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A lot of conversations about expanding rights, end up with a distinction between positive and negative rights. A right to water, is different to free speech. Fo

A lot of conversations about expanding rights, end up with a distinction between positive and negative rights. A right to water, is different to free speech. For everyone to have a right to water, someone needs to provide the water or be held accountable for not providing it. A default, state culprit needs to be designated. Privacy though, privacy is like speech or equality before the law or presumption of innocence. You have it by default and if it’s denied there is a culprit. Even in this case, we seem to have a hard time expanding rights. I say expanding, but privacy is a right in many places, formally. But, the interpretation of that right is very weak. Anyway… if we’re to make privacy a right with serious intent then there needs to be a willingness to break eggs, bear a cost. The right to free speech, conscience, affiliation , assembly and other political freedoms mean we need to tolerate and protect the proverbial nazis’ rights to try and spread their politics. Bitter pill for anyone scared of a proverbial nazi takeover. Are we willing to bear the (fear-based, mostly) costs in the fight against the terrorism demon. The economic costs that will be claimed by companies relying on data? If we have a strong yes, I think we can start building the real framework of laws and conventions that will secure a right to privacy for the next few generations. Absolute principles require some sacrifice.

rmc 9y ago
> A lot of conversations about expanding rights, end up with a distinction between positive and negative rights. Correct. Right to a fair trail is also a positive right. To uphold it, the state must pay for a lawyer if you don't have one, the state must pay for enough judges (& associated costs) to ensure your trail isn't delayed ("Justice delayed is justice denied" and all that). > The right to free speech, conscience, affiliation , assembly and other political freedoms mean we need to tolerate and protect the proverbial nazis’ rights to try and spread their politics. Plenty of legal systems have those rights, and also ban nazis or similar groups. It's not an either/or.
- icebraining 9y ago
  Right to a fair trail is also a positive right. Ehh, I'm not sure. The actual right is better described as the right not to be unfairly tried, which is clearly negative. The distinction is more than semantic: if the State launches an investigation and then drops it, leaving suspicion in the public's mind, you can't force them to go to trial to present your case and clear your name.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - dieterrams 9y ago
    The right not to be unfairly tried is easily satisfied by not having a trial at all. The right to a fair trial is about two things: you must be tried before being found guilty and punishment/sentencing is administered, and that trial must be executed fairly. In effect, you have the right to a (fair) trial. A trial and especially a fair trial are undeniably interventions on how things would otherwise proceed. But I agree with moomin that the positive/negative distinction is not really meaningful.
    - Qantourisc 9y ago
      There is still the option to mandate both. (No unfair tried, and a fair trial.)
    - icebraining 9y ago
      A trial and especially a fair trial are undeniably interventions on how things would otherwise proceed No, because otherwise it would just be aggression. A trial is a method for the accusers to be able to show that their subsequent aggression (imprisonment, removal of property, etc) is justified.
      - dieterrams 9y ago
        No, it is to prevent the defendant from being unjustly blamed and punished.
        icebraining 9y ago
        Unjustly blaming and punishing someone is defamation and aggression. You don't need extra rights to be protected from that.
        dieterrams 9y ago
- rlpb 9y ago
  > Right to a fair trail is also a positive right. To uphold it, the state must pay for a lawyer... Nope. The state could just choose not to prosecute.
- rsync 9y ago
  "Plenty of legal systems have those rights, and also ban nazis or similar groups. It's not an either/or." They are mistaken. Free speech and free association are not extant when books are banned or ideas are outlawed. It is an either/or and all historical evidence serves to confirm this. If you want blowfish source to not be a munition you need to put up with the Westboro Baptists.
  - andrewla 9y ago
    > Free speech and free association are not extant when books are banned or ideas are outlawed. I mean, is this just arguing about the definition of the term "free speech"? It's not hard to think of easy examples, like the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" or "revealing military secrets to the enemy at times of war" or "libel" or "slander". By necessity, we accept that there are restrictions. In general I favor a generous standard, where to disallow certain types of speech you need to carve out a compelling case -- the default should be that speech (and speech-like things) should not be forbidden. But stating it as a naked tautology is not helpful because it acknowledges none of the nuance. > all historical evidence serves to confirm this Once again, if we're just talking definitions, then sure, any place or time where books are banned or ideas are outlawed is not practicing free speech. But I think you'd be hard-pressed, given the exceptions above, to ever find a place in history where this was practiced.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
> The right to free speech, conscience, affiliation , assembly and other political freedoms mean we need to tolerate and protect the proverbial nazis’ rights to try and spread their politics. I'm not convinced I know how I feel about this. I want to believe this is a false dichotomy. Can we have limits in polite society? I keep thinking of the paradox of tolerance[1], which states, in brief, that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
- sametmax 9y ago
  The limit is action. Words are not important. But a lot of words are mixed with actions: harassments, segregation, etc. Those should be clearly identified so that free speech don't protect them.
  - noufalibrahim 9y ago
    This is tricky. I think a workable solution is to create zones where free speech is unrestricted and where new ideas can be incubated. They themselves would have some restrictions (e.g. you can't physically hurt the person you lost a debate to) but would, by and large, be free speech zones. The idea was described in this speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJktQiZRa5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJktQiZRa5A The rest of society can have different rules which can be more nuanced.
    - sametmax 9y ago
      Or maybe time periods. Like in the purge :)
    - matt4077 9y ago
      Yeah, that's an incredibly stupid idea–and I say that as a big fan of reasonable limits on free speech. Creating "free speech zones" seems like a surefire way to start telling everyone to "take it to the free speech zone" and stop annoying "normal people" with your ideas. It's like the wet dream of these people that have started calling citizens consumers, even in a political context, and advocate the criminal prosecution of peaceful protesters when they don't all stay on the sidewalks. FWIW, I first remember hearing the term in the context of the Beijing Olympics, which should tell you everything you need to know about that idea.
moomin 9y ago
In practice I think the positive negative distinction is somewhat pointless. All rights, regardless of their "nature" require enforcement and consistent interpretation and neither of those things come for free. Part of the problem for Americans is that they have two definitions of rights. There's the ones in the Bill of Rights, which are phrased in a negative way. And there's those in the Declaration of Independence, which are provided by the creator and that governments must implement. And those rights are extremely broad. Heck, just the right to life could reasonably be argued to ban the death penalty. (Luckily for jurists everywhere, the Declaration of Independence isn't actually on the statute book.) In practice, I think the distinction (and to be quite honest, pretty much the entire minimalist/constitutionalist approach) is mostly used to justify path dependence. The founding fathers believed that later generations would have enhanced understanding of the world. Fetishising their every decision just makes for a worse America.
- phiskk 9y ago
  For an admittedly artificial example of positive vs negative rights. If you consider, say, a person living in the middle of a desert. A right to privacy amounts to just being left alone, and enforcing that would only be required if another party were actively violating that right. <- It's easy to argue for this. A right to water, on the other hand, might require that some other party be forced to provide water to this person in the desert. <- Here many people might quite reasonably argue; why should others put themselves out to facilitate this persons life choices.
- dalbasal 9y ago
  I’m not opposed to positive rights, but I’d rather we call them something else so as not to erode the special nature of regular rights. In Europe/UK, the right to housing is often mentioned. That is a completely different can of worms. A state can try and fail to provide everyone access to housing. This is different to free speech. There is no such thing as well intentioned failure to protect speech.
  - chongli 9y ago
    special nature of regular rights They aren't special, though. The distinction between "positive" and "negative" rights completely melts away when you ask yourself who has substantive access and who merely has formal access to their rights. For example, free speech. You can't exercise your right to free speech when you're dead. Everybody may have formal access (access on paper) to free speech but some people have far greater substantive access due to their socioeconomic status. A poor person will suppress their right to free speech in exchange for a job so they can buy food. Their employer, on the other hand, can say whatever they want without the risk of being fired. Same formal access, different substantive access. This exercise works for any right. Perhaps the most obvious one is the right to a fair trial. It would be laughable if it weren't so horrific. Every day, countless people have their lives ruined by the criminal "justice" system because they cannot afford the best lawyer. Wealthy people simply do not have this problem. A person with a lot of wealth has far greater substantive access to a fair trial than the average person.
coldtea 9y ago
>The right to free speech, conscience, affiliation , assembly and other political freedoms mean we need to tolerate and protect the proverbial nazis’ rights to try and spread their politics. Bitter pill for anyone scared of a proverbial nazi takeover. Nazi's are an easy target. The problem starts when things are not as clean cut -- when actual politics are involved, as opposed to crude stuff like "exterminate all jews" and "blacks are inferior", etc that Nazi's might say. Let's say a team wants to overthrow the presidency and bring something like another parliamentary system in the US. Or rewrite the constitution and remove the BS ideas from 3 centuries ago. Should they be allowed to express their ideas? If they get somewhat popular and other people worry about their influence? And what's stopping disagreeing people from considering them the same, or worse, as they'd have more current influence, than Nazis, and asking to ban their speeches etc? (Many people considered the CPUSA like that in the 30s and up to the 60s)
- carradjm 9y ago
  They absolutely should be able to express their ideas, as long as they do so in a peaceful and non-threatening way.
  - bluGill 9y ago
    If the idea is not peaceful though, even though the expression is? "We should change the law to make murder legal" is a peaceful statement, but if it catches on...
  - ameister14 9y ago
    What about burning or hanging someone in effigy? That's pretty threatening, but doesn't actively display intent.
- gnaritas 9y ago
  I don't see why any of those are problematic, all should be protected as free speech. Speech is not violence, it does not have victims and thus should not be in any way a crime no matter how repugnant. No speech should ever be banned.
matt4077 9y ago
The definition of something as a right doesn't imply that it is absolute. Incarceration, for example, almost certainly infringes on most rights you can think of (assembly, property, association, speech, privacy, pursuit of happiness). Yet it's routinely practiced. So, no: personal rights don't have to come with costs to be meaningful. Example: "You have the right to peacefully assemble and protest for your beliefs. Yeah, no, not in my living room." Religious liberties, as another example, also seem to be doing just fine, even though it seriously cramps my style that people apparently belief virgin sacrifices are no longer included in that freedom.
DarkKomunalec 9y ago
> A right to water, is different to free speech. Not entirely. Consider the case of water privatization, where there's a real risk of extortionate pricing of what used to be a common good. If carefully written, right to water laws can ensure that such resources are used for the benefit of the people, instead of being just another market good that gets slowly monopolized. Edit: In other words, you may already have the right to free speech, while water must be provided, but both can be denied.

rmc 9y ago

> A lot of conversations about expanding rights, end up with a distinction between positive and negative rights. Correct. Right to a fair trail is also a positive right. To uphold it, the state must pay for a lawyer if you don't have one, the state must pay for enough judges (& associated costs) to ensure your trail isn't delayed ("Justice delayed is justice denied" and all that). > The right to free speech, conscience, affiliation , assembly and other political freedoms mean we need to tolerate and protect the proverbial nazis’ rights to try and spread their politics. Plenty of legal systems have those rights, and also ban nazis or similar groups. It's not an either/or.

icebraining 9y ago
Right to a fair trail is also a positive right. Ehh, I'm not sure. The actual right is better described as the right not to be unfairly tried, which is clearly negative. The distinction is more than semantic: if the State launches an investigation and then drops it, leaving suspicion in the public's mind, you can't force them to go to trial to present your case and clear your name.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- dieterrams 9y ago
  The right not to be unfairly tried is easily satisfied by not having a trial at all. The right to a fair trial is about two things: you must be tried before being found guilty and punishment/sentencing is administered, and that trial must be executed fairly. In effect, you have the right to a (fair) trial. A trial and especially a fair trial are undeniably interventions on how things would otherwise proceed. But I agree with moomin that the positive/negative distinction is not really meaningful.
  - Qantourisc 9y ago
    There is still the option to mandate both. (No unfair tried, and a fair trial.)
  - icebraining 9y ago
    A trial and especially a fair trial are undeniably interventions on how things would otherwise proceed No, because otherwise it would just be aggression. A trial is a method for the accusers to be able to show that their subsequent aggression (imprisonment, removal of property, etc) is justified.
    - dieterrams 9y ago
      No, it is to prevent the defendant from being unjustly blamed and punished.
      - icebraining 9y ago
        Unjustly blaming and punishing someone is defamation and aggression. You don't need extra rights to be protected from that.
        dieterrams 9y ago
rlpb 9y ago
> Right to a fair trail is also a positive right. To uphold it, the state must pay for a lawyer... Nope. The state could just choose not to prosecute.
rsync 9y ago
"Plenty of legal systems have those rights, and also ban nazis or similar groups. It's not an either/or." They are mistaken. Free speech and free association are not extant when books are banned or ideas are outlawed. It is an either/or and all historical evidence serves to confirm this. If you want blowfish source to not be a munition you need to put up with the Westboro Baptists.
- andrewla 9y ago
  > Free speech and free association are not extant when books are banned or ideas are outlawed. I mean, is this just arguing about the definition of the term "free speech"? It's not hard to think of easy examples, like the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" or "revealing military secrets to the enemy at times of war" or "libel" or "slander". By necessity, we accept that there are restrictions. In general I favor a generous standard, where to disallow certain types of speech you need to carve out a compelling case -- the default should be that speech (and speech-like things) should not be forbidden. But stating it as a naked tautology is not helpful because it acknowledges none of the nuance. > all historical evidence serves to confirm this Once again, if we're just talking definitions, then sure, any place or time where books are banned or ideas are outlawed is not practicing free speech. But I think you'd be hard-pressed, given the exceptions above, to ever find a place in history where this was practiced.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago

> The right to free speech, conscience, affiliation , assembly and other political freedoms mean we need to tolerate and protect the proverbial nazis’ rights to try and spread their politics. I'm not convinced I know how I feel about this. I want to believe this is a false dichotomy. Can we have limits in polite society? I keep thinking of the paradox of tolerance[1], which states, in brief, that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

sametmax 9y ago
The limit is action. Words are not important. But a lot of words are mixed with actions: harassments, segregation, etc. Those should be clearly identified so that free speech don't protect them.
- noufalibrahim 9y ago
  This is tricky. I think a workable solution is to create zones where free speech is unrestricted and where new ideas can be incubated. They themselves would have some restrictions (e.g. you can't physically hurt the person you lost a debate to) but would, by and large, be free speech zones. The idea was described in this speech https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJktQiZRa5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJktQiZRa5A The rest of society can have different rules which can be more nuanced.
  - sametmax 9y ago
    Or maybe time periods. Like in the purge :)
  - matt4077 9y ago
    Yeah, that's an incredibly stupid idea–and I say that as a big fan of reasonable limits on free speech. Creating "free speech zones" seems like a surefire way to start telling everyone to "take it to the free speech zone" and stop annoying "normal people" with your ideas. It's like the wet dream of these people that have started calling citizens consumers, even in a political context, and advocate the criminal prosecution of peaceful protesters when they don't all stay on the sidewalks. FWIW, I first remember hearing the term in the context of the Beijing Olympics, which should tell you everything you need to know about that idea.

moomin 9y ago

In practice I think the positive negative distinction is somewhat pointless. All rights, regardless of their "nature" require enforcement and consistent interpretation and neither of those things come for free. Part of the problem for Americans is that they have two definitions of rights. There's the ones in the Bill of Rights, which are phrased in a negative way. And there's those in the Declaration of Independence, which are provided by the creator and that governments must implement. And those rights are extremely broad. Heck, just the right to life could reasonably be argued to ban the death penalty. (Luckily for jurists everywhere, the Declaration of Independence isn't actually on the statute book.) In practice, I think the distinction (and to be quite honest, pretty much the entire minimalist/constitutionalist approach) is mostly used to justify path dependence. The founding fathers believed that later generations would have enhanced understanding of the world. Fetishising their every decision just makes for a worse America.

phiskk 9y ago
For an admittedly artificial example of positive vs negative rights. If you consider, say, a person living in the middle of a desert. A right to privacy amounts to just being left alone, and enforcing that would only be required if another party were actively violating that right. <- It's easy to argue for this. A right to water, on the other hand, might require that some other party be forced to provide water to this person in the desert. <- Here many people might quite reasonably argue; why should others put themselves out to facilitate this persons life choices.
dalbasal 9y ago
I’m not opposed to positive rights, but I’d rather we call them something else so as not to erode the special nature of regular rights. In Europe/UK, the right to housing is often mentioned. That is a completely different can of worms. A state can try and fail to provide everyone access to housing. This is different to free speech. There is no such thing as well intentioned failure to protect speech.
- chongli 9y ago
  special nature of regular rights They aren't special, though. The distinction between "positive" and "negative" rights completely melts away when you ask yourself who has substantive access and who merely has formal access to their rights. For example, free speech. You can't exercise your right to free speech when you're dead. Everybody may have formal access (access on paper) to free speech but some people have far greater substantive access due to their socioeconomic status. A poor person will suppress their right to free speech in exchange for a job so they can buy food. Their employer, on the other hand, can say whatever they want without the risk of being fired. Same formal access, different substantive access. This exercise works for any right. Perhaps the most obvious one is the right to a fair trial. It would be laughable if it weren't so horrific. Every day, countless people have their lives ruined by the criminal "justice" system because they cannot afford the best lawyer. Wealthy people simply do not have this problem. A person with a lot of wealth has far greater substantive access to a fair trial than the average person.

coldtea 9y ago

>The right to free speech, conscience, affiliation , assembly and other political freedoms mean we need to tolerate and protect the proverbial nazis’ rights to try and spread their politics. Bitter pill for anyone scared of a proverbial nazi takeover. Nazi's are an easy target. The problem starts when things are not as clean cut -- when actual politics are involved, as opposed to crude stuff like "exterminate all jews" and "blacks are inferior", etc that Nazi's might say. Let's say a team wants to overthrow the presidency and bring something like another parliamentary system in the US. Or rewrite the constitution and remove the BS ideas from 3 centuries ago. Should they be allowed to express their ideas? If they get somewhat popular and other people worry about their influence? And what's stopping disagreeing people from considering them the same, or worse, as they'd have more current influence, than Nazis, and asking to ban their speeches etc? (Many people considered the CPUSA like that in the 30s and up to the 60s)

carradjm 9y ago
They absolutely should be able to express their ideas, as long as they do so in a peaceful and non-threatening way.
- bluGill 9y ago
  If the idea is not peaceful though, even though the expression is? "We should change the law to make murder legal" is a peaceful statement, but if it catches on...
- ameister14 9y ago
  What about burning or hanging someone in effigy? That's pretty threatening, but doesn't actively display intent.
gnaritas 9y ago
I don't see why any of those are problematic, all should be protected as free speech. Speech is not violence, it does not have victims and thus should not be in any way a crime no matter how repugnant. No speech should ever be banned.

matt4077 9y ago

The definition of something as a right doesn't imply that it is absolute. Incarceration, for example, almost certainly infringes on most rights you can think of (assembly, property, association, speech, privacy, pursuit of happiness). Yet it's routinely practiced. So, no: personal rights don't have to come with costs to be meaningful. Example: "You have the right to peacefully assemble and protest for your beliefs. Yeah, no, not in my living room." Religious liberties, as another example, also seem to be doing just fine, even though it seriously cramps my style that people apparently belief virgin sacrifices are no longer included in that freedom.

DarkKomunalec 9y ago

> A right to water, is different to free speech. Not entirely. Consider the case of water privatization, where there's a real risk of extortionate pricing of what used to be a common good. If carefully written, right to water laws can ensure that such resources are used for the benefit of the people, instead of being just another market good that gets slowly monopolized. Edit: In other words, you may already have the right to free speech, while water must be provided, but both can be denied.