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The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

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Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#341

Post by ajross »

danaris wrote: post #301
pdonis wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The market winning solution, of course, is to put THE entire music library, all of it, everyone's, in the cloud and get to it from any device anywhere. Not in a free market (which is part of "libertarian ideals", or at least it's supposed to be). In a free market, there is no single "solution"--there are whatever solutions people are willing to pay more than they cost for. If you want your music in the cloud, and y…

But in real life, any time you have "a free market", by the definition of "no or minimal regulations", you will inevitably end up with a very un-free market, by the definition of "lots of choice for the consumer, healthy competition". And far, far too many self-proclaimed libertarians think that any regulations that "encumber" the market take it farther away from being "free", when in fact, there are regulations that…

Exactly. My point sort of the converse: that the upthread comment reflected a set of values that, while grounded in "cyberlibertarian" thought, do not reflect actual market value as measured by an actual market. The libertarians tend to think simultaneously that "The Right to Pursue my Niche Ideas" and "The Supremacy of the Market" are related concepts, and they emphatically aren't.

And in particular that the former tends to be the first thing stomped on by runaway market forces.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#342

Post by jonhohle »

txrx0000 wrote: post #321
BlackFly wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfortunate reality of the internet is that anonymity is abused by troll farms and genuine human interaction is corrupted by their astroturfing and political propaganda. Anonymity in the hands of the powerful is so much more corrupting than the liberty it imparts to the weak.

Bots are only an issue for public posts, not chat groups and DMs where the most valuable interactions happen. Ideally chats would be encrypted, untraceable, and anonymous, except to the people you're talking to. Anonymity is an overwhelmingly positive feature there. For public feeds, you seem to assume that only the propagandists can leverage bots effectively, which is the right assumption for the centrally-controlle…

> But if we make a platform that is just some protocols that can't be controlled by anyone, you and I would be able to spin up anti-propaganda bots to pwn the propaganda bots without fear of repercussion.

How has this worked out with email, text messages, or the phone system, or even postal mail.

I rarely receive messages from kindly anti-propaganda bots, but sure receive a lot of messages from actual propaganda that bypass filters and infect everything like cockroaches.

Assuming that otherwise won’t happen is a basic failure to understand humanity. Spend a few hours with middle school boys and after observing their behavior, try to determine if your protocols will withstand that goofiness, naivety, rudeness, absurdness, sensitivity, callousness, puerileness, unpredictability, and rambunctiousness.

As a parent to several, I see how educational institutions (school) whose job it is to be experts at this exact behavior are failing catastrophically by not understanding this very basic idea. If your protocol something that is designed for well meaning people with good behavior who trust one another, it probably won’t work to well when given to middle schoolers and will work even worse when someone with the slightest bit of malice gets a hold of it.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#343

Post by overfeed »

txrx0000 wrote: post #230
lampiaio wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article was interesting to read not necessarily as a generative spark but as a datapoint, a symptom of how effective, in the long run, the response from those who saw the internet as a threat was. Only someone who's lost the plot (or arrived late) would summarily conflate Barlow's 1996 Declaration with "one of those sovereign citizen TikToks where someone in traffic court is claiming diplomatic immunity under mar…

I will add, for those that lost the plot: the goal was, and still is, to build a world where anyone can communicate with anyone else without exposing their physical identity and location, and therefore people cannot be physically persecuted for what they think and say. We're far from achieving this goal, and we underestimated our opponents by a lot. But it would be foolish to blame the Barlows of the world instead of…

> the goal was, and still is, to build a world where anyone can communicate with anyone else without exposing their physical identity and location

Whose goal is it? The article notes that the goal is immediately dropped whenever it's more profitable to do the opposite. We got tracking pixels, browser fingerprinting, and privacy-focused companies that talk big game about supporting (/selling you?) anonymity online but won't accept anonymous payments.

The anonymous online communication dream is dead. It died after 9/11 when the US government doubled-down on rolling out a panopticon to prevent future "intelligence failures."

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#344

Post by lovich »

abc123abc123 wrote: post #315
lovich wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hadn’t heard of Barlow or these articles prior to this post but after reading them all I am left with the same question I have for every libertarian, cyber or otherwise. When the corporation that runs as a planned economy with only a few unaccountable leaders at the top has as much power as any other existing government, what makes them any different in terms of morality or “goodness”? I have never gotten a coheren…

The reason is that your question makes no sense, and shows a lack of understanding of how markets operate. Corporations work on markets, with customers, and need to dynamically adapt to the demands of the customers. Therefore the concept of planned economy goes out the window. Leaders in a corporation are accountable to the share holders, so again, what you say makes no sense. Morality relates to value carriers, in t…

When I say corporations run as planned economies, I meant their internal operations. There is no market dynamics going on when the board and C*Os tell you the budget you have for the year and what you are working on.

When I say leaders I am referring to the shareholders. Take Meta for example. Zuckerberg is the only one who has an ultimate say.

I am aware of the theorists you say I will never research. I am also aware you will never change your mind if you think the internal dynamics of mega corps are beholden to market dynamics.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#345

Post by expedition32 »

intrasight wrote: post #333
schoen wrote: post #19

I was a great admirer (and later friend) of Barlow, and I'm still very deeply influenced by the Declaration and many adjacent phenomena. I agree with some fraction of this post in terms of seeing many people shelving these principles when it gets inconvenient for them. In the past few months, I've been troubled by one specific part of the Declaration, in the final paragraph: > We will create a civilization of the Min…

Now, I boil the whole discussion down to the question "What price freedom?" - the sentiment of which is attributed to Jefferson but according to Gemini can be traced back to John Philpot Curran "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance"

Thomas Jefferson the slave owner?

Hypocrisy indeed!

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#346

Post by expedition32 »

patrec wrote: post #340
chairmansteve wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because of onerous regulations, the EU has much less startups". That old trope. Is that also the reason Miami or St. Louis have less startups? I have started companies in the UK. The process is about the same as in the USA. The problem in Europe is that there is a lot less VC capital. Just like in Miami. It had nothing to do with regulation.

And of course the reason that there is a lot VC capital in Europe has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that you'd be crazy to do a startup in e.g. Denmark (because doing so will likely be personally ruinous even in the unlikely case that you get some traction, due to unrealized gains tax) or to directly invest in one in e.g. Germany (where you'd be expected to physically sit through, on location, a few hours of…

Europeans are aware of this but they do not want to engage in a race to the bottom. Socialism was a conscious political decision in response to the oligarchy.

It is incomprehensible to Americans but not everyone wants to be like them. It would actually be a capitulation.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#347

Post by CalRobert »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #191

Also old enough to have been pre-internet: > Paper maps were absolutely horrible… No, and still not horrible. I jeep a trucker's atlas in my van for road trips. Siri and Google Maps (Gigi, we call her) don't seem to realize I want to stay on interstates making distance. Wandering some two-lane country road diagonally through Kansas might save me 10 minutes but having oncoming traffic and the possibility of a rock int…

I generally agree with you but paper maps really were horrible for this of us who have no sense of direction (despite trying for years). I remember multiple times trying to go somewhere, getting horribly lost (in one case I was within half a mile of the house I was trying to find the whole time but couldn't find it for an hour), and giving up and going home. The day I bought a TomTom (GPS that you could use without telling Google where you were going -imagine that!) was lifechanging.

But GPS is kind of an interesting one because it's not actually the internet. And it can be used without any loss of privacy.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#348

Post by nozzlegear »

stkdump wrote: post #298
nozzlegear wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Who are you to make rules for others to follow?

I'm citing a rule, not making one. American is in the dictionary, used by the UN, recognized by everyone and their dog as the proper demonym for citizens of the United States. Who are you to question that authority and replace the proper demonym with a neologism?

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#349

Post by nozzlegear »

a_victorp wrote: post #228
nozzlegear wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

To be fair, "american" could refer to anything made in the American continent (North, Central and South America)

Not in English.

Re: The hypocrisy of cyberlibertarianism

#350

Post by CalRobert »

flomo wrote: post #240
chasd00 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, you have a compass. Just drive South until you reach the Gulf of Mexico, then drive East until you reach the Atlantic ocean, then drive South until you reach where you're going ( it will be daylight by then ). /edit i guess it could be possible to drive South and end up in key west but it will be daylight long before you run out of road.

Did people really carry a compass? (and did it even work inside a car? I think you could get one to stick on the mirror.)

They definitely work inside cars! And you could get cool dashboard mounted ball ones.
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