Mister Green

Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus...

... And some people are from Planet Dipshit. In double-checking at Amazon.com the publication date of Stupid White Mike for my last post, I clicked a link to Moore's book Downsize This. There is a user comment on that book from May 4, 2002 by Josh Dougherty. In it, he points to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948.

Article 23, section 1 says: "Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favorable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment."

Section 3 of the same article says: "Everyone who works has the right to just and favorable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection."

Dougherty cites this as proof that "a job and economic security *ARE* actually basic and fundamental human rights."

Hmmm.

I would cite this as proof that the United Nations is out of touch with reality, and has been since its inception.

You can have the right to work - feel free to come on over and clean my house any time you want to exercise that right. But to say you have the right to a paying job is nonsense. Paying jobs don't just fall from trees or grow up out of the ground. Somebody has to choose to employ you. So if you have the right to a job, somebody else - like me - must have the legal obligation to give you one, my need for help or ability to pay for that help notwithstanding.

And if it's my responsibility to create jobs and distribute them like party favors, surely there ought to be some way to ensure that I am creating as many jobs as I possibly can, right? Somebody ought to be standing over me with a stick, ready to give me a good whack if I start to shirk my duty in providing other people with their rightful jobs as mandated by the UN. Man, this whole "employer" gig really sucks. I think I'm getting screwed. That stick really hurts. I wish there were a way out....

Wait! I've got it! I'm a human, too. I have the right to a job just like everybody else! Let some other poor bastard do the job creating and the paycheck paying. And you know what? I don't want to work very hard. I want my job to be really low-effort and low-paying. Then somebody else will be obligated to give me the supplemental income necessary to make my life worthy of human dignity. Yeah, that's the ticket. I just hope everybody else doesn't figure out that they have the right to sit on their ass and make the rest of the world give them whatever they need to live whether or not they contribute anything at all. That's my job.

Now, if there were an economic system where people had the right to keep the wealth they created… Hell, they wouldn't be obligated to support me in the lifestyle to which I would like to become accustomed. I’d have to pull my own weight. I’d have to be a contributing member of society instead of a leeching freeloader. Thank God the UN’s protected me from that nightmare!

Excuse me, I’ve got to call my boss and tell him to come over to the Greenhaus and clean my toilet. I’m pretty sure it’s my fundamental human right.

Posted by Mr Green at September 19, 2003 10:14 AM