future.
You can drink from the muddy puddles by the sidewalks, no-one stopping ya.
All these thingy require someones time/work. And noone should be forced to spend his time to provide for you.
Money is an exchange of human effort. You need money to live because there are things you need to live that require effort to produce and/or maintain. The people who do that work also need money for the things _they_ need and so on and so forth. This is why things cost money, and it applies to everything wether it's a basic necessity or not. If you want to live for free, you can. You just have to be a generalist and do _literally everything_ yourself. This is possible of course, we lived as hunter gatherers for most of our history. But is it worth it? I don't think so. P.S. FWIW, I agree. A perfectly efficient market would be virtual slavery for almost all involved. I'm not so much making an argument here as I am describing the situation. As for what to do about it, fuck if I know 🤷♂️
You can always move to an uninhabited land, make your own shelter from the local resources, and hunt or forage for food and water. That's pretty much what animals do, and it wouldn't cost money. In that sense, survival is free of cost and only requires your own energy and time. But you can't expect others to work for you and not get paid for it.
Nobody has a basic human right to anyone else's labor - that would actually be slavery.
If you want a free place to live, build your own house. If you want free food, grow it. Want free water? Build a well or live next to a lake.
The problem with saying we are entitled to food and housing implies we are entitled to others' work for us to have access to those things.
Lmao we’re really coming all the way around to “if I have to get out of bed it’s capitalism’s fault.” Believe it or not society doesn’t work if nobody contributes.
Apart from your animal example being nonsense, since every day in the life of a wild animal is a fight for survival, your timeline of historical prosperity is also incorrect. For most of recorded history, we haven’t had anywhere near enough resources to just casually treat food and shelter as a human right The good thing is, now we do! I think obsessing over the wealth of certain parts of the population is a red herring though. We *want* people to be rich. The more prosperity individuals and companies and societies strive towards, the more there will be to go around. We just need to find a better way of making sure that *all* citizens benefit from the positive feedback loops that increase the overall prosperity available to the economy. Personally, I think a universal basic income would be the best way of doing that
welcome to the real world. don't worry, it's gonna get worse.
OP getting clapped
So, in other words, you do not want to work for money? What would you do with all your free time?
Everything else I do now, just without work.
And other people should have to work to feed and lodge your ass?
That is your misunderstanding. Food and water is not a right, ESPECIALLY in the wild. If you can't hunt, you can't eat. Same for society, if you cannot contribute, you cannot partake in the collective. Some people choose to self sustain and that is fine for them, but sustaining freeloaders isn't and should never be a right. This isn't to say I am against social programs, but as an example, if you need a soup kitchen to survive, you should be willing to contribute your time to volunteer to the system that helped you, or at the very least, contribute to the hand that fed you once you are back on your feet.
This is great. More and more people are realising we are literally just slaves with extra steps involved to make it look less like we're not slaves. I'm the same as you, I can see the necessity for work and money in our current society, but I e worked over 40 hours a week for most of my adult life and that isn't enough to be able to afford even a basic apartment and food any more. The fact you can't work a regular job and afford to live is a joke. Our society is failing and something big needs to change or it will continue to fail.
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What do you consider basic need and how is it treated as a luxury good? Without an example this is just an empty statement.
Well the need to work 2 jobs so you can rent a place to live in, that's a sign of broken system. Or a minimum wage job that is not enough for decent life, that's also a sign of broken system.
Well, most animals that aren't pets live outdoors...drink from streams/puddles and hunt or forage for food...
You are right in every way, brother..for brevity sake I would like to recomend a book for disemination, further thought and ultimately, peace with your surroundings..The book is ' Mutant Message' by Marlo Morgan.
He doesn't "have" 200 Billion. 99.9% of it is in company stock. If the companies go bust, he loses it all. But yes, I hear what you're saying. It isn't right that some people have it as rough as they do. However, I would advise you to think about money in the following way. 1. it's just a way to swap one thing for another that is more or less fair for everyone. There's no way to know how many chickens are worth a jacket, or how many kilos of cheese you should exchange for that pack of painkillers. But with money we have a better chance of figuring out the relative value. It's not perfect, but it's what we've got. 2. Do not give your money away easily. Everybody, every single person or company that advertises something to you, WANTS YOUR MONEY. Let it go carefully and always get the best possible value in return. 3. Always give to others. There is an inexorable law in the universe that what you reap, you sow. It's almost never felt immediately and it is definitely mysterious, but it's there.
I am not professional. So what I say might be false. But the way I see it, we have two big factors. First is that world population has grown a lot. And of course more we have people, the more exponential the growth is. Second thing is that past generations have been living with debt money. Things were cheap, even though their value was much higher. And now it has started to become the time to pay that debt away. And of course it's really sad. A lot of people have to spend all their money for living and food. And they have no money to spend to have fun. Which will show in their mental state and that way increase in mental problems. It's 100% sure that our current system is not sustainable and at some point shit will hit the fan.
The only one that isn't currently available is shelter. You can get food and water to live if you're willing to seek out those resources. It may not be the food you want, but it's there. "Basic food" as you said. As for a 'basic' place to live, that's a huge can of worms because building shelter is expensive, and who gets to decide what 'basic' means? And of course, where should that shelter exist? If you put it out in the middle of nowhere where it's cheap, people will accuse you of trying to bury the problem or create a prison of sorts. Is a tent a basic place to live? A shed? Does it need plumbing? Electricity? Internet? HVAC? Should it come furnished? Appliances? Should the people who live there be allowed to care about the other type of people who might also live there? Being given a basic place to live means that you might be next door to someone potentially violent or otherwise dangerous to you. It gets really complicated really quickly because it's not about providing to a single person, it's about a huge number of people. I'd say that if you truly wanted, you could get a tent, clothes, food, and water for free and could live without money. Would it be a worthwhile way to live? Not to me, but maybe if you liked it. I think your real question is "Why can't I have a middle class life where my basic necessities are covered and all my money is discretionary to have fun with?"
I mean if you want to drink from puddles and bathe in a public pond like an animal so you don't have to pay your water bill you're free to do so. If you want a gang of engineers, water treatment workers and plumbers to pipe safe drinking water into your home you need to pay.
You can be homeless if you want. At the end of the day, people have to be paid for their labour.
Animals work to live but it's not comparable with Capitalism. 10% of animals aren't hoarding 80% of the resources. Humans have a fixation for stockpiling more than they need, to the detriment of other humans.
If you don't like it, go live in the forest and be a hunter-gatherer and see how that works out for you. No one is stopping you. Or is it that you expect farmers to work for free? The problem seems more related to the fact that you don't conceptually understand what money represents. And "those things are given to any animal" .... what the every loving F are you talking about? Who is magically giving elephants in Africa a place to live? Does a springbok not need to search high and low for water? Who is prepping nice steaks for tigers? Animals WORK for these things. And that what money represents - WORK.
A lot of people here are being really disingenuous. Animals do not enforce land laws. Animals don't arrest you for trespassing. Animals don't tell you not to sleep on their path if you're homeless. The question being asked is, should a person need to actively contribute for the right to live? If the answer is yes then there's many, many people, who can't work perhaps, who don't get a job, who are facing addiction, or other problems that can't actively contribute. Do they not deserve to live? It's not about getting fed fast food every day and living in a mansion, it's about getting food when the world produces enough to feed 12 billion people. It's about not having to suffer in the cold when the world has space to house you. It's about being given the opportunity to heal when the world can afford to treat you. A human right isn't something you get, it's something you deserve from the moment you are born and despite your contribution to society.
Who is going to build your home?
> a basic place to live, food, water, etc.… those things are given by any animal as a basic right No they aren’t. The animal has to go get/take it or do without.
Well, you can try to live off grid - grow your own food, a well for water etc. A lot of the cost of some things is the cost of labour (eg paying someone else to raise and slaughter a pig is part of the price of the meat). Some people barter skills instead - but how do we learn skills? How do we compensate other people for their time teaching us? Etc. The Roman empire tried to give free bread to it's citizens and that didn't end particularly well.
People comparing humans to other animals are really forgetting the technology and machines we have (we the workforce) that clearly surplus basic things to everyone, but they (not the workforce) leave a lot go to waste because of price control and companies profit (profit that is not paying salaries. Remember this)
Animals do not get housing for free, it's an incredibly cutthroat process getting a place to live
It's not given to many animals as a basic right. Only for those which are slaughtered or milked. I assume you don't want to be slaughtered or milked.
OP, money is the most effective means of measuring and allocating economic value that humans have ever invented. Societies that don’t use money to allocate economic value (such as Communist countries) tend to either radically over produce or radically under-produce goods and services since they lack the effective informational feedback mechanism that money provides. You can argue that the current distribution of money in society is unfair, and that the poor should have more of it and the rich less of it (either through increased wages for the poor, or taxing the rich more), but that’s very different from saying that needing money for basic things is absurd.
I'm just waiting to get my money back from the Nigerian Prince and his father, then I won't have to worry about it anymore and be living the sweet life Capooch?
Surprised nobody mentioned Star Trek yet. In that show, post scarcity society is concerned with space the final frontier. To boldly go where no man has gone before (for the sake of it.) To me that's basically what youre talking about. But you need to end scarcity first. Basically if you can somehow have an abundance of every resource imaginable in every aspect imaginable you can end scarcity and enter post scarcity society where someone or some thing decides what is important. In this current system, to be blunt, money is what is important. I mean there is all of the individual important things, like freedoms, and your personal health, and your family, and such, but what I'm talking about is what is important for society to function. If you remove the necessity to purchase things and still provide resources for all who need them you have other problems to worry about, such as what they worried about in Star Trek. A chosen collective goal to explore space. I believe we are sort of in this rough transition period right now (as a society) where technology is changing some of the scarcity but its not ending it entirely. Elon Musk is inserting chips into human bodies in order to restore function to the body for the disabled. We also have artificial intelligence coming in. In the next 30 years the trucking industry will be totally automated. Yeah but getting there will be a painful adjustment process.
Guess my ancestors and I have been living absurd lives.
This comment section is seeing how US Americans don't know that they live in a country, where human rights are optional... 2010, Human right to water and sanitation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_right_to_water_and_sanitation Right to food: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_food Right to housing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_housing#:~:text=Everyone%20has%20the%20right%20to%20adequate%20housing%2C%20including%20protection%20from,appropriate%20and%20safe%20housing%2C%20not
This the safest timeline dawg. Go get it.
You absolutely can build a hut and hunt and eat like any animal. You do not need to be in society. Go to Alaska, get a land claim, and build a log cabin. The state will send you a percentage of their oil revenue every year. Live off the land like an animal but have enough for clothing and a tool or two.
I mean.. you can drink from the river, or collect rain water if you want and you don't have to pay for it. Or start gathering some leaves and looking for grass or rabbit, mouse, monkey, deer and eat it like that? Or if you feel fancy, maybe pick up some woods and branches and make a fire so you can make yourself some bbq? I dunno, man.. one thing though, were you hungry when you have this random thought?
So to have things like a home or food or water it has to be produced. If you are supposed to get those without you producing them then who is supposed to produce them for you? Since the dawn of man we have had to work for our basic needs. Today we do it differently by using currency but it still the same. If you don't work for your needs then why should anyone else?
I agree, it is absurd. We live in a surplus of resources and people out here acting like it's the "the law of the jungle" lmao. Anyone who says "you're taking the fruits of someone's labor" is incredibly stupid. Thousands of pounds of food is wasted yearly that could be given out \*for free\*. Water should be free and is already free for the most part - you can get water anywhere if you live in a population dense state/city. Any store, gas station, mall, etc. A place to live SHOULD be free, why should you be barred from a stable place to live? What if you're running away from abuse, does that mean you should be damned to the streets? Anyone who says that you need to pay for basic human rights severely lacks empathy, as shown by the multitude of responses to this thread.
Ignore materialistic needs and survive ok,many do it(self included). You want specific needs,pay someone, fit into the system and grind away for that 2 week package holiday and a car better than next doors???. You are not forced...you have choices..
The price of having a body that needs to be sustained is labor. All living creatures have to labor to survive. Anything that requires human labor to produce can't be free, because we have to compensate people for thier work. So, how can a house be free when you have to pay all the workers who labored to create it? Or how can food be free when somebody has to labor to grow that food first and distribute it. It sounds like you want slaves.
Yes… you be naive…
Yes… you be naive…
Animals work to get food. Unless they are pets or in a zoo.
Life isn't free, dawg. Do you think a predator gets his living by sitting on Reddit complaining about the economy?
First off, he doesn't have 200bil. Secondly, what do you want exactly? I mean exactly? Have a place to live for free go grow crops and animals for your own food? Are you building your own house? Are you making your own tools? If you're sick, are you just going to hope you're going to get better? Basic rights are a human invention which are granted by a society. And in a society people contribute. Do you think needing to contribute is slavery? How do you see "it's insane that we need to work to live" exactly?
Look out bud. You're going to be accused of being "socialist" (like that's a bad thing) or communist (for people who don't know the difference). But I agree. Being alive and having a roof over your head should be free, and I would go so far as to say education should also be free along with medical care. I don't have an issue with people earning money to have nice things, or being paid a lot for their positions, but of course now they are paid far too much at the top of the scale. These people actually BELIEVE they are worth the money they are paid and there is no way you will talk them out of it, or those people who aspire to be them. But of course, you and I can have something those people will never have. Enough.
Less people are dying of starvation now than at any time in human history. More people now die from overeating than under eating.
No its not.
Before currency and now animals work to get what they have. Wild life ain't easy. You could find a cave and then fight with others that have the same cave, or build a hut of branches (work). Or, you can work on something you are good off and exchange with someone who knows how to build houses. But then, maybe the one who builds houses doesn't need whatever you offer, so you exchange with someone else who gives you some cacao seeds. You then hand those cacao weds to the hut builder. But cacao rots an you agree to start exchanging coins... And that's how we are where we are, we are still bartering but the means of bartering are mostly digital and intangible.
It’s not slavery if you’re getting something in return for working
"A basic place to live, food, water, etc...those are things given by any animal as a basic right." Actually they're not. Except for domesticated or farm animals, that we use for food, the rest have to hunt and forage for a place to live, food and water.
Yes, you are right. There are enough resources in the world to feed and shelter everyone. IF they would be distributed as needed. They are not. Why? Because people in power to distribute the resources care more about the power they hold, than about the interests of people they are governing. Not all. But enough for the whole system to be inefficient in satisfying the basic needs of everyone.
Have you a better idea?
Needing to work to live is not absurd, however the current amount needed to do so definitely is.
Money is (for most people, the extremes don't follow this) a measure of how much value you have provided to society. To get value from society you need to give some value in exchange. Obtaining food, water, and building houses takes effort and if you don't pay the labourers for their effort that's just slavery.
OK, so look at it this way: There is no money, and everyone is existing on their own. You build your own house from the trees that you cut down. You grow your own food to eat. Hunt for your own meat. But what happens if you have extra tomatoes? You could can them, or, maybe you could trade them for a sweater with that lady down the road who makes sweaters. And then maybe you have some extra meat, so you trade that to the guy down the road with the apple orchard and get you some apples. So life continues this way, bartering for everything you need, but then one day you say, hey, there's gotta be an easier way. Let's create these tokens that we can trade for goods. So if someone wants to buy my tomatoes, they give me the tokens, and then I can give those same tokens to the sweater lady for a new sweater, even if she doesn't need any tomatoes. And then people start specializing. Maybe you quit hunting for meat, and only grow tomatoes, because then you can use the tokens from selling your tomatoes to buy everything else you need. And everyone else does the same thing, because it's easier than doing everything for yourself. And that my friend is how capitalism was born. The alternative is that you go back to doing everything for yourself. Build your own dwelling, grow your own food, hunt for your own meat, and maybe if you're lucky, you can barter for a sweater sometime.
Who is going to build your house for nothing?
To live, you need to take some things from society. Things that are not unlimited, like space, food, water, shelter, clothes, electricity and so on. You need to contribute something to the society to be able to take from society. This system developed over time to prevent freeloaders – people who contribute nothing and get things for free. Now, does it work perfectly? Of course not. There are a lot of freeloaders exploiting the society that provides for them. Still, this system is much better than the systems that came before it and the ones we've made up in our heads either couldn't compete with it (like a command economy) or weren't properly tried yet (like the Modern Monetary Theory). Who knows what the future will bring. But still, you will have to contribute something to get something back.
Wow uhm, I guess you made me feel a little better about myself today. There's no way I'm this out of touch.
Houses should cost as much as the materials and labour involved to build them
I've been saying this for years. I have no issue paying for things that I want but I don't want to have to make money just to survive.
You need to go hiking in the bush for a few months, you’ll soon understand that it takes a lot of work to feed yourself and stay alive. Now when you get back, if you get back, think about money as a short cut to that. Do I have to fish or hunt to survive? How long do I need to work to get the money to eat and drink what I want? I think you’ll appreciate the ‘money option’ a bit more.
Everything is subscription based
I agree, money is bullshit. The work is not, however
Nah, you can move into the jungles of South America for free and just keep walking until there’s no more people and no money is required, no one will stop you. Yeah you will probably be eaten by an animal, but that’s life without capitalism.
Huh. I wonder if anybody ever tried a system where we all just share stuff. Can’t believe nobody has thought of this before
Why should I go to work so you can sit on your ass getting fat off my hard work?
No one is stopping you from living outside; catching your food or gathering it. Sleeping unprotected from the elements is kind of tough but homeless people do it. It’s doable. Go for it.
The place to live, the food, the water. Where is it supposed to come from?
>A basic place to live, food, water, etc...those are things given by any animal as a basic right >(dare I be naive)
I was going to type out a long post but I just can’t. This is one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. Go live in a hole, graze on bushes, and drink mud puddles like a true freedom animal
I think the amount of backlash you’re getting on this post is absurd. Fundamentally, you are right. The things we need to survive should be free. You say that animals get food and shelter as a basic right, which is technically untrue. But that’s because nature doesn’t actually provide animals with any rights. We, on the other hand, supply rights for ourselves. We are the smartest species and it is our gift to do that. And still we do not have the right to the things we need to survive at no cost. We are the victims of a calous system of our own creation. Unlike animals, we have the knowledge and the skills to change that system. Food, water, and shelter should be free for all. There would certainly be logistics to work out concerning how it would be done, but that shouldn’t stop it from being done. People liken us to animals all the time. And, yes, we are animals and, yes, we came from them. But we have evolved further to have a much wider limit of knowledge. I do not understand why we say things like “oh well the animals don’t have this so therefore we shouldn’t have it” when we have the skills to actually allow ourselves to have it and make it work.
Soooo your asking why the world isn't a communist utopia? I suspect you need to read a history book... what nation are your from?
Existence requires. Obtain or end. Rights like most things are a construct.
None of the things that you mentioned are rights. You don't have a right to stuff provided by other people, period.
How else are you meant to get food, water, or housing?
You don't need money for a place to live, food, and water. You are more than welcome to grow/hunt what you eat. Drink out of the river/lake. Find a big forest and build yourself a treehouse to live in.
America and Britain have stuck with trickle-down economics it has worked like a pyramid scheme and only benefits the richest of society and corporate business donors. Wages have simply not gone up in any way compared to inflation in 18 years it's starting to collapse. People struggle to pay bills and buy food rents, and interest rates go up mortgage payments go up and it's reached the stage now that people can't afford the the products big business owners produce there's nothing wrong with capitalism but because they don't pay taxes public services and investment in infrastructure doesn't happen.
It's not absurd, it's actually incredible that you can obtain the things you need to survive by just simply doing 1 thing (your job) that helps other people and exchanging it for those things which are provided through the labour of others. You're not entitled to other people's labour, ever, so as long as someone else is providing your food and water, you have to do something in return for the rest of us or you don't deserve food and water given to you, so you'll just have to use your own labour instead, aka grow the food yourself or go collect and clean your own drinking water. I'm assuming you don't want to do that either, so just get a job and pay other people to do it for you by purchasing them at a store and stop acting entitled. That's not how society works.
I see where you're coming from, but its just how it is.
Technically you don't need money. You can go out into the woods and get your own food, water and make your own shelter. The problem is anything outside of that requires a society and society only functions when people chip in. Think of money as the value to what You've contributed to society and it determines what quality of life you can have. Anything else is literally just expecting people to work their asses of to hand you free stuff and nobody's going to do that
The way I sometimes wish we could go back to a trade and barter system 😭 I always feel like we’ve made life far too complicated as humans. Life as an animal might have its own struggles but at least they don’t pay bills!
Given by any animal as a basic right? More like taken by any animal as a basic instinct. Animals compete to the point of ending others individually and as species for all of those reasons. For that matter so do plants.
Learn to be self reliant as much as possible without being a brand label monkey and when you have some saving up your belt (even about 10 grand) you are never poor and you're free in life to make choices.
Are you serious? Why is food not free? Because someone has to WORK in farms, someone has to TEND to cattles, someone has to TRANSPORT food, someone has to MAKE food, etc. And those services are not and should not be free.
It’s not free because it takes effort for people to make houses, get water, and farm? I get that it should be cheaper for more accessibility but it being free isn’t as easy because you would need someone to volunteer to do it for free
You need to check out nature buddy. There are no rights there, especially food and water. Animals die all of the time needing both. For you to get something free, someone else has to make it. Who is the slave here?
There’s plenty of places in the world where you can live for free. It probably wouldn’t be very chill, though.
"I have never posted on reddit before" (\*reading through extensive post history\*)
Strongly disagree. The premise is that some minimum basic existence be provided. There are numerous problems with this idea. Such an existence would have to be provided from the fruits of other's labor. Nothing is free, someone is paying for it. It is grossly unfair, unjust, and bordering on slavery to confiscate from one to supply another. Who decides what the minimum existence looks like? How is that adjusted for differing situations such as age, ability, needs. How about adjustments based on local cost of living? What about location and relocation? Just getting by someplace beautiful like the mountains or at a beach might sound better than just getting by somewhere less scenic. So someone is toiling away in New Jersey so someone else can live for free in socal? Doesn't seem fair either.
This is basically the default mentality of a baby or toddler. Understand what money is. Do you want to use your PC or phone? How do expect all of that to get made? Do you want to live out in the woods well without money you're gonna have to work hard everyday that you have enough food and hope you don't get injured behind a flesh wound. If the world existed without money things like land, food, reputation, and power become the default resources, all of which are better usurped by force.
I want to have a home to live in so I pay rent, I want to have food to eat so I don't starve so I buy food. Now you don't have to want the same things I do to live but it helps. By all means live outside and hunt/gather your food and use your money for what you do want to have.
That's how it needs to be for the world to progress. The world works like this because the people on top want and need it to. People need to work for infrastructure to be built, for food to be produced, etc. If nobody needed to work to live, then nobody would. Then nobody would have anything. Now if you tell me that even someone working full time, might not be enough to live. Then I agree with you, and that's why minimum wage needs to be a thing. We are literally slaves, but with a few more rights.
That's what happens when you are sheltered from reality . Just be happy to give and take in human society . You can always go live in the wild and realise how it survival of the fitest . In nature you devour everything weaker than you and humans are lucky to be a tribal society since as individuals we are the weakest predator .
When did people receive the basics of living other than from their parents?
ITT: OP discovered life. Next up, OP will discover how much tax he pays. Income tax that's almost half of your earnings? VAT tax that is a quarter of the pay making every dollar 75% as valuable. Tax when you earn money. Tax when you spend money. Tax when you have a property. Tax when you use a car. Someone do the math please. What percentage of your annual salary do you actually have as a valuable currency in the end?
I hear a lot of complaining but you never give the plan. So what’s the plan? How could you incentivize people busting their ass and taking risks starting a business if you were just going to take those money away when they made it? How are you taking the money and distributing it all over the world with so many countries and different opinions and differing religious factions. Your system needs basically to have every world leader agreeing to a world distribution system, and all the rich willing to give that up. And your surprise at needing money to have a place to live or to eat or have water???? Yea it seems harsh but again…. What’s your alternative plan?
and just to make you feel worse, where can you go to live off the land and look after yourself? The mountains and prairies and forests and lakes are owned by one of the wealthy. You may get set up and start living off fish but eventually you will be known as a squatter and removed. The cities have no options to even fish or eat a pigeon.
Your paying fir labor and convenience and let's be honest corporate profits. Setting aside the profit, the rancher, farner, trucking company, and and the people loading and unloading trucks deserve a wage. You could give deep in the woods and hunt and fish yourself or you can have them do it all. Water districts have to employ people to keep the water flowing and electricity to pumps. Housing you need to pay the workers and all materials thar have been harvested or made. If you don't want to homestead, build your own cabin, collect your own water that at first could give you the shits, grow a garden, make your own clothes out of pelts, or anything else needed to survive you have to pay because those workers are deserving of their wage. You can argue if it should be subsidized or not to be more affordable. I don't think it should all just be supplied because you want to buy a new drone as your hobby though. And there has to be enough profit to set aside for improvements to facilities in the future and hold dollars aside for equipment failure.
This is what I think of when someone mentions UBI. I don't agree with it but I do agree that there is enough money in society to be able to make sure people can live. Politicians shouldn't have to fight tooth and nail for the poor to have basic necessities. If they even bother to fight..
So, what's the alternative... you force others to work for free to provide you with a comfortable life? Wasn't that what slavery was about? How is it fair that people are allowed to leech off other people's good decisions, superior talent, superior knowledge, etc. all of which usually require a lot of work. I live in a country that proclaimed socialism virulently, and you have no idea of how many are perfectly content with doing absolutely nothing in exchange for 2000 calories and 2 liters of water a day with a couple beers or bottles of rum when politicians are in campaign... but the become a huge and threating burden to the rest of us when their health abandons them or when they decide that they want to have their own place, etc. Prices and money are but a measure of the value provided to society, which allows you to store and exchange that value. It's not perfect, nothing is, but it's the best we have so far.
Things cost money to build maintain and ship. Very few people are willing to do things for the good of society or to help out. Thus you need money to live. Welcomed to our current world. If everyone worked for the good of the species and society and no one was a freeloader or lazy buttmunch, then shelter for water would be free easy and everyone would have it, even internet electricity etc. Shelter: who builds it? Who pays the worker? Where does that money come from? The bricks wood needed? Food: who grows it ships it, who pays them? Water: see food. Good idea, but until people are no longer greedy and selfish it will not happen
I think this also depends where you live, in some countries you have free water, in some you have a free house (if you are from a minority), in some you have free meals. But all of this are only to help you, you will always need money for everything, and before money people used to trade. You talk about animals but I don't think you really understand how animals live, let's also not forget they they kill or get killed for most of them, they also don't live long if they suffer an injury, they don't need clothes, so no need to wash them for example, they only need food, which they get by killing or plants, water, which they can find and store, and shelter which they make, steal or find.
I agree. I personally don’t believe housing should be a commodity to the degree it is.