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> until we have a federal government that is no longer slavish prostituted to business interests If you lend an ear to some contemporary ideas about how techno

> until we have a federal government that is no longer slavish prostituted to business interests If you lend an ear to some contemporary ideas about how technology changes our societies, there might be a chance we will see this happening in our life times. Current government models, democratic and authoritarian alike, seem to grow ever less capable of coping with technology and how it reshapes society. Yuval Noah Harari has a section devoted to it in Homo Deus. I suppose Angela Merkel's famous "Das Internet ist für uns Neuland." [1] (engl. "The Internet is uncharted territory for us.") shows off just how overwhelmed even G7 economies are with a technology that became common 30 years ago. We generate tons of information which is barely translated to knowledge, especially if you leave out ad tech. [1] http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/merkel-neuland-gaff-elicits-ridicule-and-goes-viral-on-twitter-a-906859.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/merkel-neuland-g...

ralusek 8y ago
> democratic and authoritarian alike Those aren't opposites, they are entirely different concepts. Any law that mandates behavior is authoritarian, which is not inherently good or bad. Are democracies incapable of producing such laws? Criminalizing murder is authoritarian, for example, but unobjectionably desirable. Freedom of speech is actively anti-authoritarian, as an alternative, as it is a restriction placed on the state.
- sls 8y ago
  Democracy and authoritarianism are both forms of government, and that is the sense of the words being used in the sentence ("Current government models, democratic and authoritarian alike, …"). You've chosen to reinterpret one of them as an adjective unconnected to the thing it describes (government models) and then criticized the parent for a category error.
smacktoward 8y ago
At least Merkel has a sense of humor about it: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/06/europe/angela-merkel-shitstorm-scli-intl-grm/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/06/europe/angela-merkel-shit... :-D

ralusek 8y ago

> democratic and authoritarian alike Those aren't opposites, they are entirely different concepts. Any law that mandates behavior is authoritarian, which is not inherently good or bad. Are democracies incapable of producing such laws? Criminalizing murder is authoritarian, for example, but unobjectionably desirable. Freedom of speech is actively anti-authoritarian, as an alternative, as it is a restriction placed on the state.

sls 8y ago
Democracy and authoritarianism are both forms of government, and that is the sense of the words being used in the sentence ("Current government models, democratic and authoritarian alike, …"). You've chosen to reinterpret one of them as an adjective unconnected to the thing it describes (government models) and then criticized the parent for a category error.

smacktoward 8y ago

At least Merkel has a sense of humor about it: https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/06/europe/angela-merkel-shitstorm-scli-intl-grm/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/06/europe/angela-merkel-shit... :-D