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It is one thing to say that such an offering is not in the poor's best long term interest. It is another to oppose it in such a way that hurts the poor's chanc

It is one thing to say that such an offering is not in the poor's best long term interest. It is another to oppose it in such a way that hurts the poor's chance of even having a choice. If is the difference between saying that smoking at 18 is bad and pushing a ban on selling cigarettes to adults who are considered too young. By all means, inform me. But do not take my freedom from me, even if it is in my best interest. For example, I strongly oppose bans on selling cigarettes to young adults even though I have never smoked and I hate smoking. I love the advice of how it is bad for you, but I love having the freedom to choose not to smoke instead of having it forced upon me. But, I also realize it isn't this simple, as you have the other side using very underhanded if not outright illegal means to push what is in their best benefit. Personally this leads to me being at a moral impasse, because while I love the freedom to choose things that are less than beneficial for me, I realize that applied at large this causes major problems and I personally cannot hand wave it all away by saying they are adults responsible for their own choices (I honestly don't draw a major distinction between adults and children in this regard). I dislike Zuckerberg for being deceitful as to the goals of this 'charity'. But I also dislike those who want to remove choices, even those that are not in my favor.

Manishearth 11y ago
As I've mentioned elsewhere, Free Basics isn't the only offering that solves the problem. There are other options, and other models which have worked which Free Basics could adopt instead. From that point of view, there are things which are strictly better than free basics which address these concerns (and net neutrality affects everyone, it's not just the "choice" of the people using Free Basics). If these other models didn't exist there would probably be a weaker opposition to Free Basics. I'd mostly be on the fence -- preferring that net neutrality wasn't affected, but still supporting (or, not opposing) Free Basics since it's an IMO net gain. But these other options do exist. What if there was a way to get the stress relief and other effects of smoking in a perfectly healthy and otherwise equivalent way? Would you ban cigarette smoking then? This "safe smoke" is not inferior to regular smoking according to smokers. It feels the exact same and has the exact same effect. If this exists, why allow cigarettes to exist? Okay, maybe you still want that choice. What if secondhand smoke was a much larger danger than it is now, and if a sizeable chunk of people start smoking, a lot of other people may get cancer just by sharing the same streets? In that case, would you allow it? It's the same situation here.

Manishearth 11y ago

As I've mentioned elsewhere, Free Basics isn't the only offering that solves the problem. There are other options, and other models which have worked which Free Basics could adopt instead. From that point of view, there are things which are strictly better than free basics which address these concerns (and net neutrality affects everyone, it's not just the "choice" of the people using Free Basics). If these other models didn't exist there would probably be a weaker opposition to Free Basics. I'd mostly be on the fence -- preferring that net neutrality wasn't affected, but still supporting (or, not opposing) Free Basics since it's an IMO net gain. But these other options do exist. What if there was a way to get the stress relief and other effects of smoking in a perfectly healthy and otherwise equivalent way? Would you ban cigarette smoking then? This "safe smoke" is not inferior to regular smoking according to smokers. It feels the exact same and has the exact same effect. If this exists, why allow cigarettes to exist? Okay, maybe you still want that choice. What if secondhand smoke was a much larger danger than it is now, and if a sizeable chunk of people start smoking, a lot of other people may get cancer just by sharing the same streets? In that case, would you allow it? It's the same situation here.