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> At one point in time, we put a much greater emphasis on integrity and telling the truth When was this? The Victorian era, with its literal snake oil, yellow

> At one point in time, we put a much greater emphasis on integrity and telling the truth When was this? The Victorian era, with its literal snake oil, yellow journalism, adulterated food (e.g. chalk in bread), etc? The era when "all men were created equal", despite there being slavery? When was this era of great integrity?

HiloHorse 8y ago
The FCC fairness doctrine It used to be that the news media was required to be honest, equitable, and balanced. This doctrine has been repealed.
- CamperBob2 8y ago
  No, in addition to being blatantly unconstitutional, the Fairness Doctrine wasn't even a valid solution to the problem. These days we have an entire news network dedicated to being "fair and balanced," don't we? How's that working out for us? There are more than two sides to every worthwhile argument, and it's not the government's place to decide which voices require equal time to rebut. Furthermore, "Congress shall make no law" means just that, until it's repealed or further amended.
salawat 8y ago
Fine. Let's go ahead and assume that we have as much if not more integrity now than ever before. Is the point we're at peak virtue? Peak integrity? I don't think so. We're connected better than we've ever been before informationally, yet we find now that somehow, magically, every institution that's been put in place to get us where we are is insufficient. Schools don't provide children with a quality education (cheaply enough). The police are too prone to abuse (or not effective enpugh). Our legal system is completely stratified in it's capability to process cases (the poor take plea deals when they can't afford to fight, but corporations never seem to be able to be pinned down as having done anything wrong). Government officials can be felons, who can't even vote (Yet it seems like the number of felonies that can be committed increases every year). Our infrastructure falls apart and starts major fires under private management (Yet public management is out of the question because it is unfair competition). Everything we've got now got us where we are, yet it never seems to be enough to even continue to tread water. Why? W/o what have we lost? What are we not doing? The world has changed. Understood. Yet we're clearly in a state where there is no unified sense of direction. Talking with people, if you can manage to get past small talk, renders an image of a country that can't trust itself. I can't accept that our present day is functional. Even if the integrity I imagine of the past wasn't there, that lack of integrity was appropriate for the time and managed to stay low key enough to maintain some semblance of equilibrium with the environment. Now, the differences in the observable outcomes of events in the world seem to be becoming more and more polarized. The low hanging fruit has been picked, and all that's left is issues that seemingly can only be resolved by the application of overwhelming, global scoped decree. We're backed into a starting point from which change must happen that has been 200 years in the making, that has apparently blossomed into a historo-legal structure that takes longer than a human lifespan to parse. So we're stuck at an impasse. Either every decision up to now was right, and every axiom (be it statute, or legal precedent) built into our government is right, in which case every move we want to make from here is moot. We're already perfect. Or... Bad decisions were made, history stands as an example of what not to repeat, and we should be free to remold things such that an effective governance is reachieved and a more stable foundation from which we all can build our lives, and collective society into something as great to us as where we are now is to our forebearers. So what is it? Are we peak human, or just a bunch of people trying to make a world worth living in? I honestly can't tell anymore, but I can't accept we've hit the zenith. A local one maybe, but not an absolute by far.

HiloHorse 8y ago

The FCC fairness doctrine It used to be that the news media was required to be honest, equitable, and balanced. This doctrine has been repealed.

CamperBob2 8y ago
No, in addition to being blatantly unconstitutional, the Fairness Doctrine wasn't even a valid solution to the problem. These days we have an entire news network dedicated to being "fair and balanced," don't we? How's that working out for us? There are more than two sides to every worthwhile argument, and it's not the government's place to decide which voices require equal time to rebut. Furthermore, "Congress shall make no law" means just that, until it's repealed or further amended.

salawat 8y ago

Fine. Let's go ahead and assume that we have as much if not more integrity now than ever before. Is the point we're at peak virtue? Peak integrity? I don't think so. We're connected better than we've ever been before informationally, yet we find now that somehow, magically, every institution that's been put in place to get us where we are is insufficient. Schools don't provide children with a quality education (cheaply enough). The police are too prone to abuse (or not effective enpugh). Our legal system is completely stratified in it's capability to process cases (the poor take plea deals when they can't afford to fight, but corporations never seem to be able to be pinned down as having done anything wrong). Government officials can be felons, who can't even vote (Yet it seems like the number of felonies that can be committed increases every year). Our infrastructure falls apart and starts major fires under private management (Yet public management is out of the question because it is unfair competition). Everything we've got now got us where we are, yet it never seems to be enough to even continue to tread water. Why? W/o what have we lost? What are we not doing? The world has changed. Understood. Yet we're clearly in a state where there is no unified sense of direction. Talking with people, if you can manage to get past small talk, renders an image of a country that can't trust itself. I can't accept that our present day is functional. Even if the integrity I imagine of the past wasn't there, that lack of integrity was appropriate for the time and managed to stay low key enough to maintain some semblance of equilibrium with the environment. Now, the differences in the observable outcomes of events in the world seem to be becoming more and more polarized. The low hanging fruit has been picked, and all that's left is issues that seemingly can only be resolved by the application of overwhelming, global scoped decree. We're backed into a starting point from which change must happen that has been 200 years in the making, that has apparently blossomed into a historo-legal structure that takes longer than a human lifespan to parse. So we're stuck at an impasse. Either every decision up to now was right, and every axiom (be it statute, or legal precedent) built into our government is right, in which case every move we want to make from here is moot. We're already perfect. Or... Bad decisions were made, history stands as an example of what not to repeat, and we should be free to remold things such that an effective governance is reachieved and a more stable foundation from which we all can build our lives, and collective society into something as great to us as where we are now is to our forebearers. So what is it? Are we peak human, or just a bunch of people trying to make a world worth living in? I honestly can't tell anymore, but I can't accept we've hit the zenith. A local one maybe, but not an absolute by far.