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I like that there is a logic and consistency to this "hyper-capitalist" approach, but the founders could not have had internet platforms in mind when they wrote

I like that there is a logic and consistency to this "hyper-capitalist" approach, but the founders could not have had internet platforms in mind when they wrote the rules. Back when the country was 10,000x smaller, then yes, meeting in person at the equivalent of a mall would empower a group enough to keep the authorities worried. But now? Could anything like the umbrella movement in Hong Kong happen without the organizing power of social media?

SllX 7y ago
There is a lot that the founders didn’t account for from the cotton gin forward, but they inherited one of the most flexible legal systems in the world and even made some improvements upon it. The nice thing about the common law is that it adapts over time. The nice thing about a republic is that your legal system no longer depends on a King and in the absence of even a President, society will still tick forward with the rules of the road well understood, and human ingenuity can still flourish in these conditions. And the nice thing about capitalism, really just free markets, is that as a byproduct of human ingenuity, you tend to see an increase in the number of choices available to you over time, and the quality of those choices will tend to increase over time even as the price decreases over time. You can choose where to socialize. You can choose who to socialize with. You can choose what to socialize around. If we ever get to the point where we would want something like the umbrella movement to happen here, then we have far bigger problems than whether that could or could not happen without the assistance of certain social networks. Also if I recall correctly, the HK protest movement actually made use of obscure social media tools as mainstream tools became unavailable or inconvenient and built tools of their own to carry out the movement, or repurposed existing tools which never had the purpose of supporting the movement. You know, good old fashioned human ingenuity.

SllX 7y ago

There is a lot that the founders didn’t account for from the cotton gin forward, but they inherited one of the most flexible legal systems in the world and even made some improvements upon it. The nice thing about the common law is that it adapts over time. The nice thing about a republic is that your legal system no longer depends on a King and in the absence of even a President, society will still tick forward with the rules of the road well understood, and human ingenuity can still flourish in these conditions. And the nice thing about capitalism, really just free markets, is that as a byproduct of human ingenuity, you tend to see an increase in the number of choices available to you over time, and the quality of those choices will tend to increase over time even as the price decreases over time. You can choose where to socialize. You can choose who to socialize with. You can choose what to socialize around. If we ever get to the point where we would want something like the umbrella movement to happen here, then we have far bigger problems than whether that could or could not happen without the assistance of certain social networks. Also if I recall correctly, the HK protest movement actually made use of obscure social media tools as mainstream tools became unavailable or inconvenient and built tools of their own to carry out the movement, or repurposed existing tools which never had the purpose of supporting the movement. You know, good old fashioned human ingenuity.