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> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things eas

by akie 7y ago

> In America, we understand that there is absolutely nothing more dangerous than an entity that feels entitled to control what is true. It might make things easier, and it might actually produce better results so long as the entity doing so is competent and benevolent, but nearly every structure in America is meant to serve as a bulwark for the cases in which the entity in power is precisely the sort that you do not want to be making those decisions. And to be frank, Europe should probably be more wary of that. This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. You philosophize on basis of the assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized decision making. That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News. How does your system deal with that then? Not very well, it seems. Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts and your CEO might have to go to jail"? What you don't seem to take into account in your comment is that centralized bodies can protect the weak from the powerful. If you only have decentralized entities, it's survival of the fittest – which is a nice way of saying that the weakest get eaten or die. I don't want to live in a society that has these values.

ralusek 7y ago
Trump has been able to do very little, and this is a good thing. However, what he has done is effectively demonstrate that the executive branch has too much centralized power, not too little. In regards to whether or not it would be great if we had a powerful centralized body that could determine what constitute outrageous lies worthy of a fine, no, for the reasons I've already stated, I do not think that this would be a good thing. I have no problem with European and Asian countries granting their (very often highly competent) governments greater authorities than what is afforded to the US government, but I think it's supremely important that there remains at least one superpower fundamentally predicated on a mistrust of a central authority.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- shkkmo 7y ago
  Trump has accomplished much more than you think he has. He has done a good job of using controversy to divert people from a great deal of the significant changes he has made via executive authority to the various government agencies under his control.
Yessing 7y ago
I mean his arguments is the basis of the the separation of powers. It's only American insofar as American democracy was inspired in it's founding by the enlightenment thinkers.
brigandish 7y ago
> That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. It's based in European, and more specifically, British Enlightenment thinking, the apotheosis of which (with regard to freedom of speech) is On Liberty[0] by John Stuart Mill, an Englishman. To quote: > THE TIME, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be specially insisted on in this place. It appears his hopes would bring disappointment were he still around. [0] Chapter II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion https://www.bartleby.com/130/2.html https://www.bartleby.com/130/2.html ---- Edit: Fixing markup. If anyone knows of a document describing the markup rules, please let me know, it would save me an awful lot of edits ;-)
- toxik 7y ago
  This to me seems not far from ayatollahs quoting scripture to justify their positions and policies. Surely thought has progressed in the last two hundred years?
  - kortilla 7y ago
    > Surely thought has progressed in the last two hundred years? Nope, that’s not how it works. People consistently keep retrying ideas for government and economics over and over because they get tempted by promises while ignoring history because “this time it’s different”.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      "This time it's different" was exactly the answer the liberals gave when propounding their system. It is also the answer mathematicians gave every time they tried to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Contrary to popular belief, "this time it's different" is a very good way to go about progress, so long as there is good theoretical reason to believe there could be a difference in application.
sterlind 7y ago
Would this centralized body extend to regulating bloggers and YouTube personalities? It's tricky to draw a line based on scope - influencers and personalities will grow ever more popular, and conspiracy rabbitholes will only grow more decentralized. How would you deal with foreign media that violates the laws? You'd either have to permit them - which opens up the country to foreign meddling, since they can and have spread propaganda - or sanction/block them, like Russia and China (and Australia.) Also, suppose despite your best efforts, Trump still gets into the White House. He's installed loyal yes-men in many departments already - if they defy him, they'll resign under pressure or be fired. He'd easily gut this Ministry of Truth and weaponize it to quash CNN/NYT or even climate scientists. I'm quite on the left and not averse to regulation or centralization, but it's wishful thinking to assume this "powerful centralized body" is going to do the right thing. See, for example, the use of corruption taskforces in many countries to purge political rivals or even honest bureaucrats who won't take your bribes. Corruption should be illegal, allegations should be investigated but things can go very wrong and these checks perverted against their intended function.
- sjy 7y ago
  Media regulations do exist, and are more robust outside the United States. Usually the answer to your question about bloggers and YouTube personalities is that they are ignored by the regulators of the professional media, but may attract police attention in extreme cases under anti-vilification laws that would likely be unconstitutional in the U.S., eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meechan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meechan (UK), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Cottrell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Cottrell (AU). I don't see the problem with subjecting foreign media to the same or even stricter laws. Yes, it's difficult to enforce the law against foreign nations, especially your friends, so enforcement often doesn't happen. That doesn't mean that foreign meddling ought to be made legal, which would be a step backwards in view of laws like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countering_Foreign_Propaganda_and_Disinformation_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countering_Foreign_Propaganda_....
madaxe_again 7y ago
> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body No. It wouldn’t. When that kind of power (arbiter of truth) is placed in a single point, that point will become the highly contested point of control. Eventually, inevitably, the body would end up turned to some ruthless power of the day, and would serve as the most phenomenal propaganda machine. “The Ministry of Truth is pleased to announce that bootlace production is up a thousandfold this quarter, due to the heroic efforts of the King. You may now cheer.” Total decentralisation is the only sane route - you build a bulwark out of billions of human minds, and you build inertia into your system such that emotional volatility led by events or propaganda efforts is smoothed out. This is basically the concept of democracy and electoral cycles - group consensus on what reality is and how it should be responded to, with a temporal buffer (the election cycle length) to smooth out rash decisions. Our systems need amendment to better smooth our inherent volatility, which has been provoked by our exponentially growing sphere of information - but this can’t come at the cost of handing control over something as fundamental as the idea of truth to some technocratic committee. That’s how you end up with gulags. Edit/addendum: Further musing on temporal smoothing of volatile and labile humanity led me to recall the idea of Concents in Anathem - groups are sequestered away for a year, a decade, a century, or a millennium, and are allowed only at those intervals to interact with the outside world. This monkish dedication to record preservation minimises informatic drift within the group, and provides a continual negative feedback factor to the unstable curve of truth, thus preventing the rewrite of the past, and therefore the present and future.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Ok, so a centralized system is as smart as the people working in the Ministry of Truth, but also creates a highly contested point of control. It's not guaranteed that it'll be smart, but ideally it can get as smart as possible for human beings. A decentralized system is not controllable directly, but can only be as smart as the mean of the population[0]. Also, it also has a mechanism of control - propaganda. It's not all that effective, because you can have competing groups countering one another, but the side effects of that are relevant here: people take sides and reason by soundbites, while facts and critical thought get crowded out. Which means the more competing propagandists you have, the dumber the system becomes, even if all propaganda attempts cancel each other out. So, on one hand you have a system with a very good quality ceiling but easy to manipulate; on the other hand, you have a system more resistant to direct manipulation, but consequently with a much lower ceiling that that also goes monotonically down as attempts to manipulate the system increase. Or, in other words: good results with high risk of bad results, vs. consistently shitty results. Can't we do better? Are we doomed to choose between only those two? -- [0] - Assuming a normal distribution, by the central limit theorem. If that doesn't hold, things could get even worse.
chr1 7y ago
Why do you think the centralized body would say that to fox and not to cnn? After all if there are about 50% people thinking that fox spreads lies and 50% people thinking cnn spreads lies the decision of centralized body could go any way. It is better to let everyone speak and everyone to make their own decisions
- navigatesol 7y ago
  One of the great ironies of the state of media in America: almost everyone agrees that Fox News is extermely biased and sometimes dishonest. Yet CNN, ABC, CBS, NYT and MSNBC are bastions of truth. I mean, just a few weeks ago ABC posted a video from a Kentucky range and claimed it was fighting in Syria[0]. Is that simply horrible journalism, or a lie? [0] https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/media/abc-news-error-video/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/media/abc-news-error-video/in...
  - galangalalgol 7y ago
    I think you may be in an echo chamber. Most of my coworkers watch fox news. Its even playing on tvs at work in the hallways and cafeteria. People chat about their latest dose of truth and the outrageous lies of cnn etc. I listen to npr on the way home to get the sam facts in a different light/bias and then resolve to ignore everything but local races. I wish high offices were still elected by lower offices down to the lowest of offices where all the voters actually know the people they are choosing between.
    - pattrn 7y ago
      Not sure if you're referencing the constitution's original intent for state legislatures to elect senators. If you are, here's a good reference for anyone interested in the topic: https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Direct_Election_Senators.htm https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing...
  - kazagistar 7y ago
    People who pay attention know that fox news is fine and sticks to the truth (perhaps a selective truth, but still truth). It's the editorial panels that run around it and look like news that are a pile of made up lies.
Hermel 7y ago
> Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News. Have you ever considered the option that you might be the one who is disinformed? European media have a tendency to "group-think" and to extrapolate certain narratives to the extreme. For example, I observe that even reputable German news outlets like "Der Spiegel" put a negative spin on every single story about Trump. My guess would be that the Danish media is simiarly biased given your views. And apparently, your laws did not prevent that from happening.
- grego 7y ago
  Well, if you read factcheck.org or any other fact checker, or just read transcripts of Trumps speeches you can see that the negative spin is usually there for a reason.
kmlx 7y ago
> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body No. And i'm from Europe, the supreme "nanny state".
- bjelkeman-again 7y ago
  And Europe isn’t “one” thing. Finland works quite differently than Greece. I am very happy where I am in Europe.
lr4444lr 7y ago
We do have libel and slander laws, you know.
- IX-103 7y ago
  Yes but that only works if they say something bad about someone or something. If they only tell positive lies or completely make up things it's hard for anyone to prove standing, much less show damages. But it still has a negative effect on public discourse. It's like information pollution.
Xelbair 7y ago
>>> This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. You philosophize on basis of the assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized decision making. This should be basic assumption of the all laws. Remember early 20th century and legal takeovers of governments by warmongering maniacs in Europe? It was legal, there was trust toward government. All it took was a single group to take over Germany and start WW2. Even if no one will abuse the law currently, you have absolutely no guarantees(as democracy is popularity contest) that no one will try to abuse them in future. >> That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. Not really, it is very prevalent in Europe too - especially Eastern Europe which suffered under Russian communist occupation. Mostly because it was the case in those countries - the populace still remembers government actively working against people. >> Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News. >>> How does your system deal with that then? Not very well, it seems. It works perfectly... for those in power. From citizens perspective it is a nightmare. >> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts and your CEO might have to go to jail"? What prevents this centralized body from making politically motivated decisions? If we go to the extremes we have examples in history - heresy trials, censors in communist Russia, and even current example - China. One could argue for centralized body of such power in only a single case - system transition by force with benevolent ruler that will dissolve itself after transition. Good Luck with that.
- sjy 7y ago
  > What prevents this centralized body from making politically motivated decisions? An established institutional culture of apolitical service, reinforced by respect for those who uphold it and consequences for those who violate it. The kind of thing that the U.S. still expects of its military, judiciary and public service, and the kind of thing that is corroded by political leaders showing contempt for it.
kortilla 7y ago
> This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. Calm down. This isn’t productive to discussion. > that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person For being the most powerful person, he doesn’t get much done and is in the process of potentially being impeached. Sounds like an argument in favor of the checks and balances and an argument in favor of less power being concentrated at the federal level in general. > publicly broken all the norms and all the rules Publicly broken “all the rules”, really? Methinks you’ve been drinking some koolaid. > Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies Absolutely not. A ministry of truth that dictates what people say and answers only to politicians is about the worst and least imaginative solution to the problem. > What you don't seem to take into account in your comment is that centralized bodies can protect the weak from the powerful. If you only have decentralized entities, it's survival of the fittest False dichotomy. State-level governments in the US are very capable of handling many of the responsibilities that have amassed at the federal level. If you think more centralization is better, why not have a single world government that decides what is true? The government choosing what is true is working pretty well for China, why don’t we just let them take over control?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- dhimes 7y ago
  I'm sorry this comment is being downvoted so hard. I think it's excellent, apart from the "koolaid" bit.
lr4444lr 7y ago
Ask the Uighurs in China how well a centralized authority is "protecting" their speech and beliefs as a minority.
matwood 7y ago
The problem is that a centralized body immediately becomes too powerful. The body itself would need to be limited in scope with other outside checks and balances. SCOTUS is close to one of these centralized bodies you speak of, and they purposely only deal with cases that have gone through every other avenue. And even then, they are not trying to determine truth, but only fit the verdict within the existing body of law. I would prefer less decisions being decided in this manner.
- kazagistar 7y ago
  I prefer giving power no secrecy to hide behind and limiting it by democratic control. I dont know why the assumption is always that a central power has to be some opaque inscrutable beurocracy.
  - ralusek 7y ago
    I don't know why the assumption is always that a democracy is incapable of tyranny. Gay marriage had been illegal for most of our modern democracies' histories under the tyranny of democracies. Prostitution and drug usage are currently illegal under the tyranny of democracies. In England the manner in which you discuss large scale immigration or transgender issues, or what pornography is acceptable to watch is subject to review under the tyranny of democracy.
jeegsy 7y ago
I strongly prefer what we have now to the authoritarian "society" you have described. It sends shivers down my spine to think that there are westerners advocating such things. You can always move to China, they have everything you sound like you want
wuliwong 7y ago
> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts and your CEO might have to go to jail"? no.
naasking 7y ago
> You philosophize on basis of the assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized decision making. That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. Literally every government and civilization in the history of the world has eventually failed or been corrupted. Given this inevitability, how is it not better that citizens have protections against a failing government abusing that power? Avoiding centralization of power is one such protection. This is not an "American perspective", it's a simple conclusion reached after looking at history.
nidificate 7y ago
Is it easier to corrupt one institution or five?
- notSupplied 7y ago
  Looking at how fast the Republican Senate became supplicant to Trump, the separation did not turn out so "separate" after all due to the concentration of parties.

by akie 7y ago

ralusek 7y ago

Trump has been able to do very little, and this is a good thing. However, what he has done is effectively demonstrate that the executive branch has too much centralized power, not too little. In regards to whether or not it would be great if we had a powerful centralized body that could determine what constitute outrageous lies worthy of a fine, no, for the reasons I've already stated, I do not think that this would be a good thing. I have no problem with European and Asian countries granting their (very often highly competent) governments greater authorities than what is afforded to the US government, but I think it's supremely important that there remains at least one superpower fundamentally predicated on a mistrust of a central authority.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
shkkmo 7y ago
Trump has accomplished much more than you think he has. He has done a good job of using controversy to divert people from a great deal of the significant changes he has made via executive authority to the various government agencies under his control.

Yessing 7y ago

I mean his arguments is the basis of the the separation of powers. It's only American insofar as American democracy was inspired in it's founding by the enlightenment thinkers.

brigandish 7y ago

> That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. It's based in European, and more specifically, British Enlightenment thinking, the apotheosis of which (with regard to freedom of speech) is On Liberty[0] by John Stuart Mill, an Englishman. To quote: > THE TIME, it is to be hoped, is gone by, when any defence would be necessary of the "liberty of the press" as one of the securities against corrupt or tyrannical government. No argument, we may suppose, can now be needed, against permitting a legislature or an executive, not identified in interest with the people, to prescribe opinions to them, and determine what doctrines or what arguments they shall be allowed to hear. This aspect of the question, besides, has been so often and so triumphantly enforced by preceding writers, that it needs not be specially insisted on in this place. It appears his hopes would bring disappointment were he still around. [0] Chapter II: Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion https://www.bartleby.com/130/2.html https://www.bartleby.com/130/2.html ---- Edit: Fixing markup. If anyone knows of a document describing the markup rules, please let me know, it would save me an awful lot of edits ;-)

toxik 7y ago
This to me seems not far from ayatollahs quoting scripture to justify their positions and policies. Surely thought has progressed in the last two hundred years?
- kortilla 7y ago
  > Surely thought has progressed in the last two hundred years? Nope, that’s not how it works. People consistently keep retrying ideas for government and economics over and over because they get tempted by promises while ignoring history because “this time it’s different”.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    "This time it's different" was exactly the answer the liberals gave when propounding their system. It is also the answer mathematicians gave every time they tried to prove Fermat's Last Theorem. Contrary to popular belief, "this time it's different" is a very good way to go about progress, so long as there is good theoretical reason to believe there could be a difference in application.

sterlind 7y ago

Would this centralized body extend to regulating bloggers and YouTube personalities? It's tricky to draw a line based on scope - influencers and personalities will grow ever more popular, and conspiracy rabbitholes will only grow more decentralized. How would you deal with foreign media that violates the laws? You'd either have to permit them - which opens up the country to foreign meddling, since they can and have spread propaganda - or sanction/block them, like Russia and China (and Australia.) Also, suppose despite your best efforts, Trump still gets into the White House. He's installed loyal yes-men in many departments already - if they defy him, they'll resign under pressure or be fired. He'd easily gut this Ministry of Truth and weaponize it to quash CNN/NYT or even climate scientists. I'm quite on the left and not averse to regulation or centralization, but it's wishful thinking to assume this "powerful centralized body" is going to do the right thing. See, for example, the use of corruption taskforces in many countries to purge political rivals or even honest bureaucrats who won't take your bribes. Corruption should be illegal, allegations should be investigated but things can go very wrong and these checks perverted against their intended function.

sjy 7y ago
Media regulations do exist, and are more robust outside the United States. Usually the answer to your question about bloggers and YouTube personalities is that they are ignored by the regulators of the professional media, but may attract police attention in extreme cases under anti-vilification laws that would likely be unconstitutional in the U.S., eg. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meechan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Meechan (UK), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Cottrell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Cottrell (AU). I don't see the problem with subjecting foreign media to the same or even stricter laws. Yes, it's difficult to enforce the law against foreign nations, especially your friends, so enforcement often doesn't happen. That doesn't mean that foreign meddling ought to be made legal, which would be a step backwards in view of laws like the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countering_Foreign_Propaganda_and_Disinformation_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countering_Foreign_Propaganda_....

madaxe_again 7y ago

> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body No. It wouldn’t. When that kind of power (arbiter of truth) is placed in a single point, that point will become the highly contested point of control. Eventually, inevitably, the body would end up turned to some ruthless power of the day, and would serve as the most phenomenal propaganda machine. “The Ministry of Truth is pleased to announce that bootlace production is up a thousandfold this quarter, due to the heroic efforts of the King. You may now cheer.” Total decentralisation is the only sane route - you build a bulwark out of billions of human minds, and you build inertia into your system such that emotional volatility led by events or propaganda efforts is smoothed out. This is basically the concept of democracy and electoral cycles - group consensus on what reality is and how it should be responded to, with a temporal buffer (the election cycle length) to smooth out rash decisions. Our systems need amendment to better smooth our inherent volatility, which has been provoked by our exponentially growing sphere of information - but this can’t come at the cost of handing control over something as fundamental as the idea of truth to some technocratic committee. That’s how you end up with gulags. Edit/addendum: Further musing on temporal smoothing of volatile and labile humanity led me to recall the idea of Concents in Anathem - groups are sequestered away for a year, a decade, a century, or a millennium, and are allowed only at those intervals to interact with the outside world. This monkish dedication to record preservation minimises informatic drift within the group, and provides a continual negative feedback factor to the unstable curve of truth, thus preventing the rewrite of the past, and therefore the present and future.

TeMPOraL 7y ago
Ok, so a centralized system is as smart as the people working in the Ministry of Truth, but also creates a highly contested point of control. It's not guaranteed that it'll be smart, but ideally it can get as smart as possible for human beings. A decentralized system is not controllable directly, but can only be as smart as the mean of the population[0]. Also, it also has a mechanism of control - propaganda. It's not all that effective, because you can have competing groups countering one another, but the side effects of that are relevant here: people take sides and reason by soundbites, while facts and critical thought get crowded out. Which means the more competing propagandists you have, the dumber the system becomes, even if all propaganda attempts cancel each other out. So, on one hand you have a system with a very good quality ceiling but easy to manipulate; on the other hand, you have a system more resistant to direct manipulation, but consequently with a much lower ceiling that that also goes monotonically down as attempts to manipulate the system increase. Or, in other words: good results with high risk of bad results, vs. consistently shitty results. Can't we do better? Are we doomed to choose between only those two? -- [0] - Assuming a normal distribution, by the central limit theorem. If that doesn't hold, things could get even worse.

chr1 7y ago

Why do you think the centralized body would say that to fox and not to cnn? After all if there are about 50% people thinking that fox spreads lies and 50% people thinking cnn spreads lies the decision of centralized body could go any way. It is better to let everyone speak and everyone to make their own decisions

navigatesol 7y ago
One of the great ironies of the state of media in America: almost everyone agrees that Fox News is extermely biased and sometimes dishonest. Yet CNN, ABC, CBS, NYT and MSNBC are bastions of truth. I mean, just a few weeks ago ABC posted a video from a Kentucky range and claimed it was fighting in Syria[0]. Is that simply horrible journalism, or a lie? [0] https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/media/abc-news-error-video/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/15/media/abc-news-error-video/in...
- galangalalgol 7y ago
  I think you may be in an echo chamber. Most of my coworkers watch fox news. Its even playing on tvs at work in the hallways and cafeteria. People chat about their latest dose of truth and the outrageous lies of cnn etc. I listen to npr on the way home to get the sam facts in a different light/bias and then resolve to ignore everything but local races. I wish high offices were still elected by lower offices down to the lowest of offices where all the voters actually know the people they are choosing between.
  - pattrn 7y ago
    Not sure if you're referencing the constitution's original intent for state legislatures to elect senators. If you are, here's a good reference for anyone interested in the topic: https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Direct_Election_Senators.htm https://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing...
- kazagistar 7y ago
  People who pay attention know that fox news is fine and sticks to the truth (perhaps a selective truth, but still truth). It's the editorial panels that run around it and look like news that are a pile of made up lies.

Hermel 7y ago

> Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News. Have you ever considered the option that you might be the one who is disinformed? European media have a tendency to "group-think" and to extrapolate certain narratives to the extreme. For example, I observe that even reputable German news outlets like "Der Spiegel" put a negative spin on every single story about Trump. My guess would be that the Danish media is simiarly biased given your views. And apparently, your laws did not prevent that from happening.

grego 7y ago
Well, if you read factcheck.org or any other fact checker, or just read transcripts of Trumps speeches you can see that the negative spin is usually there for a reason.

kmlx 7y ago

> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body No. And i'm from Europe, the supreme "nanny state".

bjelkeman-again 7y ago
And Europe isn’t “one” thing. Finland works quite differently than Greece. I am very happy where I am in Europe.

lr4444lr 7y ago

We do have libel and slander laws, you know.

IX-103 7y ago
Yes but that only works if they say something bad about someone or something. If they only tell positive lies or completely make up things it's hard for anyone to prove standing, much less show damages. But it still has a negative effect on public discourse. It's like information pollution.

Xelbair 7y ago

>>> This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. You philosophize on basis of the assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized decision making. This should be basic assumption of the all laws. Remember early 20th century and legal takeovers of governments by warmongering maniacs in Europe? It was legal, there was trust toward government. All it took was a single group to take over Germany and start WW2. Even if no one will abuse the law currently, you have absolutely no guarantees(as democracy is popularity contest) that no one will try to abuse them in future. >> That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. Not really, it is very prevalent in Europe too - especially Eastern Europe which suffered under Russian communist occupation. Mostly because it was the case in those countries - the populace still remembers government actively working against people. >> Despite the good intentions behind the decentralization of power and the checks and balances that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person has blatantly and publicly broken all the norms and all the rules, who regularly and repeatedly tells the most outrageous lies, and where a very large amount of people stand behind him nevertheless because of large scale & organized disinformation campaigns by the likes of (decentralized) propaganda entities like Fox News. >>> How does your system deal with that then? Not very well, it seems. It works perfectly... for those in power. From citizens perspective it is a nightmare. >> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts and your CEO might have to go to jail"? What prevents this centralized body from making politically motivated decisions? If we go to the extremes we have examples in history - heresy trials, censors in communist Russia, and even current example - China. One could argue for centralized body of such power in only a single case - system transition by force with benevolent ruler that will dissolve itself after transition. Good Luck with that.

sjy 7y ago
> What prevents this centralized body from making politically motivated decisions? An established institutional culture of apolitical service, reinforced by respect for those who uphold it and consequences for those who violate it. The kind of thing that the U.S. still expects of its military, judiciary and public service, and the kind of thing that is corroded by political leaders showing contempt for it.

kortilla 7y ago

> This is such blatant and obvious nonsense. Calm down. This isn’t productive to discussion. > that have been built into your system, you have ended up with a nation where the most powerful person For being the most powerful person, he doesn’t get much done and is in the process of potentially being impeached. Sounds like an argument in favor of the checks and balances and an argument in favor of less power being concentrated at the federal level in general. > publicly broken all the norms and all the rules Publicly broken “all the rules”, really? Methinks you’ve been drinking some koolaid. > Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies Absolutely not. A ministry of truth that dictates what people say and answers only to politicians is about the worst and least imaginative solution to the problem. > What you don't seem to take into account in your comment is that centralized bodies can protect the weak from the powerful. If you only have decentralized entities, it's survival of the fittest False dichotomy. State-level governments in the US are very capable of handling many of the responsibilities that have amassed at the federal level. If you think more centralization is better, why not have a single world government that decides what is true? The government choosing what is true is working pretty well for China, why don’t we just let them take over control?

deleted 7y ago
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dhimes 7y ago
I'm sorry this comment is being downvoted so hard. I think it's excellent, apart from the "koolaid" bit.

lr4444lr 7y ago

Ask the Uighurs in China how well a centralized authority is "protecting" their speech and beliefs as a minority.

matwood 7y ago

The problem is that a centralized body immediately becomes too powerful. The body itself would need to be limited in scope with other outside checks and balances. SCOTUS is close to one of these centralized bodies you speak of, and they purposely only deal with cases that have gone through every other avenue. And even then, they are not trying to determine truth, but only fit the verdict within the existing body of law. I would prefer less decisions being decided in this manner.

kazagistar 7y ago
I prefer giving power no secrecy to hide behind and limiting it by democratic control. I dont know why the assumption is always that a central power has to be some opaque inscrutable beurocracy.
- ralusek 7y ago
  I don't know why the assumption is always that a democracy is incapable of tyranny. Gay marriage had been illegal for most of our modern democracies' histories under the tyranny of democracies. Prostitution and drug usage are currently illegal under the tyranny of democracies. In England the manner in which you discuss large scale immigration or transgender issues, or what pornography is acceptable to watch is subject to review under the tyranny of democracy.

jeegsy 7y ago

I strongly prefer what we have now to the authoritarian "society" you have described. It sends shivers down my spine to think that there are westerners advocating such things. You can always move to China, they have everything you sound like you want

wuliwong 7y ago

> Wouldn't it be great if you would have a powerful centralized body that can say "Ehm, you guys keep on telling outrageous lies, we're going to forbid it and if you keep in doing it you'll be slapped with a fine that really hurts and your CEO might have to go to jail"? no.

naasking 7y ago

> You philosophize on basis of the assumption that central authorities ('government') by definition cannot be trusted, and we should therefore be wary of anything that reeks of centralized decision making. That is a supremely American way of looking at the world. Literally every government and civilization in the history of the world has eventually failed or been corrupted. Given this inevitability, how is it not better that citizens have protections against a failing government abusing that power? Avoiding centralization of power is one such protection. This is not an "American perspective", it's a simple conclusion reached after looking at history.

nidificate 7y ago

Is it easier to corrupt one institution or five?

notSupplied 7y ago
Looking at how fast the Republican Senate became supplicant to Trump, the separation did not turn out so "separate" after all due to the concentration of parties.