551–560 of 1001 posts
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So we should substitute 'strong cryptography' for 'arms' and see what happens.
It is funny you mention that actually - as a personal anecdote, I can say that many of my friends who happen to be advocates for free distro of crypto tech - or more commonly, cryptocurrencies - also tend to be fairly strong 2A advocates. TL;DR; - IMO there is some significant crossover between crypto* people, and 2A people.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/03/business/apple-hires-goog...
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Can you explain the mechanics of that happening? Do you have any personal experience of unionized work? Employees having more of a say about what they work on though collective bargaining, resulting in employees having less of a say on what they work on, seems unlikely to me.
I'm making almost $400,000 total compensation and I'm happily working on things that I love. I don't need a union to tax me and force me to pay dues to do absolutely nothing that will benefit me, besides pay themselves well. On top of that, having a union start representing itself as a political force will definitely upset me. I may be against the militarization of Google, but what if I weren't? What if I supported i…
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Doesn't the fact that this is another step towards autonomous killing machines complicate your view of this? A lot of Silicon Valley's justification for its immoral actions rests on the _belief_ of the inevitability of outcomes. It's ok to monopolize and centralize everything, discarding the lives of people who are negatively impacted because it's inevitable. It's ok to make robots able to kill people better because…
I find it pretty easy to believe that other countries will continue to funnel money into military operations even if the US slows or stops. No, I can't prove that. But it seems like a very reasonable belief to have. What reason do you have to believe that it won't be so?
From a less grassroots perspective, international regulations and sanctions tend to be fairly effective.
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My memory isn't short. You made a point of talking about cryptography. The US government also classified crypto as munitions in order to control its usage and export: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_th... This had very negative effects on cryptography in general (see the FREAK exploit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FREAK ) Also, why wouldn't this be employed to better monitor Stingray ( http…
The classification of cryptography as munitions was an interesting choice. The first amendment may protect domestic encryption capabilities as stated by the wikipedia article. From a legal standpoint, does encryption being classified as munitions also put it into second amendment territory? As information becomes weaponized, it's an interesting thought. The first amendment is arguably more vulnerable these days, so I…
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I'd argue that fundamental human rights means rights that exist inherently regardless of whether the UN or any given country recognizes them. My feeling is that people have a right to self defense, which would require them to have access to some effective weapon. In theory that could be a club or blade rather than a firearm; however, currently firearms are the only (somewhat) socially acceptable weapon to carry in th…
I can't think of a single right that exists inherently. Where does such a right originate? For every right that most people hold evident, you'll find people who disagree. This is why rights are codified in laws and agreements.
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Not at all. The concept of natural rights merely means that by our nature we have rights. The schools of thought that led to that identification and to the foundation of the US based on the ideal of a government exclusively tasked with securing these rights goes back at least to the 15th century (Aristotle and other Greek thinkers already were inching towards the idea that there are things that are right to protect i…
> The concept of natural rights merely means that by our nature we have rights. The Greeks may have had a concept of natural rights separate from their being endowed by a Creator, but that is not the same concept of natural rights that John Locke proposed and which inspired the American Founding Fathers, leading to posts from Americans like the one we see above. Advocacy for that school repeatedly cites the existence…
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A reason why we SHOULDN'T unionize. It means that workers could potentially be politicized and forced to be a part of things that they don't believe in. Maybe right now we may agree with not militarizing our company, but what if the union starts supporting ideas that you're fundamentally against?
Can you explain the mechanics of that happening? Do you have any personal experience of unionized work? Employees having more of a say about what they work on though collective bargaining, resulting in employees having less of a say on what they work on, seems unlikely to me.
It's simple - unions can force you to join, take your money, and give it to political causes you don't support. And if you're in the minority, you don't have any say in it. See Abood v. Detroit Board of Education and several more recent cases (Friedrichs v. CTA, Janus v AFSCME).
Picture this - if you were a minority opinion holder in a Google Union, and the majority of the members decided to strike to protest Google's work with the Pentagon, you would be subject to union discipline, including fines and lawsuits.
Basically, unions are fine as long as you agree with everything they say and do...
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As an engineer I have serious moral qualms about not furthering the goals of our military. After all, I would not be here, and my job would not exist, and the freedom I have to do this work would not exist, if soldiers like my grandfather hadn't stepped up to Hitler and Stalin and Mao and say "No, you're wrong, and we're willing to use violence to protect our way of life". Just my 2c but I definitely respect the ulti…
They didn't step up to Stalin and Mao. Hitler was because of alliance with Britain and the Japanese attack, not because of how awful the Nazis regime was. The US for the most part didn't want to get dragged back into another European conflict. Hitler was bad, yes. But what happened in Germany was rooted in the outcome of WW1, which was rooted in all the alliances and what not proceeding it, which was rooting in yet p…
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This way you end up with someone unskilled taking a job and instead of 1 drone you have to send 10 because only 1 will hit the target.
If our war machine kills less people, sounds like a win to me.