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> Now, if we have governments that punish people for being dissidents or engaging in victimless crimes, the answer is to fix the government and the laws, and no
by zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y ago
> Now, if we have governments that punish people for being dissidents or engaging in victimless crimes, the answer is to fix the government and the laws, and not to sneak around.
You might as well be saying that instead of having democracy and elections, the answer is to fix the government and the laws.
You are putting the cart before the horse here: Sufficiently powerful individuals are the precondition for fixing the government and the laws. And that doesn't change once all the governments and laws are fixed: Criminals will continue to try and corrupt the government and the law. If you have too much power concentrated in one spot, be it a dictator or surveillance agencies, that is the spot that criminals will try to manipulate/use to their advantage, and only sufficient independent real power of individuals (that is: power that can not be made to disappear by a simple decision of someone trying to subvert the system) can possibly keep that in check.
The dream of the benevolent dictator, in some form or an other, seems to be irresistible--but if we want human rights to stay, we have to overcome that urge. Benevolent dictators are not a thing, and every attempt to build one so far has led to disaster.
- EGreg 7y agoPerhaps it is the opposite — we would gradually replace all functions of government with technology :) We already have, to a large extent. The post office. Printing and letters patent and many kinds of licenses. Many kinds of clerks. And so on.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y agoHow does that change anything? If you have a dictator control a thousand computers or a thousand humans, the result is that the dictator has the power. The post office is obviously not a central component of the government, it simply was operated by the government in the past because it was useful to have as a basic service to serve the economy.
- EGreg 7y agoWe can have voting on a merkle tree, each person gets exactly one token. If they lose it they can recover it with friends etc. We can automate safety nets and payouts using technology, and calculate the consumer price index. We could have direct democracy or each person could select their delegate. We can start on a local community level.
- zAy0LfpBZLC8mAC 7y agoWhich sounds like you are saying that we should strengthen individual power ... so how is that the opposite of anything I said?
- EGreg 7y agoWe may have misunderstood each other. I agree we should empower individuals in general, and try to defuse centralization of power. And I thought by powerful individuals you meant people in the government or some rival organizations. I began talking about recording interactions, though, being potentially a very good thing.