18 ms·

Is it even possible to win this battle? Things like this keep coming up year after year, whittling down opposition; then once in place, it is 10x as hard to ove

Is it even possible to win this battle? Things like this keep coming up year after year, whittling down opposition; then once in place, it is 10x as hard to overturn, aka effectively impossible. I feel as though the only thing we can do is dig in simply to delay the inevitable.

hedberg10 6y ago
No. Pick up the can, citizen.
- bilegeek 6y ago
  "initiate accelerated backhop..." But in all seriousness, I unfortunately agree.
- blackrock 6y ago
  Repeat after me. We are a nation of laws. This is the will of the people.
RpFLCL 6y ago
I often wonder if it's possible to encourage lawmakers to pass laws in the opposite direction. I.e., to instead pass laws that guarantee the right of citizens to share information, make content, etc in ways that shall not be infringed. Laws that affirm freedom of expression and free speech in the digital space, instead of laws that increasingly punish common behavior in the name of copyright or "think of the children" type rhetoric. I don't have much experience in law so I don't know if something like this is even possible. Can laws only dictate punishments? Is it possible to use legislation to make encroachments of freedom harder, or does that require a constitutional amendment? Is it a question of financial lobbying power? Perhaps a more legally informed user could chime in about how feasible it is to push for legislation in the other direction.
- bilegeek 6y ago
  > Is it possible to use legislation to make encroachments of freedom harder, or does that require a constitutional amendment? This phrase just drags me into darkness. Things are so broken, that such legislation is impossible to imagine today. IANAL, but theoretically, yes, we have the ability to pass and enforce laws that would protect individual and societal rights. In practice, you would need a complete overhaul of both the rules and incentives of the current political system; however, such an overhaul would need a fair and just system to be here in the first place, otherwise it'll just entrench the authoritarianism and/or refuse to enforce the good parts, put in there only as platitudes. So, actually, no.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- gregatragenet3 6y ago
  It's very possible. Simply outspend the other side Disney et al on lobbying and campaign donations.
- ramphastidae 6y ago
  That’s called the Bill of Rights, and the entire point of the government (originally) was to protect the rights enshrined therein. Unfortunately that ideal was lost long ago and our legislators no longer operate in good faith. So asking them nicely to reform the system they so dutifully corrupted isn’t likely to do it.
  - markkanof 6y ago
    More specifically, the idea is that we as humans just have certain rights and the Bill of Rights is supposed to prevent the government from infringing in any way on those rights. It seems that many elected officials do not understand that or have realized that they can seemingly get away with things as there is no direct way for any of us to challenge them.
- frongpik 6y ago
  Restrictions and punishments always have concrete beneficiaries - dark, broken personalities with a blind lust for power and money. On the other hand, freedoms don't have concrete beneficiaries, so it takes a Lincoln-caliber person to advocate for them.
- tacocataco 6y ago
  "I often wonder if it's possible to encourage lawmakers to pass laws in the opposite direction" How can you encourage them to do anything when people "vote #color no matter who"? Our First Past the Post electoral system [1] encourages this blind tribalism. Attempting to vote outside of the two party system puts #otherside in power. Representatives have no incentive to be anything other than not the other political party. People are forced to vote against someone they don't want in office, rather than for someone they do want in office. (1) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
SkyMarshal 6y ago
The only way to stop it is to pass a law (or Constitutional Amendment) explicitly protecting the behavior being attacked. But if you're just continually on the defensive, then you will continue being attacked.
- dirtyoldmick 6y ago
  There is a whole amendment protecting firearms that the government has spent considerable time and money violating for at least the last 100 years. Amendments don't help as much as you would think.
- adamcstephens 6y ago
  I think you mean free speech, which is already in the constitution. If money is speech, so should sharing of content be.
gremlinsinc 6y ago
Yeah, run for office. If you're in a red state run as a Republican, blue state Democrat. All politicians lie, so just play their game, support the issues that will get you elected then stand up for what you really believe in when you get in. You may only make it one term, but at least things will change.
- coolgod 6y ago
  Can't believe this simple method hasn't been tried before.
  - vineyardmike 6y ago
    Trump kinda?
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      So we only need a small loan of a billion dollars to get started?
- anfilt 6y ago
  Running for election even at local levels is not cheap... Let alone federal offices. At least if you want to have any chance of winning
ktkoffroth 6y ago
We have the right to bear arms for a reason. Governments will eventually push citizens to a breaking point.
- thayne 6y ago
  But we no longer have the right to bear the same arms as the government. Obviously, gun control is complicated, and I'm not advocating that anyone should be able to buy military grade armaments, but at the same time, it does concern me that the citizens last resort against tyranny becomes less and less viable.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    When things actually come to this, I don’t expect US military to actually use its superior equipment to mow down the opposition en masse: you’d more likely see various factions in military take it out one upon another.
  - adventured 6y ago
    > But we no longer have the right to bear the same arms as the government. You hardly need it. You can see what guerrilla forces do to the standing army of a superpower, by looking at Iraq and Afghanistan. They can't stop it, its demoralizing, and even if the superpower kills at a 2 to 1 or greater ratio, the losses are considerable. And in this case that force would be domestic, so all the negative PR/image consequences are radically amplified (your army might kill at a 2 to 1 or 4 to 1 ratio, but every one of those citizens that you kill makes the general population hate you more and brings out more recruits for the opposition). The US has maybe 12 to 15 million functional, trained former soldiers, many of whom have been to war, they know everything the military knows, they have experience in every aspect of combat, and they have a vast number of arms and a hundred million sympathetic people behind them. It makes Afghanistan look like a cakewalk. A standing army trying that in the US would be butchered, they'd bleed like a stuck pig. And that's to say nothing of the vast internal sabotage and assassinations that would immediately begin to occur and would never cease; it would instantly split the military into factional pieces that would fight against eachother.
commandlinefan 6y ago
> Is it even possible to win this battle? Yes, but technologically, not legally. We need technology that's impossible for them to police. "The lesson here is that it is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics." -- Bruce Schneier
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
spopejoy 6y ago
> Is it even possible to win this battle? Things like this keep coming up year after year Most fights worth fighting are like this. Resistance doesn't guarantee success; indeed it usually loses. But that's no reason not to fight, and it makes you appreciate the precious wins when they do come. “The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you're going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins.” - IF Stone

hedberg10 6y ago

No. Pick up the can, citizen.

bilegeek 6y ago
"initiate accelerated backhop..." But in all seriousness, I unfortunately agree.
blackrock 6y ago
Repeat after me. We are a nation of laws. This is the will of the people.

RpFLCL 6y ago

I often wonder if it's possible to encourage lawmakers to pass laws in the opposite direction. I.e., to instead pass laws that guarantee the right of citizens to share information, make content, etc in ways that shall not be infringed. Laws that affirm freedom of expression and free speech in the digital space, instead of laws that increasingly punish common behavior in the name of copyright or "think of the children" type rhetoric. I don't have much experience in law so I don't know if something like this is even possible. Can laws only dictate punishments? Is it possible to use legislation to make encroachments of freedom harder, or does that require a constitutional amendment? Is it a question of financial lobbying power? Perhaps a more legally informed user could chime in about how feasible it is to push for legislation in the other direction.

bilegeek 6y ago
> Is it possible to use legislation to make encroachments of freedom harder, or does that require a constitutional amendment? This phrase just drags me into darkness. Things are so broken, that such legislation is impossible to imagine today. IANAL, but theoretically, yes, we have the ability to pass and enforce laws that would protect individual and societal rights. In practice, you would need a complete overhaul of both the rules and incentives of the current political system; however, such an overhaul would need a fair and just system to be here in the first place, otherwise it'll just entrench the authoritarianism and/or refuse to enforce the good parts, put in there only as platitudes. So, actually, no.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
gregatragenet3 6y ago
It's very possible. Simply outspend the other side Disney et al on lobbying and campaign donations.
ramphastidae 6y ago
That’s called the Bill of Rights, and the entire point of the government (originally) was to protect the rights enshrined therein. Unfortunately that ideal was lost long ago and our legislators no longer operate in good faith. So asking them nicely to reform the system they so dutifully corrupted isn’t likely to do it.
- markkanof 6y ago
  More specifically, the idea is that we as humans just have certain rights and the Bill of Rights is supposed to prevent the government from infringing in any way on those rights. It seems that many elected officials do not understand that or have realized that they can seemingly get away with things as there is no direct way for any of us to challenge them.
frongpik 6y ago
Restrictions and punishments always have concrete beneficiaries - dark, broken personalities with a blind lust for power and money. On the other hand, freedoms don't have concrete beneficiaries, so it takes a Lincoln-caliber person to advocate for them.
tacocataco 6y ago
"I often wonder if it's possible to encourage lawmakers to pass laws in the opposite direction" How can you encourage them to do anything when people "vote #color no matter who"? Our First Past the Post electoral system [1] encourages this blind tribalism. Attempting to vote outside of the two party system puts #otherside in power. Representatives have no incentive to be anything other than not the other political party. People are forced to vote against someone they don't want in office, rather than for someone they do want in office. (1) https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo

SkyMarshal 6y ago

The only way to stop it is to pass a law (or Constitutional Amendment) explicitly protecting the behavior being attacked. But if you're just continually on the defensive, then you will continue being attacked.

dirtyoldmick 6y ago
There is a whole amendment protecting firearms that the government has spent considerable time and money violating for at least the last 100 years. Amendments don't help as much as you would think.
adamcstephens 6y ago
I think you mean free speech, which is already in the constitution. If money is speech, so should sharing of content be.

gremlinsinc 6y ago

Yeah, run for office. If you're in a red state run as a Republican, blue state Democrat. All politicians lie, so just play their game, support the issues that will get you elected then stand up for what you really believe in when you get in. You may only make it one term, but at least things will change.

coolgod 6y ago
Can't believe this simple method hasn't been tried before.
- vineyardmike 6y ago
  Trump kinda?
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    So we only need a small loan of a billion dollars to get started?
anfilt 6y ago
Running for election even at local levels is not cheap... Let alone federal offices. At least if you want to have any chance of winning

ktkoffroth 6y ago

We have the right to bear arms for a reason. Governments will eventually push citizens to a breaking point.

thayne 6y ago
But we no longer have the right to bear the same arms as the government. Obviously, gun control is complicated, and I'm not advocating that anyone should be able to buy military grade armaments, but at the same time, it does concern me that the citizens last resort against tyranny becomes less and less viable.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  When things actually come to this, I don’t expect US military to actually use its superior equipment to mow down the opposition en masse: you’d more likely see various factions in military take it out one upon another.
- adventured 6y ago
  > But we no longer have the right to bear the same arms as the government. You hardly need it. You can see what guerrilla forces do to the standing army of a superpower, by looking at Iraq and Afghanistan. They can't stop it, its demoralizing, and even if the superpower kills at a 2 to 1 or greater ratio, the losses are considerable. And in this case that force would be domestic, so all the negative PR/image consequences are radically amplified (your army might kill at a 2 to 1 or 4 to 1 ratio, but every one of those citizens that you kill makes the general population hate you more and brings out more recruits for the opposition). The US has maybe 12 to 15 million functional, trained former soldiers, many of whom have been to war, they know everything the military knows, they have experience in every aspect of combat, and they have a vast number of arms and a hundred million sympathetic people behind them. It makes Afghanistan look like a cakewalk. A standing army trying that in the US would be butchered, they'd bleed like a stuck pig. And that's to say nothing of the vast internal sabotage and assassinations that would immediately begin to occur and would never cease; it would instantly split the military into factional pieces that would fight against eachother.

commandlinefan 6y ago

> Is it even possible to win this battle? Yes, but technologically, not legally. We need technology that's impossible for them to police. "The lesson here is that it is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics." -- Bruce Schneier

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

spopejoy 6y ago

> Is it even possible to win this battle? Things like this keep coming up year after year Most fights worth fighting are like this. Resistance doesn't guarantee success; indeed it usually loses. But that's no reason not to fight, and it makes you appreciate the precious wins when they do come. “The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you're going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins.” - IF Stone