361–370 of 384 posts
Surveillance and totalitarian control is a downward spiral of misery and suffering for everyone, even those in power. It reminds me of some quotes from the Tao Te Ching - Restriction breeds the disorder it's meant to prevent (ch. 57) The more prohibitions there are in the world, the poorer the people become. The more sharp weapons, the more the state falls into confusion. The more laws and edicts are posted, the more…
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>with the caveat that you wouldn’t know how things turn out when you lived in that time. The premise sort of gives it away, doesn’t it? If you don’t know how things turn out you can’t say how you’d respond. Everyone is a product of their time. Some people are miserable, some are resilient.
It's a necessary restriction. Part of what drives modern anxiety is you don't know the future, so it's necessary that while you get to pick a time period where you have perfect visibility into its future (for example, you know that the cold war doesn't lead to the nuclear apocalypse) the person who lives through that moment can't have that knowledge. If you picked the cold war period, it is necessary that you pick it…
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It wasn’t a problem to begin with. Meta studies recently showed trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT, certainly nothing than cis women don’t have biological variation within anyway. All the rule updates did was exclude and further marginalise an already marginalised extreme minority. There are very few trans women to begin with, fewer of us still are competing in sports. Nothing was studi…
> trans women have no biological advantage over cis women after HRT As someone who's been into weightlifting and only casual observer-like in regards to testosterone therapy, this doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. After taking TRT/Steroids a person retains a good deal of the muscle/strength they gained even after cessation ... It surprises me to hear that this wouldnt carry over to sports where muscle/strength/pow…
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Yes. Inequality creates antisocial asshole criminals at a far greater rate than more equal societies. But even if you disagree, you must still agree that antisocial asshole criminals will find ways to steal and get away with it, cameras or no.
In a just and equal society, criminals would be prosecuted and convicted for the economic violence of theft. Inequality is a useless measurement used to excuse antisocial behavior. The inequality between Bill Gates and I has increased exponentially in the past 20 years, yet I'm significantly better off than I was then back then. Inequality is a feel good measurement thats fundamentally the wrong target.
If inequality is the wrong measure? Fine. Deep poverty, perhaps? Lack of opportunities and hope for rising out of poverty, maybe? However you feel best describes people who are not “significantly better off” than 20 years ago. Because most of america would say they are worse off than 20 years ago.
> In a just and equal society, criminals would be prosecuted and convicted for the economic violence of theft.
That doesn’t solve the problem tho. Because even if you jail someone for life for petty theft, the funnel is still there creating more petty thieves.
To be clear - i am not absolving people of their crimes. It’s still wrong to steal someone’s packages. I just don’t think that more enforcement is the right way to make it happen less. I say attack the upstream problems first, deal with the downstream effect last.
Surveilling the entire population also has basically nothing to do with solving either upstream causes or downstream effects.
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Everything related to the right wing and fox news? We never had a big "swing left" - clinton was the democrats showing they can do economic conservatism as well. Modern acceptance of trans folks isn't a pendulum, most of the people espousing anti-trans views weren't pro trans 5 years ago. Trying to abstract history into major shifts that are attributable to inanimate objects is just very ludic fallacy.
I'm confused by this. Are you saying that everything related to the right wing and fox news is evidence that momentum is a good model or that trying to model history with momentum is fundamentally fallacious? If the former, you've really got to be more specific- was firing Tucker Carlson evidence for momentum somehow? Did Republicans conceding gay marriage or Trump conceding abortion give Democrats momentum?
I suspect that Mass Surveillance is here for good, and the real project is to regain control of who gains the power and benefits. There are dozens if not 100s of ways that mass surveillance can improve human life. There are also as many where it can be abused to create suffering. I think the real issue is we're trending to the latter. In order to safely continue down this path we (USA) need: 1. EU style governmental…
The protest is more about who watches the watchers. And neither will trust the other.
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> The ultra wealthy are entrapped by their own minds & machines of wealth that have tight demands. But only within their minds. They could change their minds, donate or pay enough taxes that their billions would be distributed far and wide. Then they'd no longer be trapped. Plenty of people make the choice to stop acquiring, stop increasing their wealth, and stop having more everything (kids, houses, cars, pets, hobb…
> They could change their minds, donate or pay enough taxes that their billions would be distributed far and wide. Then they'd no longer be trapped. They pay giant amounts of tax. The people not paying tax, or costing negative tax, are who you mean.
The 2021 ProPublica tax leak showed the 25 richest Americans paid a "true tax rate" of roughly 3.4% on their $401 billion in wealth growth between 2014 and 2018, because their wealth grew without triggering realization events.
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It really sounds like you're trying hard to define a square circle. Your argument isn't even self consistent because what you described sure sounds like someone has power...
Nope. It's perfectly consistent. No one has much power at all. No one is in charge, there is no greater power sitting above us all calling all (or even most) the shots. To use someone else's term, there is no cabal. You seem to conflate "no one is powerful" with "no one has any power in any situation at all".
> You seem to conflate "no one is powerful" with "no one has any power in any situation at all".