6 ms·

> Your lack of faith in human nature should extend to all humans, not just ones who are the apparatus of the state. It's not that there's some reason to preter

by cderwin 10y ago

> Your lack of faith in human nature should extend to all humans, not just ones who are the apparatus of the state. It's not that there's some reason to preternaturally trust corporations and to distrust the state, it's that the apparatus of the state is infinitely more powerful. If a corporation acts unethically, you lose the benefits and service it provides. If the state acts unethically, you lose your freedom and/or your life. That's a colossal difference. Likewise, if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation controlling access to the internet, there's really no choice at all: who would pick Chinese internet service over Google Fiber? And make no mistake: with utility-style regulation the only boundary between the FCC and the PRC is "the people", and if this year's election has shown anything, they are a fickle and largely ignorant bunch. "Utility-style regulation" isn't an epithet because the internet shouldn't be treated as a utility; it's an epithet because utility regulation over the past hundred years has been absolutely disastrous, enabling the supreme power of corporations, not limiting it. It's really, really sad to see the internet falling into the hands of telecoms and the FCC.

gumby 10y ago
Metacomment: I disagree with this comment but was sorry to see it down voted (greyed out) so upvoted it. It doesn't matter at this point why I might disagree with it; it's on topic and did not deserve a down vote just because someone(s) disagreed with it.
thenewwazoo 10y ago
> if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation You're committing the fallacy of the excluded middle. There is a massive gulf between unregulated behavior of publicly-held companies and authoritarian dictatorship by an unelected body, and the USA is somewhere there in the middle.
- treehau5 10y ago
  I think this is more along the lines of false dilemma, no? oh I see this is an alias for that. false dilemma, false dichotomy and excluded middle are apparently all the same thing.
  - pc86 10y ago
    They are certainly not
    - treehau5 10y ago
      Ok, wikipedia lied to me then, or I misread. Sorry.
    - dctoedt 10y ago
      > They are certainly not So what's your understanding of those terms? Mine is identical to that of treehau5.
yongjik 10y ago
> If a corporation acts unethically, you lose the benefits and service it provides. If the state acts unethically, you lose your freedom and/or your life. Several thousands people who died in Bhopal on Dec 2, 1984 might think otherwise. Or 2,209 people who died in Johnstown, PA on 1889 when South Fork Dam failed. Or another 502 people killed on Jun 29, 1995 when Sampoong Department Store collapsed. Or...
- cderwin 10y ago
  What about the 10 million people that died during the Holocaust, or the 30 million people that died in the Great Famine (or, for that matter, oppress and enslave African-Americans for 300+ years)? Obviously too little/poor regulation can allow corporations to commit truly awful atrocities, but I've yet to see any private enterprise cause a fraction of the damage that states around the world have. But I digress -- in any free society people will eventually cause horrible things to happen, it just seems to me that the government inevitably causes much worse things to happen.
  - yongjik 10y ago
    Your first assertion read as if you claimed unethical corporations don't kill people. I showed that it's not the case. Now you say even unethical corporations normally kill much fewer people than unethical governments. Which is true. But I have to ask, why do unethical corporations kill so few people? After all, they're all led by the same greedy people. It's not like CEOs magically become conscientious and say "Well, we can make billions of dollars by screwing all these poor people, but fuck it if we end up killing them!" The answer: governments. Governments keep corporations in line so that they can't get away with killing people. Where a government is run by better people, corporations tend to not kill people, because they'll face consequences. So, you are right that an incompetent government can be much more dangerous. However, one way such a government can kill people is by colluding with corporations and voluntarily relinquishing its authority (and duty) to police them as a government should. When you're limiting the government's power over corporations, in some situations, you could be in fact ensuring that the government remains incompetent.
  - 10y ago
jblow 10y ago
"absolutely disastrous"? I am 44 years old, which means I remember growing up at a time when you were not allowed to own a telephone -- because AT&T exercised its corporate monopoly to control what you could plug into your AT&T phone line, and they would only permit that to be an AT&T phone, and they would not ever sell you an AT&T phone, they would only rent you one at an exorbitant price. And they didn't bother to provide you any variety in models, because why would they? There's one phone, that is what you get. Also, if you wanted to call someone in a different area code, then I hope you are ready to shell out some cash... If it weren't for state-exercised power, it is quite possible that things would still be this way. I do not consider today's situation a disaster at all, relatively speaking. (For sure there are still many un-ideal things about it.)
- duncan_bayne 10y ago
  How did AT&T come by their monopoly in the first place? IIRC it was a crony deal with the State that established it in the first place.
  - jblow 10y ago
    It's a complex history, but it started with the government's prevention of what would have been an even bigger monopoly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment But for the most part, it is just that AT&T kept buying smaller companies, which is just what happens in capitalism when one party starts to win, which is why checks on capitalism are necessary.
    - maloney 10y ago
      Here is an in depth look into how the state prevented competition in regards to AT&T. http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1994/11/cj14n2-6.pdf http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/ca... In no way is the free market responsible for the AT&T monopoly.
      - 10y ago
michaelmrose 10y ago
What is slippery slope fallacy Alex.
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  The funny thing about these pop "fallacies" is that they're often perfectly reasonable explanations. They're not necessarily fallacious and thus shouldn't be labeled "fallacies". It seems that someone put a bunch of common explanations on a web page and stuck the word "fallacy" after all of them so that they could use it to try to win arguments with easily-intimidated persons.
  - amake 10y ago
    Do you have an actual rebuttal to the patent, or is this a "pop" fallacy as well?
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    Slippery slope is valid when party A is trying to move parties B into a position far down on the slope gradually by easing parties B down the slope. Many situations exist wherein a series of steps could superficially be arranged in a progression or slope between points a and b but in fact individual steps have different costs and benefits and are in fact independently good or bad. Often those arguing for/against a subset of the points in the graph have good arguments for/against then some jerk goes and implies that if you allow point 1-3 on the graph somehow by magic you will eventually arrive at point 37. They ignore the fact that its possible and in fact reasonable to support point 1-3 and skip right to the extreme and absurd. They neatly bypass any and all relevant arguments in favor of 1-3. This is destructive to conversation because you can use it in nearly any situation. It is especially frequently used in anything involving government because somehow all roads that don't lead to anarchy somehow lead to hitler. Its frequently useful to just point out the obvious fallacy and move on rather than giving a longer treatment because such tracks are frequently useless and drag the entire discussion inevitably towards stupidity.
SkyMarshal 10y ago
>Likewise, if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation controlling access to the internet, there's really no choice at all: This is a straw man argument, that's not the only choice, in fact it's not even the actual choice facing us right now. >it's an epithet because utility regulation over the past hundred years has been absolutely disastrous, enabling the supreme power of corporations, not limiting it. This is not universally true. In the comparatively economically conservative Southeast where power generation and the electric grid have been regulated as public utilities for as long as anyone can remember, there was never a temptation to experiment with deregulation as in CA, and no small bit of schadenfreude when Enron wrecked havoc on the CA energy system as a result. Stability is an (maybe the most) important characteristic of national economic infrastructure that is susceptible to systemic risk. It enables the forces of innovation to confidently build on top of it - capital formation, ROI forecasting, planning & investment, long-term credit extension to wealth-creating industries, etc. Introducing shocks and instability into the base layer infrastructure makes that wealth creation activity much more difficult and constrained.
croon 10y ago
No one would pick AT&T over Swedish internet service either... What's your point?

by cderwin 10y ago

gumby 10y ago

Metacomment: I disagree with this comment but was sorry to see it down voted (greyed out) so upvoted it. It doesn't matter at this point why I might disagree with it; it's on topic and did not deserve a down vote just because someone(s) disagreed with it.

thenewwazoo 10y ago

> if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation You're committing the fallacy of the excluded middle. There is a massive gulf between unregulated behavior of publicly-held companies and authoritarian dictatorship by an unelected body, and the USA is somewhere there in the middle.

treehau5 10y ago
I think this is more along the lines of false dilemma, no? oh I see this is an alias for that. false dilemma, false dichotomy and excluded middle are apparently all the same thing.
- pc86 10y ago
  They are certainly not
  - treehau5 10y ago
    Ok, wikipedia lied to me then, or I misread. Sorry.
  - dctoedt 10y ago
    > They are certainly not So what's your understanding of those terms? Mine is identical to that of treehau5.

yongjik 10y ago

> If a corporation acts unethically, you lose the benefits and service it provides. If the state acts unethically, you lose your freedom and/or your life. Several thousands people who died in Bhopal on Dec 2, 1984 might think otherwise. Or 2,209 people who died in Johnstown, PA on 1889 when South Fork Dam failed. Or another 502 people killed on Jun 29, 1995 when Sampoong Department Store collapsed. Or...

cderwin 10y ago
What about the 10 million people that died during the Holocaust, or the 30 million people that died in the Great Famine (or, for that matter, oppress and enslave African-Americans for 300+ years)? Obviously too little/poor regulation can allow corporations to commit truly awful atrocities, but I've yet to see any private enterprise cause a fraction of the damage that states around the world have. But I digress -- in any free society people will eventually cause horrible things to happen, it just seems to me that the government inevitably causes much worse things to happen.
- yongjik 10y ago
  Your first assertion read as if you claimed unethical corporations don't kill people. I showed that it's not the case. Now you say even unethical corporations normally kill much fewer people than unethical governments. Which is true. But I have to ask, why do unethical corporations kill so few people? After all, they're all led by the same greedy people. It's not like CEOs magically become conscientious and say "Well, we can make billions of dollars by screwing all these poor people, but fuck it if we end up killing them!" The answer: governments. Governments keep corporations in line so that they can't get away with killing people. Where a government is run by better people, corporations tend to not kill people, because they'll face consequences. So, you are right that an incompetent government can be much more dangerous. However, one way such a government can kill people is by colluding with corporations and voluntarily relinquishing its authority (and duty) to police them as a government should. When you're limiting the government's power over corporations, in some situations, you could be in fact ensuring that the government remains incompetent.
- 10y ago

jblow 10y ago

"absolutely disastrous"? I am 44 years old, which means I remember growing up at a time when you were not allowed to own a telephone -- because AT&T exercised its corporate monopoly to control what you could plug into your AT&T phone line, and they would only permit that to be an AT&T phone, and they would not ever sell you an AT&T phone, they would only rent you one at an exorbitant price. And they didn't bother to provide you any variety in models, because why would they? There's one phone, that is what you get. Also, if you wanted to call someone in a different area code, then I hope you are ready to shell out some cash... If it weren't for state-exercised power, it is quite possible that things would still be this way. I do not consider today's situation a disaster at all, relatively speaking. (For sure there are still many un-ideal things about it.)

duncan_bayne 10y ago
How did AT&T come by their monopoly in the first place? IIRC it was a crony deal with the State that established it in the first place.
- jblow 10y ago
  It's a complex history, but it started with the government's prevention of what would have been an even bigger monopoly. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment But for the most part, it is just that AT&T kept buying smaller companies, which is just what happens in capitalism when one party starts to win, which is why checks on capitalism are necessary.
  - maloney 10y ago
    Here is an in depth look into how the state prevented competition in regards to AT&T. http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/1994/11/cj14n2-6.pdf http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/ca... In no way is the free market responsible for the AT&T monopoly.
    - 10y ago

michaelmrose 10y ago

What is slippery slope fallacy Alex.

cookiecaper 10y ago
The funny thing about these pop "fallacies" is that they're often perfectly reasonable explanations. They're not necessarily fallacious and thus shouldn't be labeled "fallacies". It seems that someone put a bunch of common explanations on a web page and stuck the word "fallacy" after all of them so that they could use it to try to win arguments with easily-intimidated persons.
- amake 10y ago
  Do you have an actual rebuttal to the patent, or is this a "pop" fallacy as well?
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  Slippery slope is valid when party A is trying to move parties B into a position far down on the slope gradually by easing parties B down the slope. Many situations exist wherein a series of steps could superficially be arranged in a progression or slope between points a and b but in fact individual steps have different costs and benefits and are in fact independently good or bad. Often those arguing for/against a subset of the points in the graph have good arguments for/against then some jerk goes and implies that if you allow point 1-3 on the graph somehow by magic you will eventually arrive at point 37. They ignore the fact that its possible and in fact reasonable to support point 1-3 and skip right to the extreme and absurd. They neatly bypass any and all relevant arguments in favor of 1-3. This is destructive to conversation because you can use it in nearly any situation. It is especially frequently used in anything involving government because somehow all roads that don't lead to anarchy somehow lead to hitler. Its frequently useful to just point out the obvious fallacy and move on rather than giving a longer treatment because such tracks are frequently useless and drag the entire discussion inevitably towards stupidity.

SkyMarshal 10y ago

>Likewise, if the choice is between Google controlling access to the internet and Chinese-style regulation controlling access to the internet, there's really no choice at all: This is a straw man argument, that's not the only choice, in fact it's not even the actual choice facing us right now. >it's an epithet because utility regulation over the past hundred years has been absolutely disastrous, enabling the supreme power of corporations, not limiting it. This is not universally true. In the comparatively economically conservative Southeast where power generation and the electric grid have been regulated as public utilities for as long as anyone can remember, there was never a temptation to experiment with deregulation as in CA, and no small bit of schadenfreude when Enron wrecked havoc on the CA energy system as a result. Stability is an (maybe the most) important characteristic of national economic infrastructure that is susceptible to systemic risk. It enables the forces of innovation to confidently build on top of it - capital formation, ROI forecasting, planning & investment, long-term credit extension to wealth-creating industries, etc. Introducing shocks and instability into the base layer infrastructure makes that wealth creation activity much more difficult and constrained.

croon 10y ago

No one would pick AT&T over Swedish internet service either... What's your point?