No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner • Hacker News Board

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#71

Post by waps » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 12:58 AM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #28

oleganza wrote: post #7

Actual translation: because of the behavior of U.S. government, E.U. government(s) will make it hard for E.U. citizens to trade with U.S. citizens. So normal people get spied on and bullied by one government, then because of that their life is made even more complicated by some other government. Great outcome! When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any p…

> When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any particular issues? It's totally okay to be an atheist today, but we need just one extra little step to be anarchists and it's so, so, so complicated. While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity. People "believe in" government not because they love it or t…

Of course what people don't really understand is that religion today is government of yesterday (give or take a millenium ... well probably give). Some religions, one in particular, still sees it that way.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#72

Post by dmix » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 1:03 AM UTC

justin66 wrote: post #28

oleganza wrote: post #7

Actual translation: because of the behavior of U.S. government, E.U. government(s) will make it hard for E.U. citizens to trade with U.S. citizens. So normal people get spied on and bullied by one government, then because of that their life is made even more complicated by some other government. Great outcome! When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any p…

> When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any particular issues? It's totally okay to be an atheist today, but we need just one extra little step to be anarchists and it's so, so, so complicated. While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity. People "believe in" government not because they love it or t…

That reminded me of a famous libertarian quote: "If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." - Mises

If humans are full of logical fallacies and poor decision making, just making a collection of humans and giving them unlimited power does not make the logical fallacies and poor decision making go away. It can often makes it much more harmful.

But then it comes down to who has the better information (individuals/organizations or politicians) and who is more capable of acting on that information in humanities best interest.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#73

Post by wavefunction » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 1:06 AM UTC

pvnick wrote: post #54

jussij wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with GM is it puts the world's food production into the hands of a select few multinational companies. Companies like Monsanto have already shown they are prepared to fight hard to keep control their GM monopolies: http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/monsanto-gmo-roundup-ready-se...

So? That's not a good reason to restrict life-saving technologies.

The claim that GMO has been responsible for gains in modern food production are most likely false and are more likely the result of traditional breeding techniques:

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/27/study_monsanto_gmo_food_clai...

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#74

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 1:08 AM UTC

pvnick wrote: post #70

threeseed wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give us all a break. It's so easy to make that choice when you and your family aren't literally starving to death.

Why is this simple piece of logic so difficult for anti-GMO extremists to understand? These technologies literally have the potential, without even being hyperbolic, to save Billions of lives. And these clowns are worried about the providers making an extra buck.

> Why is this simple piece of logic so difficult for anti-GMO extremists to understand? These technologies literally have the potential, without even being hyperbolic, to save Billions of lives.

Any description of technology "saving" lives is hyperbolic. Technology can extend lives, or make more lives possible to start, but we haven't yet found any technologies that will actually save lives.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#75

Post by csense » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 1:10 AM UTC

waps wrote: post #71

justin66 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When people will realize that the problem is always in the governments themselves as a concept, not in any particular issues? It's totally okay to be an atheist today, but we need just one extra little step to be anarchists and it's so, so, so complicated. While belief in a magical all-powerful and caring government is no different than a belief in deity. People "believe in" government not because they love it or t…

Of course what people don't really understand is that religion today is government of yesterday (give or take a millenium ... well probably give). Some religions, one in particular, still sees it that way.

While it's true that religion generally had a lot more influence over politics and policy in the past (the recent past moreso than the present, and the distant past moreso than the recent past, at least in the USA), saying that "once upon a time, religion and government were one and the same" ranges between, at best, a gross oversimplification of complex sociopolitical circumstances, and at worst, a factually incorrect misrepresentation. Exactly where your statement falls on that scale depends on the exact places and times you're talking about.

Disclaimer: Everything I know about medieval European history, I learned from Crusader Kings 2.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#76

Post by csense » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 1:18 AM UTC

thangalin wrote: post #53

oellegaard wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is more a implementation issue of democracy in some countries. Look at the Danish democracy, we have many parties and both currently and historically we rarely have one party governments. It is not uncommon that three or more parties are forming governments. This helps make sure that there is never one entity that decides or hides things from the public.

Duverger's law states that first-past-the-post electoral systems result in two-party governance. I am fairly certain Denmark uses either a double ballot majority system or proportional representation, which is why Danish democracy both excels and has multi-party governments.

This is an incredibly interesting and thought-provoking hypothesis.

The Wikipedia entry says that exceptions are due to regional differences. I've often wondered if the increased communication and travel between people in different regions as a result of technology (tech as old as trains/telegraph or as recent as email/Facebook) will lead to local cultural differences gradually disappearing as everyone mixes together into one population.

Maybe this is going to make it harder for multiple parties to exist.

Then again, AFAIK the US has usually had only two major parties for most of its history (with occasional replacement of one party by another...anyone remember the Whigs?)

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#77

Post by 6d0debc071 » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 1:23 AM UTC

pvnick wrote: post #54

jussij wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest problem with GM is it puts the world's food production into the hands of a select few multinational companies. Companies like Monsanto have already shown they are prepared to fight hard to keep control their GM monopolies: http://www.dailyfinance.com/on/monsanto-gmo-roundup-ready-se...

So? That's not a good reason to restrict life-saving technologies.

Yes, it is. If significant numbers of people become dependent upon a single point of failure then whoever controls that gains an incredible degree of power. You have to have some plan for how you're going to spread your risk pool around in that regard or you're just creating a population of slaves.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#78

Post by camus » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 1:27 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #43

wazoox wrote: post #6

Frankly, I can't see a single good reason for this trade agreement, and a lot of good reasons against, starting with that I (and all other Europeans) don't want GM food, hormone beef and chlorinated chicken in my plate any day soon.

Trade openness is one of the strongest predictor of peace [1] (also see: Better Angels of our Nature [2]). Free trade would also be an economic boon to Europe and the U.S. A study by the Bertelsmann Foundation together with the Munich-based Center for Economic Studies found that "if the United States and the European Union are able to come together on a far-reaching free trade agreement, Germany would be one of the g…

bullsh*t , like the benefits of europe when we have 26 million + people out of work, fool me twice ... EU is not working , for the people at least ...

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#79

Post by mpyne » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 1:29 AM UTC

tokenizer wrote: post #47

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #24

I'm going to freely speculate here, but this seems obvious enough to any observer of international relations just to come out with it. Let's just call this story the way it is. EU governments have been in bed with the US for decades with spying. Yes, they've postured and done a bunch of things to make themselves look good -- Google had better watch their step -- but at the end of the day the EU is as guilty as any ot…

> It's a question of limits, and of degrees of intrusion. Great point. Honestly, my biggest issue with this is the secret nature of the FISA court and the near 100% approval for warrants. You NEED to have watchdogs for the watchers. You can't simply have massive ABC orgs having all of this information unchecked like it is now. The cat is out of the bag however. We can't simply stop using our technology, the question…

Well, the 100% stat doesn't mean much by itself either. We should expect the government to be bringing cases with fairly solid proof for starters, so 100% is nearly indistinguishable from the ideal scenario.

But more importantly if the judge indicates they won't sign it without changes, then the changes get made and it ends up eventually counting as a signed warrant.

If the judge says they won't sign that warrant at all then the government withdraws it before formally filing it; again, keeping the stat near 100%.

In fact the only warrants by these metrics that wouldn't end up signed are the ones that the government felt so sure about that they didn't even bother vetting it with the judge first before formally submitting it, and the judge had to actually reject it.

With all that said, I do agree that this standard of oversight is severely lacking compared to the capabilities of the NSA. Allowing companies to give stats regarding NSLs and other warrants is only the tip of the iceberg of improvements that are needed to transparency, oversight, and accountability; not just with PRISM, and not just with NSA.

Re: No free trade agreement if charges of espionage are true, warns EU Commissioner

#80

Post by csense » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 1:30 AM UTC

_k wrote: post #26

rorrr2 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It deeply saddens me that a tiny tiny percentage of the population can really fuck up the lives of everyone - financially, socially, politically, religiously. The real problem is in how we set up the governments. We give to much power to a few people. What we really need to do is let people vote on individual issues. Want to go to war that will affect everyone and will cost trillions? Let's have a vote.

I understand what you're saying but letting people vote on individual issues isn't always good. Here's an example : I live in Belgium, a country where 3 million people are paying for 8 million others. Those 8 million include kids, people without a job and people in retirement or who got sick. And we should help them. But it also includes 1.3 million government employees (hundreds of thousands more than The Netherland…

This is the fundamental problem with communist/socialist style systems where the government is supposed to take care of everyone: Productive work is no longer incentivized enough to support the society, and rollback is politically impossible, so they keep right on following an unsustainable course until there's a complete collapse.

Unfortunately, people who are in favor of things like universal healthcare, minimum income, etc., fail to appreciate that good intentions don't always lead to good outcomes. (I'm speaking about typical HN readers who support these things who won't personally immediately be getting a piece of the pie.)

As you say, the fact that people will vote for things that are in their self-interest at the expense of the society as a whole is a problem with democracy. In the US this has traditionally been avoided by a strong sense of patriotism / nationalism and an ideology of individual responsibility, but these barriers are eroding with cultural changes, increases in minorities with different values, a dysfunctional education system, and various economic disruptions.