[fool1987]

If you take the view that rights are granted by society and not inherent then you are technically correct that rights don't really exist. But then neither does money or law. This kind of nihilistic reductivism isn't particularly useful.

What I mean by "rights" are those that are taken to be so by common consensus - e.g. those in the European Convention on Human Rights, which includes the right to life; to deny someone shelter is to threaten that right.

To withhold shelter from people and then rent it back to them is a racket, plain and simple: safety in return for money, underwritten by a threat of violence.

I thought the whole deal with this society thing was a collective endeavour for the common good; structures that hold private interest above common good seem blatantly counter-productive.

[s1artibartfast]

>If you take the view that rights are granted by society and not inherent then you are technically correct that rights don't really exist. But then neither does money or law. This kind of nihilistic reductivism isn't particularly useful.

If you take the view that rights are granted by society, then money, law, and property rights DO exist.

I get that you are saying that you want something, but it doesn't exist in either the current defacto social sense, or in inherent moral sense.

>I thought the whole deal with this society thing was a collective endeavor for the common good; structures that hold private interest above common good seem blatantly counter-productive.

I think this is where your position differs with mine, and that, and that generally held by world. Society is not and has never been a collective endeavor for the common good. It is merely a system to prevent people from murdering each other, enslaving them, and taking their things. In one sense, the common good is served in that it prevents lawless anarchy, but few societies have ever bought into the utilitarian view where maximizing the common good is the primary goal.