Karnataka government body wants to stop women from taking night shifts because no women should work late nights as they have a family to attend to. And well for safeguarding women from any sexual incidence. (http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/karnataka-no-night-shifts-for-women-it-bt-firms-women-and-child-welfare-panel/1/914859.html – the link won’t open if you’ve adblocker. Just disable JS from your browser to read the article)
Uttar Pradesh government too seems to have brought anti-Romeo squad essentially disallowing two consenting non-married adults to spend time together publically (http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/up-s-anti-romeo-squads-strike-terror-a-quiet-gloomy-sunday-at-ghaziabad-s-biggest-park/story-s0oLyrFPCu5ua2bUkO0tFO.html).
In both of these incidences, there’s a higher authority who wants to take charge of decision making about what one can do and what one cannot.
Why I supported the net neutrality movement back then
Yet many, including me, paraded against Facebook when it tried to provide the restrictive free Internet access to everyone, essentially forcing out an option for them.
The reason why I supported the Net Neutrality movement back then was because I believed I knew better about what the poor, who couldn’t afford to access the Internet, should access. It’s only I realise how obnoxiously self-assertive and arrogant it was on my part to assume I knew better on how the poor should spend their time and what they should access.
Another reason for me to support the movement back then was that once you allow a certain thing/law in India, it takes tremendously long to overturn it.
And yes, there’s this petit petit chance that I blindly followed my ex-boss who played a major role in the movement.
Now I know better
If anything I’ve understood by reading countless books on psychology and economics is that:
1. Even poorest or poor know how to make decisions best for them
Everyone makes decisions best for them based their surroundings, necessities and bandwidth. No one should force a decision on someone and take away an opportunity. When you think about it, it’s absurd that many liberals and activists are naturally capable enough to clearly demarcate the wrongs from the rights.
It’s quite possible that many users could have experienced Internet for the very first time in their life grâce à Facebook’s walled free Internet service.
In a way, by forcing out Facebook’s free Internet we took away from them the choice of experiencing opportunity, which many in the lower income strata are frequently denied.
2. The market corrects itself. Eventually
If I had paid more attention to economics during my early years, I wouldn’t have to learn this after reading some complex economics books. Although it helped that these books had actual examples to explain these fundas than mugging up some theory. Theory is always boring.
The market always always corrects itself. And if it doesn’t then, probably, that the way things should be.
If Levi’s forces jeans with pockets on knees and very few people buy them, Levi’s will naturally bring out jeans with normal pockets in the next quarter.
Similarly, if people in lower income group did not feel that Facebook’s walled garden is the right kind of Internet for them, they would have stopped using it. Taking away the opportunity to make that choice from them was just wrong.
If the same people liked what they got, maybe it could have paved out a way for micro-internet packets for which users could pay for from their own pockets. Now we wouldn’t know whether that is what the market wants!
There are chances of corporates evidently taking advantage of the situation. In that case, we are assuming that people cannot take a decision for themselves. Do we really have so less faith in fellow humans?
Of course, these thoughts had been brewing in me for quite some time but few incidences connected the dots. What’s more disappointing for me is that I call myself a liberal and think that I have a pretty open mind but clearly I am not. I had my own biases.
I apologise to everyone who followed me in supporting the net neutrality movement and I hope now that I have changed my mind on it, you are aware of it.
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