posted by
CoolHand
on Monday May 15 2017, @01:58PM
from the you-didnt-just-think-at-me-did-you dept.
from the you-didnt-just-think-at-me-did-you dept.
"Thou canst not touch the freedom of my mind," wrote the playwright John Milton in 1634.
But, nearly 400 years later, technological advances in machines that can read our thoughts mean the privacy of our brain is under threat.
Now two biomedical ethicists are calling for the creation of new human rights laws to ensure people are protected, including "the right to cognitive liberty" and "the right to mental integrity".
Scientists have already developed devices capable of telling whether people are politically right-wing or left-wing. In one experiment, researchers were able to read people's minds to tell with 70 per cent accuracy whether they planned to add or subtract two numbers.
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Experts Warn New Computers Could Delete Thoughts Without Your Knowledge
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Monday May 15 2017, @02:09PM (9 children)
The right to "cognitive liberty" would ban all advertising. What else is adverising than the attempt to make people think differently than they would otherwise?
Ok, but nobody loves advertising. But the right to "cognitive liberty" would also potentially ban all forms of persuasion. Lobbying for good causes? Presenting facts about climate change that conflict with someone's "deeply held beliefs"? Get off my cognitive liberty.
Heck, my freedom of sheesh in general is a violation of your "cognitive liberty" if I say anything that could make you think differently.
Show me a clear line where speech ends and persuasion begins, and where persuasion ends and manipulation begins, and maybe, maybe I'll agree the idea could be worthy of discussion.
(Score: 2) by BsAtHome on Monday May 15 2017, @02:34PM
I'm not worried about "computers deleting thoughts". The human kind is doing quite a good job at it already. Ever heard of propaganda?
Many people do not think for themselves and take for granted what you feed them. Where is the problem concerning computers? The process of influence has been perfected over many many years, predating the computer-era significantly. Are they arguing that robots are taking over the job to create the propaganda? Are the propagandists afraid of unemployment? What irony.
I guess it would be more important to /educate/ people to be and think critical, but that would mean a change in governmental model...
(Score: 4, Touché) by Dunbal on Monday May 15 2017, @03:50PM
The right to "cognitive liberty" would ban all advertising.
You say that as if it's a bad thing.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Nerdfest on Monday May 15 2017, @04:20PM (2 children)
Advertising is not inherently bad. If I'm looking for a product, advertising that extols the virtues of a product, and ideally, even the downsides (perhaps addressed in a more high-end offering) is exactly what I want. Celebrity endorsements, logical fallacies, selling with sex, etc, are *not* what I'm looking for, and that's the crap that would fall under cognitive liberty.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 15 2017, @05:25PM
If I'm looking for a product, advertising that extols the virtues of a product, and ideally, even the downsides (perhaps addressed in a more high-end offering) is exactly what I want.
So, what you're actually looking for isn't "advertising," but "honest, informed product reviews." That's a different genre.
Even if advertisers admit some "downsides," they will only do so strategically, i.e., admitting stuff that might be perceived as "downsides" by some, but will actually make their product more appealing in certain markets. (E.g., if your primary market is hipsters, you might deliberately point out how the technology is LESS "advanced," but that's because your "downside" is actually selectively selling your product better to your target audience.)
Advertising is basically never about giving you an honest evaluation of pros and cons. Why would any business voluntarily PAY to create ads that admit faults in their products which would make them less appealing?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday May 15 2017, @05:25PM
It is intrinsically evil.
If I am looking for a product, I will search for it. There are these search engine things that scrape websites, including commercial web sites offering products. Some search engines even have a separate "google shopping" sub section if you are looking for something to buy rather than a more general query about whether ant bellies are smooth or not.
In ancient times past there were these yellow pages things. (Now some might call that advertising.)
What I mean by advertising is when I have to see or hear some inducement to buy a product, where I did not want, seek out or ask to have it presented to me for consideration.
Advertisers will get congress to mandate advertisements on the inside of our eyelids once the technology becomes available.
Here is a past rant about advertising [soylentnews.org] that I wrote on SN entitled "Advertising always ruins everything it touches".
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bradley13 on Monday May 15 2017, @05:35PM
Heck, my freedom of sheesh in general is a violation of your "cognitive liberty"
You are free to sheesh all you want, just not in church, ok?
More seriously, this is currently a serious problem. That's what "safe spaces" are all about - people not wanting their delicate selves exposed to points of view they disagree with. That's what's happening in Berkeley (and plenty of other places), when SJWs can't stand the idea that a conservative speaker might present viewpoints they dislike - even though they are hardly required to attend or listen.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by ilsa on Monday May 15 2017, @09:00PM (1 child)
Don't forget the various psychiatric drugs. Antidepressants. Antipsychotics. Those most certainly change how you think.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:46AM
We need an established right to make, use, and share psychedelics. Until that happens, these ethics clowns can fuck off back to the Matrix.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday May 16 2017, @02:30AM
No, see, traditional cognitive access like in Clockwork Orange or Waterboarding, that's not what's at debate here - what they're worried about is having to wear tinfoil hats to prevent new forms of hacking.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:16PM (6 children)
Link to paper?
Quick Google reveals similar research based on sentence construction, suggesting conservatives prefer nouns to adjectives. Hardly conclusive given the existence of left-leaning rationalists, even if many have now find themselves holding centrist positions. Perhaps that experiment simply indicates those with a grasp of reality verses those who favour ideology and deny objective reality by describing it in the abstract?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday May 15 2017, @03:12PM (2 children)
By "developed device" in a very wide ranging sense they mean a classic IQ test.
Star Trek handled the moral and ethical issues by allowing unwilling Vulcan mind melds if and only if it advanced the plot. I suspect that'll be the long term result in practice.
Note that we can't detect lying right now, we can only measure gross emotional state in relatively uneducated poor actors and by being theatrical enough the victim can be convinced to be terrified when they lie, and the physical effects of terror can be quantified and put on paper. That's a kind of a long jump to wandering around inside holodecks and coworkers getting pissed off at their holodeck character presence, or waving a scanner over someones head.
Once interesting error source is age and the rapidly leftward moving Overton window. My grandparents were classic limousine liberals of the most stereotypical sort and as such they held pretty weird views compared to modern lefties. Of course they've been dead for decades so its kind of unfair to compare them to living 2017 snowflakes, but toward the end of their lives in the 80s they didn't really fit in with the D party anymore. Simply measuring brain age would give a semi-accurate political spectrum measurement.
Or perhaps instead of IQ or brain age, how about THC level? I would think that's nearly perfectly correlated with politics which is the main reason why Americans are such lunatics about weed, you have to bicker for the sake of bickering about anything that's highly party polarized. We aren't going to have socialized medicine or federally legalized weed until we have national consensus those issues are not owned by one party simply for party politics reasons. Weed is inherently left wing in the sense of lay around and daydream and eat a lot. I'd be willing to propose stimulants, legal and illegal, for the right, historically right wing governments have had a weird relationship to stimulants. Stimulant drugs are very much "get on your feet, get out there, and invade Poland again" kind of drug.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @04:38PM
Smoke weed socially to make other people more interesting only to discover they're boring as hell. Weed is a mental stimulant in controllable doses though, especially for creative people.
You're wasted here, you should be writing advertising copy for pharmaceutical steroids. "Forget depression and embrace oppression - free swastika armband with every order - 50% discount for antifa members".
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @07:54PM
Weed is Anti-Capitalist??
This is news to me.
It would be good if people would use proper callouts for characteristics.
If you mean Anti-Authoritarian or Progressive, you should use those terms.
If you mean Conservative or Reactionary, you should use those terms.
Left and Right are ECONOMIC terms.
Civil liberties are plotted on an axis that is at a right angle to that.
Quit mindlessly repeating the inappropriate terms which talking heads in Lamestream Media (who have empty heads) keep mindlessly repeating.
...and I reject the premise that uptight suit-wearing dedicated followers of Ayn Rand or Barry Goldwater never do recreational pharmaceuticals.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 15 2017, @03:14PM (1 child)
Well, regarding political beliefs, there's stuff like this [smithsonianmag.com]. That article has a summary of some other studies on this as well. The findings, basically:
Liberals: tend to have more brain regions light up associated with "broad" social connectedness, acceptance of risk, and social/self-awareness.
Conservatives: tend to have brain regions light up associated with "tight" social connections (family, country), more intense reactions to threats/fears, more "fight-or-flight" response activity.
I couldn't find the addition/subtraction article easily, but it doesn't surprise me because there's been a lot of brain-scan research on what happens while doing basic arithmetic.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @04:19PM
I know this. My enhanced fight-or-flight response is a direct reaction against pseudo-liberals defending any aggressor with a victim card to play. I'm not a conservative but I've edged more centrist as a result of bitter experience and now lack any confidence that "liberals" will take an intellectually or morally defensible position.
This is why I'm interested in the math research - it seems it may be simple enough to corroborate with a different hypothesis entirely.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @03:52PM
Link to paper?
Empirical evidence. Import millions of "Syrian Refugees" into your community. The "left wing" will stand with welcome signs, the "right wing" will complain about the invasion. Shit is more effective at polarizing people than a pair of electrodes and a strong current in salt water.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Revek on Monday May 15 2017, @02:19PM (7 children)
What a nice simple two dimensional way of looking at things. Unfortunately the majority fall in between those two extremes. Thats the problem with predictive AI, its only as good as the parameters its set up to analyze. The real truth is that most people fall in between those two extremes. It seems so polarized due to the minority at either end making so much noise.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:30PM (2 children)
Even the four way political compass is simplistic, although it is accurate enough that anybody at the extremes cen be deemed extremely dangerous.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @08:12PM
Even the four way political compass is simplistic, although it is accurate enough that anybody at the extremes [can] be deemed extremely dangerous
To start, "four-quadrant" or "two-dimensional" would be more accurate; "four-way" sounds like some sort of Lou Reed thing.
Next, you are claiming that "not allowing wealth and power to be highly concentrated" (extreme Left Wing) is dangerous??
Last, what would you add to the two-dimensional representation that would improve over Capitalist-vs-Socialist/Communist and Civil liberties-vs-Authoritarianism?
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 16 2017, @06:38AM
although it is accurate enough that anybody at the extremes cen be deemed extremely dangerous.
Any made up diagram or characterization scheme like this is accurate enough to deem anyone, real or imagined, extremely dangerous.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:34PM
Right-wing vs. left-wing is only a single dimension. Two dimensions would already be an improvement.
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Monday May 15 2017, @03:21PM (1 child)
To be fair, the studies I assume are being referenced aren't just dealing with "right wing vs. left wing," but general "conservative vs. liberal" or "Democrat vs. Republican" as they show in brain scans. (See my post above.)
As others have already noted, the one-dimensional liberal-conservative spectrum is a pretty poor way of classifying political opinion, though. Some multi-dimensional models [wikipedia.org] have had more success than others, but none has really penetrated mainstream news discourse.
(Score: 1) by Revek on Monday May 15 2017, @10:55PM
I was thinking more in terms of a bell curve with the left and the right at the edges and the majority grouped into the center. With myself playing the part of Joe Bauers [wikipedia.org] of course. Most of my problems are caused by liberals and conservatives. I can see how it would be seen as a one dimensional argument. This country really needs a centrist push for public office. To bad centrist are usually to busy living their lives instead of tell other how to live theirs.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday May 15 2017, @07:42PM
Spoken like a heathen commie liberal!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:24PM (11 children)
WTF is this shit? Delete thoughts? Get me my Matrix plug first, then I'll worry about computers deleting my thoughts.
Or hell, if a computer could erase my memories of the first 20 years of my life, I'd pay money for the service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:50PM
You already have your Matrix plug in. It's just that any memory of it has been removed. :-)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:52PM (7 children)
Seriously though, first twent years is the entire basis of ones personality and experience engine. How would you have learned anything by erasing the entire boot record. For sure i get some peple might need some memories supressed, or even new information implanted, buying a new language would be nice. However wholesale blocks would have to be nothing more than a lobotomy.
Not that 1sigma accuracy is much of a worry, alitle longer til the matrix methinks.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @03:39PM (4 children)
My ex-parents were Christian fundamentalist-extremist assholes who thought Jesus the 5 Star General and Supreme Commander of the Army of the Apocalypse was going to return after the Jews implemented in the New World Order after Y2K (or someshit, I've tried my best to forget without the help of this exciting new technology) and lead a jihad to purge the Earth of infidels.
EF and my folks would probably get along pretty well. Actually not, on second thought. EF is more toned down and culturally sensitive to Judaism than my ex-parents were. Or at least I should say EF's theories about "them Jews!" (a catchphrase of one shortwave radio host) are more rational and actually have a shred of reality in them instead of just being batshit WTF Neon Genesis Evangelion caliber insanity.
THAT is why I want to erase memories of the first 20 years of my life. The only thing those memories have given me is PTSD and a severe hatred of Christianity.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday May 15 2017, @04:12PM (1 child)
Is that you, Brian Flemming [wikipedia.org]?
If not, you might appreciate this [youtube.com]. Here's more information [wikipedia.org] in case you are skeptical about giving up an hour of your life for a YouTube video
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @04:29PM
Thanks for the links. I'm always up for that kind of stuff. I'm an atheist more or less, but the Christian insanity lurks in the dark corners of the mind. I doubt it'll ever be eradicated without that Matrix plug I want.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @04:56PM (1 child)
What or who is "EF"?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @06:14PM
What or who is "EF"?
Just a guess, but I'd say it was our favorite scumbag, Ethanol-fueled [soylentnews.org].
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday May 15 2017, @03:54PM (1 child)
The system can still run without the boot record once it's up. The problem only happens when you try to reboot.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Monday May 15 2017, @06:39PM
We all just PXE-boot off our parents anyway, boot sectors are a waste of space. :)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by VLM on Monday May 15 2017, @03:27PM (1 child)
then I'll worry about computers deleting my thoughts.
Its not really going to be computers deleting thoughts its going to be wikipedia deletionist style people. Scum of the earth griefers. And thats the good ones in that group.
Also you have to be realistic about this stuff. Much like cryptography there are a lot of people ranting barely off the paranoid end of the spectrum about how every man, woman, child, and the other 43 genders all require 4268017129876 bit public key crypto because we're all in rebellion against the government all the time or we all have secrets that need to be secure for 4320523 years against alien SETI quantum computers whereas mostly what we need to keep secret is that one night stand with a fat chick 25 years ago or that time experimenting with alcohol when I drank about 15 beers then promptly threw up in a urinal. Not the same day BTW. Unsurprisingly after you've experimented with this stuff and had the experience, both beer and 300 pound women lose their appeal. Thank god I grew up before smartphones and antisocial networking, we really knew how to party back then.
Likewise the tinfoil hats are worried that someone will delete their conspiracy theory about Russian Hackers Stealing The Election (and where are they hiding something so large? a backpack? A rather large USB drive? Tupperware?). The reality is most people have to fear capitalism deleting their memories of bell bottom pants, shag rugs, and how much disco sucked because a lot of money can be made off repeating that dumb stuff. Just think of how much money could be made by the right people by deleting all memory of the dotcom bubble so as to do it again. Hey fellow internet kids, I have a sock puppet and a domain name, can I haz $100M?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @03:42PM
Its not really going to be computers deleting thoughts its going to be wikipedia deletionist style people.
Well, crap. So it's just yet another clickbait article meant to troll for a good flamewar about "fake news," then.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @02:56PM (1 child)
...get off my Brawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @10:29PM
Doh!
Sorry, couldn't resist. It has electrolytes.
(Score: 1) by idiot_king on Monday May 15 2017, @03:16PM (4 children)
So we've got this big problem of Der Trumpenreich right now. How did Unser Furher get into office? Obviously because the US is stuck in its racist, sexist ways (see: torchlit vigil at the Robert E. Lee statue that's been in the news).
But what if it was possible to forget that? What if it was possible to "unlearn" racism and sexism? Could you imagine how much better off the world would be? People finally being treated as the equals they truly are, no more wars, no more greed, no more squabbling over "private property" and the like.
Yes it seems scary, but so was dissecting the human body to the ancient Greeks-- it was pure sacrilege. But our knowledge of human anatomy and physiology has helped push us into the current age of medicine. Progress REQUIRES sacrifice. I'd be willing to give up a small chunk of my memory to live in that world. Wouldn't you?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sulla on Monday May 15 2017, @03:50PM
Translation: I would be willing to give up some freedom over my memories control as long as mine stay complete and they only delete memories of people I don't agree with.
I prefer live in the world of the wild west where people are free to be stupid and cause stupid people problems, and in exchange if you manage to survive all the people being stupid you get to think as your brain was evolved to.
Going to have to go full Godwin on that Greek bit. The world also profited from medical research that came out of the Third Reich, I am uncertain you will find many people who are okay with the sacrifice made to get that knowledge. Could say the same about the research that the Japanese did on Allied soldiers, but same issue.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @05:56PM (2 children)
Obviously because the US is stuck in its racist, sexist ways (see: torchlit vigil at the Robert E. Lee statue that's been in the news)
Defending a statue that's part of the collective history of the United States doesn't make you racist or sexist. We're getting to the point where some people won't be satisfied until every statue of old, white men has been torn down and their names removed from the history books.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @08:31PM
The Confederacy lost! Get over it!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday May 16 2017, @06:43AM
We're getting to the point where some people won't be satisfied until every statue of old, white men has been torn down and their names removed from the history books.
The past is just another enemy.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @03:37PM (1 child)
Here's a more informative article about the possibilities of memory manipulation:
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/memory-editing-technology-will-give-us-perfect-recall-and-let-us-alter-memories-at-will-v24n1 [vice.com]
Another interesting article that shows you don't even need to physically access the brain to alter memories:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20121213-fake-pictures-make-real-memories [bbc.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @04:12PM
Hmm the second part you reference is very dodgy stuff imho. This seems more like
a) an attempt to resolve cognitive dissonance.
b) attempting to please / gain attention by lying. (lying to oneself as well)
(Score: 3, Funny) by choose another one on Monday May 15 2017, @04:14PM
"Did you see the message?", his friends asked.
"Yes." said he. "The answer is "
There was a point to this story, but it has temporarily escaped the commenter's mind.
This keeps happening to me, like someone is deleting my thoughts, but I am sure that isn't possible.
There was some author I was going to apologize to as well, I think, but that's gone too...
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @04:58PM
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
— Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights#Freedom_of_thought.2C_conscience_and_religion [wikipedia.org]
I'm not a judge, but I'd say it's implied that nobody is allowed to physically modify your brain so that your thoughts are modified according to their will.
Scary realization: by my interpretation, psychiatric patients who are given drugs to control hallucinations etc are being denied this human right.
I guess that's why consent from themselves or their family is required...
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday May 15 2017, @05:32PM (3 children)
The problem scenario is that Facebook starts to sell these new neurotypist headsets that enables users to type using their thoughts. Which they will say simplifies daily life and people feel the same. It gets more popular and eventually it becomes the standard way. But no one will have the schematics or the source code for what these headsets are capable of nor what they actually do. No way to ensure that they only do what's stated and nothing else. Thus any neuro-interfaces that lack schematics and source should be banned as a threat to democracy and freedom.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @08:34PM
Don't worry! Wil Wheaton [wikia.com] will save the day!
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday May 16 2017, @08:37AM (1 child)
The problem scenario is that Facebook starts to sell these new neurotypist headsets that enables users to type using their thoughts.
Presumably there is some restraint in the "thoughts" any given person types onto a page, if the first thing that comes to mind gets posted, there could be some repercussions. Also, Facebook already records what is typed and erased without posting, do we want to let them deeper into people's minds?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday May 16 2017, @08:21PM
The problem is not that you accidentally types something bad. Rather its that the neuro-interface will mess with your thinking right away.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday May 15 2017, @05:56PM (3 children)
Without Your Knowledge -- that is the part we should have a problem with.
Some people may want to delete some memories.
But should be done by consent.
Including the consent you give about 2/3 of the way through the ISP service agreement you signed on page 223 in the fine print. You did read it, I assume?
Next, evil left wing liberals will insist that clauses and conditions like this should be forbidden by law.
God fearing conservatives will protect our corporations from these over burdensome job killing regulations.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @08:31PM (2 children)
Liberals are on the Right side of the political palate.
They accept Capitalism as normal; they simply want to redistribute the wealth of Capitalists.
Leftists are Anti-Capitalists; we want to make redistribution unnecessary by eliminating the Ownership Class and concentrated wealth, leaving only Worker-Owners and well-distributed wealth from the start.
There is zero overlap between the 2.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:39PM (1 child)
There is zero overlap
Except that both are flaming criminally insane.
(Redistributing someone else's wealth or eliminating ownership are both forms of theft, which is a crime in civilized society because a kleptocracy ultimately self destructs.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @08:01PM
Nope. That's called competition.
Capitalists claim that they like competition.
The Mondragon Cooperative, as an example, outcompetes its Capitalist rivals on a daily basis.
What is needed to make a greater impact is MORE Socialist workplaces.
The trick is for Socialist types to get their own businesses started.
In Italy, they use unemployment insurance payouts (for workers idled by boom-and-bust Capitalists) to do that.
The Marcora Law [google.com]
They have thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of worker-owned cooperatives there due to doing things wisely.
Credit unions in the USA are examples of co-ops.
A lot of folks are divesting from banks that are e.g. financing oil pipelines and those folks have found a credit union to handle their banking needs.
Food co-ops in the USA continue to gain in popularity with better quality stuff and a think-locally economic approach.
There are some obvious endeavors with low startup costs where co-ops have made inroads in the USA:
home healthcare, child care, elder care.
More and more, folks in the trades have realized that a co-op is the way to go:
carpenters, masons, electricians, plumbers.
There are some IT co-ops around the globe as well.
Swedish Worker Cooperative Software Development Company Has No Boss [soylentnews.org]
Bernie isn't even a real Socialist, yet folks like that he calls himself by that tag.
"Capitalism" has become an increasingly unwelcome word in the USA; folks know that the status quo is screwing them and they want something else.
"Worker-owned" is something I expect to see on more and more business signage, with folks responding ever more positively.
Finding the folks who haven't yet got a job and figuring out something for them to do that is useful for society comes toward the end of the process of converting from Capitalism.
I've seen people who are mentally limited but who do low volume production work (e.g. limited-run silkscreened T-shirts).
At that point you've crossed over from the Socialist paradigm to the Communist notion of "From each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs".
...and AFTER you have the vast majority of folks working in and owning their own Socialist businesses, the very LAST step is common ownership of natural monopolies (electricity, natural gas, internet service, transit, etc.).
Governments buying up incumbent businesses via eminent domain on behalf of all the citizens and paying fair market value to the Capitalist owners would be one way to go.
The choices are Capitalism with its economic inequality and exploitation of workers and concentration on maximizing profits for an elite Ownership Class (making someone else rich) -or- Socialism/Communism with egalitarianism and concentration on maximizing the stability of your society with the wealth generated staying with those who actually do the work.
Like the Slave economies and Feudal economies that preceded it, folks are realizing that Capitalism is a failed system and is past its sell-by date.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @07:23PM (2 children)
From TFS: "two biomedical ethicists are calling for the creation of new human rights laws"
Since when would any "law" inhibit the worst possible practitioners, namely: governments?
Privacy? Ever heard of a search warrant? They come in cereal boxes.
Private property? Try not paying your property taxes. Go ahead. Try, and see how long it's "your property".
Humanity as we knew it is doomed. Deal with it.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 15 2017, @10:30PM (1 child)
You have misspelled "Capitalists".
Now, if you want to look at -government- as degrading to human rights, you'll need to look at individual crooked politicians who allow themselves to be bought off by Capitalists, rather than serving the vast majority of their constituency (The Working Class).
Capitalism, as practiced in the USA, seeks to maximize profits for the Ownership Class; all other concerns are subordinate to making money for the Overlords.
Capitalists seek to undermine legislation that would regulate workplaces (read: protect workers) and to undermine Executive Dept. enforcement of those regulations (read: protecting workers), if ever enacted, with the Capitalists seeing those regulations (read: worker protections) as cutting into profits.
(See the story about the Coal CEO whose actions resulted in 29 dead miners.)
N.B. In his 696-page book which analyzes 250 years of Capitalism, Professor of Economics Thomas Piketty notes that Capitalism continually concentrates wealth (and political power, see above) in fewer and fewer hands and results in Oligarchy.
"What have you (in the Constitutional Convention) given us, Mr. (Benjamin) Franklin?
"A republic--if you can keep it."
Switzerland's form of Direct Democracy has been mentioned in the (meta)thread.
It's clear that it is possible to do government properly.
Onlookers, however, don't make significant changes to government.
Individuals becoming informed and voting is a start.
In the USA, -REAL- change comes from people joining in the operation of a political party and making sure that decisions about the platform and the choices of candidates get made properly.
The Tea Party hijacked the Republicans Party on behalf of their paymasters (the Kochs, Sheldon Adelson, et al.).
If you want change, you will have to mirror the participation of (and overwhelm the efforts of) those whose politics you abhor.
Life is politics.
If you choose not to engage, you lose by forfeit.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 16 2017, @03:05AM
So true, and so depressing. Everybody else is too busy being a temporarily embarrassed millionaire or else somebody who gets upset any time the government reduces “their money.”