Why is exactly Internet access a "human right" (whatever that term means) more than television or going to a football match?
But you get a discount on electric installation if you sign up for your new service online.
Internet service isn't just entertainment: It is communication, banking, and lots of very basic things folks need in life. It just happens to be multi-purpose, so you get the entertainment value as well.
Many jobs require internet access to apply: Fewer and fewer take any sort of paper applications and not everywhere has kiosks to apply and test at (low paying jobs, at least). Heck, game disks are getting rarer, so you sometimes need to be online to use a PC game. Lots of research for school papers is done online.
Also, communication. Few folks send snail mail letters anymore due to email. Chat programs work well too.
If you aren't connected to the internet, you are at a disadvantage. I cannot say that about television in general or a football match - going without those sometimes means you don't have as much to talk about with folks that consume those.
That should be illegal. It's discrimination for a basic service.
>Internet service isn't just entertainment: It is communication, banking, and lots of very basic things folks need in life.
You can still walk into the bank. Checking your account from home is cool, but hardly a vital thing.
>Many jobs require internet access to apply: Fewer and fewer take any sort of paper applications and not everywhere has kiosks to apply and test at (low paying jobs, at least). Heck, game disks are getting rarer, so you sometimes need to be online to use a PC game. Lots of research for school papers is done online.
I doubt they can pull this shit off in a place where 25% of people have no access to the Internet. Otherwise they wouldn't find applicants.
>Also, communication. Few folks send snail mail letters anymore due to email. Chat programs work well too.
A bummer. Hardly a "human rights" issue.
What are you talking about? A lot of Alabama (and the US generally) is unbanked specifically because there's no bank in walking distance.
So instead of giving a discount for signing up online, they should charge everyone the same price which would be the non discounted price - how does that help?
There are all kinds of things where there's a service fee tacked on for more expensive or convenient ways of accessing city or public services. I can apply for parking permit or pay parking tickets for free if I walk to the parking office, or for the cost of a stamp, envelope, and a check if I mail it, or for a 2.75% (minimum $1.50) convenience charge if I use a credit card.
Am I being discriminated against without even realizing it?
> By necessaries I understand not only the commodities which are indispensably necessary for the support of life, but what ever the customs of the country renders it indecent for creditable people, even the lowest order, to be without. A linen shirt, for example, is, strictly speaking, not a necessary of life. The Greeks and Romans lived, I suppose, very comfortably, though they had no linen. But in the present times, through the greater part of Europe, a creditable day-laborer would be ashamed to appear in public without a linen shirt, the want of which would be supposed to denote that disgraceful degree of poverty which, it is presumed, nobody can well fall into, without extreme bad conduct. Custom, in the same manner, has rendered leather shoes a necessary of life in England.
If yes, then let's do it. If not, then let's not. No need to argue about whether it's some ineffable "right" or not, which ultimately comes down to personal philosophy.