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Local rules instead of global censorship

redecentralize.org

121–130 of 221 posts

Re: Local rules instead of global censorship

#121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobbying isn't easier in a centralised power structure. When Amazon wanted favours from municipal governments, it held a competition to get them to lobby themselves to cut taxes and bend rules to earn the patronage of the corporation that was bigger and richer and more important than them.

How come they failed to do just that in Europe? It isn't like some random multinational company can come to Sweden and demand special rules from their national government to do something there.

Well, it worked for Luxembourg, Ireland and the Netherlands. it works between counties, it workd between states in Germany.

Re: Local rules instead of global censorship

#122
post #58

I believe the premise of the title. But the main question should be: why? And the article does not really answer that, well beyond censorship. I think the reason why centralization is a danger to democracy, is because of lobbying. Lobbying is much easier in a centralized power structure. See how much lobbying goes on in and around the power centers of this world: DC, Brussels, London. Lobby is power for money, democr…

> I think the reason why centralization is a danger to democracy, is because of lobbying. Also to add, centralized political systems cannot be truly "democratic". The middle ages were far more democratic than our modern enlightened times. Canadian historian Francis Dupuis-Déri writing in the book "Démocratie: Histoire politique d’un mot aux États-Unis et en France": "During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, thousa…

> I think the reason why centralization is a danger to democracy, is because of lobbying.

They're misattributing something to centralization which has nothing to do with centralization, casual vs. causational.

A failsafe mechanism is possible here to counter lobbying of industrial complexes. Andrew Yang's policy proposal of Democracy Dollars for example, earmark $100/year to every eligible voter to contribute to politician of choice - which will wash out lobbyist money a factor of 8:1 with money from regular citizens.

Re: Local rules instead of global censorship

#123
post #51

I think this is a very compelling point, and much better than most of the "fediverse is for freedom" talking points I have seen on HN: > I have participated in many a public forum on Internet governance, and whenever anyone pointed out that social platforms like Facebook need to do more as far as content moderation is concerned, Facebook would complain that it’s difficult in their huge network, since regulation and c…

The communities or groups who have gone "rogue" aren't going to care for moderation, they're going to ban/block anyone with a dissenting argument/narrative - even if it's reason and truth - which then externalizes the cost to the rest of society into the physical world in the form of violence, terror.

Re: Local rules instead of global censorship

#124
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nope, they cannot. in the real meaning of the words: capitalism protects unlimited capital accumulation and socialism forbids it. they are at odds. currently most nations have capitalism, often with some social policies in place (mainly to prevent uprisings).

I see this “mainly to prevent uprisings” idea asserted in lots of places but it strikes me as highly cynical. What’s the evidence this is the case? Even if a social policy was first introduced in response to uprisings, that doesn’t demonstrate that simply quelling the uprising was its sole purpose then , and it certainly doesn’t mean that’s the reason for its continued existence now

Most social policies where the results of strikes and demonstrations. See the Haymarket massacre, for instance.

Re: Local rules instead of global censorship

#125
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nope, they cannot. in the real meaning of the words: capitalism protects unlimited capital accumulation and socialism forbids it. they are at odds. currently most nations have capitalism, often with some social policies in place (mainly to prevent uprisings).

That's a rather simplistic view of the matter. They do coexist is most countries, just in different sectors. When a country collectively owns most of the healthcare means of production and protects it by law (e.g. by requiring emergency ambulances to go to public hospitals), how is that capitalism?

They are merely social policies, not socialism. Capitalism is the unlimited protection of personal wealth, thereby for instance allowing billionaires to exist.

Re: Local rules instead of global censorship

#126
post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds a lot more socialist than just "remotely". According to Wikipedia, it's the defining characteristic of socialism.

If it doesn't meet this definition, I wouldn't call it socialist. Otherwise, the word socialism would lose its meaning. California having high taxes does not make it socialist. Austria having free education does not make it socialist.

The socialst dream is the class-less, egalitarian, solidary society.

The whole point of reformist socialism is that you should not try to get there in a single giant leap, but step by step, with the fully socialist society more of a Platonic ideal: There'll likely always be a next thing to fix.

Austria having free education does not make it socialist - but it makes it more socialist.

Re: Local rules instead of global censorship

#127
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of those are policies exclusive to a socialist system. But what do i know about Social Democracy, im just Swedish.

But you do know that historically, 'Social Democratic' is just a name chosen by European socialist parties for themselves? The membership list[1] of the Party of European Socialists (known as Europeiska socialdemokratiska partiet in Swedish) reflects this to this day. It is of course true that a Social Democracy is not a fully socialist society, but that discussion was already had last century during the Revisionismu…

Yes, but these parties use 'social democratic' after a split of socialist parties in 1920s into social democratic parties and communist parties. So no need to use 'socialist' instead of 'social democratic' unless you want to dogwhistle to communist supporters.

Also note that this meaning of term 'socialist' is rather archaic (and not in opposition to term 'capitalist'). The modern meaning of 'socialism' is to describe economic system in countries of soviet communist bloc.

Re: Local rules instead of global censorship

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The central philosophy in capitalism is competition . The world is currently very acutely seeing the second and third order effects of such "winner takes all" philosophy, ranging from consumer-harming monopolies to environment-destroying profit-seeking. If we set socialism as an opposition to capitalism, it rises naturally to represent cooperation ; The idea that everyone is entitled to a base level of creature comfo…

No, you've described the caricature of capitalism that those opposed to it repeat to themselves to help justify their opposition. The central philosophy of capitalism is that voluntary trade leads, ultimately, to greater and more efficient production. That's not to say it's necessarily a straight line walk or that what is produced is necessarily pretty. Competition is a side effect that comes into play once you are p…

> The central philosophy of capitalism is that voluntary trade leads, ultimately, to greater and more efficient production.

That's also what "market socialists" believe, but still they are very different.

The central underpinning of capitalism is the protection of personal wealth, ad infinitum. Thereby allowing capitalists a.k.a. billionaires to exist.

Re: Local rules instead of global censorship

#129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Calling Finland socialist invalidates your whole post.

Parent didn't call Finland socialist, just said "more socialist". If one considers "Capitalism" and "Socialism" as the two extremes of an economic organization continuum (which is reasonable), Finland is indeed "more socialist" (or better yet, less capitalist) than the US.

Europeans often follow the classical definition of socialism: non private ownership of means if production. Things like so socialist market economies without state regulation thereof, for example, are theoretically conceivable.

However, no European country is socialist in that sense. They have a lot of state involvement, or other public institutions, but they do have private property especially for means of production. That’s all there is to it, and calling Finland socialist seems rather inappropriate to Europeans. Indeed, to describe these different systems, other names are used, for example social democracy, or social market system etc.

For Americans, socialism is just the opposite of capitalism in every particular dimension, not just means of producing. So you can be more socialist in healthcare and so forth, even by having just more state control of things that are still privately owned.

Neither is wrong. It is a semantic misunderstanding.

Americans convey a lot of meaning by using single words. For example, just yelling socialism can now bring forth associations of all kinds, from Sweden to Stalin. Political discourse seems highly polysemic.

Europeans here are to some degree confused. It is not easy to keep up with the context of what socialism all means in the US, and how that meaning constantly shifts and gets new nuances.

But the vividness of it all is linguistically rather interesting.

Anyhow, no one is inherently wrong here.

I would however mention that we converse in English, on a US website. So there is that.

Re: Local rules instead of global censorship

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both can coexist, but you can do it in a more capitalism or more socialist way. Take e.g. healthcare. You can have all private healthcare (capitalist), a public and private sector coexisting (mixed), or exclusively public provider (socialist). And that's just a sector. You can have socialist healthcare but capitalist manufacturing. Every economy is mixed, but it can balance to one side or the other. (btw, all modern…

That is an oversimplification. There is more defining Socialism than just healthcare. And having a solid social system in place is hardly a socialist thing.

I think their overall point is that it's possible to have sectors of the economy non-privately owned. Healthcare is a common one, but there's others - power generation, transit, education, etc.

If your definition of socialism is that absolutely all sectors of the economy are non-privately owned, then even places like Cuba don't qualify.

If your definition of capitalism is that absolutely all sectors of the economy ARE privately owned, the U.S. isn't a capitalist country.

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