Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

You crack me up every time I read one of your posts Bodgy ya funny bugger.

Both sides Now. Sometimes it is difficult to pick between Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins.

My three rainwater tanks are full and we are expecting a lot of rain over the next week , so runoff from our roof will go down the drain anyway. You can only catch so much

If the government wants to claim the rain is theirs... and tax me if it collects in puddles.. or containers...

I'm going to ask them to cover over my property.... so that I'm not afflicted with their bloody rain accidently...

And they'd better build a containment moot around the property... so that they don't send any runoff on to the property...

I'll meet them halfway... and dispose of any "mooted" water.. over time...

That's when council workers will enter your property after every rain with a magic syphon hose

What is the difference between positive and negative rights ?
and how does that apply to "inherent human rights" ?

Since you introduced the terms positive positive and negative human rights would you care to define them?

As to "Inherent Human rights" the term itself is a bit of a misnomer. Different societies throughout the world and history have had very different views on this. When an individual talks about inherent human rights they are really talking about the rights that their society grants to humans. In our society the rights that you have as a human are not that different from other rights that you can be eligible for in our society in principle. There are a few exceptions, the unborn for example which is a very sticky topic but a baby that is one day from being born has less rights than a baby that has been out of the womb for one minute. In practice the disabled, women, uneducated and other groups have less rights but in our society the differences while very significant are not very great. Especially when compared with some historical societies and some present day societies in less developed countries.

Personally I don't really like to define societal contracts in terms of rights. I much prefer to define responsibilities. Rights encourage the individual to think of them selves without consideration for their fellow citizens. Responsibilities encourage citizens to participate in the maintenance and improvement of their society.

In practice you need both but in our society the pendulum is too far towards rights with almost no discussion about responsibilities.

A funny thought has just struck me. A society based on rights requires a state and hence a government to protect those rights from miscreants in society who would impinge or violate them. Yet it is the anti government, no government, small government, anti tax right wingers who complain the loudest about their human rights.

No it doesn't it merely requires empathy and selflessness.

I decided on Joni Mitchell; mainly because she wrote the song and I like Big Yellow Taxi, and two lines in it remind me of parts of this thread.

Ahhh, but SV will tell you that the only way to protect peoples rights is by litigation in a privatised court system.

Your right, I should have been more informative.

Negative rights are those that give someone the right to NOT have something done to them.
eg: I have the right to not be harmed by others.

Positive rights are those that require that other people give me something.
eg: I have the right to a portion of your income.


I think you have hit the nail on the head here.
I think it would be so much better if people willingly helped others rather than being forced to.
While that does happen, it becomes much more difficult as the welfare state grows.


A society based on positive rights needs a state to enforce them.
I think the reason many of the small/no government anti-tax right wingers (you have to exclude the neo-con typs who also for big government, but these guys are really left-wingers) complain is because they oppose the positive rights and wish that their negative rights were respected.

Actually I wouldn't.
But thanks anyway for trying to save me some time and speak for me

You have said that many times before...

A society based on negative rights also needs a state because sooner or later some is going to be naughty and some form of governement is going to be needed to provide justice because if justice is left in the hands of individuals things get nasty really quickly. Peoples faith in the state is one of the foundations of a stable society. Australia is so fortunate because its citizens have so much faith in the state. That faith allows us to sleep at night trusting that the state has a monopoly on the employment of violence and any individual or group that infringes on that monopoly will face the power and fury of the state.

This situation actually arises out of market forces. Systems such as markets, economies, ecosystems, societies are more productive when a high degree of specialisation exists compared with comparable systems with low specialistion. Way back in the day farmers soon realized that they would be better off if they didn't have to fight their neighbours themselves and this developed a warrior class. Such an institution allowed farmers to concentrate on what they were good at and for the warriors to hone their skills and specialise in what they became good at, warfare. Over all this led to reduced death rates and more stable healthier societies. Since people had to be rewarded handsomely in order to put their lives on the line they got nice houses, clothes and non economic rewards like respect and getting to make rules. As long as the basic contract of "you protect me and I'll pay you to do so and let you have control" was kept by all parties the society ran along quite nicely. When ever the warrior/ruling class forgot that the only reason they were in power was because the farmers/workers had placed them there you sooner of later had a revolution which if successful meant that you had a new group of rulers/governers (ie government) and if it failed the rulers resisted the revolution and then reformed or if they did not would sooner or later be toppled by a successful revolution.

All that might seem to be an over simplification of human history and it is but that doesn't mean that it is wrong. People crying out against taxes forget that those taxes are used to pay for things for their benefit. The way SV defined a positive right seems very odd to me. I don't think anyone can have such a right and while some bureaucrats may act like they have a right to our money I am sure they would not express it that way. Trying to visualise these societal contracts is difficult in the modern age because we are so divorced from their origins.

Another example. In various periods of history society has become increasing urbanised. Towns sprang up and due to the nature of people these towns citizens got together and elected Mayors and councilors to manage the affairs of the town for the benefit of all its residents. Due to the nature of the period a common project of towns was the construction of a defensive wall. To help pay for this construction all the towns people agreed on a way to fund it and then ongoing charges were levied to maintain and improve it. We would call these charges taxes. People could avoid those charges by simply moving their premises to an area outside of the town wall. Back in the day many people did this and were happy to not have the protection of the wall as long as they didn't have to pay the taxes to maintain it. Mind you life got rather hard when a besieging army came along. As societies developed those governments raised money of labour for other projects like sanitation, roads, etc.

Today in Australia we are free to do exactly the same thing. If you don't want to pay the taxes because we are a free society you may leave. Or you may stay and agitate for a different way or degree of levying taxes but make no mistake societies that don't have taxes are not pleasant places to live. There are too many historical and present day examples to allow us to think otherwise.

And WTF has all that (not just the last one) got to do with taxing water that falls on your roof, or not allowing you to use it for your own use?