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Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

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Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#321

Post by Saline9515 »

lock-the-spock wrote: post #160
dalbasal wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Idk... The EC pushes through controversial decisions, that are not controversial between states... the bar is generally something high in this regard. National Governments get a buffer between them and discontented citizens, because "it's the EU." There is also a lot of pressure to conform to EC "consensus," parties/individuals that want to be seen as government material. EC totally discounts digital privacy especial…

There is certainly corruption in the use of EU funds within the programmes but do you have evidence of actual corruption in the institutions in recent years? The only cases I'm aware of were all in the parliament, which is unsurprising if national parties send good "party soldiers" chosen for loyalty rather than quality. Corruption at national level seems however much more common, see recent stories on Bavarian backr…

To be an EU public servant, you need a PhD. Many, many of them have “fake” PhDs, written by PhD candidates for money. How do I know? I used to date a girl that was writing one for an EU servant.

And yes, there is plain corruption. Look at Mario Draghi that overlooked Greece's false debt accounting at Goldman Sachs (GS) and then became president of the ECB. Or Emmanuel Barroso, that went swiftly to work at GS after his mandate. Or the commissioner on digital economy that went to work for Uber. That's corruption.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#322

Post by Saline9515 »

scott_w wrote: post #246
blibble wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s total gibberish. okay, so how can the parliament do it?

By passing new laws with the EC. You act like the British Parliament can pass law without government approval. Spoiler alert: it can’t.

Parliament doesn't have initiative and is only consultative (0 power). It can mainly give its perspective on the curvature of cucumbers (yeah it's regulated in the EU, don't mess up with that).

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#323

Post by jltsiren »

logicchains wrote: post #318
jltsiren wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be chaos, and the real power would shift to the administrators. If you select people at random, they will have even less understanding of the issues they vote on than career politicians. They don't have established networks of experts they believe they can trust. They lack the skills to have effective meetings between more than a handful of people, to negotiate, and to make collective decisions. Administrato…

>If you select people at random, they will have even less understanding of the issues they vote on than career politicians This isn't necessarily true. Politicians aren't selected for understanding; their ability to obtain and retain power is entirely due to their ability to attract voters and make deals with other politicians. If you assume a normal distribution of traits, then when people are selected based on scor…

Traits may be normally distributed, but they are not independent. People who are good at something tend to be above average in other things.

People have done some research on that in Finland. Due to mandatory military service, the vast majority of men have taken the same intelligence and personality tests. The research found that male politicians performed better in the intelligence test and were more likely to have favorable personality traits than men in the general population. The effect was already present among the candidates in local elections. The higher up you went, the more significant the effect became.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#324

Post by Saline9515 »

mrtksn wrote: post #54
api wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like over the past 10 years there has been a global retreat from freedom and democracy. China is returning to at least a superficially softer version of Maoism. Russia has returned to Stalinism. The Middle East never had much of a liberal tradition but it’s certainly not gained any ground. The US is flirting with populist strong man rule with Trump and RFK. South America seems to keep oscillating between aut…

>The UK and EU felt like an exception but that doesn’t seem to be the case. Both are trending toward undemocratic bureaucracies in service to either the bureaucracy itself or the powerful. The whole public opinion shifted towards security over everything, unfortunately. As a result, the institutions follow.

Rather more the local media. I can't think of a mainstream newspaper in my country (France) that is publicly pro-freedom of speech.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#325

Post by Saline9515 »

RandomLensman wrote: post #21
Lionga wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EU is a shit show of corruption and oppression. If people would riot for every atrocious thing EU does there would not be time for anything else.

Where or how are people oppressed in the EU?

Taxes are very high in the EU as a result of generalized waste of money. The green energy subsidies come to mind. We're massively subsidizing solar panels in Estonia, for instance (no light in winter).

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#326

Post by Incipient »

tpmoney wrote: post #317
irusensei wrote: post #23

Its just me that thinks there is something really wrong with the way politicians try to pass such controversial laws? Politicians bring up something controversial. Most of the time influenced by some lobby with very little interest in public benefit. To combat this lots of people need to do activism. Those people need to devote your time and energy to prevent such thing. So far it sounds good but after the dust settl…

>They can pretty much push the same bullshit forever until it stays while you are devoting your life to prevent it. This is the nature of democracy, and any way of stopping this from happening would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease. This same process is how women's suffrage, civil rights, gay rights, medical marijuana and many many many other smaller victories for rights have been enabled over the y…

Banning any form of paid lobbying, sponsorship, etc. All the politicians should be interested in are votes (eg the preference of the people).

It won't fix it, but it'll help.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#327

Post by malermeister »

rayiner wrote: post #106
malermeister wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, but it's size and focused power does, which is why the EU isn't trying to copy it 1:1

Is size and power the important thing?

If you don't want to be bullied by the bigger and more powerful, yes.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#328

Post by zarzavat »

zorrolovsky wrote: post #264
scott_w wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law is bad but spouting off incorrect nonsense like this only makes you look unhinged. Everything you said is just completely made up.

To me, it's your thinking that's unhinged. You seem blind to the reality we live in. In your country, Nigel Farage had his banking account cancelled because of having the wrong ideology. What you qualify as impossible is already happening. People are already getting economically punished for opposing ideas imposed by the state and elites. Don't trust me? Go right now to your linkedin and make a post saying: "I dislik…

Farage had a bank account at a very prestigious (i.e. image-conscious) bank. That bank decided to fire him as a customer because they perceived that being associated with him might harm the bank's reputation, and perhaps some personal vendetta against his politics by the bank's management.

On a purely objective level, the bank made the wrong decision, as it backfired rather badly. On the other hand, Farage as a neoliberal-populist should have been thrilled to be fired by his bank. Capitalism in action!

I don't disagree with your broader point, but it's nothing new. There are always things that you can't say. The creator of this website wrote an essay on the subject 20 years ago and it reads as true today as it did then. Before it was forbidden to say bad things about LGBT, it was forbidden to say good things about LGBT, indeed in many parts of the world that is still the case.

The thing that has changed is that while in the past people's political opinions would be something shared in private company, now we voluntarily broadcast them to the world. So people are more likely to find the limits of what you can't say today rather than in decades gone by.

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#329

Post by tpmoney »

Incipient wrote: post #326
tpmoney wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They can pretty much push the same bullshit forever until it stays while you are devoting your life to prevent it. This is the nature of democracy, and any way of stopping this from happening would be a case of the cure being worse than the disease. This same process is how women's suffrage, civil rights, gay rights, medical marijuana and many many many other smaller victories for rights have been enabled over the y…

Banning any form of paid lobbying, sponsorship, etc. All the politicians should be interested in are votes (eg the preference of the people). It won't fix it, but it'll help.

> Banning any form of paid lobbying, sponsorship, etc.

The problem with this is then the only people that are able to meet with / influence your representatives are the people that are independently wealthy enough to travel to them and take the time off from work to do so. If you can't pay someone to speak on your behalf, and you can't afford to take the time to speak for yourself, how do you get heard? Are you personally willing to fly out to your representatives offices every time something comes up that the EFF lobbies against or for on your behalf?

Re: Undermining Democracy: The EU Commission's Controversial Push for Surveillance

#330

Post by ClumsyPilot »

jltsiren wrote: post #282
logicchains wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I wonder what would happen if there were not politicians, if the parliament of Europe were the sum of all its citizens voting for laws in some sort of mega-stack-overflow consensus system There's another way to achieve something similar less chaotically: demarchy, which was used for some things in ancient Greece. This involves electing people at random for a limited time period; if the selection is truly random, the…

It would be chaos, and the real power would shift to the administrators. If you select people at random, they will have even less understanding of the issues they vote on than career politicians. They don't have established networks of experts they believe they can trust. They lack the skills to have effective meetings between more than a handful of people, to negotiate, and to make collective decisions. Administrato…

> They don't have established networks

of corrupting lobbyists, that the main thing they are missing.

The average age in the Senate is what, 65? The percentage of people with degrees in science, architecture or engineering is like 10%.

These people are not keeping up with changes in the world, they are not more informed than an average Joe and are definitely less capable of processing new information.

There is no formal qualification required to become a politician and they are not selected based on intellectual merit. In fact my local politician is a ex-convict.

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