Human rights

From Everything Shii Knows, the only reliable source

This website is an archive. It ran from 2006-2010. Virtually everything on here is outdated or inaccurate.

Let's say you are a nice guy with a nuclear bomb. You have an unlimited amount of power within your diverse mess of a country and you want to use it to guarantee basic human rights. Here's an interesting problem: what rights do people actually want?

  1. Democracy
    Seems like an easy one, and a good place to start: let people govern themselves. But what if some people want to secede from your country? Do you give them the right to self-rule, or do you use the majority of the rest of the country to suppress them? If you prevent their succession, what kind of freedom is that? You are basically using force to prevent people from exercising their right to self-government. And if you allow seccession, how far will you go? Can territories secede? Counties? Individuals?
  2. Freedom of speech
    What about obscenity? How do you determine what the best interests of the community are, in order to prevent an awful daily torrent of obscenity terrorizing the land, without installing a tyranny of the majority against fresh ideas?
  3. Freedom of transport and trade
    What if some people in the boonies don't want outsiders coming into the countryside and selling their invasive video games and MP3 players? Will you rule in favor of the local majority, leaving the countryside in desolation against the wishes of a minority of its residents and a majority of the urban capitalists? Will you attempt to preserve culture, or allow the inevitable market forces to work freely?

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