4 ms·
Oppression always fails in the long run because the conditions that spawn the oppression always eventually pass, and oppressive regime has to keep justifying it
by vinceguidry 8y ago
Oppression always fails in the long run because the conditions that spawn the oppression always eventually pass, and oppressive regime has to keep justifying itself.
For instance, slavery was long on the way out of the US by the time of the Civil War. As we kept expanding west-ward, the new states had exactly zero economic incentive to turn people into livestock. The South could get away with political shenanigans only as long as it could maintain its voting bloc. Expansion made that impossible, and the only solution became a war.
If the war hadn't happened though, we would have seen a managed transition. Legislation tailored at reining in slavery would have slowly made the practice increasingly untenable and the economic aspect would have gotten managed out over time. In fact, it was already happening.
To generalize, oppression seeks out a local maximum, eventually society finds a higher peak, and the oppression only lasts as long as it takes for the rest of society to build a wide enough bridge so that people on the lower hill can just walk over to the bigger hill. Or, you know, a war.
- dsfyu404ed 8y agoOk, but I sure as shit don't want to live through the 20-80yr it takes to get from oppression to something else.
- maxxxxx 8y agoIt's true that oppression fails in the long run but it's also true that we all die in the long run. There are plenty of examples where oppression lasted long enough to make the lives of generations of people miserable. So we shouldn't just say "This too shall pass"
- vinceguidry 8y agoIf the alternative is fighting a war, there's a good case to be made for managed transition.
- maxxxxx 8y agoI may not sure how this comment helps with the current situation where people think that tools like facial recognition will lead into oppression. Are you saying we shouldn't worry because that oppression will fail in another 50-100 years? Let's just make sure the end of that oppression is well managed ?
- vinceguidry 8y agoI'm saying that if you want to actually solve a problem, a more sober outlook on the reasons why that problem is even a thing is going to be far more useful than impassioned, but undirected action. The author of the piece is calling for a ban on facial recognition tech. At what level should this ban be placed? Just the US? The Anglo world? Anglo-Europe? Worldwide? China seems to be leading the push here, and they don't seem to be all that interested in human rights arguments originating from the West. I know that nobody here really wants to deal with China's focus on collectivism over individualism, but it really does deserve a discussion. China has been grappling with the task of governing its immense population for thousands of years. How do you draw the line between governance and oppression? Even if we restrict our ban to the Anglo world or just the US, A ban on facial recognition tech can have the same kind of effect that banning psychedelics did back in the 70s. A ban means that we can't run social experiments. When we can't run social experiments, we can't actually know the effects. To implement a ban, a war must be fought. Even if it doesn't result in physical violence, you're still telling a lot of people they can't have what they want. If facial recognition tech results in oppression, we need to understand how.
- maxxxxx 8y agoI get your point.
- Steltek 8y agoI'm sure they exist but could you name some civil rights movements that did not feature violence from one or both sides? Your point seems to be that "all things end" but that's true of anything. It took hundreds of years and massive two world wars for Britain to be weak enough to give up its self image of being an empire and emancipate its other colonies. Edit: Answered my own question, to some extent. Relative to even recent human history, gay marriage has gotten along pretty well. Not bloodlessly but nothing like the 1960's lynching of rights workers.
- vinceguidry 8y agoIt's a question of how much violence. All dispute resolutions involve some form of it, telling one person they're not going to get what they want is absolutely a form of violence. But the violence needs to be managed, legible, and appropriate. Slavery regimes are best eliminated through compensation of the owners. The progress difference between the Dominican Republic and Haiti is directly attributable to the fact that while the Dominican Republic saw a managed transition away from slavery, Haiti saw the entire economy crumble in a revolution modeled after the French one. It's where you start thinking "this needs to be solved, right now," that leads to senseless, irrational violence. Hang back, spend some time understanding the problem, its economics, its politics. Take action to remove the worst excesses and slowly dig the problem out in detail. There's way more historical examples of well-meaning zealotry causing more problems than it solves than there are examples of zealotry preventing bigger problems from coming to pass.