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Ritalin comments on A website standard that is affordable to the poorest demographics in developing countries? - Less Wrong Discussion
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[citation needed], but I'm willing to go with whatever works best for the end user in the long term.
And, again, it's not a matter of "more" regulation so much as it is one of badly-designed regulation that doesn't get the job done.
As for the "rights" discussion, I'm beginning to see where you're coming from. Rights are bizarre, rhetorical tools, bargaining chips in the economics of pricelessness and compromise. I'll admit, subtleties of this kind baffle me. As an engineer, I tend to think in more immediate terms, and, from the ground, all those words about rights sound like little more than well-wishing, and I use them as such.
At any rate, you seem to suggest that the fact that declaring things as rights giving States the power to defy the IMF and WTO's orders is a bad thing, which confuses me. Last time I heard, every country that attempted to apply the IMF's recommendations faced economic and social disaster; their ideas are reputedly naive at best and malicious at worst.
No, rights are (or should be) based on time-tested ethical injunctions. Granted today there is an unfortunate tendency for bodies like the UN to invent (and "de-sanctify") rights at the drop of a hat. This is undesirable behavior and should be met with mockery and derision.
Could you expound on that "time-tested ethical injunctions" thing? I understand the concepts separately, but not how they go together, nor how they relate to "rights" as in "La Déclaration des Droits de L'Homme et du Citoyen", the "Bill of Rights", or the "UN Declaration of Human Rights".
In general I'm able to speak about political matters and effects of policies without immediate judgement. When trying to understand complex political systems it helps to first focus on understanding and leave out judgements as good or bad.
The discussion about right to water is about roles of states and to what extend you have profit maximizing corporations in control of the water supply. It's a complex debate with good arguments on both sides. Policy debates shouldn't not appear one-sided.
When thinking about internet distribution the key question is whether the cell phone companies that currently provide it in Africa do enough to increase subscriber base. If you think they are doing a good job, then moving the responsibility for internet from markets to states isn't useful. If you believe that the cell phone companies are doing a poor job, then it makes a lot more sense to support ways to instead make states responsible for it.
In the EU I want to have strong net neutrality laws. I would appreciate EU legislation that makes me use my German mobile phone contract in France without roaming charges.
On the other hand I have no problem with lax net neutrality laws that would allow a service like facebook zero in Chile where facebook zero means that people who otherwise would have no access to internet at least have access to facebook.
On a further note third world countries often are corrupt which makes regulations less efficient than they could be in a perfect world. A Western company who invests wants to have some protection against the local government just coming in and forcing the Western company to provide their service for less money because the population has a right to that service.
Note, however, that first-world countries are often corrupt as well, the balance of powers is just different. And it's not just Western companies who invest, and who want to avoid the government getting in their way.
Yes. That's also on of the reasons why we in the EU don't simply let a city hand out subsidies to whatever company it wants. Having rules that forbid that on EU level means that a city officiel can't simply give the company of his friend huge subsidies.
If the city buys something they can't simply go to one company and make a secret deal but they have to accept proposals from a lot of companies for the contract.
Less power means that they can't do as much harm through corruption. When you however start given the city the task to hand out subsidies to see that flats get build because everyone has a right to housing, there's more opportunity for corruption.
Yes, I think a bunch of those third world cell phone companies are even domestic.
Well India is the standard IMF success story.
Ok, now your turn: can you provide an example of a country where applying IMF recommendations resulted in more "economic and social disaster" then the country was already in before the IMF got involved.
Here's a quick-and-dirty first things I found. Checking out peer-reviewed papers and other primary sources will take me a little more time.
Well none of those links contain examples of "economic and social disaster". The closest think to a concrete country that I could find in them was Greece. And even there the IMF/EU bailout did help, if only in a "kick the can down the road" kind of way. If any thing, from what I heard the problem in Greece is that the IMF wasn't insistent enough on structural reforms, instead going for a tax-increase heavy "austerity".
If there are no rights, there is not need for compromises or negotiation -- the bigger stick always wins. Why should I trade with you if I can just take?
Because that would lead to mistrust, isolation, fortification, violent conflict, instability, etc., which will end up in less good stuff being made overall, and in less chances of me getting what is made. Enlightened self-interest dictates that fair trade is the best option in the long run.
In a world without rights, you can have your enlightened self-interest and I'll take the big stick (along with all your stuff) :-D
Who says that just because I refrain from taking everything by force, that I don't carry a bigger stick than yours? I just happen to speak softly.
That wasn't your argument two posts up :-) You said that enlightened self-interest should win implying that the size of the stick is immaterial. Did you change your mind?
No, I did not. The implication isn't that the size of the stick is immaterial, but that sticks, like swords, are for having, not using. Once you draw your stick, you don't have many options and they're all bad ones. This is especially true in cases of Mutually Assured Destruction, where both agents are very careful not to wrong each other, because they both know and respect each other's destructive power.
We disagree about that :-) I think that swords and sticks are precisely for using and if you don't think so I'll be happy to use mine while you're still thinking whether it's OK to draw it :-/
Cases of MAD are very rare in real life.
Obviously if I see you draw your sword I will draw mine. The point of having a sword in the first place, however, is that you dare not put us both in a situation where you might die.
Cases of MAD (or at least MRD) are extremely common in Real Life. They're the reason adults stop using violence in the extensive way they used to as children; even a simple fistfight is liable to end in death for one of the fighters. And that's not withstanding any Leviathan that make it suicidal to shoot first, second, or ever.
And will you stop it with the smiley faces? It doesn't add anything to your argument and it comes of as cheeky, which is to say, self-satisfiedly disrespectful.
Hey, lookit that, something I've actually studied!
For most of recent Western history, wearing a sword casually (i.e. not as part of paid employment) was primarily a status marker: it said you were part of the aristocratic class, someone with interests and an honor that you could, in theory, be expected to defend. Toward the end of the early modern period swords began to be replaced with walking sticks in this role, but the idea was the same: you were carrying a weapon because that's what gentry were originally for.
This didn't necessarily mean you were expected to shank people on a regular basis, though. The amount of actual swordplay involved varied wildly between cultures and times: sometimes swords were essentially male jewelry, sometimes practical dueling weapons that everyone in your social circle would have been trained with and weren't too unlikely to have used in anger, sometimes something in between. Note too that the existence of a code duello or the equivalent didn't necessarily mean it was in common use or had a lot of etiquette built up around it.
Mutually Assured Destruction is extremely common? We live in different worlds (or you're confusing MAD with "there will be consequences").
That is correct. I am cheeky :-P