141–150 of 215 posts
Welcome democracy. Bye bye mobocracy!
I was a bit surprised by the fact that all of the judges' opinions, which are embedded in the article, were in English. But it turns out that English is the official language of the Indian Supreme Court, and the court has even gone so far as to rule that it need not provide a Hindi translation of its rulings: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation... It seems kind of bizarre to me that as an Ame…
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> A lot of conversations about expanding rights, end up with a distinction between positive and negative rights. Correct. Right to a fair trail is also a positive right. To uphold it, the state must pay for a lawyer if you don't have one, the state must pay for enough judges (& associated costs) to ensure your trail isn't delayed ("Justice delayed is justice denied" and all that). > The right to free speech, conscien…
Right to a fair trail is also a positive right. Ehh, I'm not sure. The actual right is better described as the right not to be unfairly tried, which is clearly negative. The distinction is more than semantic: if the State launches an investigation and then drops it, leaving suspicion in the public's mind, you can't force them to go to trial to present your case and clear your name.
What is at stake is the liberty of the poor not to be interfered with in taking from the surplus possessions of the rich what is necessary to satisfy their basic needs. Needless to say, libertarians would want to deny that the poor have this liberty. But how could they justify such a denial? As this liberty of the poor has been specified, it is not a positive right to receive something, but a negative right of non-interference.
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Uh huh, and what if I do not want to depend of the government to provide me with food, clothing and shelter since I am able to earn those for my family and me (reducing the social security burden on the government), should I not have the freedom to excuse myself from these alleged social benefit schemes. Your argument and many similar ones are now boring and have been countered enough times already.
Actually, I completely agree with your position. If you dont want ANY benefit, you should absolutely have the freedom to excuse yourself. The problem is that in a country like India 99% of the people do depend on some benefit or the other. Not sure if you are aware, but the context around this specific discussion in India is around the use of Aadhar for targeted govt. assistance. The govt. position is pretty much tha…
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This is tricky. I think a workable solution is to create zones where free speech is unrestricted and where new ideas can be incubated. They themselves would have some restrictions (e.g. you can't physically hurt the person you lost a debate to) but would, by and large, be free speech zones. The idea was described in this speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJktQiZRa5A The rest of society can have different rules w…
Yeah, that's an incredibly stupid idea–and I say that as a big fan of reasonable limits on free speech. Creating "free speech zones" seems like a surefire way to start telling everyone to "take it to the free speech zone" and stop annoying "normal people" with your ideas. It's like the wet dream of these people that have started calling citizens consumers, even in a political context, and advocate the criminal prosec…
I went to university in the United States. The university I attended instituted "free speech zones" in the wake of the (second) Iraq War. They were initially protest zones, but by the time I was there they had turned into what you basically said - places where students were told to go to express unpopular ideas instead of being allowed to express them in class.
I took a sociology course during my studies, and the topic of abortion came up. Instead of having a nuanced discussion about the topic, students objecting to the professor's view were cut off or ridiculed. One student, trying to articulate their position was yelled at, by the professor, to shut up and if they felt strongly enough to take their position "to the free speech zone with the other Christian fascists and religious weirdos". Every year I was there, the bounds of the free speech zone got smaller and smaller, so there was even less room where unpopular ideas were officially tolerated on campus.
This is part of why I got out of academia. Not because of any institutional bias, but the authoritarian bent of the administration. All of campus should be a free speech zone. (No, disrupting class is not "free speech", there is a difference.)
Here's what the Attorney General - the government counsel - argued > He said that in developing countries, something as amorphous as privacy could not be a fundamental right, that other fundamental rights such as food, clothing, shelter etc. override the right to privacy. It's a question which has alway bothered me. What happens when two fundamental rights clash with each other?
" The petitioners, former Karnataka high court judge Justice K.S. Puttaswamy and others, had contended that the biometric data and iris scan that was being collected for issuing Aadhaar cards violated the citizen’s fundamental right to privacy" I find the above interpretation of privacy troubling. In order for the government to effectively distribute social services to the needy, cutting out corrupt/inefficient middl…
Not really. He means that govt cannot force every citizen to undergo iris scan etc. for obtaining Aadhar card. I would like to get Aadhar without iris scan (and am willing to let go of secondary benefits like LPG subssidy etc). Such an option doesn't exist as of today. I , as an individual , will exercise my right to privacy by deciding whether to give my biometrics or not. Govt should not decide on my behalf.
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> The right to free speech, conscience, affiliation , assembly and other political freedoms mean we need to tolerate and protect the proverbial nazis’ rights to try and spread their politics. I'm not convinced I know how I feel about this. I want to believe this is a false dichotomy. Can we have limits in polite society ? I keep thinking of the paradox of tolerance [1], which states, in brief, that if a society is to…
Are we really to the point where Nazi ideologies are spreading like wildfire, to the point that their "intolerance" will be seized by our "tolerance?" To me it seems like the opposite is happening. Nazi ideologies are marginalized and meaningless, yet propped up like some huge threat to us... like they might take over. And this is being used as justification for limiting free speech, in a hyper-politically correct so…
" The petitioners, former Karnataka high court judge Justice K.S. Puttaswamy and others, had contended that the biometric data and iris scan that was being collected for issuing Aadhaar cards violated the citizen’s fundamental right to privacy" I find the above interpretation of privacy troubling. In order for the government to effectively distribute social services to the needy, cutting out corrupt/inefficient middl…
If one is looking at solving problems of theft, there are other bigger places to look at and plug "leaks" instead of oppressing the poorest of the poor.
Biometrics, unlike passwords, cannot be replaced or changed if leaked. And people leave their fingerprints in many places, and iris scans have been easily and trivially captured with photos. [3] The system used in India is the actual biometrics of the person that doesn't allow any kind of replacement (there are ways to create variable biometrics).
Error rates of biometrics are also too high to ignore on a population the size of India. In environments with a smaller number of people, biometrics may help in uniquely identifying people.
[1]: https://rethinkaadhaar.in
[2]: https://scroll.in/topic/38792/identity-project
[3]:https://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/12/29/german_minister_fin...
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Not really. He means that govt cannot force every citizen to undergo iris scan etc. for obtaining Aadhar card. I would like to get Aadhar without iris scan (and am willing to let go of secondary benefits like LPG subssidy etc). Such an option doesn't exist as of today. I , as an individual , will exercise my right to privacy by deciding whether to give my biometrics or not. Govt should not decide on my behalf.
An Aadhar card is just an identity document. You don't have to get one if you don't want any benefits linked to it. Just use some other ID.