The Right to a Window Should Be as Fundamental as Freedom of Speech - by Nathan J. Robinson

Found here. Our comments in bold.

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1220 words written about requiring a right to a window. Seriously. Lacking the ability to think clearly, Mr. Robinson prattles on and on. Reliably loquacious, he substitutes volumes of words for reasoning, as if a barrage of language means intellect. It reads like satire, but when it comes to leftists like Mr. Robinson, we know they have no sense of humor. So we must assume he's actually being serious. 

Constitutionally speaking, there is no justification for his position, but Mr. Robinson doesn't bother with the constitution. Nor does he even posses a rudimentary understanding of it. This is the most troubling thing. The Constitution was written to create, define, and limit government. It does not create rights for The People. 

The powers of The People pre-exist the constitution, which they delegate as they choose via the constitution. The 10th Amendment makes this clear: 

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Power is delegated to the government by what's contained the constitution's provisions. If the power isn't delegated, the government can't do it. Other powers are reserved for the states, if the state constitutions delegate them. If powers are not delegated to the federal or state constitutions, then the people retain them.

Thus there can be no right to a window, because the constitution doesn't create rights. Otherwise, the current fashion, the feelings of the majority, or the winds of culture would determine what people have a "right" to. And once the camel's nose is under the tent, there is no end to the rights that can be created out of thin air. For example:

• A Caribbean vacation is good. Boom - it's a constitutional right.
• A new car has substantial benefits. Shazaam - it's a constitutional right.
• A 5000 square foot home clearly is better than a tiny apartment. - Ta-daaaah! Constitutional right.

Last thing: The seriousness with which Mr. Robinson writes about this is concerning. However, we have learned that when it comes to socialists and leftists, what they advocate is seldom important to them. Gay rights, racism, sexism, the poor, or everybody having a window, these things are irrelevant. They are simply convenient. Excuses. Smokescreens.

As we have mentioned in other posts, leftists have one goal in mind: Promulgate The Narrative in service to The Agenda. The Narrative is the talking points and bumper sticker slogans issued every day by Central Command, which appear simultaneously all over the media landscape. 

The Agenda is the dismantling of the system. The system is oppressive and evil. The system is systemically racist. The system needs to be replaced. The Agenda is to install Marxism. 

The Narrative always has the goal of advancing The Agenda. Since Mr. Robinson is a self-admitted Socialist, we must consider this article a being part of The Narrative.

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Many workers have their health damaged by lack of access to sunlight and plants. Windows shouldn’t be seen as a perk or luxury. They are a basic necessity that everyone deserves.

It’s an absolutely gorgeous day today here in New Orleans, and I hate that I have to be indoors. But I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a big window in my office. It looks out on a pretty dismal alleyway. I’d prefer it to look out on an urban forest. But it’s a window, and the sun streams through it. I can even open it, though I choose not to because there’s a big ol’ wasp nest right outside and they fly into my office the first chance they get. (Sounds like he needs to have the constitutional right to we wasp-free.)

I can’t imagine how bleak my working life would be without my window. Being a writer and editor requires spending a lot of time cooped up alone in a quiet room. (At least if you’re like me, and can’t work in noisy coffee shops.) (A constitutional right to a quiet coffee shop.)

If I had to work in an office without a window, I’d barely see the sunshine. I think I would get very depressed very fast. (A constitutional right to not be depressed.)

But plenty of people do spend all day in windowless spaces. I stopped by the CVS pharmacy this morning, and I noticed that the pharmacy in the back of the store has zero natural light. I hadn’t thought before about the fact that the pharmacist, who is there all day, doesn’t get to enjoy any of a gorgeous day like today. (Did he have to pay for the drugs? If not he needs another right.)

I consider that cruelty.

I’m not just an unusually avid proponent of office sunlight. According to a survey reported on in the Harvard Business Review, “access to natural light and views of the outdoors” are the number one attribute that people seek in a workspace. (Because natural light is good and beneficial, it becomes a constitutional right.)

They want it more than on-site cafeterias and fitness centers. (What people want, they have a constitutional right to have.)

What’s more, despite craving light, people don’t actually get it. The same survey found that “over a third of employees feel that they don’t get enough natural light in their workspace” which tended to make them feel tired and “gloomy.” (A constitutional right to not feel gloomy.)

There is plenty of research showing that there are negative health effects to not having enough sunlight in the office. For instance, a study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that “workers in windowless environments reported poorer scores than their counterparts on two SF-36 dimensions—role limitation due to physical problems and vitality—as well as poorer overall sleep quality.” (We wonder if there are any health impairments to those people who build skyscrapers and install their windows.)

You don’t need the empirical research in order to understand this. Plants and sunlight make us happy. Not everyone, I’m sure—people vary wildly, and I’m sure there are those who like to work in dismal cocoons. (Hmmm, a variety of opinions based on preference. That is sufficient to create a constitutional right.)

But people’s preferences will tend to be very similar if you ask them whether they’d rather work here:

 

Or here: 



Interestingly, Amazon, understanding the clear benefits of sunlight and plants for the well-being of workers, built a “stunning urban oasis” in Seattle called the Spheres to serve as an employee lounge for its white-collar workers:

 

Similarly, Amazon’s planned headquarters in Virginia is a giant glass helix with a spiral-shaped garden that goes from the top to the bottom of the building. (So private companies choosing on their own to create these spaces without the coercion of government should be the impetus for the creation of a constitutional right.)

Of course, Amazon is evil, and so most of the people who work for the company will never get the “perk” of sunshine and plant life. (It may also be offering these benefits to compensate for its brutal extraction of every last ounce of labor from its white-collar workers.) People who work in Amazon warehouses don’t get a giant greenhouse with a forest. Instead, they have to content themselves with an “AmaZen” mindfulness booth.

But doesn’t every person deserve access to sunshine and greenery as a basic right? (Mr. Robinson asks the question as if the answer is self-evident. He doesn't even bother to make an affirmative argument.)

If it harms your health not to have these things, then companies that don’t provide them should be treated the way companies that unnecessarily endanger workers’ safety are treated. The Occupational Health and Safety Administration rightly requires that workers who toil in the sun must be given access to shade. Why don’t they require that workers who work indoors be given access to sunshine and nature? If these things are basic to our health, (A concept Mr. Robinson has yet to defend.)

and people who don’t have them are hurt mentally, then they’re not luxuries or perks, they’re necessities.

The problem is that a for-profit corporation is not going to take measures that cost money unless they’re forced to by an external authority. (But, but... Amazon did. Surely other leftist companies have done similarly. But more to the point, notice that Mr. Robinson declares something good, elevates it to a necessity, and then invokes government power to force private businesses to do his dirty work. That's always the way it is with the Left. They will happily use coercion to get their way, because they know better than anyone else what's good for you.)

It would require thought, care, and money to build every new CVS with windows in the pharmacy and a little garden outside. Why would they ever do it unless they’re made to do it? (Yes, yes. send the non-compliant off to the gulag. Liquidate some Kulaks.)

I don’t know why it should sound wild or utopian or unrealistic to say that windows are a basic right that every worker deserves. (Because, sir, you live in your stupid little leftist bubble, always wanting to use other peoples' money to realize your utopian dream. You leftist pursue the workers' paradise like Dr. Soran longs for the Nexus. He would willingly kill millions to obtain his objective. Mr. Robinson is different only in degree.)

You have rights 

(even if they’re under-enforced) to safety in your workplace. (Are they constitutional rights?)

Why don’t you have a right to necessities essential for your mental well-being? (The target keeps moving. It used to be that windows were good and pleasant, then beneficial, but now are  essential.) 

Unfortunately, in this messed-up world of ours, rather than giving people more access to the outside world, we may give them less. The mayor of New York City just suggested that to ease the city’s housing crisis, it might be necessary to permit windowless bedrooms in apartments (currently banned under a tenement regulation dating back to the 19th century). After all, he said, “when you sleep it should be dark.” (Indeed, but when you wake up it should be light.) (Mr. Robinson is happy to tell everyone what should be. "Should" is language of moral imperatives. We would question why Mr. Robinson feels free to impose his morality, elevating it to constitutional status.)

Centrist blogger Matthew Yglesias has written that “to save downtowns, we need to embrace windowless bedrooms,” though he gives zero evidence that this is actually necessary to provide more housing. His argument appears to be that if they’re legalized, and there is “demand” for them, this will prove that people “want” them. The analysis will not persuade leftists, who understand that market choices are not reflections of what people ideally “want,” because often they take the best thing they can afford even if it’s terrible. (More moral pronouncements.)

I have no doubt that if you legalize windowless bedrooms in New York City, plenty of people will move into them, just as they moved into tenement houses in the 1800s. But the fact that poor people in search of housing don’t have the ability to demand a window as a nonnegotiable condition is precisely why the government has to establish basic standards. (People who have nonnegotiable standards may end up homeless.)

(In San Francisco, I bet you’d find people willing to rent an apartment where you had to poop in a bucket if the rent was $700 a month. But while Yglesias might say that this shows consumers are demanding poop-buckets, and the government is unfairly preventing the market from providing them, toilets should be nonnegotiable. (Bad analogy. There is no market principle that makes waste matter a condition of rentability.)

I think the right to sunlight and access to plant life is fundamental. (More moral pronouncements. And he pushes the language farther. It was essential, now it's fundamental.)

It should be written into the damn Constitution. (He truly does not understand the constitution.)

You are not a part in a machine. (In the workers' paradise all leftists dream of, this is certainly his destiny.)

You are a human being who should get to watch birds out your window. ("Should." Mr. Robinson's writing drips with moral smugness.)

(Assuming we don’t annihilate all of the birds.) There may be other labor issues that rightly get higher priority—it’s understandable that when people aren’t even paid enough to afford their rent, (People get paid based on what they're worth, not on what their expenses are.)

they’re less concerned with whether they get sunlight or not. But we need to raise our expectations and demands. Companies that don’t give workers windows are engaged in mistreatment and abuse. The health effects are clear. The right should be absolute. (Unlike the right to keep and bear arms.)