pear01

The system is clearly breaking. Rather than couching your language in rehashed partisan politics that will only lead to further and more egregious breaks, the best thing you could do is acknowledge these events as a system failure. The safest thing is then to first work to defang the system. This is also bipartisan and more likely to succeed.

Just look at the situation as the founders would. It's amazing a society that came from a generation that engineered their own form of government is now trapped by their forebears' invention. They told us explicitly they were merely men, not gods. When America was founded it was a weak, newborn power of 3 million people who were forced to make awkward compromises mostly to protect the country from being recolonized by European domination. And yet our system of government has remained mostly unchanged from the founding.

Any of you Americans out there worried about a European armada? Or the British burning down the White House again?

America's sister republic - the French - has gone through many more iterations. Your problem is you have no imagination. Regardless of what you think of Trump, he does. He is an avatar for a group of people that understand correctly that what had been the prevailing system was no longer responsive to the times, so they are essentially remaking it on the fly. What is your answer to that, that isn't just lets rewind the clock? You tried that with Biden and the disease became worse.

Do it a second time and I fear the future will bring you someone who makes Trump look like a saint.

Are they going to stop because a company fights a subpoena? Or perhaps in the case of some touted alternatives, even if a subpoena were acted upon, no data would be intelligible?

Maybe they'll just show up to your house next time. I'm not sure why people complain about US companies complying with US government subpoenas. Isn't that how it is supposed to work? Imagine if the opposite were routine, would you like that?

People want to stop using Gmail to feel agency in a situation where the real problem is their own government. The real answer thus lies in deeply reforming a federal government that really both sides of the aisle (in their own way) agree has gotten too powerful and out of control.

Good luck trying to subject them to the same level of scrutiny. They live in places with high walls and armed guards, a lot of them don't even drive themselves if they drive at all. Even when using helicopters or planes their private ownership means a lower level of scrutiny. "The plane" was a big part of how Epstein was able to do what he did. Obviously, these types never step foot on public transit.

Even if hypothetically speaking you could support volunteers to follow them around and film them, I would think the asymmetry of resources would practically make it impossible. It's not about privacy, it's about wealth. Take their wealth away and then they'll actually have to live the way they tell you to. They don't care because they don't live in the world they are creating, you do.

well practiced cynicism is boring.

imo there are actually too few answers for what a better path would even look like.

hard to move forward when you don't know where you want to go. answers in the negative are insufficient, as are those that offer little more than nostalgia.

I believe this was "spoofed" only in the sense that a particular provider/online platform accepted data via an API that was abused to draw this on that platform only. Searching around it seems it was not found if you looked on other platforms, so it might not even have been a crime. I believe they didn't emit any real "signals" just took advantage of an API that should probably be better secured.

This doesn't make any sense. Is it individual or up to the culture? You have a culture but it ultimately lies with the individual? So what was this culture before? How can the ultimate responsibility ever be displaced by any culture if it's up to the individual ultimately? Is your claim neoliberalism single handedly altered the nature of morality? You don't think something like students getting screwed can see improvements if legislated? Selfishness was invented within the last 100 years?

Sorry, but imo your argument is just bad. It's just griping about neoliberalism dressed up as some argument whose terms wouldn't even pass a type checker level of logical validation. And it's also boring. Neoliberalism is so easy to dunk on these days and yet you couldn't even manage to do it convincingly.

US also tariffs Chinese EV makers out of the US market so they can keep peddling the fiction that EV sucks or China can't build anything we can't.

This has the same corrupt nexus with the anti-renewable mantra. Essentially subsidize oil and gas under the table and punish renewables then tell the electorate that the latter is worse than the former.

Instead of giving Americans free choice American automakers pay American politicians to prop up their uncompetitive prices and subpar offerings. All while they take in huge private profits. American workers could work on foreign automobiles, just as they do with other automakers not from China. It's not about workers, it's not about national security. You don't even have to go into all the environmental concerns that of course disproportionately affect poorer individuals.

It's corporate welfare. And yes, it should be criminal. At the very least, if the American people are going to inflate CEOs salaries they should have seats on the board.

This is actually not a wild idea. You might be surprised to find who one of the largest shareholders of the Volkswagen group is. It's not like that is an obviously mismanaged socialist hellhole company, it's a perfectly competitive and well regarded car company.

Americans need to start demanding more equity or oversight in operations their governments are already paying for. The fact most Americans think this amounts to communism just means more people have to call out the money is already flowing.

Farmers like Ragland are overrepresented.

Why do these rural states (several of which have a total population less than that of major metro areas on the coasts) have two senators?

The senate is an antidemocratic institution. The compromise that every state gets two senators made sense when we were a weak, newborn and vulnerable nation, with a total population of less than 3 million people. Not anymore. The founders likely didn't want people like Ragland to have the vote anyway. They were not salt of the earth farmers they were largely plantation and merchant and legal elites. Ragland is the dumb mob rule they feared.

Maybe the 17th amendment was a mistake. At the very least, why stop there? The constitution is not sacred, as established and as written, the founders would have given Ragland less representation.

Perhaps in the spirit of actual democracy and modern reform, it is time to revisit the idea that every state gets two senators. Given what is really going on here is these states vote against their own interests and then rob blue states to cover up the shortfall. Why are blue states tolerating it?

It would be one thing if it was just about money, but it's not. These populations are being deputized in a culture war that tells them to hate you while they take your money. They need a reality check.

Ah yes, human history is full of societies that never legislated morality. They always trusted in the individual. After all we all remember the nature of God's law and the ten commandments - Thou shalt follow your conscience.

Humanity is a largely defined by our exercise of legislating morality. For a lack of insight into history you should consult a mirror.

Sorry but you're just wrong, and shockingly so.

"In democracies, they are just protesters protected against the retaliation by laws and constitutions"

This is a mind numbing statement to make in context. What do you think the civil rights fight was about? You think black people marching around freely in the pre civil rights South were treated as "just protestors"? You realize for a long time the Constitution outrightly failed to protect people who were black, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches#%2...

This is just one example. And sorry, it was part of their philosophy that exposing the country to this brutality would awaken the conscience of the nation. As it eventually did. That meant accepting the police brutality they knew was waiting for them. You are simply wrong, and frankly again, shockingly so.

1. Don't seem to understand the nature of civil disobedience - disobedience being a key word here.

2. Don't seem to understand how engaging in civil disobedience invites severe consequences - especially in the face of an aggressive state. We aren't just talking criminal penalties we are talking risk to life and limb.

3. Don't seem to understand the nature of nonviolence - it wasn't just about not being violent. It was about exposing the barbarity of the state as they attacked nonviolent people not responding even remotely in kind.

4. Don't seem to understand the nature of democracies in reality. Engaging in outright fiction re how democracies treat protestors vs autocracies, as if there is some obvious invisible line. Apparently ignorant of the fact that especially in King's time, protestors rights were often not protected by local authorities in the South.

5. Don't seem to understand that's kind what the entire movement was about, rights for me but not for thee.

I was kind of expecting this response given it was the only logical rejoinder after your previous statements, but it rests on a real misstatement and misunderstanding of the facts that even though was anticipated, is still disappointing.

Democracies can abuse protestors too. Always have, always will. It's why the founders feared the people's temptation for mobs as well as tyrants.

Have a good day

True enough but really this boils down to we are just doing what they are doing. The reason they had it higher for longer was because for longer the situation was reversed, our cars were better. Now they have surpassed us and don't really need protection. We didn't before either, so it was a moot point. Now we do, so we do the same thing.

The point however is that the United States is supposed to operate under a different model than China. The reason to bring up the ways we act the same is then to find clarity in the contradiction.

This is essentially the same tension that runs through much of modern American discourse. It's never welfare if the beneficiary is a rich CEO at a corporation, only if it's a family in poverty. It's not like Chinese cars can't employ American workers just as Japanese and other foreign automakers do.

To my mind then, I think it's less about reciprocity and more about corporate welfare. Putting aside ICE automakers, there is also a very obvious individual who turned conspicuously political as of late who owes a great deal of his fortune to the expectation that his electric car company will one day rule the world. It would be quite embarrassing for even him if demand for his vehicles suddenly got demolished on his own turf. I would think he and others would be willing to spend a small fortune to keep the political needle tipped in their favor on this issue, the average consumer be damned.

At some level there is nothing wrong with such naked self interest. I just prefer we be honest about it, as only then can we really analyze it.

It's a good point but imo not really surprising when the President of the United States essentially threatened to invade Canada and Greenland.

This is classic multipolar politics, trade the two behemoths against each other so they don't roll over one day and just squish you. By alienating Canada and Europe we've handed China a great gift.

Yes, not to mention the fact that Chinese EVs can't be sold here... protectionism for weak American companies that can't compete globally. We've gone from an automotive superpower and the land of Henry Ford to the government propping up automakers and depriving Americans of free choice. If Chinese cars would actually be allowed to sold here they would sell like Toyota Camrys.

Your logic on the criminal consequences is simply bizarre. It's like you think if I put myself out there protesting a law and subjecting myself to arrest or other consequences by virtue of this opposition I really don't want to accept consequences. What do you think happens to people who protest against the enforcement of a law?

And let's not move the goalposts. I never said it was a suicide pact, nor did anyone else. Reads like more cope. Yes you can tailor your approach, as they did. But ultimately are you staying home or not? Let's take another example, was D Day a suicide pact? Or do you regard them as heroes? Did they not have much to lose?

The fact remains most people stay home. Most people are cowards, unless compelled otherwise. Let's also understand leadership is extremely important. A good leader makes people around them stronger. King made people resolute, and in turn they made him resolute.

Like Eisenhower and the paratroopers before D Day. They made each other feel better. Go read about the visit I'm sure you've seen the famous photograph. The real tragedy of today isn't about cowards, which again have always existed and always will. It's about a vacuum of leadership.

Indeed, good point. Proper threat modeling is everything.

This also explains my original reply to the ancestor comment. As I see it, most people's personal threat model essentially already accounts for data breaches to the point that they are almost irrelevant. We hear about them all the time. More and more people are learning about credit freezes or 2fa or just getting these services baked into things they already use (more banks offer free credit monitoring, 2fa is increasingly a standard). It seems like we are in a place where data breaches just become essentially background noise to the average user.

In my view then, I would personally factor in physical theft as a higher threat than "phishing and data breaches". Even if low probability to begin with.

There is also the objective question of which occurs more or incurs more damages to individuals, the answer to which I do not know. I know companies often spend a lot of money to fix problems or deal with lawsuits, but individuals don't really get compensated by that the way they would if someone who ripped your phone away from you was tackled to the ground and your property got returned. For example.

As you say though, the threat model is everything.

People have too much to lose nowadays?

Many of King's contemporaries died for this. He was shot and killed. The FBI tried to blackmail him and get him to commit suicide.

I would rather people just admit they are cowards. It is fine, most people are. But saying people have too much to lose nowadays as if this is a contemporary phenomenon is just disingenuous. People always have much to lose, arguably "nowadays" less than ever before.

Maybe the real change is in how things are valued or what society sees as virtues. Perhaps our modern society values wealth more than personal integrity for example. I would suggest though a lot of this is just cope for the fact that people are learning they aren't fit for their heros, they don't belong in the same room let alone the same building. It's easy to valorize King when he's a voice from the past. The people who stay home today are the same who stayed home then. The American revolution was really instigated by a minority of the colonial population. Most people stay home.

It's just a basic fact of humanity - most people are cowards, and that is probably fine. If they weren't society would likely never exist in the first place. What does a polity even look like in a land where everyone is a hero?

I think we also shouldn't sell the nonviolence short. It wasn't merely nonviolence. It was subjecting yourself openly to state violence and not resisting. It was letting the brutality of the state be made manifest as it washed over you. As the cops abused and beat people who were not responding even remotely in kind.

That was part of Malcolm's moral clarity, though in the alternative. He suggested it was immoral to subject yourself or people you loved to such an exercise, tantamount to one of self immolation.

Malcolm X essentially advocated a system of sovereignty not unlike the American founders, who of course were violent, not nonviolent.

In that way MLK JR really was America's Christ. He was willing to be nailed to the cross if it meant bending the arc towards justice.

Demanding a password introduces more error and more room for evasion than a finger, which as I said is about the same as getting the phone in the first place. You are right that in some, maybe even most cases, it may not make a difference. But when time is of the essence, additional obstacles are often simply avoided.

You also might ask who is sticking you up. For example, I believe there is fourth amendment literature re government officials that have gotten away with using an arrested persons biometrics to unlock a phone, in a manner in which compelling the release of a password would be illegal. Put another way, I can simply grab your finger or put your phone in front of your face, whereas beating you until you surrender your password is a lot harder to accomplish without creating additional consequences.

Really? What about phone theft? If someone sticks you up and knows all it takes is your finger to unlock the phone, I would think they would be more tempted to do so, as it takes more or less the same level of coercion as taking the phone. And it's easier than fumbling around with a password... therein is the double edged sword...

You should read James Baldwin. Or read up on the debates post revolutionary war in the United States about the French revolution.

The truth is the land of the free has always been quite conservative. Which frankly, is true of most societies. In many ways that's what a society is.

Worse still, ICE stomping people out in the street is what freedom means to a vast swath of Americans. The rest are scared and leaderless and let down by an opposition that betrays their trust at every turn.

And yes Europeans keep telling Americans how to protest, but really they are little better. "Far right" candidates are already projecting big wins in the UK today. To say nothing of the victories far right parties have already secured in Europe. Spain is more familiar with blatant facisim and totalitarianism than Americans are. So idk... imo Europeans really pat themselves on the back too much... what would you do?

Provoking a riot is of questionable value anyway when he won a pretty convincing national victory at the polls just a year ago... no one has any answers as far as I can see, only empty expressions of anger... protest harder means what? I think a better start would be a coherent, defensible list of demands than anyone from a governor to a street activist can convey intelligently. Then you can try to enforce it.

But ultimately you can't muster more force than the state. If that is your only suggestion then it's a fruitless one.

So, that would be corrupt because you don't agree with it then?

Which are these sane countries? How do you think lobbying should work then? Everyone should get equal access? Hunter and gatherer man was egalitarian like that. Afaik it is a universal feature of civilization that this eventually breaks down. Of all the existent modes of dealing with this problem, money is probably one of the better ones compared to some historical or even contemporary alternatives. I actually will be very surprised if you come up with a single country that credibly makes "paying for access and influence illegal" as that is pretty much the history of all of human civilization, but I would welcome being surprised.

I hope you're joking...

Otherwise it would suggest you think the problem is they didn't ask? When was the last time you saw a customer read a terms of service? Or better yet reject a product because of said terms once they hit that part of the customer journey?

The issue isn't about asking it's that for take your pick of reasons no one ever says no. The asking is thus pro forma and irrelevant.

It's really not that dramatic. Just build it like more classic media. Curated content the company takes responsibility for, closed platform, pay upfront. Or have public programming, that is the oldest model there is.

Ad driven online content is especially bad for kids. But let's not pretend the only way to find an alternative is to end the world.

The fact is the "bad" solution is popular because consumers say they care about these things but then in real life they act like they don't. If no one watched the problem would solve itself. Thus, I'm not sure the solution is even to be found in platforms, if parents are burned out or don't have ways to make better choices for their kids.

That's a reason for these laws, to essentially just take it out of people's hands.

Well, people bid for USA government resources all the time. It's why the Washington DC suburbs have some of the country's most affluent neighborhoods among their ranks.

In theory it makes the process more transparent and fair, although slower. That calculus has been changing as of late, perhaps for both good and bad. See for example the Pentagon's latest support of drone startups run by twenty-year-olds.

The question of public and private distinctions in these various schemes are very interesting and imo, underexplored. Especially when you consider how these private LLMs are trained on public data.

To be candid, this is a common refrain that simply doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

> I'm not especially interested in passing moral judgment on others

Earlier:

> I chose to spend most of my career at a company that did stuff I found morally acceptable (inspiring, even). I made probably half what I could have made at places that were more dodgy.

Put more succinctly:

"I work somewhere that is morally acceptable. I could have made double or more if I had worked at a 'more dodgy', less morally acceptable place. Like where you work. No judgement though."

Honestly, I would have more respect for your sentiments if you would just stick to the logical conclusion of your position. Perhaps the scorn you meet is simply a reaction to this inability to simply follow the logical course of your own viewpoint. It has nothing to do with the mere existence of your morals it has to do with the fact that they are incompatible.

You want to have it both ways - you want to make a moral judgement and yet not make a moral judgement. Or you want to bound your moral judgement simply to yourself as if it is at all logical to not extrapolate it to others. If others can work for wherever they please, then what do you even mean by "morally acceptable" or "dodgy"? Simply places you prefer? That's not what morally acceptable means.

For someone who speaks of moral judgements, you don't seem to grasp their implications. I would suggest reflecting on this if you actually care about the reactions you elicit in others. This brief back and forth with you is certainly suggestive of a picture far different from the one you originally painted.

I believe what you are running up against is a tendency to externalize shame as anger.

Part of the tradeoff the parent comment references is a lack of thinking about the moral ramifications. Thus, when you mention your position which is grounded in that tradeoff's opposite, the reaction is not surprising. They are largely incompatible. Because your position hinges on a moral component, you are thus passing a moral judgement on others. This is often met with scorn, most especially because people have an aversion to shame, and it doesn't help if it's on the behalf of someone essentially randomly declaring they are morally better than you anytime the topic of their employment comes up.

So really, I'm not sure why you would be surprised, though I sympathize with your general sentiments, in a way you should know better. Surely you are aware of the aversion to shame writ large. That seems a logical predicate of your own conceptualization of your position.

These critiques are so tiresome. Like he forced people to buy macs or something. You're not the audience. For the average consumer the fact they don't even have to think about unscrewing something is a major part of the appeal. The walled garden is a plus for them not a negative.

And then ending with the sanctimonious line about selling. Like you eat off of selling nothing. Go screw in whatever you like just understand your critique comes across as little more than entitled griping against a majority. You're the people he fought against the entire time, people obsessed with their own personal agenda/minutia with no understanding of the overarching mission or who the customer is. This video comes to mind https://youtu.be/oeqPrUmVz-o

Design without an audience in mind is not design. Don't dismiss the work simply because you're not the audience.

You disagree and yet you agreed 100% and made the change. I thought the point the preceding parent comment is making is that you should have thought of that beforehand. Yet you seemed to already come to a judgement about it yet then quickly agreed to reverse yourself.

Sounds like a clear "lack of a depth of understanding" to me.

Someone has never heard of a medieval peasant. Or take your pick of ancient slave...

Maybe your theory is that if you weren't alive in the past to see "an asshole" for yourself, then the prudent conclusion is a sort skepticism about their very existence.

I wonder how you envision the past then... a vacant landscape? Perhaps you actually believe human nature has radically changed just in the past few decades? The odd thing is I think an actual analysis might contradict your claim, that is if the measurement is simply who is "an asshole". Perhaps we would find more surveillance actually reduces "asshole" behavior generally. Like how confrontational people often change their behavior when confronted by a camera, .etc

Are you under the illusion that greed and selfishness is a vice unique to the 21st century? You would think someone with an internet connection would know better. Humanity has always been this way. In most contexts where the concept "integrity" is evoked it carries with it at the very least a tacit acknowledgement of the strong temptation to do otherwise, that is part of the reason it is recognized as a virtue.

I really find these "in 2025" takes tiresome. There is no golden age, only your own personal nostalgia masquerading as analysis.