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Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

ar.al

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Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#41

Post by Ygg2 »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #34
Ygg2 wrote: post #9

Preface: I might be too influenced by Adam Curtis. But what I find most interesting about this reply/rant, is that it - like most of left, always seems to envision a world without power. And you can't confront entrenched power, without seizing power, and using it to transform society.

It's worse than that. Fundamentally, the problem is that people are not angels. The left recognizes, correctly, that the people in power - the leaders - are not angels. So the left wants them gone - wants there to be nobody in power. The problem is that the people who are not in power also are not angels. Left to themselves, a fair number of them will find ways to harm (economically or even physically) people around…

People might not be angels, but they aren't devils either.

The way I see it, left doesn't want people to have power. So it limits politician's power. And then, the financial/corporate interest seize all powers, and use it as they will.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#42

Post by munin »

leggomylibro wrote: post #39
65827 wrote: post #5

We're really moving into the strange cyberpunk dystopian future when CEOs start writing bizarre manifestos about how they want to reshape the world like this. Really just a few years out from private corporate armies I think (Zuckerberg already has a small private army protecting him with heavy weaponry) and cyber wars and espionage and open defiance of governments. Like we all knew this was an option of where we wer…

Musk and Bezos both have access to the rocketry tech necessary to produce ballistic missiles, along with autonomous machines which are starting to rival the sort of things usually produced by DARPA. Meanwhile, Facebook is tinkering with the best ways to influence masses of people and journalism/propaganda channels. So I'm not necessarily saying that we're living out a mashup between Shadowrun and that Simpsons episod…

DARPA is a funding agency, the only thing they produce are power points. They fund labs and companies that make things. The people that own those labs have this same power too but since they're not as cool as Bezos I guess we don't talk about them?

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#43

Post by Analemma_ »

concinds wrote: post #33

The mainstream view is that for the world to be sustainable and stable, it needs to be more centralized and governed from the top. That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system. It needs to be more functional, not more centralized. The NNTaleb view is that to be sustainable and stable, the world needs to be decentralized and antifragile. In other words: not 1 government, but 100 well designed, functional g…

> That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system.

You've buried an awful lot in that sentence without justifying any of it. I could just as easily say "decentralization and local governance don't work because the world is a complex system" and sound just as correct.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#44

Post by pizzetta »

concinds wrote: post #33

The mainstream view is that for the world to be sustainable and stable, it needs to be more centralized and governed from the top. That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system. It needs to be more functional, not more centralized. The NNTaleb view is that to be sustainable and stable, the world needs to be decentralized and antifragile. In other words: not 1 government, but 100 well designed, functional g…

I think we need some kind of arbiter of last resort when there is contention for resources or other things which do not respect borders (like climate, resource depletion, pollution, disease, etc).

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#45

Post by MrZongle2 »

hourislate wrote: post #15
MrZongle2 wrote: post #2

FTA: "Where Mark asks you to trust him to be a benevolent king, I say let us build a world without kings." I'd also submit that even if you trust Zuckerberg to be a benevolent king, he won't be king forever. He may grow bored of Facebook and move on, have an untimely accident or a poor diagnosis...these are all events that can put all things Facebook in the hands of somebody far less (presumably) benevolent. Imagine…

All those you listed are Saints compared to Mark who is one of the most dangerous men in the world. facebook needs to be torn down. It is a toxic apparatus, being used against the population. Just saying.

Well, don't count me among those who trust Zuck. I stopped using Facebook years ago when I opened my eyes to what a massive intelligence-gathering operation it is.

And the names I listed are just examples; my point remains that one cannot predict who will hold the reins in the future. We can debate how much of a monster Zuckerberg may be, but I'm convinced that there can be somebody much worse in charge.

I think the most productive thing most of us can do in the short term is to convince everyone we know to stop using that platform.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#47

Post by concinds »

rdtsc wrote: post #11

I made a few tangential points regard globalization in a similar discussion. Basically wondering how globalization which was a very right wing corporatist idea (Sanders calls it a Koch brothers proposal here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0 basically) became a favorite of the new left. And conversely anti-globalization was a top issue for the left along with TPP, NAFTA and other such stuff. I think it is r…

Disagree completely. I grew up in pretty "elite", mostly left-wing circles, who were heavily pro-globalization. The reason in a nutshell is "freedom". When your friends growing up come from all over the world, and you understand that with anti-migrant policies, you wouldn't have ever met any of them, you'll be pro-freedom of movement. If you grew up in Alabama, and still live close to where you were born, you won't be.

Maybe none of this is in the interest of factory workers, but that's not what the left is about anymore, and it's not the left's fault either. The world moved on. You will never get the "old left" back. Weakening the influence of corporations will still be popular on the left, but reversing globalization and freedom of movement will hopefully never be a left-wing position again.

The factory-worker type who complains that his job moved to China, while he only buys the cheapest Chinese crap at Walmart, is not the future of the left.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#48

Post by unhinged_wanker »

Someone1234 wrote: post #32
decebalus1 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (Zuckerberg already has a small private army protecting him with heavy weaponry) Source? I agree with your ideas overall but I'm genuinely interested in this aspect.

There's some details here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-28/facebook-... I think calling four full time guards a "small private army" is a little hyperbolic, but it is safe to say he is heavily protected.

Maybe most of the time King Zuck only has 4 people guarding him personally, but if you think that facebook security staff that he controls is just those 4 guys, you're crazy.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#49

Post by Analemma_ »

65827 wrote: post #5

We're really moving into the strange cyberpunk dystopian future when CEOs start writing bizarre manifestos about how they want to reshape the world like this. Really just a few years out from private corporate armies I think (Zuckerberg already has a small private army protecting him with heavy weaponry) and cyber wars and espionage and open defiance of governments. Like we all knew this was an option of where we wer…

It's not new, though. The phenomenon of business leaders wanting to build cloistered utopias is at least a hundred years old. Henry Ford had "Fordlandia" in Brazil, and Walt Disney was planning to make EPCOT, before the company canned the project after his death.

Private armies for the wealthy aren't new either: see the Pinkerton Agency.

Note that Fordlandia fell apart and the Pinkertons were outlawed when people realized what a terrible idea that was. But I guess those who don't learn their history are doomed to repeat it.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#50

Post by agd »

concinds wrote: post #33

The mainstream view is that for the world to be sustainable and stable, it needs to be more centralized and governed from the top. That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system. It needs to be more functional, not more centralized. The NNTaleb view is that to be sustainable and stable, the world needs to be decentralized and antifragile. In other words: not 1 government, but 100 well designed, functional g…

Ok, but by your same logic it also means not a few monopolistic multinational silicon valley companies dominating our digital lives. These companies are already more powerful than many governments.
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