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Aral Balkan has a blog post about taking small steps to end surveillance capitalism. In particular he focuses on the need for federated services. He points out that the move to re-decentralize the WWW is difficult and needs to start at the beginning, using a comparison of Apple's original computers to their latest generation of tablets as an illustration.
Five years ago, when I decided to devote myself to tackling the problem of surveillance capitalism, it was clear what we needed: convenient and beautiful ethical everyday things that provide seamless experiences1 on fully free-as-in-freedom stacks.
This is as true today as it was then and it will remain so. The only way to compete with unethical products built by organisations that have control over hardware + software + services is to create ethical organisations that have control over hardware + software + services and thus have at least the possibility to craft competitive experiences. We remove our eyes from this goal at our peril.
Related: Tim Berners-Lee Launches Inrupt, Aims to Create a Decentralized Web
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @08:26PM (2 children)
Bastiat tore your claim asunder all the way back in 1850: [bastiat.org]
I'll add that neither the smart people nor the moral people aspire to become governmental paper-pushers, thereby making your claim even more ridiculous.
If men are not angels, then that is a point against government, not for it.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 10 2018, @09:34PM
But women are, and that's why we're honored to be called "she," like other objects that are the property of a man, a boat for example....
Anyway, when do we kill all men? You've once again made an eloquent case for Emacs. If not now, when?
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday December 10 2018, @11:43PM
Well hell, so do I. However, it is the only system which has been proven to be somewhat stable. No government-free entity has ever produced a nation worth the name. When one does, then your ideas might have merit when examined closely. Barring that condition, they don't.
That is nonsense. You and Bastiat cannot reasonably put forth ideals as viable propositions unless you have an ideal petri dish. And we don't, and we never have, and frankly, we probably never will - certainly not in the next few decades, anyway.
Just quickly, from your quote:
They aren't; that argument has not been submitted. Straw man. The argument is that they keep evil within the capitalist framework down to a dull roar. Which they do.
The evidence show that they do even when regulated, and when they think they can get around the regulation, they do that, too. Removing the regulations offers not even a hint of a solution. "Hey, evildoers! Now we won't even try to stop you! You'll be good now, right?" What nonsense.
They do make those claims; and those claims are validated by every evildoer they stop. And that list is very, very long.
Pompous, nonsensical bullshit.
The system — legislators, legislation, courts, juries, capitalism — is what shows the positive effect overall. The system again, has thus far proven its worth many times over. You can conduct your business in relative peace, without fear of invasion by foreign powers, with a stable currency, in a framework of somewhat reasonable rules, over a complex and robust transport infrastructure. In a system without government — AKA anarchy — you would have none of these advantages, or the barest shadows of just one or two of them.
The argument for anarchy, which is what you are making when you suggest no government is required, is one only the evil, naive or deluded can make with a straight face.
No, it doesn't affect my claim at all, because I make no claim that the resulting system is either perfect or even working all that well. I'm just saying it's working way better than anarchy would. Looking around the world where governments have collapsed, over and over again the evidence is 100% in favor of no government = the people are screwed.
That is facile. Or possibly just stupid. So the government is made up of the fallible, the corruptible, the corrupt. Does this mean that letting the population in general exercise those same traits without any controls will be better? Of course it doesn't. And when the people have some input — as they do in our system at least (the US), there are extra-governmental factors at work all the time to steer the system, to keep it from falling completely into chaos. For instance, it is a very rare thing to see a toxic leader like Trump reach the oval office... and the system is working to pull him out of it, and it may very well succeed.
We have laws and enforcement against rapine. Against pollution. Against mugging, theft and murder. Against hit-and-run. Against bribery. Against monopoly. Etc. All of these things work to counter the chaos that you would have if your ridiculous idea of "no government" were to take root. For that reason, no one with a wet neuron will take you seriously. Certainly I don't. I just found it worthwhile to pound your head against your own idiocy.
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The 3 Functional Retardations:
traditional, jingoistic, and religious.