You have an odd view of society, at least from a European point of view.
- not all of Europe. I rather like Switzerland and its take on things.
In Europe certain things are considered human rights, such as the right to life and to shelter and to water.
- please, define what you mean by 'human rights'?
If the human right in this case means that government cannot prevent an individual from attempting to build himself a better life, attempting to survive by building/acquiring shelter/water, that is one thing.
If by 'human right' you mean government using force and violence to take resources from some people in order to provide entitlements to items, that you think are 'rights' (food/shelter/water), then it's something else entirely.
A right is a protection against government abuse, nothing else, everything else is government abuse. An entitlement system is a system of government abuse and destruction of human rights. Also it doesn't work at all once you run out of people that you can abuse, look at Greece. Who will provide the Greeks with those entitlements if there is nobody left to steal from?
Therefore the water company can't turn your water off, ever.
- nonsense. A water company can shut down and not provide you with water. It can move the water pumps and cleaning facilities out of there and all of a sudden your entitlements are gone. Simpler still, a water company can shut down because it cannot pay energy bills because the people feel they have a 'right' to get water and it cannot be shut off 'ever' even if they stop paying the water bills to the water company.
The only way to maintain such a system of entitlements is to have government enforced monopoly on supply and then ration the supply based on the so called 'rights'. Of-course as all such schemes, this too ends the moment financial troubles start and they start eventually in a system like that, where there are no individual rights, there are plenty of people that feel entitled to be supplied stuff by others and there is a government that enforces this view with the rule of violence.
Similarly, the gas and electricity companies can't turn your supply off in the hope that the freezing weather and the fact that your kids can't do their homework in the dark is sufficient motivation to make you pay up, they have to supply that service while taking other legal action.
- and it is absolutely wrong to destroy individual rights of people (companies are ran by people, so that just we are clear) to turn off the lights this way, they are not property of the state and they are not your private slaves either. Of-course again, in a system like that this collapses eventually and inevitably, the only question is time.
Of-course natural monopolies are a myth, a way for governments to establish monopolies and destroy competition by destroying individual rights of people.
There is no loss of rights for the corporation, because they have none. They are not people, human rights don't apply.
- a corporation is a fiction, every business is ran by people, you are talking about destroying individual rights of people that run companies, don't pretend you don't understand it.
Again, it isn't that dissimilar to the US, where a business cannot refuse to serve people because of their religion, race, gender or sexual orientation.
- yeah, and people should be able to refuse to serve anybody they want for any reason they want.
A person can walk into any business he desires, thus discriminating against all other businesses, no questions asked. Same for people that run businesses, they should be able to discriminate against anybody who wants to use/buy their services. USA is wrong as well, but multiple wrongs don't make a right.
This system works pretty well for us. If you don't like it, don't do business here. There are plenty of others who want to, we don't need you.
- sure sure, the way of Greece is the way of all socialist / fascist societies.