[cookiecaper]

>It encourages me to see that the European court at least has some people on it that seem to understand that net neutrality is in fact a human rights issue.

If everything is a human right, nothing is. At this point, what's the difference between a "human right" and a nice thing?

>Yes, I would rather have decisions made by people in Brussels that understand what they're doing.

The thing about centralized government is that it's great when you agree with what they're doing, but it's terrible when you don't. Ask yourself how happy you would be with European governance if they primarily didn't implement policies that you personally considered wise.

People have different ideas about what's fair. The hinge of democracy is the simplicity by which a people can make their will known and have that will executed, at least within their own region.

More local governance makes individual will much more important. Consider that a representative's attention is evenly divided by the quantity of his constituents, because each constituent has an equal quantity of votes. Thus, a smaller quantity of constituents means more individual influence in government. That's generally a positive thing. Therefore, jurisdictions should be broken into the smallest workable units, and the amount of power concentrated within a jurisdiction should be correlated with its localness.

[nitrogen]

Human right: neutral communications

Nice thing: iPhone 6+

Human right: freedom of movement

Nice thing: Maserati

See the difference?

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As for your second part about localization of politics, the tyranny of the majority is much more severe in hyper-local settings. Global issues like human rights cannot be entrusted to local governments whose local majorities are prone to divisiveness and discrimination.

[smsm42]

> Global issues like human rights cannot be entrusted to local governments

Who they can be entrusted to? There's a lot of countries with severe human rights issues, and I don't see many examples of super-governmental bodies having much progress in fixing them unless local government is on board with it. In fact, it's almost always impossible to do without local government participation.

[johnnyhillbilly]

To put the "universal" in the declaration of human rights in its context: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cairo_Declaration_on_Human_R...

These countries each take part in the UN, without showing any signs that they respect the universal human rights declaration.

I'd suggest fixing that part of the human rights situation should have a higher priority than making monopolist abuse and unfair trade in communications about human rights.

[cookiecaper]

>See the difference?

Not really. I understand that you've differentiated between tangibles and concepts (and I probably should've said a "good law" instead of a "nice thing" to prevent this obvious conclusion), but the concepts can be moved up to exclude most tangibles. For example, perhaps "smooth, comfortable transportation" is a human right just as "neutral communications" are. In this case, budget transport carriers would be a violation of human rights, just as budget phone carriers deciding to charge either more or less for different traffic sources (as in T-Mobile's BingeOn promotion) apparently is.

Under the old guard, neither "neutral communications" nor "smooth, comfortable transportation" would be considered a "human right". They would be considered nice features. "Human rights" would simply be a very small core of natural, inviolable principles, the rights to which all men inherently possess, and are mandatory for a functional society (and you could perhaps argue that "neutral communications" is included in "free speech").

Since no man inherently possesses the ability to access the internet (he requires external devices for this), it is not a human right, which is a right fundamental and intrinsic to all humans, which the government can only restrict and has no power to grant (because they are granted naturally ("by their Creator", as in American founding documents) as an intrinsic part of being human) (people also do not have a "human right" to food or shelter -- they have to get those things on their own if they want them).

We can perform legislative tasks without exaggerating every issue into the category of basic human rights.

>Global issues like human rights cannot be entrusted to local governments whose local majorities are prone to divisiveness and discrimination.

There is no hard definition to what qualifies for "discrimination". At its most basic, discrimination is simply making choices, and everyone has to do that dozens of times a day. "Discrimination" in the political sense usually refers to making it illegal to make certain choices based on certain criteria -- what are those criteria and which choices should be restricted? That sounds like something for the local government to decide.

As for divisiveness, I've actually found that most localities are mostly one way or the other. They share a common culture. That's why there are only about 6 battleground states in the U.S. (and even then, that's usually the case because the state includes roughly equal numbers of people in 2 divergent cultures -- one rural/suburban and the other urban). The fact that politics is so divisive today, to the point where we are in total legislative gridlock, is evidence that we need more localization, not less.

Urban communities can make laws that sound good to them, rural/suburban communities can make laws that sound good to them, everyone can live in the way they see fit, and survival of the fittest will eventually prove out one method as superior. Competition between the jurisdictions will encourage friendly, popular laws and prevent excessive governmental intrusion.

[nitrogen]

You're inadvertently falling into the slippery slope fallacy with a bit of a strawman mixed in. Nobody has said that "smooth, comfortable transportation" is a human right. Human rights cover the basic dignities required to function in society, which can change over time. Due to the ubiquity of the Internet, it is reasonable for neutral communications to become a human right.

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W.r.t. urban vs. rural communities and localized politics, those communities are less homogeneous than you seem to think. It's not terribly uncommon for people to find themselves trapped in a rural community when their personalities and values are more suited to an urban community, but they can't afford to move until they become adults and save up money, which may never happen.

There are floors of dignity below which no human should be allowed to fall, and allowing every rural community to set its own standards for human rights only makes sense if everyone in those communities has total freedom and means to leave, and total awareness of the other options available to them. Think of isolated, repressive fundamentalist or polygamist communities, for example (not that every fundamentalist or polygamist group is necessarily repressive, but it is certainly common).