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If you can read this you are very lucky

ahumanright.org

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Re: If you can read this you are very lucky

#6
Agreed about the lucky part, but I generally disagree with saying "X is a human right." Because different resources are always competing with each other at the margin so if you put in a huge campaign for Internet access, etc, you're probably crowding out other valuable infrastructure, like plumbing or electricity.

Furthermore you can take things too far. Water is so cheap in the US because "it's a human right" but this doesn't mean that it's above the laws of supply and demand, which in Southern California anyway means that people still take long showers during droughts, because the water's not priced at market level. See more here http://search.forbes.com/search/colArchiveSearch?author=davi...

On another note, just putting in Ethernet lines and computers won't have magic side effects. I was in India last spring, and when I went out to the field most places generally had a computer. However it was almost always under-utilized; for example in one place the computer had been off for 2 months because the mouse was broken, and another place had Photoshop and was using it only to resize images because they didn't know how to use it.

Re: If you can read this you are very lucky

#7
Wait, wait. It's "A FREE COMMUNICATION NETWORK AVAILABLE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD" yet only accessible to "95%" of the world's population? .. either "95%" have the technology to access it, or 5% live in outer space .. or did I miss something.

Re: If you can read this you are very lucky

#10
post #5

I think it is a mistake to make something a human right that has to be provided by somebody else.

> I think it is a mistake to make something a human right that has to be provided by somebody else.

So you don't believe in property rights; the right to an attorney; the right to a trial by jury; the right of a speedy trial; protection from unreasonable search and seizure; the right to confront your accuser? All of these things require someone else to do something they might not be paid to do or would be paid by the government to do through tax revenue.

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