261–270 of 283 posts
EU's recently rejected chat control looks like child's play compared to this. These are some Stasi methods that are going to destroy the US if implemented. Europe already went through creating dossier on citizens in the past, the next immediate step is always fascism. Nothing good comes out of fascism, as the history showed.
To collect data just for police enforcement is horrifying and it will increase the control that goverment has in private affairs without proving anything of value to society.
The USA claims freedom to avoid taking care of their own, but it claims security to spy and control its own citizens.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be fair, pixelready said "average person," not "average American."
Yes, I would not like my own prosperity to come at the cost of others’ suffering (where “others” here means all of humanity). I understand hard choices must sometimes be made but I think our technology has progressed to the point that we can honestly provide a good quality of life for the vast majority of human beings globally if we were able to overcome old modes of thinking and actually set ourselves to that proble…
As someone who came from the extremely far left (with an anarchist bent), I just want to respond to this, though:
>> it seems there are certain types of people or that under certain circumstances have grown to have this twisted need for “all”, instead of “just enough”.
My observation has been that the desire for all, or at least more, is inherent to all people. You may be happy with a UBI, but the great complaint is wealth inequality.
I look around and find myself pretty well-off, with easy access to goods and services my father struggled for, and which my grandfather could never have imagined. I look around and see people of my own well-off technical elite upper-middle-class touting stuff like Maoism, because America allegedly has worse wealth inequality than China did in the 1970s. And logically I have to ask: Are these people so obsessed with keeping up with the Joneses that they can't see what they have?
Greed comes in different forms, right? There's this amazing line in Dostoevsky's "Devils": Why is it that all these desperate socialists and communists are so incredibly miserly, acquisitive, and proprietorial? In fact, the more socialist someone is, the further he's gone in that direction, the stronger his proprietorial instinct. Why is it?"
Okay, so imagine you live a life with 100x the material wealth of your grandfather, like me, but you still are in the middle 40-60% of the country in terms of wealth. You'll never own a private jet, you'll never party on a private island. The question is: Are you happy with yourself and your life? Can you see how much prosperity you've achieved and be proud of it? Or do you spend your time worrying that someone else has more than you, that it's unfair, that the system is rigged against you, etc.
Maybe this is because I come from an immigrant family mindset, but, prosperity and self-reliance are so much more important to me than trying to compare my life to what anyone else has.
Personally, I'd be happy enough in a prison cell or on my death bed, if I had a pen and paper to write on. So I'm okay with other people having luxuries I don't have. I count each day as an amazing blessing if I can wake up, find work, get laid, eat a good meal, watch a good Netflix show, get stoned and go to bed with my lover. Every single one.
I never for a moment thought that Elon or Bezos or any of them were happy. Their toys always seem to rot, their possessions don't intrigue me because they're clearly miserable.
In large bore: Those "certain types of people" you mention exist on both the Left and the Right - they will find a way to blame anyone who has something they don't have. That's the genesis of all the nasty politics we see. I'm not advocating for having less or having nothing or anything like that. I'm just saying, a small amount of appreciation (historically) for what you have now goes a long way toward letting people be happy and chill instead of angry and aggrieved. And someone will always have more unless you're the King of AI or King of Logistics or King of Twitter. So, we lead more modest lives, but lives are all finite, and we have happiness that they can't possibly achieve.
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First, the post literally gives instructions to do something. Second, the root problem is not incompetence, it's that half of America wanted exactly this, for a second time now.
> the root problem is not incompetence, it's that half of America wanted exactly this, for a second time now. That is the same psychology I described in the GP: Instead of looking in the mirror and figuring out what they need to do better, they blame outside forces. It's victim psychology - powerless, someone else's fault, etc. Your group failed; people didn't vote for it because you are well-known quitters and whine…
I'm not American, so let me ask you: what do you think they should have done better? Maybe a not presenting a woman candidate? I ask because that's the most common denominator in their last two election losses.
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And just like that jimbo throws away his right to privacy.
Privacy is important, but so is knowing who people are when you let them into your country.
Migrating to the United States is not a right anyone has, it's a privilege. Documents can easily be forged, or official ones created for a bribe. I'd rather live in a country that will put our own citizens' rights to safety and security ahead of the rights to privacy given to a foreign national who is willingly seeking the privilege of immigrating to a country that is not their own.
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Yes, they're definitely doing this to help you, the hoi polloi whose data is being harvested.
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At some point the answer is “because that’s what reality is.”
If by "reality" you mean "the universe", then the way the universe is depends on a cause, as the existence of the universe is not explained by the universe itself (even an "eternal" universe). Its existence is contingent on some other cause that ultimately cannot be contingent and thus does not require explanation. So the cause or dare I say reason for the universe being the way it is will depend on its cause.
I remember nostalgically when this kind of thing would have been so unpopular in the USA, including (especially?) among the "populist right", that it would not have happened. The escalation of the surveillance security state has been quick and vast.
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Yes, they're definitely doing this to help you, the hoi polloi whose data is being harvested.
Do you not realize how much of a constant, non-trivial challenge identifying foreign nationals is for immigration officials? Forged identities, corrupt/bribed document offices, stolen identites, state-backed agents, etc are all a constant threat. These are not citizens, these are foreigners electing to seek the privilege of entering a country that is not their own. Using technology to mitigate these very real threats…
Who cares? You used to not even need a passport at all for international travel.