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Comment by trav4225 | Hacker News Reader

What a perfectly rational explanation. Thank you for not instantly appealing to vague notions of social justice.

Dishearteningly, however, people still do this. When people demand affordable rent but do not get it, many still cry "injustice!". This seems to me to be counterproductive as it causes others to wonder what, if anything, such people do not consider to be a human right.

edit: accidentally left out "not" in first paragraph

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> When people demand affordable rent but do not get it, many still cry "injustice!".

Well, it can be interpreted as an injustice. If you have a society that can realistically provide housing and food for everybody, is it not injust to deny handing these things out? The answer depends on what society you're going for. The optimum path is probably neither the extreme of the state providing everybody with everything he needs , nor a dog-eat-dog world in which the idividual gets nothing, no matter his situation.

I hear ya. We probably differ on semantics. To me, the modern notion of "justice" seems to be concerned with the answer to the question "What does my fellow man owe me?". The answer to that question is always "nothing". On the other hand, the answer to the question "How ought my fellow man show compassion to me?" is a different question altogether (to me at least). :)

uhh they are directly appealing to social justice. Class issues are social issues.

I'm curious why you think otherwise.

Hmm. I read the comment as addressing the goal of healthy, functioning cities rather than the goal of artificially leveling playing fields.

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