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German government comes out against Chat Control

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Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#441

Post by kharak »

selfmodruntime wrote: post #328
mfru wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are not living under socialism, but under capitalism, don't try to paint it another way.

No, the defined economic model in Germany is called "Social market economy", not capitalism. It is one of the systems furthest removed from capitalism that is not yet Socialism (or similar systems). It's a regulated market economic model and it is designed to sit exactly in the middle between laissez faire capitalism and socialism. You can read this up if you like.

Not sure why you are downvoted. Social market economy is the self-description in Germany, it's what you learn in school and how German politicians name the system.

The goal of social market economy is to 'correct undesirable effects' of free markets. Depending on your perspective, you categorize it as capitalist, socialist or in-between system.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#442

Post by alexey-salmin »

gambiting wrote: post #427
alexey-salmin wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Germany, but in France for 100k gross salary, the employer social contributions will be around 40k, the employee social contributions another 20.5k, then 15.5k income tax. In the end 140k that employer pays result in less than 64k take-home salary. The real tax rate is around 54%. So, I can't verify what OP says about Germany but I can easily believe it. You can see chatgpt calculations here (and t…

Right, but I've never met anyone who looks at it this way - this part: "the employer social contributions will be around 40k" Is not your salary. This is what the employer has to pay to keep you. So even in your example your tax on your earnings is around 35%. The fact that the employer has to pay another 40k to keep you employed is......well, shocking, but I wouldn't say that's a tax rate on your earnings - for the…

> Right, but I've never met anyone who looks at it this way - this part: "the employer social contributions will be around 40k". Is not your salary.

I don't know, maybe you should speak more to people about this. Literally everyone who I discussed it with (like dozens of people) see it in the same way:

* There's the money your employer spends to pay your salary

* There's the money you take home

* Everything in between is the government tax. There's absolutely no difference between "employer social contributions" and "employee social contributions" except in the name

Well now I kind of know one person who sees it differently, but this PoV still doesn't make sense to me.

> for the simple reason that if the government reduced the employer contribution to zero it wouldn't change anything about your take home salary(unless your employer decided to be generous and give you a raise).

Believe it or not, but for multi-national companies job offers in France are smaller for this very reason: you have a fixed budget to hire an employee, you subtract the "employers contributions" and calculate the gross salary you can offer in various countries where you have legal entities. There's also the "adjust to local market part", it's not a single-factor formula of course, but "contributions" play a huge role in it. After all budget is budget, you can go lower if you like but you can't go higher.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#443

Post by Xelbair »

the_gipsy wrote: post #424
Xelbair wrote: post #376

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've made a lot of assumptions about people i know and talk with - without knowing them, exactly showcasing the problem that I've mentioned. As soon as the topic is mentioned it becomes a discussion stopper. Thank you for your contribution into proving my point.

If we were to categorize AfD voters and supporters into two groups: 1. people that support some of: racism, xenophobia, homophobia, misogyny, anti-environmentalism, etc., i.e. authoritarianism for their group 2. people that have been pushed by extreme leftism because they can no longer discuss alternative points of view (but do not strictly belong to group 1) What share would you assign to each?

majority in 2, due to worsening economic situation over the years and total disappointment in current options with no other option to break this impasse than to throw hand grenade into the mix.

exactly one person in first group - a genuine belief in efficiency of authoritarian system from someone on spectrum.

I also love how you neatly divided whole political spectrum into two, and bundled a lot of options into 'bad' category. Another example of political tribalism. while option "2" is clearly 'misguided' one.

For example anti-environmentalism can be seen from 'does not like Greens', through 'i think we should reevaluate our energy policy for feasibility of moving to renewables/nuclear and do a slow transition while persevering our beautiful nature' to 'we should only burn coal and gas forever'.

Same thing with xenophobia - it can be pure nationalism, or being anti illegal immigration while supporting legal one, or even just idea that government has responsibility for their own citizens first and foremost. Which one do you have in mind?

Where you draw the barriers between those arbitrary labels?

is there even anything i could say that would change your mind, or are you looking for validation of your views only?

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#444

Post by array_key_first »

velocity3230 wrote: post #281
array_key_first wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I know this basic tool already exists. In the US, the government can just ask any old company for their data and they have to give it up, just like they would their mail or their physical locations. I'm assuming the rest of the West has similar tools, warrants of some kind. The problem is nobody uses them to combat crime on the internet. They use them for stupid shit usually or stuff that involves lots and…

We're talking about end-to-end encrypted data here. It doesn't matter if LE have the company's data because it's just a scrambled mess. They don't have the keys to decrypt it. They only exist on the users' devices. Chat Control seeks to execute on each and every device before/after encryption so it has access to the data pre/post encryption.

Sigh. We already have a mechanism to get the data off the devices.

If the servers don't have it, what do you do? You go to the end points, you issue a warrant, and there's your unencrypted data.

What if they don't wanna do that? I don't know, that's out of scope.

People refuse warrants all the time. You know what we DON'T do? Say, "fuck it" and no longer require warrants.

Again, let's look at good old mail. I can encrypt mail. I can write in ciphers.

Okay, now FedEx gets a warrant. They give me the mail. I can't read it. Uh oh. What do I do? I go to the sender and recipient, and I issue warrants. Problem solved.

That's how we do things, that's how weve always done things, and that's the only reasonable way to do things. We don't say "hey post office, open up every letter and read it. And if it sounds suspicious, tell us". We don't do that.

Okay, so everyone understands that and there's no confusion. When we go online, suddenly there's confusion. Is it confusion, or is the confusion a viel for authoritarian?

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#445

Post by graemep »

angry_octet wrote: post #249
egeozcan wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AfD is classified as extreme-right not only in the eyes of the public, but also by German intelligence. Therefore I'd personally expect them to support potential tools that authoritarian governments would find useful.

They are not in government just yet. But if they gain control, expect their position to change. That's why it is critical to reverse government positions across the block, or we'll see a new authoritarian wave sweep Europe.

I was thinking just this. Anyone strongly opposed by those in power (whether right, left, or whatever) will oppose the concentration or power.

Very few are principled enough to stick to that in power.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#446

Post by patanegra »

latexr wrote: post #431
yason wrote: post #349

Online control is like a squatter waiting for years in the bushes on your yard and it only takes one time that you forget to lock your door and he sneaks in and claims he lives in your home, and uses all possible legal loopholes to prevent any imminent relocation. A pedigree of chatcontrols has already been turned down several times in the past but there's nothing stopping it from being raised from the dead a couple…

What’s your point? That you should just give up and invite the squatter in? Serve him a cup of tea while you’re at it, and give him the house? That brand of defeatism has been spewed every step of the way every time. If everyone thought like you, the first version of Chat Control would have passed. But it didn’t. And even if it eventually does, later is better than sooner. Later is worth fighting for. Look, it’s fine…

No, you should tie the squatter, drive him to the middle of wilderness, and leave him there. So he will no longer have such bad ideas.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#447

Post by gambiting »

alexey-salmin wrote: post #442
gambiting wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but I've never met anyone who looks at it this way - this part: "the employer social contributions will be around 40k" Is not your salary. This is what the employer has to pay to keep you. So even in your example your tax on your earnings is around 35%. The fact that the employer has to pay another 40k to keep you employed is......well, shocking, but I wouldn't say that's a tax rate on your earnings - for the…

> Right, but I've never met anyone who looks at it this way - this part: "the employer social contributions will be around 40k". Is not your salary. I don't know, maybe you should speak more to people about this. Literally everyone who I discussed it with (like dozens of people) see it in the same way: * There's the money your employer spends to pay your salary * There's the money you take home * Everything in betwee…

Well obviously, yes, but again, I don't know anyone who looks at it this way. If your salary is £100k and you know your effective tax rate is 35% then you're taking home £65k a year. I don't know how much on top of that my employer is paying in contributions, if it's another £100k on top or zero - and frankly I don't really care? The negotiated salary is £100k/pa and that's what anyone uses as a number of their compensation, if I ask you your salary and you say it's €140k but that's including my employers social contributions......that's just weird? Are jobs advertised this way in France?

Edit:

I just want to add one more thing - this entire comment chain started by OP saying, and I quote "I have over 50% of my income taken from me into a collapsing welfare state/pension system".

The money that the employer pays to have you employed isn't your income, so adding it to your total earnings and saying "well I'm paying 50% of my income to the state" is just not correct. The employer probably pays money for the office and a desk for you to sit at, but it's not your income - it's part of their cost to keep you employed. I will say it again - if those costs dropped down to zero, you wouldn't say your income is now smaller, would you?

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#448

Post by avianlyric »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #156
layer8 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, for example: https://www.bundestag.de/dokumente/textarchiv/2021/kw02-de-p... https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-v... https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/111/1911127.pdf

The first one is bad indeed, but what's so "authoritarian" about the rest? > https://www.bundestag.de/webarchiv/textarchiv/2018/kw08-de-v... Other European countries like Switzerland, also banned full face veils(burqas) in public. Try entering a bank, city hall, school, etc with a balaclava, ski mask or motorcycle helmet see how that goes. > https://dserver.bundestag.de/btd/19/304/1930412.pdf Allowing the surveillanc…

> Taking citizenship away from those who voluntarily join terrorist organizations like ISIS? 100% agree with this, how could you not?

Because governments shouldn’t be allowed to just wash their hands of any responsibility to a citizen, just because they don’t like their views, regardless of how extreme and vile those views maybe.

We have judicial systems for a reason. If someone joins a terrorist organisation, you arrest them and allow the justice system to determine the consequences. Allow governments to strip citizenships is effectively a mechanism to allow governments to avoid due process and their own judicial systems. Those are never healthy behaviours in any democracy.

Societies should deal with their own citizens properly, not just strip them of citizenship and declare them someone else’s problem. I have no idea why anyone would believe making it effectively impossible to ever leave, except by dying, terrorist organisation would be a good idea. That must ensure all members of terrorist organisations literally have nothing else to live for. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to ensure that all terrorist go out with a bang.

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#449

Post by saubeidl »

somenameforme wrote: post #440
saubeidl wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've argued a lot on this platform before, but I fully agree with your post this time. -- a young-ish person flirting with communism.

The current systems in many places are breaking, but communism isn't a solution. Because the main reason the systems are breaking is not because of the systems themselves, but of the people in charge of them. Communism faces the exact same issue, except in that case the people in charge have orders of magnitude greater power and the people orders of magnitude less. In a contemporary democracy we could, at least in th…

> Because the main reason the systems are breaking is not because of the systems themselves, but of the people in charge of them

I disagree with this assessment. The reason systems are breaking are inherent contradictions in capitalism that inevitably lead to crisis. See Crisis Theory [0] for a more thorough description of the mechanisms at play.

Communism doesn't need to be authoritarian either - Salvador Allende famously tried for a more democratic socialism before the CIA couped him away - can't have the systemic competitor look good...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crisis_theory

Re: German government comes out against Chat Control

#450

Post by hopelite »

kakacik wrote: post #407
selfmodruntime wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Germany does have limited Freedom. I won't move an inch in this matter. The exact paragraph behind the Habeck or Grote case is now being abused by the literal thousands each year. And violent crime is on the rise, we are currently back at a 2005 level. It is very easy to find sources on this matter.

No place has absolute freedom, not sure what you are rambling about. Making up some extra categories that suit your own narrative doesn't change reality.

You are making typical argument shifting excuses. No one is talking about "absolute freedom" no matter how that is defined, notwithstanding even your infantile attempt at using insult in your absence of rational argument.
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