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Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

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Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#641

Post by roywiggins »

mapt wrote: post #634
nathan_compton wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just America Pilled but I'll support almost anyone against a hereditary monarchy. The idea should be fundamentally disgusting to any self-respecting human being.

There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy, nor any so effective at destruction as a malevolent one. If our democracy is sufficiently broken, if supermajority voter policy preferences continue to be dismissed by both parties, it might be that we just cannot survive under the old Constitutional order. The Right's open move towards a post-democratic future, and the pro…

> There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy

Autocracies have lots of issues around eg building a sufficiently capable bureaucracy that isn't too corrupt to do things. It can make it harder, not easier. Democracy can lean on democratic legitimacy, constitutional traditions, and a history of allowing power transitions without anyone losing their heads or launching a civil war over it. Those are all really useful things that autocracies have to cope without. It's not like it's easy mode.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#642

Post by nobody9999 »

Gormo wrote: post #637
nobody9999 wrote: post #486

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A ranked choice ballot at least requires you to assign a unique value to every candidate on the ballot: you can honestly rank your second choice without being concerned that doing so undermines your first. That's highly implementation dependent. Where I live we have ranked-choice ballots for local primary elections, while the local general elections are FPTP. State and Federal elections are all FPTP for primary and…

It sounds like the local ranked-choice implementation is unnecessarily complex and constrained. A simple "rank all candidates from 1 (most preferred) to n (least preferred)" for n candidates seems like the better solution.

>It sounds like the local ranked-choice implementation is unnecessarily complex and constrained. A simple "rank all candidates from 1 (most preferred) to n (least preferred)" for n candidates seems like the better solution.

I'm sure you're right. Unfortunately, I'm not the person you'd need to convince.

Here's contact information[0] for the relevant folks, and thanks for taking an interest. I'm sure my fellow townspeople will be grateful for your guidance. You have my thanks for stepping up to help us improve our voting systems!

For your reference, here's some background on the how the process came to be[1][2][3][4]

[0] https://www.vote.nyc/page/contact-us

[1] https://ballotpedia.org/New_York_City_Ballot_Question_1,_Ele...

[2] https://apnews.com/article/nyc-ranked-choice-voting-explaine...

[3] https://rankthevotenyc.org/history-of-rcv-in-nyc/

[4] https://rankthevotenyc.org/what-we-learned-from-new-york-cit...

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#643

Post by AnthonyMouse »

iamnothere wrote: post #211
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal, then the logical outcome is to make more and more things explicitly illegal. Except that that isn't the only way to protect yourself from selfish people and the assumption that it is is the source of a significant proportion of the dumb laws. There is a narrow class of things that have to be prohibited by law because the…

I will add this: the number of ways in which humans can harm one another is immeasurable, and every law comes with an associated cost. At the bare minimum the cost is enforcement plus the harm imposed by occasional false accusations and convictions. But bad laws can also dampen legitimate economic activity, making social problems worse. As a society plunges into dysfunction due to economic stress, the number of peopl…

> At the bare minimum the cost is enforcement plus the harm imposed by occasional false accusations and convictions.

Don't forget compliance costs. Those are some of the largest costs and they're largely hidden because they don't go into the government budget. You pass a law to prevent a million dollars in total harm and then a hundred thousand companies each spend $100 to comply with it, what did you get and what did you pay?

Compliance costs also have a specific type of cost because of their asymmetry. It's like adding a fixed amount of weight to a boat. If you add 1000 pounds of regulatory costs to a 200,000 ton container ship, it doesn't even notice. If you add the same amount of weight to a kayak, it sinks. But if you keep adding costs until you sink all the small boats, and then sink all the medium boats, you're not just failing to solve all the problems caused by market consolidation, you're actively making them worse.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#644

Post by delfinom »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #296
otterley wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that is true. But that is not a violation , which was in the first clause of your original claim. It's an end-run. If it were a violation, Courts could enjoin it. But since it's not a violation, there's nothing to enjoin.

You had me up until now. Turns out your whole point is arguing semantics? You're arguing just to argue and not providing anything of substance on this point. As another person said, this isn't a court.

Unfortunately, all lawyers and courts do is argue semantics.

Which is why it's a misnomer to call the legal system a justice system in criminal cases. Lol.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#645

Post by Gud »

JCattheATM wrote: post #628
Gud wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people are brainwashed by corporate controlled media. In a functioning democracy, there is counter balance against the oligarchs.

Democracy has no built in controls to stop oligarchs becoming a thing, and the people were a problem in the first place as they voted against measures that would prevent them. See all the people voting for Reagan, for example.

The US is only nominally democratic

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#646

Post by mschuster91 »

epolanski wrote: post #503
mschuster91 wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have a branch of government called Congress ... that has been virtually useless as it has been rendered ineffective by Republican obstructionism and the unwillingness of the Democrats to counteract it, leading to the current state of Trump being able to do what he wants completely unchecked.

That's a flaw of the constitution and it's revisions. You should always assume bad actors when designing a political system. And that's why parliamentary republics where you elect parties that form coalitions that chooses a prime minister who still has to deal with opposition and its own party support, every day, are much more resilient to authoritarianisn. In fact there hasn't been a single parliamentary republic to…

> In fact there hasn't been a single parliamentary republic to turn authoritarian since Sri Lanka 50 years ago.

I'd disagree on that. Austria had the FPÖ in government multiple times and each time they caused massive scandals. Some of the German states are on the brink of the AfD not even needing a coalition partner alone - should the elections this year turn out to be as bloody as the polls suggest, it may very well be the case that they go from opposition straight to sole government, with no one holding them back.

Fully agree on the rest though.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#647

Post by bmitc »

It's always been curious to me how Americans have pointed at places like China, mocking their government surveillance state, while also just allowing U.S. (and foreign) corporations to surveil everything under the sun, including our schools. Those corporations then sell or give information to both other corporations and the government.

These corporations have nothing in mind but profits and would sell your sould if it meant a tick up in their bottom line.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#648

Post by harimau777 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #97
harimau777 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, those thousands of crimes on the books exist because American society operates under a norm of "if its not explicitly illegal then its fine for people to do it". See for example, the rhetoric around maximizing shareholder value. If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal, then the logical outcome is to make more and more things explicitly illegal.…

> If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal, then the logical outcome is to make more and more things explicitly illegal. Except that that isn't the only way to protect yourself from selfish people and the assumption that it is is the source of a significant proportion of the dumb laws. There is a narrow class of things that have to be prohibited by law because the…

Oh sure, if we can somehow get functional anti-trust, campaign finance reform, labor protections, and progressive taxation, then we probably wouldn't need nearly as many of these protective laws.

However, I don't see that happening anytime soon so the numerous laws are the best option we have.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#649

Post by harimau777 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #151
harimau777 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, those thousands of crimes on the books exist because American society operates under a norm of "if its not explicitly illegal then its fine for people to do it". See for example, the rhetoric around maximizing shareholder value. If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal, then the logical outcome is to make more and more things explicitly illegal.…

> If the only way to protect yourself from selfish people is if their actions explicitly illegal It's not. You're asking for contract law.

How do you forsee contract law helping? I can't very well sign a contract with every person that I meet. That's to say nothing of situations where they simply refuse to agree to reasonable terms.

Re: Amazon's Ring and Google's Nest reveal the severity of U.S. surveillance state

#650

Post by godelski »

mapt wrote: post #634
nathan_compton wrote: post #615

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just America Pilled but I'll support almost anyone against a hereditary monarchy. The idea should be fundamentally disgusting to any self-respecting human being.

There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy, nor any so effective at destruction as a malevolent one. If our democracy is sufficiently broken, if supermajority voter policy preferences continue to be dismissed by both parties, it might be that we just cannot survive under the old Constitutional order. The Right's open move towards a post-democratic future, and the pro…

  > There's no government as effective at instituting necessary changes as a benevolent autocracy
This is untrue.

The world is so complex that a single person or group can adapt and develop fast enough. We've seen what happens to planned economies. Their ineffectiveness is not due to malevolence.

Distribution of power not only serves as a protection to autocratic takeover but allows the system to be more flexible. The concentration of power can make some things more efficient but you trade flexibility.

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