Is electricity a "human right"?

[UK1]

There's a free market solution for that.TM

[Viliam]

Human right is a misleading term. If try to approach it theoretically, philosophically, ethically, then we will either have to accept arriving at absurd conclusion, or making way too many poor axioms. As with many such terms, human rights is a vague concept that has roots in our social instincts.

Exactly.

If we try to expand the meaning of macro "human right", it means "things I would like to see guaranteed for every human".

Therefore, the meaning of this topic is:
1) Should "we" (the humankind) provide electricity to everyone on this planet?
2) Who exactly should provide it?
3) Should we punish those people if they fail to provide it? (How exactly?)

Questions containing the word "should" are always subject to opinion. But when written this way, at least it is more obvious what exactly are we asking.


Possible solutions:

1) No.
2) N/A
3) N/A

1) Yes.
2) Goverment of each country should find some solution for their country; we do not care about details.
3a) Activists in developed countries will whine a lot.
and/or
3b) US army will bomb the country to stone age. Later, some private company will be paid to provide electricity to the survivors; the bill will be paid by NATO members' taxpayers.

[Moribund]

I haven't read the whole thread, so this has probably already been said or whatever, but I think it depends on the context of the individual person. People living in urban environments need electricity to live in the manner of their peers and function in society. Farmers or tribesman, do not.

However one could say that this notion is preposterous and is simply a matter of varying socioeconomic status, and that by this system of social context, the upper class could be considered deprived of rights if they were suddenly reduced to the income of a lower class citizen.

But the key word, I believe, is "function". I don't think that reverting to a hunter-gatherer state is viable for people living in urban settings, and even if it were it would deprive them of any semblance of relatability with their community, in fact shutting them off from a community of any kind. The fact that a deprivation of electricity means, in essence, a kind of excommunication for some people warrants its title as a "human right".