House of Eratosthenes

BBC World Service just released a global poll that sends conflicting signals about people’s attitudes toward the Internet.

On the one hand, 79 percent of the 27,000 adults polled in 26 countries believe that Internet access “should be a fundamental right for all people.” (Half of them strongly agree with that proposition.) But on the other hand, 53 percent believe that “the Internet should never be regulated by any level of government anywhere.”

If these people regard the word “right” the way I do, then this is a terrible situation. It is my reluctance against the deepest and darkest variety of pessimism that persuades me to believe the term could benefit from some clarification; to believe that, where I think a “right” is something justifying the invasion of a country, to many other people in those other countries a “right” is justification for simple diplomacy. As in “Hey, those people don’t have Internet access.” “Well, let’s try to get it to ’em.” Which is a far cry from saying “Hey, those women are being raped on a regular basis, and murdered when they try to learn to read,” to which civilized people say “Well this sucks big ol’ donkey balls, but we’re going to have to go in there and put a stop to that.”

Rights. It seems America was out grabbing another beer from the fridge, when someone came on the teevee and handed out the instructions to be so casual and flip with that word. So ninety-six percent of the adults in South Korea think it’s a basic human right to be hooked up to the net? In my world, this would mean only four percent of them should be allowed to vote, or to make any decisions about anything at all. What in the world is going on in your head? You like surfing the net, therefore it becomes a “right”?

Has anybody mentioned equality? Holy smokes, that would really stir up a hornets’ nest wouldn’t it. All over the world, it seems people who are most into this hyper-“New Rights” stuff are also into equality. Now, if only ten percent of us have access to ninety percent of the available bandwidth, then…oh, goodness gracious me. Better do something about it right now! Human rights are at stake!

Rights. Pffffft. You realize the danger here, don’t you? And it’s a pretty serious one: If everything is a right, then nothing is.

So I have a new right in mind for myself: When I vote, my vote should not be watered down by the votes of numbskulls laboring under the delusion that we’re living in a populist pure-democracy, and that they/we can have any li’l thing they/we decide is desirable, simply by voting on it.

New “ripening smartphone fruit” project: Civics knowledge quiz for Americans who want to apply for their “right” to vote. And I’m going to limit its length. But one of the very first questions is going to be — what is a right? That, to me, seems to be where the trolley is leaving the tracks here. Too many people think, if it would cause some bad feelings of withdrawal if they were deprived of something they have currently, that this by itself conjures up a “basic human right.”

It is, more and more, taking on the form and substance of a problem that is too serious to be left alone, and allowed to smolder itself out. More and more, it is demanding some intervention.

[…] D’JEver Notice? LIII Broadband is a Right? Norse Mythology and Vikings Birra Moretti Zero “Dumb Like a Fox” Best Sentence LXXXVII […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 03/10/2010 @ 08:40
One mustn’t lose sight of the fact that of 26 countries polled, in maybe 20 both the
questions and answers are translations,the word”rights” didn’t quite exist as in
american english.How many respondents took this as their gov’t shouldn’t
interfere with their web connection?Q: How many people in the US have access
to a new Mercedes? A:All of them,anybody can walk to a dealer, hand over 50thou
and have one.Should the gov’t control Merc access?
- kermitt | 03/10/2010 @ 08:45
Yeah that’s a good point. Of course the issue of the word “rights” not existing in English is the tip of a tail of a very, very large Brontosaurus. Over here where English is (for now) the predominant language, we’re still deliberating over what a “right” is without really deliberating it, see the post that follows this one. And that inspires another issue: If the question has to be translated, including the word “right,” then who is in charge of this translation? How does that person view a right? (Refer once again to the post that follows this one.)

What I get out of this is additional confirmation of this chicken-and-egg relationship between a strutting-martinet government that considers itself the originator, as well as guardian, of “rights”; and the entitlement mentality upon which it depends, and which in turn depends on it. It’s a vicious cycle, and I think when the Founding Fathers sat down to draw up all those fancy documents, what they were really drawing up was what they had concluded to be the only way out. Governments have a way of naturally setting themselves up as lieges, and only by conceptualizing “rights” as provided by something bigger-than-government can they be curtailed from doing this.
- mkfreeberg | 03/10/2010 @ 09:34
A “right” is simply something the government cannot lawfully or morally take from you without just cause – your freedom to speak or move about, for instance. Negative rights, in other words – what the rulers are prohibited from doing to you.

If the word is redefined the way Chairman Zero wishes it to be, then the concept metamorphasizes into something altogether different. His definition is “what the government must do FOR you.” A positive right, such as the right to Internet access. Naturally, any thinking person asks the next logical question, “Okay, who is going to forced to pay for it, then? Don’t say “the government” because governments – federal, state, local, foreign – have only those resources which they’ve confiscated from productive members of the private sector. It’s precisely why we argue that there is no such thing as a “right” to health care. Not when someone else must be forced to pay for it.

The only lawful exception to that (which I can think of, anyway) would be the right to legal representation when accused of some crime – meaning a public defender if the accused cannot afford a lawyer. And even that right is there simply to prevent the criminal justice system from running ordinary people over with its large wheels.
- cylarz | 03/11/2010 @ 01:39
You’re on the right track, cylarz. Perhaps rights could be defined as being available to all people, all places, at any time. Right to life? Universal. Right to broadband? Non sequiter.
- chunt31854 | 03/11/2010 @ 12:44

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Wednesday, March 10th, 2010