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Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

ar.al

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Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#51

Post by bordercases »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #34
Ygg2 wrote: post #9

Preface: I might be too influenced by Adam Curtis. But what I find most interesting about this reply/rant, is that it - like most of left, always seems to envision a world without power. And you can't confront entrenched power, without seizing power, and using it to transform society.

It's worse than that. Fundamentally, the problem is that people are not angels. The left recognizes, correctly, that the people in power - the leaders - are not angels. So the left wants them gone - wants there to be nobody in power. The problem is that the people who are not in power also are not angels. Left to themselves, a fair number of them will find ways to harm (economically or even physically) people around…

I take this pretty literally and I not ironically see Buddhism or something like it as a leverage mechanism to make people closer to angels. But gnostic religions don't scale well unless one intends to be a cult leader. So...

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#52

Post by concinds »

Analemma_ wrote: post #43
concinds wrote: post #33

The mainstream view is that for the world to be sustainable and stable, it needs to be more centralized and governed from the top. That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system. It needs to be more functional, not more centralized. The NNTaleb view is that to be sustainable and stable, the world needs to be decentralized and antifragile. In other words: not 1 government, but 100 well designed, functional g…

> That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system. You've buried an awful lot in that sentence without justifying any of it. I could just as easily say "decentralization and local governance don't work because the world is a complex system" and sound just as correct.

Ok, analogy time.

The bigger the banks, the more centralized the banks, the more fragile the banking system. Same for governments. Systemic risk increases as you increase the system's complexity, and you increase its complexity when you centralize it.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#53

Post by [deleted] »

pizzetta wrote: post #44
concinds wrote: post #33

The mainstream view is that for the world to be sustainable and stable, it needs to be more centralized and governed from the top. That doesn't work, because the world is a complex system. It needs to be more functional, not more centralized. The NNTaleb view is that to be sustainable and stable, the world needs to be decentralized and antifragile. In other words: not 1 government, but 100 well designed, functional g…

I think we need some kind of arbiter of last resort when there is contention for resources or other things which do not respect borders (like climate, resource depletion, pollution, disease, etc).

[deleted]

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#54

Post by icebraining »

sandworm101 wrote: post #26
Tharkun wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does he really think a large and growing percentage of the planet uses his website? Yes. Because it's true. Facebook has more than a BILLION active users. Let that sink in for a minute.

So, even accepting that (i dont) the vast magority of the planet do not use facebook. How many use telephones? How many use email?

What does it matter? A large percentage doesn't mean more than 50%, or more than competing services. And remember that those are just systems, not single companies.

Frankly, if something I made had reached even 5% of the whole human population, I'd consider that freaking huge! Hell, I can't even imagine what it's like to have that much influence.

Don't get me wrong: I dislike FB too, I don't use it, and I lobby against it when it comes up. But it is, unfortunately, rather big.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#55

Post by kelvin0 »

eropple wrote: post #31
kelvin0 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everyone stopped using FB (not saying they should), what do you think would happen? As individuals we have a choice in certain actions and their impacts. I agree with you that having an opinion on everything and boycotting this and that can lead down a rabbit hole ... but we did bring this upon 'ourselves'. (I am not a FB user, but I do respect peoples use of it)

If "everyone" did something, we'd have all the unicorn hides we could ever want. Expecting "everyone" to do anything is silly and is frequently used--not saying you are, but it's a thing that happens--to delegitimize concerns by whatabouting them to death.

OK, here's my last stab at making this small point: The only reason FB is successful is because 'we' CHOOSE to use it. No one is coercing FB users physically into it's usage.

Thus, once we acknowledge this simple fact, we can also CHOOSE not to use it anymore.

That's the core of my point I tried to make originally.

Thanks for your patience and feedback.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#56

Post by humanrebar »

gph wrote: post #37

Not a bad rebuttal, I have to agree that Zuckerberg is trying to position Facebook as the end all be all of social contact in the future. I don't think that's a good solution. But in reference to this quote: >The reason we find ourselves in this mess with ubiquitous surveillance, filter bubbles, and fake news (propaganda) is precisely due to the utter and complete destruction of the public sphere by an oligopoly of p…

> That's going a little far, filter bubbles and propaganda have existed since forever. The public sphere was never a panacea for these problems.

I'm not sure the kinds of bubbles we have aren't brand new. The bubbles used to map pretty closely to geography and political structures. The bubbles now are oriented around where our information lives, not where we physically are.

Also, I think you're overstepping with 'panacea'. I don't think anyone who believes in decentralized life thinks universal panaceas even necessarily exist. But it can still be true that central planning has displaced local living without fulfilling all the same purposes. And if so, the result could be a net negative.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#57

Post by Analemma_ »

rdtsc wrote: post #11

I made a few tangential points regard globalization in a similar discussion. Basically wondering how globalization which was a very right wing corporatist idea (Sanders calls it a Koch brothers proposal here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf-k6qOfXz0 basically) became a favorite of the new left. And conversely anti-globalization was a top issue for the left along with TPP, NAFTA and other such stuff. I think it is r…

No offense, but I think you're swallowing a lot of right-wing lies about what "the left" believes. "The left" is as opposed to the plutocratic tendencies of globalization as it always has been. Believing in freedom of movement, and that immigration does not lead to the downfall of a society, does not mean having to believe in, for instance, corporate sovereignty.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#58

Post by supernumerary »

munin wrote: post #42
leggomylibro wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk and Bezos both have access to the rocketry tech necessary to produce ballistic missiles, along with autonomous machines which are starting to rival the sort of things usually produced by DARPA. Meanwhile, Facebook is tinkering with the best ways to influence masses of people and journalism/propaganda channels. So I'm not necessarily saying that we're living out a mashup between Shadowrun and that Simpsons episod…

DARPA is a funding agency, the only thing they produce are power points. They fund labs and companies that make things. The people that own those labs have this same power too but since they're not as cool as Bezos I guess we don't talk about them?

If they loose DARPA funding they go away or re-organise e.g. innumerable research Depts at universities they constantly have to hustle for funding and follow the grant money, Musk and Bezos are independent, their income streams are not going away.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#59

Post by purple-again »

decebalus1 wrote: post #20
65827 wrote: post #5

We're really moving into the strange cyberpunk dystopian future when CEOs start writing bizarre manifestos about how they want to reshape the world like this. Really just a few years out from private corporate armies I think (Zuckerberg already has a small private army protecting him with heavy weaponry) and cyber wars and espionage and open defiance of governments. Like we all knew this was an option of where we wer…

> (Zuckerberg already has a small private army protecting him with heavy weaponry) Source? I agree with your ideas overall but I'm genuinely interested in this aspect.

Very wealthy individuals hire private security to protect themselves because they are targets for a class of crime (kidnapping, extortion, etc) that average people have a negligible chance of being targeted for. Private army is a stretch of the terms but technically accurate.

Re: Encouraging individual sovereignty and a healthy commons

#60

Post by m-j-fox »

What's boring here is there's no suggestion as to how this utopia of digital parks can come to be. Even if we have the resources to invest in development and operations, who without a profit motive, will devise the marketing campaign for privacy and common good?

This guy wants a world like Craigslist, but Airbnb already taught us that free and p2p is easily subsumed by slick and centralized.

In BitTorrent and Usenet we've had great, free p2p media distribution for years. How does iTunes, Netflix and the rest compete? By doing all the evil, centralized, corporate stuff -- like advertising -- the pirates won't do because pirates have morals.

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