Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by jeffdavis 2447 days ago
Rights can, in theory, be had by everyone. Privileges are inherently for a select few.

Wouldn't the world be wonderful if all 7 billion people had free speech?

1 comments

>Rights can, in theory, be had by everyone. Privileges are inherently for a select few.

when it is had by everyone then it is a right. Until that it is a privilege. For example voting in US was in the past a privilege of white male property owners, and today it is pretty much a right (if one discounts voter suppression state laws, etc).

Another example - free speech can, in theory, be had by everyone in Russia or China, yet it is really far from everybody having it there. Thus it isn't a right there despite that "can, in theory".