This right tonight

[j4]

I caught part of a bunfight discussion on Radio 2 at lunchtime today, between George Monbiot and somebody from (I think) the Spectator, about the environmental ethics of cheap flights. [BBC News: "UK 'must act' on plane emissions" | Report launched today by the University of Oxford]

You already know what Monbiot's line is; I don't need to rehash that here. But the other chap was putting forward a view that I hadn't heard before; he was arguing that Monbiot's call for fewer cheap flights was part of some kind of middle-class conspiracy to trample all over the "rights" that have recently "been acquired" by "poorer people". He claimed that the rich resented the poor becoming richer, and wanted to "punish" them for this by curtailing their "rights" to cheap flights -- whether they are making these flights for pleasure, work, or "education".

Questions I am not going to attempt to answer include: whether the environmentalists' predictions of the future global warming scenario are as exaggerated as their detractors claim; how many flights Monbiot has made in the last year; whether he is more interested in advertising his book than saving the world; how many of our cheap flights to European holiday destinations (of which I've made a few myself) are "educational"; whether there is a middle-class conspiracy to erode the rights of poorer people; whether the poor are in fact becoming richer, and if so, by what metric.

Questions I would like to find answers to include: where do "rights" come from? Are we born with them? If not, do we accrue them as a function of our passage through time, or are they allocated to us by some external agency? Does the discontinuing of a commodity or service which used to exist automatically constitute riding roughshod over somebody's "rights"? If we have a "right" to something, should we claim it, whatever the cost?

Comments

[beingjdc.livejournal.com]

Two different routes. The right to fair pay for your labour, say, and the right to pay people any amount they will accept to work for you, arose in different ways, and are conflicting. Arguably most of the latter category of rights will pre-exist, in that they would require someone to stop them, whereas the former category will require someone to create them.

Negative duty on other-in-general would be for example 'I have a right to walk down the street without being mugged because you have a duty to leave me alone'. Positive duty on others-in-particular would be for example 'You gave birth to me, now I have a right to food and shelter because you have a duty to look after your child or give it to someone who will'. Awaits feminist onslaught due to use of bad example.

Good books about rights. Hmm. Well anyone is going to say that you need to read the "Two concepts of Liberty" lecture, which has the advantage of being short and probably available on the web somewhere, though I find it rather tediously A-Level nowadays. Probably because it's a standard A-Level mock essay, not to malign Berlin himself.

The political and legal philosopher who actually has all this sorted is Joseph Raz (Balliol), so you might read his "The Authority of Law", or "Rights, Culture and the Law" which is about him rather than by him. From a more positive perspective there's Dworkin (Male version), "Taking Rights Seriously".

Neither of those are introductory texts, really though - I'm sure there's a "Rights" in the "Democracy", "Capitalism", "Feminism", etc series. I think it's purple, and quite possibly very acceptable.