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The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

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Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#201

Post by pocksuppet »

malwrar wrote: post #135

It has been funny to watch people’s attitudes on copyright change ever since ChatGPT blew up. All I used to hear and experience was copyright used by corporations to shut down open source projects threatening their business models, but now it is the savior of the little guy who is a victim of flagrant corporate violators. In the background, the wealthy and powerful disregard all of this and seem to do whatever they w…

Think it's just the hypocrisy. Either copyright for everybody or copyright for nobody is much more defensible than the current state of affairs, where infringing copyright is legal as long as you're rich. Some random guy in Nebraska had to pay $250,000 to a music company for downloading one MP3, but OpenAI can download all music that ever existed and pay nothing. Meanwhile they prosecute "Anna" who did the exact same thing, because "Anna" isn't politically well-connected.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#202

Post by iamnothere »

pdonis wrote: post #193
bluegatty wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"don’t break norms “just because”, they do it only in specific circumstances based on a calculus." No - I didn't suggest 'just because', and Libertarians reject norms not 'on a specific basis' - they reject the nature of the limiting impetus on their expression. Norms are by by default bad and can only be justified in a narrow sense. Critically, there is no moral impetus but the expression of one self. There is no 'g…

> Ayn Rand Is hardly an example of what you're describing. She explicitly supported property rights and the non-aggression principle. It's interesting, though, that she refused to identify herself as a libertarian because she saw those who did as anarchists. So she apparently had the same kind of misconception about libertarianism that you do.

Not to mention that objectivism and libertarianism are not synonymous. “Libertarian” isn’t even a great label considering that it lumps in everyone from Hoppeans (“libertarian” fascists) to Georgist UBI proponents to minarchists to Tea Partiers to Glenn Greenwald. You’re not going to find a lot of common ground across those demographics except for a desire to maximize some definition of individual liberty, in a general sense, and a shared distaste for government intervention.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#203

Post by yw3410 »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #34
bluefirebrand wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A substantial majority of all human beings have a magic screen in their pocket that lets them look up any information they're interested in or contact anyone on the planet who they'd like to talk to Or allow their bosses to contact them anywhere. Or allow corporations to know their location at all times and use that information for advertising. There have been tradeoffs to smartphones, and arguably they are worse f…

I don't download random business apps, and I live in a pretty tech heavy area, but I've never encountered a parking lot where I couldn't pay at a kiosk or booth. What I do encounter sometimes are friends who "have to" download the app because they're used to the convenience of app-based payments, or because they don't feel a need to carry cash. I strongly feel that the convenience vs. annoyance is heavily tilted towa…

Then I think you're lucky; I live in a major city (London) and can attest that there are parking spaces where the kiosk and booths are gone and the app the only way to pay.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#204

Post by noosphr »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #173
zozbot234 wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Specifically, I think the cyberspace civilization, to the extent that it exists, has been a failure lately on "humane" in the broad sense. I disagree. By meaningful real-world standards , the average Internet space is in fact extremely humane and polite. People will bring up the random exceptions where groups of people absolutely hate one another and these hates eventually spill over into online spaces, but that's…

By meaningful real-world standards there are bot farms sowing dissent and literally driving people into mental illness which has already destroyed many families. At the same time there's the Cambridge Analytica/SCL strand where a corporation literally sells election fixing services that rely on data gathered from social media accounts. To be fair these are all extensions of political and media trends that already exi…

>By meaningful real-world standards there are bot farms sowing dissent and literally driving people into mental illness which has already destroyed many families.

Real living standards have been stagnant or falling since 1971. We've been making time up by working more, buying plastic and filling our free time with distractions.

Blaming the internet for 50 years of policy is both stupid and pointless. In short: what governments want you to do instead of asking why your grand father could buy a house at 20.

Propaganda is only effective when it's true.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#205

Post by aleph_minus_one »

pocksuppet wrote: post #195
schoen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a theory that some skeptics of tech optimism have advanced for a while, that governments like Internet freedom and widespread availability of ICTs in rival nations because it either (1) makes people there hate and fear each other, or (2) makes them easier to propagandize. In this account the U.S. State Department's Internet Freedom Agenda (which many of my friends and colleagues have been directly funded by)…

ICTs? ("Information and Communication Technology" does not make sense here)

> ICTs?

I think "Information and communications technology (ICT)":

> https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Information_and_c...

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#206

Post by pocksuppet »

slopinthebag wrote: post #70
igor47 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in a democracy, you at least have input! Google is also a coercive force with no real checks on its power, but it doesn't care about anything you have to say. That's the difference, that's it, right there. The answer to abuse of power is not to just unleash raw power, its to subordinate and restrict it. That's what government is for. When you find yourself arguing that power you participate in is bad and shouldn'…

The amount of input we have is virtually zero. I have never had a candidate I felt represented me, I have never had a candidate who I voted for win an election, and I have never had a a party who the candidate voted for win an election. Thus my minuscule "input" had absolutely zero impact, both in elections and on my life as a whole. The reason democracy is better than other forms of governance is that it provides in…

Logical conclusion: The US is not a democracy.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#207

Post by roenxi »

malwrar wrote: post #135

It has been funny to watch people’s attitudes on copyright change ever since ChatGPT blew up. All I used to hear and experience was copyright used by corporations to shut down open source projects threatening their business models, but now it is the savior of the little guy who is a victim of flagrant corporate violators. In the background, the wealthy and powerful disregard all of this and seem to do whatever they w…

> It has been funny to watch people’s attitudes on copyright change ever since ChatGPT blew up.

I doubt many individuals actually changed their opinions. Just that a large crowd of previously-silent people decided AI is a threat to them and they can attack it on copyright grounds. The AI revolution is a great argument against copyright law. The US's lax enforcement means that the incredible, world-changing tech could be built before the luddites got organised to try and stop it. The productive path appears to be illegal, but they took it anyway and we're all the better off for it.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#208

Post by irusensei »

tkel wrote: post #182
thinking_cactus wrote: post #143

Irrespective of anything else, I think libertarians of any kind have to contend with that Corporations can be extremely powerful entities that can be just as bad as governments. At the very least, setting their sights on governments alone seems terribly inconsistent and incorrect. In no small part because megacorps can yield governments in their favor, and by the point they're extremely powerful megacorps, the libert…

It makes sense when you understand the origins, "libertarian" as a phrase was coopted from socialist-libertarians (now called anarchists), and is full of contradictions and hypocrises, mainly the one you mentioned about private property (in the economic sense of the term), controlling economic organizations as a dictator and owning their collective output as property. Not to mention this type of property is pretty an…

> I mean, their foundational philosophy is Ayn Rand, a fiction writer? The whole right-libertarian ideology is a joke compared to the intellectual rigor of anarchist theorists like Kropotkin, Bakunin, Malatesta, etc.

Ayn Rand is not consensus within libertarian circles.

From the top if my head on the libertarian camp I think of Rothbard, Hayek, Mises, Menger, Von Bawerk who debunked Marx economic policies. Also arguably Kant and Adam Smith and many others who influenced it.

My guess is that since you know Bakunin and these others there might be a chance you are deep into the other extreme. I think it's okay to disagree but your comparison shows you probably need to do better research before putting things together to avoid the "our blessed homeland, their barbarous wastes" situation.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#209

Post by gardnr »

I have a suspicion most Libertarians are actually something else but who haven't realized it yet. When you really dig into it: idea of private property (as in owning land and charging people rent for using it) is akin to slavery (owning people and extracting labor from them). The pre-colonial indigenous structures of managing societies were much more aligned with my internal values but they are poorly defined in modern vernacular and we don't have a good "common vocabulary" to talk about how we might want to do things in a different way.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#210

Post by nozzlegear »

pocksuppet wrote: post #199
artyom wrote: post #176

Look, I agree with a good part of this article. I also agree that the whole "unregulated internet" is terrible for humankind in general. Crypto is a scam. Meta should be, plain and simple, shut down. Twitter is a madhouse. The list is endless. However, every single time I feel like stricter regulation should be in place, a congressman speaks about "servers"... and yeah, maybe not.

The EU seems to have a different take. As I understand it, regulations are much more malleable in Europe. When problems arise, regulations are put in place. When regulations are problems... it takes a lot longer to remove them, but can still happen eventually. Nothing like the USian deadlock system. And when they do write them, it's always about general principles. The GDPR doesn't speak of cookie consent banners, in…

> USian

American. Please avoid the childish term "USian" unless you're going to commit to calling people from South Africa "SAian" too.

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