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> Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. A nation st

> Am I alone in thinking this isn't heresy? A country or federal state is just a company with a monopoly over law in a certain geographical region. A nation state is backed by armies, monetary obligations, and the need to co-operate with other nation states in each others' best interests (optimally). In order to protect its citizens and monetary interests and obligations most modern, well-functioning markets are regulated by these nation states. Facebook doesn't care about users, laws, and lacks any sense of moral or ethical standards. While I enjoy the benefits of being able to freely start a business I believe that a well-functioning market requires guidance and planning from broader, more conservative social structures in order to benefit everyone.

ekianjo 9y ago
> Facebook doesn't care about users, laws, and lacks any sense of moral or ethical standards. its difficult to say with a straight face that a government that runs trillions of deficits, spies constantly on its population, and engages in so called defensive wars abroad, cares about its citizens. The lack of responsibility is rampant among government figures.
- prolepunk 9y ago
  You are comparing badly functioning government with businesses functioning as intended. At least there's ability to enforce governmental responsibility through elections and free press. Facebook can be leveraged in no other way then through government regulation, even if you opt out from facebook it still watches you, and good luck even understanding of what's going on if you're not a technical person.
  - AndrewBissell 9y ago
    > At least there's ability to enforce governmental responsibility through elections and free press. Yes, for example, voters in the U.S. elect presidential candidates who promise to scale back our military presence overseas, and then it happens! Voters also get what they want when they elect candidates promising to reform Wall Street, make government more transparent, or end the culture of graft & corruption in Washington. Or take the issue of NSA surveillance, mentioned above. Since there were zero candidates on offer from either major party who promised even a sliver of reform, and no major media outlet even raised the issue, we can conclude that the voters have "opted in" to this program, and we should all learn to just live with it.
    - Apocryphon 9y ago
      And yet, living under that is preferable to living under a Facebook-governed polity.
      - AndrewBissell 9y ago
        No one is talking about a "Facebook-governed polity" in the sense of FB fielding police forces and standing armies, or holding elections to determine their leadership.
    - prolepunk 9y ago
      The problem of participatory democracy is that the people need to be informed and participate and vote for the issues, if no one cares about the surveillance then nothing is going to be done about it, and this is a major problem of the society; nothing is going to be done with facebook policy internally because there is no democratic process inside corporations. The other issue is -- as I come to grips with it myself, is yes NSA has sweeping and unjust powers, which invade privacy of many, but so far this power has been largely benign, whereas facebook was either complicit or actively participated with the subversion of several western democracies.
      - AndrewBissell 9y ago
        > The problem of participatory democracy is that the people need to be informed and participate and vote for the issues, if no one cares about the surveillance then nothing is going to be done about it Incidentally this is also true of people patronizing large companies and exchanging their personal data for those companies' services. And I don't know why a constituency which accepts NSA surveillance from its government would be expected to pressure that same government to sanely regulate edge providers like Facebook. In reality, this pressure is all coming from elites who are upset by the prospect that they've lost some of their exclusive control over social media to the Bad Side. When it was the Obama campaign applying largely the same tactics in 2012, they were feted in the press as tech geniuses. > yes NSA has sweeping and unjust powers, which invade privacy of many, but so far this power has been largely benign "So far" being the operative term here, and I'm amazed that the same people who think Trump is a huge threat to civil liberties are somehow still not up-in-arms about this. It's probably also not true that its use has been benign, there are strong hints that NSA surveillance has already been deployed in an unconstitutional manner against U.S. citizens who find themselves in the government's crosshairs, e.g. in the hunt for Ross Ulbricht. > facebook was either complicit or actively participated with the subversion of several western democracies. Again, the only reason people are talking about "subversion of Western democracies" is because Trump/Brexit/Orban/AfD are winning, and that's not "supposed" to happen according to their own preconceptions. It's far easier to chalk these election results up to nefarious foreign meddling than it is to confront the genuine, pressing systemic problems causing voters to want to upend the system in this way. Had the Russians run a similar number of hilariously bad ads in favor of Clinton, occupying an equally infinitesimal sliver of Facebook ad traffic, it correctly would be dismissed as largely inconsequential to the electoral result. I don't like Facebook, and even as a fairly hardcore libertarian, I'm open to the idea that FB and its ilk need to be reined back from some forms of data sharing and overly broad applications of their terms of service. But it's hilarious that what finally got people up in arms about this issue was Russia putting up a handful of vaguely pro-Trump Jesus arm wrestling memes on Facebook.
  - nickpp 9y ago
    Taking an average over the world, most governments are badly functioning and they've been that way for years if not centuries. Business on the other side, tend to be punished by the markets when misbehaving and then course-correct.
    - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
      Yes but the point is that what is 'misbehaving' is defined by market norms. 'Misbehaving' is engaging in behavior which decreases profit but it can never help us to escape the question of profit altogether. That's what government is for - when what is good for society and what is good for profit conflict government steps in to correct. The point of markets is that they rely on only individual decisions and what may seem like a rational individual decision to every member of society may lead to an overall outcome that no member of society supports. In those instances we have democratic government to allow us to reach out of the realm of individual and act in a collective self-interest. That in recent years our government has been malfunctioning in a way that suppresses our ability to act this way is not an argument to get rid of democratic governance altogether, it's an argument to bring it back and strengthen it.
      - nickpp 9y ago
        A well functioning government, does, ideally, what you describe. But most governments in the world (maybe except a few western ones) are, as I was saying, incredibly disfunctional. And when governments misbehave, they kill: wars, corruption, suppression, etc. Forgive me if I’ll prefer businesses over governments every day.
        JumpCrisscross 9y ago
        > And when governments misbehave, they kill: wars, corruption, suppression, etc. You're comparing a giant to a nest of angry ants. The giant sometimes tramples houses; the ants don't. One might conclude the ants are therefore gentler, and wonder much better life would be under giant ants instead of the giant, neglecting that if the ants had the giant's power, they would be far more deadly than it.
ModernMech 9y ago
> Facebook doesn't care about users, laws, and lacks any sense of moral or ethical standards. True, but I can point to many countries (my own USA in many cases) that doesn't care about citizens, laws, and moral ethical standards. I can also point to corporations with high ethical standards, who care deeply about their users and the laws. Corporations and governments are just groups of people. Groups of people have shown great capacity for good, but also extreme evil.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
vinceguidry 9y ago
> In order to protect its citizens and monetary interests and obligations most modern, well-functioning markets are regulated by these nation states. It's hard to take this 'protection' seriously in many cases. It's for more often the case where nation-state protection is extended to one company against other companies within the state than it is for one country's industry to be collectively protected against other countries'. Protecting your own company against both the state and other companies is the CEO's mandate.
- owebmaster 9y ago
  > Protecting your own company against both the state and other companies is the CEO's mandate. Which usually mean to not care about users, laws, and any sense of moral or ethical standards.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    That principle is much, much older than companies and business.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  > Protecting your own company against both the state and other companies is the CEO's mandate No, this is a mob boss's mandate.
gm-conspiracy 9y ago
Giving retroactive telecom immunity is moral and/or ethical?

ekianjo 9y ago

> Facebook doesn't care about users, laws, and lacks any sense of moral or ethical standards. its difficult to say with a straight face that a government that runs trillions of deficits, spies constantly on its population, and engages in so called defensive wars abroad, cares about its citizens. The lack of responsibility is rampant among government figures.

prolepunk 9y ago
You are comparing badly functioning government with businesses functioning as intended. At least there's ability to enforce governmental responsibility through elections and free press. Facebook can be leveraged in no other way then through government regulation, even if you opt out from facebook it still watches you, and good luck even understanding of what's going on if you're not a technical person.
- AndrewBissell 9y ago
  > At least there's ability to enforce governmental responsibility through elections and free press. Yes, for example, voters in the U.S. elect presidential candidates who promise to scale back our military presence overseas, and then it happens! Voters also get what they want when they elect candidates promising to reform Wall Street, make government more transparent, or end the culture of graft & corruption in Washington. Or take the issue of NSA surveillance, mentioned above. Since there were zero candidates on offer from either major party who promised even a sliver of reform, and no major media outlet even raised the issue, we can conclude that the voters have "opted in" to this program, and we should all learn to just live with it.
  - Apocryphon 9y ago
    And yet, living under that is preferable to living under a Facebook-governed polity.
    - AndrewBissell 9y ago
      No one is talking about a "Facebook-governed polity" in the sense of FB fielding police forces and standing armies, or holding elections to determine their leadership.
  - prolepunk 9y ago
    The problem of participatory democracy is that the people need to be informed and participate and vote for the issues, if no one cares about the surveillance then nothing is going to be done about it, and this is a major problem of the society; nothing is going to be done with facebook policy internally because there is no democratic process inside corporations. The other issue is -- as I come to grips with it myself, is yes NSA has sweeping and unjust powers, which invade privacy of many, but so far this power has been largely benign, whereas facebook was either complicit or actively participated with the subversion of several western democracies.
    - AndrewBissell 9y ago
      > The problem of participatory democracy is that the people need to be informed and participate and vote for the issues, if no one cares about the surveillance then nothing is going to be done about it Incidentally this is also true of people patronizing large companies and exchanging their personal data for those companies' services. And I don't know why a constituency which accepts NSA surveillance from its government would be expected to pressure that same government to sanely regulate edge providers like Facebook. In reality, this pressure is all coming from elites who are upset by the prospect that they've lost some of their exclusive control over social media to the Bad Side. When it was the Obama campaign applying largely the same tactics in 2012, they were feted in the press as tech geniuses. > yes NSA has sweeping and unjust powers, which invade privacy of many, but so far this power has been largely benign "So far" being the operative term here, and I'm amazed that the same people who think Trump is a huge threat to civil liberties are somehow still not up-in-arms about this. It's probably also not true that its use has been benign, there are strong hints that NSA surveillance has already been deployed in an unconstitutional manner against U.S. citizens who find themselves in the government's crosshairs, e.g. in the hunt for Ross Ulbricht. > facebook was either complicit or actively participated with the subversion of several western democracies. Again, the only reason people are talking about "subversion of Western democracies" is because Trump/Brexit/Orban/AfD are winning, and that's not "supposed" to happen according to their own preconceptions. It's far easier to chalk these election results up to nefarious foreign meddling than it is to confront the genuine, pressing systemic problems causing voters to want to upend the system in this way. Had the Russians run a similar number of hilariously bad ads in favor of Clinton, occupying an equally infinitesimal sliver of Facebook ad traffic, it correctly would be dismissed as largely inconsequential to the electoral result. I don't like Facebook, and even as a fairly hardcore libertarian, I'm open to the idea that FB and its ilk need to be reined back from some forms of data sharing and overly broad applications of their terms of service. But it's hilarious that what finally got people up in arms about this issue was Russia putting up a handful of vaguely pro-Trump Jesus arm wrestling memes on Facebook.
- nickpp 9y ago
  Taking an average over the world, most governments are badly functioning and they've been that way for years if not centuries. Business on the other side, tend to be punished by the markets when misbehaving and then course-correct.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 9y ago
    Yes but the point is that what is 'misbehaving' is defined by market norms. 'Misbehaving' is engaging in behavior which decreases profit but it can never help us to escape the question of profit altogether. That's what government is for - when what is good for society and what is good for profit conflict government steps in to correct. The point of markets is that they rely on only individual decisions and what may seem like a rational individual decision to every member of society may lead to an overall outcome that no member of society supports. In those instances we have democratic government to allow us to reach out of the realm of individual and act in a collective self-interest. That in recent years our government has been malfunctioning in a way that suppresses our ability to act this way is not an argument to get rid of democratic governance altogether, it's an argument to bring it back and strengthen it.
    - nickpp 9y ago
      A well functioning government, does, ideally, what you describe. But most governments in the world (maybe except a few western ones) are, as I was saying, incredibly disfunctional. And when governments misbehave, they kill: wars, corruption, suppression, etc. Forgive me if I’ll prefer businesses over governments every day.
      - JumpCrisscross 9y ago
        > And when governments misbehave, they kill: wars, corruption, suppression, etc. You're comparing a giant to a nest of angry ants. The giant sometimes tramples houses; the ants don't. One might conclude the ants are therefore gentler, and wonder much better life would be under giant ants instead of the giant, neglecting that if the ants had the giant's power, they would be far more deadly than it.

ModernMech 9y ago

> Facebook doesn't care about users, laws, and lacks any sense of moral or ethical standards. True, but I can point to many countries (my own USA in many cases) that doesn't care about citizens, laws, and moral ethical standards. I can also point to corporations with high ethical standards, who care deeply about their users and the laws. Corporations and governments are just groups of people. Groups of people have shown great capacity for good, but also extreme evil.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

vinceguidry 9y ago

> In order to protect its citizens and monetary interests and obligations most modern, well-functioning markets are regulated by these nation states. It's hard to take this 'protection' seriously in many cases. It's for more often the case where nation-state protection is extended to one company against other companies within the state than it is for one country's industry to be collectively protected against other countries'. Protecting your own company against both the state and other companies is the CEO's mandate.

owebmaster 9y ago
> Protecting your own company against both the state and other companies is the CEO's mandate. Which usually mean to not care about users, laws, and any sense of moral or ethical standards.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  That principle is much, much older than companies and business.
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
> Protecting your own company against both the state and other companies is the CEO's mandate No, this is a mob boss's mandate.

gm-conspiracy 9y ago

Giving retroactive telecom immunity is moral and/or ethical?