7 ms·

You are comparing badly functioning government with businesses functioning as intended. At least there's ability to enforce governmental responsibility through

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 8y 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 8y ago
  And yet, living under that is preferable to living under a Facebook-governed polity.
  - AndrewBissell 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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.
    - prolepunk 8y ago
      > 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. That's just false equivalency. > "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. So far we can only operate with the evidence we have. Ross Ulbricht was caught because he was trying to order a 'hit' on one of his accomplices who turned to authorities. It's strange that you used this example because he was arrested and charged by using good old police work, everything that he did to run his organization, besides tech skills, was really amateurish. > 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. There's consistent, irrefutable evidence that it is in fact the nefarious foreign power manipulating people to achieve destabilization of what it perceives to be the enemy states. > I don't like Facebook, and even as a fairly hardcore libertarian, Try throwing Atlas Shrugged at Zuck and see if that does anything.
nickpp 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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.

AndrewBissell 8y 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 8y ago
And yet, living under that is preferable to living under a Facebook-governed polity.
- AndrewBissell 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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.
  - prolepunk 8y ago
    > 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. That's just false equivalency. > "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. So far we can only operate with the evidence we have. Ross Ulbricht was caught because he was trying to order a 'hit' on one of his accomplices who turned to authorities. It's strange that you used this example because he was arrested and charged by using good old police work, everything that he did to run his organization, besides tech skills, was really amateurish. > 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. There's consistent, irrefutable evidence that it is in fact the nefarious foreign power manipulating people to achieve destabilization of what it perceives to be the enemy states. > I don't like Facebook, and even as a fairly hardcore libertarian, Try throwing Atlas Shrugged at Zuck and see if that does anything.

nickpp 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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 8y 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.