Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Way Over the Top

The United Nations has assigned an official, “special rapporteur on the right to adequate housing" Raquel Rolnik, to investigate the housing crisis.

According to Rolnik, housing should be considered a "human right" before it is considered a commodity.Using this logic, it is unclear why Rolnik has simply not declared everything a "human right before it is a commodity." Let's by Rolnik declaration just make the entire planet one big Garden of Eden, where everything is plentiful and like air, no incentives, no property rights, no work or exchanges are necessary.

5 comments:

  1. I doubt it, but maybe that soundbyte is out of context.

    With that said, based solely on the soundbyte, I'd say that woman has no idea what the hell she's talking about.

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  2. Anon,

    Seriously, look at all 4 of the women featured in this clip and ask yourself if anything was taken out of context.

    Do those look like libertarian women to you?

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  3. The UN Housing Czar is the perfect soldier for the Obama/TBTF bankster's plans. By mid 2010, the number of foreclosed houses on and off the books of the GSEs & TBTF banks will be = to 1/2 of the morgaged housing in the US, ready for redistribution to the needy. Middle Class will be destroyed.

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  4. OP: "Using this logic, it is unclear why Rolnik has simply not declared everything a "human right before it is a commodity." "

    Probably because shelter, unlike "everything", is usually, and without controversy, considered a basic human need. You know, like air.

    BTW, LOVE the scare quotes around "human rights". Hilarious.

    Anonymous: "With that said, based solely on the soundbyte, I'd say that woman has no idea what the hell she's talking about."

    Google her. She's actually a highly-educated woman, a professor, and extremely experienced in housing issues. So I suspect that she knows exactly what she's talking about. I think you meant to say "I disagree with her statements."

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  5. theczech,

    Probably because shelter, unlike "everything", is usually, and without controversy, considered a basic human need. You know, like air.

    You seem to have missed Wenzel's point, which is odd because of your choice of "air" as an example is identical to Wenzel's usage in making his point.

    The point is this-- a need is not a right. Simply because someone needs something to live, does not mean they have a positive right (an entitlement) to other people's labor and resources to acquire it. People may need shelter to live, but they don't have a right to shelter, that is, they don't have a right to make me or anybody else provide them with it if they can't provide themselves.

    She's actually a highly-educated woman, a professor, and extremely experienced in housing issues. So I suspect that she knows exactly what she's talking about.

    She might "know what she's talking about" but that doesn't mean she's correct, so in the sense that she believes herself to speak truth on something she has spent a lot of time studying and becoming familiar with, but she is in fact speaking falsity, it's fair to say she doesn't know what she's talking about. This would be similar to somebody studying the movement of the stars, the planets, etc., and concluding the sun revolves around the earth-- you may have studied it a lot, you might have a degree in astronomy, yet, you still don't know what you're talking about.

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