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Comment by johnnybgoode | Hacker News Reader

If you meant about Estonia, here is a link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0701/p07s01-woeu.html

(I had no idea that it's been almost six years already since I saw that!)

If you meant about the dilution of real rights, I'd have to get political to explain. I hope this is OK since the headline is already political.

It has to do with negative and positive rights. Very briefly, a positive right is a right to be given something through the action of someone else. A negative right is usually a right to be left alone in some way, such as a right to free expression. As a positive right, a right to internet access can only be guaranteed to everyone through a violation of someone's negative rights.

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If I recall correctly, the EU's "right" to Internet Access was in response to France's "three strikes" cutoff law.

In other words, this is a right that prevents governments from cutting off an individual's access, not (and correct me if I'm wrong) any right to free state-paid Internet access.

I believe you are correct about the law, but I was responding more to the idea expressed in the title and in the article of recognizing internet access as a "fundamental" right "on par" with the right to free expression.

Be that as it may, one can easily imagine cases where the benefits of creating a positive right would outweigh the harm. Any particular reason to think negative rights must trump everything else?

> one can easily imagine cases where the benefits of creating a positive right would outweigh the harm.

Houw about three really good/strong examples?

I'll even stipulate one - trial by jury with competent representation. (I'm pretty sure that health care won't qualify.)

A positive right infringes on the rights of others. For example, a right to health care means doctors and nurses don't have rights to their time; a right to housing means existing home owners don't have a right to their homes.

There are certainly positive rights that could be net beneficial. And taking away negative rights could also be helpful. E.g. the negative externalities of imminent domain could be reduced by censoring anyone who tried to talk about how it's a bad deal -- this would temporarily reduce the negative effect on real estate prices. But it sets bad precedents and leads to bad decisions.

"For example, a right to health care"

But we have a right to health care, at least where I live, and I'm not aware of doctors' rights being compromised. Nothing's forcing them to work for the National Health Service.

That sort of right merely compels the government to implement certain policies (i.e. hiring enough public sector doctors).

I was thinking more along the lines of anything tax pays for (so yes, healthcare does work as an example, but not in the way you suggest). Presumably, taxing people is a violation of their negative right to be left alone. Yet tax pays for many good things, and I don't want to live in a place where it doesn't exist.

Yes, as I explained at http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=602678 it has to do with equal rights.

I'm not sure that's necessary. Can you link on a resource that says positive rights always result in the violation of someone's negative rights? I guess the negative right of property would be violated by the tax cost of the internet.

The positive/negative rights thing is basically the libertarians adopting a simplified and less-nuanced reading of Isaiah Berlin's famous essay, "Two Concepts of Liberty"

http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/papers/twoconcepts.pd...

It's better to go to the originals on things like this then to read what they've become in the political folk mythology on the internets.

The only exception would be a positive right to something previously unowned. For example, you could have a right to own any island you discover, without violating someone else's preexisting claim.

But if you have a right to be fed, it violates someone else's right to the food they own; if you have a right to medical care, nurses and doctors don't own their own time, etc.

This point seems misguided. Your right to medical care doesn't force nurses and doctors to become nurses and doctors - on the contrary it enables their right to a job if that is their chosen career path.

But you don't mind being guaranteed a speedy trial by a jury of your peers, do you?

Even though that is something guaranteed by something called the 'Bill of Rights' it's really more of an implementation detail of the general mission of the government. A speedy trial just ensures that the government must treat like things the same and different things differently. Without the 'speedy' provision then an innocent person could conceivably be treated as a guilty one by delaying trial. Similarly, the right to an impartial jury ('a jury of one's peers' isn't in the Constitution) is a check on arbitrariness on the part of the courts. So the first principle is that we're innocent until proven guilty and that like things should be treated alike and different things should be treated differently.

Right, but the point is that the "right to a trial" (at all):

- is a positive right (to have a jury trial at all implies judge, jury, etc., all of whom have better things to do with their time than listen to two losers argue back and forth, and thus somehow someone is going to be compelled to provide for the trial, either directly -- jury duty -- or indirectly -- via taxation)

- that a positive right makes it into the bill of rights means positive rights as such are not verboten, or somehow anathema to the founders' sensibilities

- or it's an entitlement (which is closer to the truth), but then again there's no problem with entitlements being enshrined in the bill of rights

I've got a special place in my heart for people who use the positive/negative distinction as a kind of club; cf my other post in this thread to see the origin of the notion in modern discourse.

I do mind, actually. I did read your other post in this thread, and you've made some unwarranted assumptions.

What about it do you mind?

As I explained in another post, I'm against violating people's rights.

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