81–90 of 289 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
cough Pinkertons cough
What is pinkertons?
I'm decidedly against government surveillance, but it feels like our government are deliberately inviting crime to further the needs and arguments for complete surveillance. Now that violent attacks against the police and emergency services, stabbings, rape, murder and generally a complete refusal to accept the law become more common, I'm at the point where unsolved crime bothers me more than protecting people's priv…
> Now that violent attacks against the police and emergency services, stabbings, rape, murder and generally a complete refusal to accept the law become more common [...] Citation needed.
These are all publicly accepted problems by now, so I'm not going to do a writeup for all of them just because one person asks for it.
Your downvotes change nothing, by the way. This is not a sinister outlook, it's already happening right now and I'm provably right.
We get more police and they get more permissions, including broader surveillance, and they're looking to adopt tasers like in the U.S. The last few years did this and hardly anyone is arguing it anymore.
The surveillance state you don't want is coming, and you are the reason.
> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Especially when the author follows up with this sentence: > We will not silently build…
This is like blaming whatever company makes M113s when they wind up in the hands of local police.
Now, I don't consider Amazon or the bureaucrats who are rubber stamping the paperwork for APCs to be blameless but they're definitely not the root cause. The fact that there is a domestic market for this crap it the root of problem.
This is also something that voters have a lot of power to chance because it's a city/town level issue and while it's getting cheaper all the time implementing a surveillance state still is still expensive so there's an avenue to drum up bipartisan support for not doing it.
> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Especially when the author follows up with this sentence: > We will not silently build…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"at the end of the day if amazon doesn't do this someone else will" "If Amazon doesn't fuck over people someone else will, so who cares" is a shit argument.
Personally, I see it as the opposite side of the same argument people use about drugs - that simply banning things doesn't work, motivated people will find another way to obtain them. There is no one more motivated and persistent than the US Government... Even if all the US tech firms join together and refuse to sell to them, the US is not the only country on Earth with tech companies making innovations in this area.…
[1] their tech would most likely be much inferior, and when the likes of Google/Amazon/Facebook/etc. have to choose between getting kicked out of countries or providing their tech to authoritarian governments, then they usually pick the latter.. because profits is more important than the imprisonment and death of millions.
> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Especially when the author follows up with this sentence: > We will not silently build…
That doesn't follow. One can believe in the utility of the military while at the same time holding that it must operate purely as a public service, so that no incentives are created for a state of permanent war. Famously, an American president expressed this very concern. I doubt that Dwight Eisenhower did not believe in the utility of the military, given that he was a general.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"at the end of the day if amazon doesn't do this someone else will" "If Amazon doesn't fuck over people someone else will, so who cares" is a shit argument.
Personally, I see it as the opposite side of the same argument people use about drugs - that simply banning things doesn't work, motivated people will find another way to obtain them. There is no one more motivated and persistent than the US Government... Even if all the US tech firms join together and refuse to sell to them, the US is not the only country on Earth with tech companies making innovations in this area.…
Won't the tech be built regardless of Amazon? It is either SV companies help with it and reduce costs or else blood-suckers such as IBM will come in with their contracts and low tech but costly solutions..
Make up your mind, will the solution work if IBM makes it? If so, then it's not really low tech. If not, then Amazon staying out of the game did exactly the right thing because all of the capable people abstained.
> Regardless of our views on the military, no one should be profiting from “increasing the lethality” of the military. It makes no sense for these two clauses to exist together. If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. Especially when the author follows up with this sentence: > We will not silently build…
> If you do not believe that people should profit from increasing the lethality of the military, then you do not believe in the utility of having a military. That doesn't follow. One can believe in the utility of the military while at the same time holding that it must operate purely as a public service, so that no incentives are created for a state of permanent war. Famously, an American president expressed this ver…