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How does a nation built upon the concept of natural rights in turn deny non-Americans those same innate rights? Looking back, as a history buff, I think the pr

How does a nation built upon the concept of natural rights in turn deny non-Americans those same innate rights? Looking back, as a history buff, I think the problem is that each generation felt that it was a special snowflake, so the rules didn't apply to them. Early on we had terrible travesties -- the Alien and Sedition Act, for instance. But people came to their senses and it was repealed. Over time, however, as each generation thought it was facing something nobody could have planned for, the boundaries got pushed. Fast-forward 240 years, and what you have is the natural result of systemic drift. With each travesty and reversal, maybe you lose 1% over a decade. Add that up over 24 decades and its amazing anything is left at all. Technically, both the Supreme court and the Senate are charged with preventing this from happening. But the Senate was gutted and turned into another House of Representatives when they went to direct elections, so the only thing those guys are good for now is pandering to the TV cameras. The courts tend to give wonderful speeches on liberty and such -- but usually end up keeping things much as they are. (They have nibbled a bit around the edges, but in general they've been more part of the problem than part of the solution. Part of the reason for this is the gradual and incremental nature of the drift.) That's what's happened internally, with a huge set of checks and balances in place. Externally? It never had a chance.

pdkl95 11y ago
> the Senate [is] charged with preventing this from happening. But the Senate was gutted There is a gradual drift over time; most complex systems accumulate errors, imbalances, and unexpected problems over time. However, there is another problem happening right now that I've only seen mentioned[1] by Dan Geer. He suggests that technology has changed the balance of powers: The central dynamic internal to government is, and always has been, that the only way for either the Executive or the Legislature to control the many sub-units of government is by way of how much money they can hand out. ... Suppose, however, that surveillance becomes too cheap to meter, that is to say too cheap to limit through budgetary processes. Does that lessen the power of the Legislature more, or the power of the Executive more? I think that ever-cheaper surveillance substantially changes the balance of power in favor of the Executive and away from the Legislature. While President Obama was referring to something else when he said "I've Got A Pen And I've Got A Phone," he was speaking to exactly this idea -- things that need no appropriations are outside the system of checks and balances. The "power of the purse" doesn't mean much when technology drives prices towards zero. This is made much worse by the "humans need not apply"[2] shift in jobs from humans to automation. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=625 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=625 http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
- DanielBMarkham 11y ago
  Yes. This. As much as I like ranting about the security and surveillance state, the real problem with automation is that even if you somehow implement it perfectly according to our traditional values, it takes all the slack and human judgment out of the middle tiers of the system. You've got just one guy at the top at the steering wheel. We're already in a situation where we're all guilty of felonies; it's simply a matter of whether the executive wants to go to the trouble of enforcing the law or not. Now imagine a scenario where the proof of our guilt was automatically generated. Where we're all observed, tried, found guilty -- all without any cost at all. That makes the executive for all intents and purposes a modern day absolute ruler, a king. (I know it's popular to accuse the executive of being a king as part of political rhetoric, but I'm talking about real, objectively-measurable political power.) When I look at the lack of any real third party challenge, the absence of real policy changes no matter who takes control, the regular, almost clockwork change of power at the executive level between parties, and the apathy both parties seem to feel when they lose big at the polls? This may already be reality. It's just the common man hasn't felt the stick yet. ADD: You want a real nightmare scenario, imagine President Bozohead walking around with a set of VR googles hooked into a national surveillance system. He could walk up to anybody, point at them, and the system would review that person's previous decade's worth of records. Speeding tickets that were never given. Misstatements on tax forms. When they picked up that rock to take home on their trip to the Grand Canyon. The pond that formed in their backyard due to poor drainage. The time they fudged the truth about whether or not they were camping to that park ranger -- remember, lying to a federal employee is a felony. He could just point at the guy, think the right thought, and the appropriate subpoenas and summonses would be electronically generated, and auto-signed by a judicial official. Or perhaps it's all administrative. Hell, they can always pick you up for 24 hours just on good measure -- the automated system can figure out everything you've done while you're cooling your heels. With ten years of detailed records, the government can create trouble for you faster than any team of lawyers could hope to defend. Add in a little civil asset forfeiture if you want to complete the picture. Do you really need that house? This puts the president, and his agents, completely outside the law. The only thing preventing abuse in such a scenario is public opinion and the personality of the guy in office. And there are lots of ways to deal with public opinion. Scary stuff. ADD2: Might be a good time for some science fiction writer to re-do Kafka's The Trial, this time with the crime hidden by computational complexity. (We could tell you, but there's actually 4,749 charges, 117 of which your AI thinks we could get lifted....)
paganel 11y ago
> Looking back, as a history buff, I think the problem is that each generation felt that it was a special snowflake, so the rules didn't apply to them. There was one notable exception, though, that is the French during the Revolution. I'm now reading an excellent book by Mona Ozouf (it's in French: http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Quarto/De-Revolution-en-Republique http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Quarto/De-Revolu..., the author is a notable historian of the French Revolution and its aftermath in the "long" 19th century: the 3rd Republic) where in one of the essays she says that one of the defining aspects of the French nation and its people was the fact that the people who made the Revolution actually believed in the universality of their beliefs, hence the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" of 1793 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_Citizen_of_1793 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_M...), which was supposed to be universal and apply to all humans. For some time the French did actually believe that they were superior to other nations because of their universalist approach in bettering the human condition. It all went downhill from there, obviously, as time marched on.

pdkl95 11y ago

> the Senate [is] charged with preventing this from happening. But the Senate was gutted There is a gradual drift over time; most complex systems accumulate errors, imbalances, and unexpected problems over time. However, there is another problem happening right now that I've only seen mentioned[1] by Dan Geer. He suggests that technology has changed the balance of powers: The central dynamic internal to government is, and always has been, that the only way for either the Executive or the Legislature to control the many sub-units of government is by way of how much money they can hand out. ... Suppose, however, that surveillance becomes too cheap to meter, that is to say too cheap to limit through budgetary processes. Does that lessen the power of the Legislature more, or the power of the Executive more? I think that ever-cheaper surveillance substantially changes the balance of power in favor of the Executive and away from the Legislature. While President Obama was referring to something else when he said "I've Got A Pen And I've Got A Phone," he was speaking to exactly this idea -- things that need no appropriations are outside the system of checks and balances. The "power of the purse" doesn't mean much when technology drives prices towards zero. This is made much worse by the "humans need not apply"[2] shift in jobs from humans to automation. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=625 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT-TGvYOBpI#t=625 http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt http://geer.tinho.net/geer.blackhat.6viii14.txt [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

DanielBMarkham 11y ago
Yes. This. As much as I like ranting about the security and surveillance state, the real problem with automation is that even if you somehow implement it perfectly according to our traditional values, it takes all the slack and human judgment out of the middle tiers of the system. You've got just one guy at the top at the steering wheel. We're already in a situation where we're all guilty of felonies; it's simply a matter of whether the executive wants to go to the trouble of enforcing the law or not. Now imagine a scenario where the proof of our guilt was automatically generated. Where we're all observed, tried, found guilty -- all without any cost at all. That makes the executive for all intents and purposes a modern day absolute ruler, a king. (I know it's popular to accuse the executive of being a king as part of political rhetoric, but I'm talking about real, objectively-measurable political power.) When I look at the lack of any real third party challenge, the absence of real policy changes no matter who takes control, the regular, almost clockwork change of power at the executive level between parties, and the apathy both parties seem to feel when they lose big at the polls? This may already be reality. It's just the common man hasn't felt the stick yet. ADD: You want a real nightmare scenario, imagine President Bozohead walking around with a set of VR googles hooked into a national surveillance system. He could walk up to anybody, point at them, and the system would review that person's previous decade's worth of records. Speeding tickets that were never given. Misstatements on tax forms. When they picked up that rock to take home on their trip to the Grand Canyon. The pond that formed in their backyard due to poor drainage. The time they fudged the truth about whether or not they were camping to that park ranger -- remember, lying to a federal employee is a felony. He could just point at the guy, think the right thought, and the appropriate subpoenas and summonses would be electronically generated, and auto-signed by a judicial official. Or perhaps it's all administrative. Hell, they can always pick you up for 24 hours just on good measure -- the automated system can figure out everything you've done while you're cooling your heels. With ten years of detailed records, the government can create trouble for you faster than any team of lawyers could hope to defend. Add in a little civil asset forfeiture if you want to complete the picture. Do you really need that house? This puts the president, and his agents, completely outside the law. The only thing preventing abuse in such a scenario is public opinion and the personality of the guy in office. And there are lots of ways to deal with public opinion. Scary stuff. ADD2: Might be a good time for some science fiction writer to re-do Kafka's The Trial, this time with the crime hidden by computational complexity. (We could tell you, but there's actually 4,749 charges, 117 of which your AI thinks we could get lifted....)

paganel 11y ago

> Looking back, as a history buff, I think the problem is that each generation felt that it was a special snowflake, so the rules didn't apply to them. There was one notable exception, though, that is the French during the Revolution. I'm now reading an excellent book by Mona Ozouf (it's in French: http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Quarto/De-Revolution-en-Republique http://www.gallimard.fr/Catalogue/GALLIMARD/Quarto/De-Revolu..., the author is a notable historian of the French Revolution and its aftermath in the "long" 19th century: the 3rd Republic) where in one of the essays she says that one of the defining aspects of the French nation and its people was the fact that the people who made the Revolution actually believed in the universality of their beliefs, hence the "Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen" of 1793 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Man_and_Citizen_of_1793 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_M...), which was supposed to be universal and apply to all humans. For some time the French did actually believe that they were superior to other nations because of their universalist approach in bettering the human condition. It all went downhill from there, obviously, as time marched on.