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> Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better Let me translate “you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your abilit

> Welcome To 2030: I Own Nothing, Have No Privacy And Life Has Never Been Better Let me translate “you are slaves and you rent everything. We base your ability to purchase on a social credit score. But we let you rent houses in our artificially limited VR world.” I don’t make much of predictions like these. It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty. To the point the FED was created in 1913, research why it was created - not just wikipedia, get some books published between the 20 to 60s. When was public education first introduced at scale? When was eugenics promoted in the United States? The 1910s - 1920s was the beginning of the major authoritarian and progressive movements in the United States. Read about the history of Woodrow Wilson. At the end of the day, the United States during the 20s was losing its independence already. It was openly talked about on higher-class circles. In that context all these predictions are really aspirations. That said, I think the United States is still one of the most free and diverse countries on the planet. Has its issues and can 100% improve. But the same people and families who are part of the WEF are the same families / people in the 1910s - 1920s promoting the same general ideas.

SantalBlush 5y ago
Any attempt to depict the US as a free country prior to 1920 is a nonstarter. There was slavery, Jim Crow, and women could not vote. Seriously, give me a break.
- mbg721 5y ago
  We also had one of the strongest eugenics movements in the world, under the same progressive flag as women's suffrage. It took the horrors of WWII to snap us out of it.
  - jacobr1 5y ago
    And it set us back because we overcorrected. The biggest evil of historical eugenics was the non-consensual application, not the idea that we should improve the gene pool. This thread is an interesting summary of possible "eugenics" type applications and if those surveyed consider them moral today: https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1462824227090976772 https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1462824227090976772
    - mbg721 5y ago
      The Catholic Church still opposes all of those except for offering network support and feeding single mothers (in which cases it recommends generosity). I don't think that's an overcorrection; I think it's the result of thinking very hard about human dignity over many generations.
- NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
  Maybe you mean different things?
  - kaesar14 5y ago
    Why is freedom defined differently if you exclude slavery and women's rights?
- mistrial9 5y ago
  my ancestors had property rights and university education for women, always anti-slavery.. please do not lump me into your vague assertion edit- the USA was divided strongly between states, which had constitutions of their own. There was a very bright line between the Massachusetts colonies and the Virginia colonies, and then others.. Property rights and real education for women were a large topic! slavery was hated for good reasons .. the social contract that "my particular ancestors" created, specifically are what the PP were dismissing.. its inaccurate to dismiss that
  - hiptobecubic 5y ago
    What do your specific ancestors have to do with anything?
- georgeecollins 5y ago
  You can't completely discount the past because it doesn't meet a modern standard. It's certain that something many are doing today will be considered abhorrent in one hundred years. So are we all today too evil to bother with? Are you no worse than a murderer because you live in our flawed times? I doubt it. There were people and institutions before 1920 that were terrible and some that should be celebrated.
- thegrimmest 5y ago
  It was a free country, for a subset of the population. I would suggest that the idea of liberty, the definition, was as worthy then as it is now. I would also completely agree with the expansion of the people who are entitled to it.
jollybean 5y ago
Central Banking has been one of the most powerful and liberating achievements of civilization. And you now have the 'freedom' to strike and sue your employer, women have the 'freedom' to actually have a job, you have the 'freedom' to attend college which only about 5% did at the time, you have the 'freedom' to do almost anything in life. And what 'freedoms' have you lost? Well, there's more taxation. And you have to sell your car to a Black man if he wants to buy it from you. And you have to prove drugs work before selling them. You have to pay workers a minimum wage, and make sure they don't die on the job. What other 'freedoms' were are you keen to regain?
- __MatrixMan__ 5y ago
  It would be nice if the cost of rungs in the social later (housing, education, etc) wasn't so high that only certain kinds of people could achieve them. Many of the "your not allowed to do that"s of the past are still in place for entire neighborhoods, only the words changed.
  - jollybean 5y ago
    In 1922 only 5% of people went to University - now 50% go on to post secondary which is largely due to cost and opportunity. Only about 50% finished HS - now it's 95%. Doctors were not very affordable by anyone - now it's >90%. Most people didn't have running water and electricity yet now it's almost 100%. The only thing that's not as nice as 'real estate' - housing was cheap, but the houses were crap, and often you were isolated. If you want to go out of major US urban area, and build a small home to 1925 standards, then it's affordable. But if you are young, then I am actually sympathetic to you: education and housing costs are 'worse' now than in then 1990's. Those are the two things I will say Gen Z 'has it hard' with. That, and having to grow up where everyone has social media, which is not a social benefit, it's dystopian if you ask me.
    - mbg721 5y ago
      I would argue, as many would, that a high-school graduate now is much worse off now than a high-school dropout a century ago. Jobs are much more specialized, you can't rely on working on "the family farm", and the prestige of a high-school diploma has tanked to "You don't have this, what's wrong with you??"
deleted 5y ago
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Spooky23 5y ago
It’s probably a waste of time to argue this, but the arguments for central banking were the same as the arguments put forth by Alexander Hamilton. More stability, greater resilience, etc. The arguments against it were vague references to tyranny, orchestrated by people whose wealth is generated from resource extraction and inherited wealth.
- zionic 5y ago
  Central banks and their role in tyranny is hardly “vague”. They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by printing money. It’s an irresistible temptation that I don’t trust any man to resist long term. That kind of power shouldn’t be in the hands of any one person or organization.
  - pydry 5y ago
    >They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by printing money. It’s an irresistible temptation A) Which makes it basically another form of tax. B) The raising of which always driven the wealthy into fits of rage no matter how necessary or beneficial.
    - zionic 5y ago
      No the wealthy love this because their debt becomes cheaper to service while their assets skyrockets. Inflation primarily hurts the non-asset owning poor.
      - pydry 5y ago
        Have you met the non asset owning poor? They have debt. LOTS of debt.
        throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        The interest rates are high enough and the debt terms are short enough that they get screwed hard by relative buying power loss long before any of that matters. Having your car loan evaporate over three years doesn't mean crap if you can't afford to make the payment after one.
cm2012 5y ago
This is one of the wrongest comments I've ever seen on HN, hah.
- rbanffy 5y ago
  My favorite way to characterize this is "it's not even wrong".
- cscurmudgeon 5y ago
  Which part is wrong? Some parts are obviously correct. The US is definitely one of the most diverse large countries. India is probably more diverse along language lines. China is definitely not along any dimension. Even the EU states (that depend on US for defense and use oil to power their economies) are less diverse.
  - cm2012 5y ago
    Some parts are correct, true. Mostly "It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty." is really wrong. The US is a far more free country now than it was 100 years ago or at any point since the introduction of agriculture. Compared to one hundred years ago, there's political changes: - Minorities and women can vote - Labor rights - Consumer protections (No more debtor prisons, etc.) And tech changes: - People aren't stuck on their farms all day - Families aren't stuck doing chores all day - Birth control has allowed sexual freedom - The trains, planes, cars and the internet has allowed freedom of location Etc.
    - Notanothertoo 5y ago
      I agree with much of this as I think some of this has contributed to people's economic agency. But I think we should analyze the impact of these and not just chalk them up as actual improvements in people's liberty. For example does enabling a person's ability to vote actually increase one's liberty in a corrupt/narrow system.
- xdennis 5y ago
  Then it should be easy to say what's wrong with it.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Many non renewable resources are past peak production, and declining fast. Austerity will be next. But it will be disguised as saving the environment. So that not only do you do not blame your politicians for being poorer. You will be blamed for over consuming and destroying the environment. Energy crisis, like running out of heating gas is already hitting Europe. And shortages of fertilizer will be here this spring. China and Russia are not exporting. US doesn't make enough. Farmers will be planting without it. Expect higher food prices and possibly food shortages. Things are running short in the supply chain, from chips to little bits and pieces. When things break, they will break fast. Make a plan B people. The wave is coming.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  this is horribly misguided to say "disguised as saving the environment" .. it is conflating real environmental crisis with political posturing.. It is intellectually lazy to blur two big topics like this..
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    It's not just intellectually lazy, it's deadly. The last thing we need is to conflate politics with a catastrophe that will wipe out our lifestyle, a significant proportion of species, and potentially our civilization.
    - dukeofdoom 5y ago
      This reads more like am emotional outburst from somone with a belief system than an actual opinion. It's hard to argue against belief systems. And it will probably be taken by you in entirely the wrong way. It would be like trying to convincing a hasidic jew the messiah isn't coming. Kind of rude to even try.
      - selfhoster11 5y ago
        I can't tell whether you're describing my own comment or my parent comment. Which one are you describing here?
deanCommie 5y ago
> the United States is still one of the most free ... countries on the planet. By what metric? More importantly by what magnitude? Would "in the top 20" count? Axross 200 world countries maybe, but to patriotic Americans who speak about freedom abstractly, knowing that they are 16th in democracy [0], 44th in press freedom [1], and 20th in economic freedom [2], probably wouldn't cut it as "one of the top". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Ranking?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Ranking?wprov=sfla1 [1] https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom?wpro...
- mardifoufs 5y ago
  Those rankings have absolutely 0 values. We are currently under our 2nd curfew in less than a year, I can't go outside after 10pm under the threat of a 2000$ fine (which the police is very heavily enforcing) and yet we are way up there in the list you linked. Complete joke
  - bennysomething 5y ago
    Are you in the USA? I didn't know you had curfews!?
    - mardifoufs 5y ago
      In canada currently. 6th month of curfews this year... but at least this time it's until 10 pm and not 8pm like the first curfew. So I guess that's something lol
  - deanCommie 5y ago
    Well, when we're in the middle of a Global Pandemic, with the 5th-highest death toll in human history [0], a couple things have to change temporarily, don't you think? Also, this is a Quebec-only curfew. Take it up with your provincial government. If separated as a country, perhaps Quebec wouldn't make the list. Quebec has plenty of other counter-freedom policies including your government-endorsed islamophobia. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#By_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#By_death_tol...
verisimi 5y ago
This is a very hard conversation to have on HN. It is impossible to consider that the whole of society has been created and planned in advance. To think that the upper classes manage everyone (they always did), that the schooling system produces people that are incapable of seeing the outside the box (and yet believe that they are free, nay - they 'know' it), that finance is the main weapon in the wealth extraction, that it is planned for us to move to technocracy (with a bio-medical-wallet-etc-id, tracked everywhere in spy-cities, not allowed to even leave your 110sqft micro-flat unless the computer says so), that all the disasters we face have resulted in incremental steps towards this aim (911, covid). Its a lot to consider! That we have been harnessed and put to work creating someone else's heaven on earth (and hardcore slavery for the rest) is a bitter pill to swallow. And the techies here have recently been the greatest driver of this change. Their livelihoods do depend on it. Anyway, good on you, for bringing some of these issues up.
- bilbo0s 5y ago
  Not that I disagree with the underlying ideas, but I'd argue we're not slaves. I'll concede that in practice we can definitely be thought something more akin to peasants, but what we live in today is not slavery. Now, is being a peasant, with all the concomitant limitations on one's livelihood any better than being a slave to the mental health of the bright and ambitious? Perhaps not, but it would be significantly more deleterious to their physical health. I also understand that reasonable people can debate whether physical or mental health is more important.
  - verisimi 5y ago
    If I am forced to give any percentage of my income to a government I do not want, I think that is slavery. You wouldn't think it ok if an individual forced you, or the mafia. The government is just big mafia. But that is not really the nub of it. Slavery is really a mental state - having been through the system we have been propagandised that the government is a good thing, it's the right way to manage ourselves - anything else is very bad. This is the creation of the slave mentality, putting the policeman inside your head, so that you feel highly uncomfortable just considering non-standard ideas - they are thoughtcrime. Thoughtcrime egs: that news is just another show, a serious type of advert. That pharmaceutical companies will run world wide campaigns, seconding governments, drafting laws, to poison millions - this will fill up their pipeline with sickness for the coming decades.
long_time_gone 5y ago
Gun control in the 1880s Old West: "The laws of Tombstone at the time required visitors, upon entering town to disarm, either at a hotel or a lawman's office. (Residents of many famed cattle towns, such as Dodge City, Abilene, and Deadwood, had similar restrictions.)" "Dodge City, Kansas, formed a municipal government in 1878. According to Stephen Aron, a professor of history at UCLA, the first law passed was one prohibiting the carry of guns in town, likely by civic leaders and influential merchants who wanted people to move there, invest their time and resources, and bring their families." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-180968013/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-...
- queuebert 5y ago
  Probably unconstitutional, but never challenged in the Supreme Court, I believe.
  - long_time_gone 5y ago
    It would have been perfectly Constitutional until the Supreme Court changed their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment in the Heller case. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
    - queuebert 5y ago
      IANAL, but I think there was no interpretation until the Supreme Court made that ruling. The Second Amendment was in a quantum state before that, both an individual right and not. When it becomes necessary to clarify something, then SCOTUS collapses the wave function in that particular area of law.
      - long_time_gone 5y ago
        John Paul Stevens was a lawyer and a judge on the Supreme Court. He disagrees and includes actual court decisions and opinions. >the Miller Court unanimously concluded that the Second Amendment did not apply to the possession of a firearm that did not have “some relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” And in 1980, in a footnote to an opinion upholding a conviction for receipt of a firearm, the Court effectively affirmed Miller, writing: “[T]he Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have ‘some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.’ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-stevens-court-failed-gun-control/587272/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-...
EGreg 5y ago
Yes and no. You see, "private property" was a step up from Feudalism. It allows you to own things. For example, the Web disrupted AOL, MSN, Compuserve, cable channels, radio stations, journalism, etc. But then, people started to just make their own "private" sites bigger. "I built it -- I own it!" OK, so Mark Z owns facebook, Jeff Bezos owns Amazon, and so forth. Our public discussions take place on "privately owned" platforms (really, owned by Wall Street bigwigs, but even they can't vote Mark Z out, they try and fail every year). So basically the current system has led to a bunch of surveillance capitalism. That iPhone and Kindle can yank the apps and books you "own" out from under you. That Alexa and Siri listens to whatever you say all the time. That car you "own" will also soon have a bunch of software downloaded to make sure you are limited in what you can do -- which is probably the scariest thing because some sleeper attack can make all cars suddenly crash into gas stations at once. In short ... your ideas of "private ownership" work on a small level but then you get these large corporations that continue "owning" things, and not giving them to you (infrastructure, backend software, AI data sets, you name it -- even "intellectual property" of patents and copyrights). This IS a feature of capitalism, that we might want to rein in. Perhaps there should be a principle that courts would enforce private property less and less when it came to scale. So on a small scale (enforce my right to chattel property, my first 3 houses etc.) it's fine. But just what does it mean that I "own" 999 houses, and see no lessening of my ability to evict people ACTUALLY living in the house as squatters, just because I contracted with a bank and some "People with Guns" to enforce some "deed of ownership"? The land used to belong to some natives hundreds of years ago, or some other group that the current group just "took" from them. What moral system are you going to appeal to, that would allow unlimited private property ownership? Even John Locke's "homsteading" concept had a "proviso" saying that you should only own that which you can reasonably use. Even Adam Smith writing about the "invisible hand" was actually writing about how the Rich are led by an invisible hand to distribute goods equally (in his time) because they can only eat so much. We see this pathology in online systems as well. Just like Bitcoin and Ethereum allow sending unlimited amounts of money in a fixed time for a fixed fee, this necessarily causes a bottleneck somewhere (proof of work miner, for instance, or everyone storing everything, leading to "flash loans" and other crap on the "world computer"). Actually, they charge the maximum fee for every transaction (even sending 5 cents) because the entire network secures everything. It's built for really huge transfers. It can be summarized like this: "Centralization is bad, and happens through enforcement of some rules. The resources to enforce rules should therefore not be deployed for unlimited value of ownership by accounts, they shouldn't even be centralized (e.g. proof of work mining elects one "consensus leader", or Facebook has a huge centralized server farm) to the point that you get these pathologies: the elites at the top are out of touch with the people who are ACTUALLY using the products / services. Same with politics / states / etc. Keep it decentralized whenever you can.
deeg 5y ago
I couldn't disagree more. Today's American society has way more liberty than it did in 1912. Blacks, women, Native Americans, LBGTQ+, other minorities: all live better today than whatever period you want to choose. Native American children were forced from their homes into institutionalize schools. In NYC tenements the police conducted midnight raids to force people to be vaccinated for smallpox (a worthy end but a terrible means). Women didn't have the right to vote. As others mentioned, Jim Crow ruled the South. There really is no comparison.
peakaboo 5y ago
I don't think the US is free at all, and would be interested in seeing facts that back it up. I see a country run like a corporation, where media, tech and science are carrying out very specific instructions from their handful of billionaire owners to steer the ship where they want it to go. You can think what you want in the US but you cannot express it publicly if you have a significant following. You will get blocked, censored, ridiculed etc. Maybe you mean something else with freedom? Freedom to carry out work and get payed for it? Sure.
HDMI_Cable 5y ago
> To the point the FED was created in 1913, research why it was created - not just wikipedia, get some books published between the 20 to 60s. Do you have any sources on this? I’m not trying to degrade your point though, just curious about the topic.

SantalBlush 5y ago

Any attempt to depict the US as a free country prior to 1920 is a nonstarter. There was slavery, Jim Crow, and women could not vote. Seriously, give me a break.

mbg721 5y ago
We also had one of the strongest eugenics movements in the world, under the same progressive flag as women's suffrage. It took the horrors of WWII to snap us out of it.
- jacobr1 5y ago
  And it set us back because we overcorrected. The biggest evil of historical eugenics was the non-consensual application, not the idea that we should improve the gene pool. This thread is an interesting summary of possible "eugenics" type applications and if those surveyed consider them moral today: https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1462824227090976772 https://twitter.com/Aella_Girl/status/1462824227090976772
  - mbg721 5y ago
    The Catholic Church still opposes all of those except for offering network support and feeding single mothers (in which cases it recommends generosity). I don't think that's an overcorrection; I think it's the result of thinking very hard about human dignity over many generations.
NoImmatureAdHom 5y ago
Maybe you mean different things?
- kaesar14 5y ago
  Why is freedom defined differently if you exclude slavery and women's rights?
mistrial9 5y ago
my ancestors had property rights and university education for women, always anti-slavery.. please do not lump me into your vague assertion edit- the USA was divided strongly between states, which had constitutions of their own. There was a very bright line between the Massachusetts colonies and the Virginia colonies, and then others.. Property rights and real education for women were a large topic! slavery was hated for good reasons .. the social contract that "my particular ancestors" created, specifically are what the PP were dismissing.. its inaccurate to dismiss that
- hiptobecubic 5y ago
  What do your specific ancestors have to do with anything?
georgeecollins 5y ago
You can't completely discount the past because it doesn't meet a modern standard. It's certain that something many are doing today will be considered abhorrent in one hundred years. So are we all today too evil to bother with? Are you no worse than a murderer because you live in our flawed times? I doubt it. There were people and institutions before 1920 that were terrible and some that should be celebrated.
thegrimmest 5y ago
It was a free country, for a subset of the population. I would suggest that the idea of liberty, the definition, was as worthy then as it is now. I would also completely agree with the expansion of the people who are entitled to it.

jollybean 5y ago

Central Banking has been one of the most powerful and liberating achievements of civilization. And you now have the 'freedom' to strike and sue your employer, women have the 'freedom' to actually have a job, you have the 'freedom' to attend college which only about 5% did at the time, you have the 'freedom' to do almost anything in life. And what 'freedoms' have you lost? Well, there's more taxation. And you have to sell your car to a Black man if he wants to buy it from you. And you have to prove drugs work before selling them. You have to pay workers a minimum wage, and make sure they don't die on the job. What other 'freedoms' were are you keen to regain?

__MatrixMan__ 5y ago
It would be nice if the cost of rungs in the social later (housing, education, etc) wasn't so high that only certain kinds of people could achieve them. Many of the "your not allowed to do that"s of the past are still in place for entire neighborhoods, only the words changed.
- jollybean 5y ago
  In 1922 only 5% of people went to University - now 50% go on to post secondary which is largely due to cost and opportunity. Only about 50% finished HS - now it's 95%. Doctors were not very affordable by anyone - now it's >90%. Most people didn't have running water and electricity yet now it's almost 100%. The only thing that's not as nice as 'real estate' - housing was cheap, but the houses were crap, and often you were isolated. If you want to go out of major US urban area, and build a small home to 1925 standards, then it's affordable. But if you are young, then I am actually sympathetic to you: education and housing costs are 'worse' now than in then 1990's. Those are the two things I will say Gen Z 'has it hard' with. That, and having to grow up where everyone has social media, which is not a social benefit, it's dystopian if you ask me.
  - mbg721 5y ago
    I would argue, as many would, that a high-school graduate now is much worse off now than a high-school dropout a century ago. Jobs are much more specialized, you can't rely on working on "the family farm", and the prestige of a high-school diploma has tanked to "You don't have this, what's wrong with you??"

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

Spooky23 5y ago

It’s probably a waste of time to argue this, but the arguments for central banking were the same as the arguments put forth by Alexander Hamilton. More stability, greater resilience, etc. The arguments against it were vague references to tyranny, orchestrated by people whose wealth is generated from resource extraction and inherited wealth.

zionic 5y ago
Central banks and their role in tyranny is hardly “vague”. They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by printing money. It’s an irresistible temptation that I don’t trust any man to resist long term. That kind of power shouldn’t be in the hands of any one person or organization.
- pydry 5y ago
  >They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by printing money. It’s an irresistible temptation A) Which makes it basically another form of tax. B) The raising of which always driven the wealthy into fits of rage no matter how necessary or beneficial.
  - zionic 5y ago
    No the wealthy love this because their debt becomes cheaper to service while their assets skyrockets. Inflation primarily hurts the non-asset owning poor.
    - pydry 5y ago
      Have you met the non asset owning poor? They have debt. LOTS of debt.
      - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
        The interest rates are high enough and the debt terms are short enough that they get screwed hard by relative buying power loss long before any of that matters. Having your car loan evaporate over three years doesn't mean crap if you can't afford to make the payment after one.

cm2012 5y ago

This is one of the wrongest comments I've ever seen on HN, hah.

rbanffy 5y ago
My favorite way to characterize this is "it's not even wrong".
cscurmudgeon 5y ago
Which part is wrong? Some parts are obviously correct. The US is definitely one of the most diverse large countries. India is probably more diverse along language lines. China is definitely not along any dimension. Even the EU states (that depend on US for defense and use oil to power their economies) are less diverse.
- cm2012 5y ago
  Some parts are correct, true. Mostly "It’s ALWAYS a safe bet to assume people will lose liberty." is really wrong. The US is a far more free country now than it was 100 years ago or at any point since the introduction of agriculture. Compared to one hundred years ago, there's political changes: - Minorities and women can vote - Labor rights - Consumer protections (No more debtor prisons, etc.) And tech changes: - People aren't stuck on their farms all day - Families aren't stuck doing chores all day - Birth control has allowed sexual freedom - The trains, planes, cars and the internet has allowed freedom of location Etc.
  - Notanothertoo 5y ago
    I agree with much of this as I think some of this has contributed to people's economic agency. But I think we should analyze the impact of these and not just chalk them up as actual improvements in people's liberty. For example does enabling a person's ability to vote actually increase one's liberty in a corrupt/narrow system.
xdennis 5y ago
Then it should be easy to say what's wrong with it.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Many non renewable resources are past peak production, and declining fast. Austerity will be next. But it will be disguised as saving the environment. So that not only do you do not blame your politicians for being poorer. You will be blamed for over consuming and destroying the environment. Energy crisis, like running out of heating gas is already hitting Europe. And shortages of fertilizer will be here this spring. China and Russia are not exporting. US doesn't make enough. Farmers will be planting without it. Expect higher food prices and possibly food shortages. Things are running short in the supply chain, from chips to little bits and pieces. When things break, they will break fast. Make a plan B people. The wave is coming.

mistrial9 5y ago
this is horribly misguided to say "disguised as saving the environment" .. it is conflating real environmental crisis with political posturing.. It is intellectually lazy to blur two big topics like this..
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  It's not just intellectually lazy, it's deadly. The last thing we need is to conflate politics with a catastrophe that will wipe out our lifestyle, a significant proportion of species, and potentially our civilization.
  - dukeofdoom 5y ago
    This reads more like am emotional outburst from somone with a belief system than an actual opinion. It's hard to argue against belief systems. And it will probably be taken by you in entirely the wrong way. It would be like trying to convincing a hasidic jew the messiah isn't coming. Kind of rude to even try.
    - selfhoster11 5y ago
      I can't tell whether you're describing my own comment or my parent comment. Which one are you describing here?

deanCommie 5y ago

> the United States is still one of the most free ... countries on the planet. By what metric? More importantly by what magnitude? Would "in the top 20" count? Axross 200 world countries maybe, but to patriotic Americans who speak about freedom abstractly, knowing that they are 16th in democracy [0], 44th in press freedom [1], and 20th in economic freedom [2], probably wouldn't cut it as "one of the top". [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Ranking?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Ranking?wprov=sfla1 [1] https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Index_of_Economic_Freedom?wpro...

mardifoufs 5y ago
Those rankings have absolutely 0 values. We are currently under our 2nd curfew in less than a year, I can't go outside after 10pm under the threat of a 2000$ fine (which the police is very heavily enforcing) and yet we are way up there in the list you linked. Complete joke
- bennysomething 5y ago
  Are you in the USA? I didn't know you had curfews!?
  - mardifoufs 5y ago
    In canada currently. 6th month of curfews this year... but at least this time it's until 10 pm and not 8pm like the first curfew. So I guess that's something lol
- deanCommie 5y ago
  Well, when we're in the middle of a Global Pandemic, with the 5th-highest death toll in human history [0], a couple things have to change temporarily, don't you think? Also, this is a Quebec-only curfew. Take it up with your provincial government. If separated as a country, perhaps Quebec wouldn't make the list. Quebec has plenty of other counter-freedom policies including your government-endorsed islamophobia. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#By_death_toll https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics#By_death_tol...

verisimi 5y ago

This is a very hard conversation to have on HN. It is impossible to consider that the whole of society has been created and planned in advance. To think that the upper classes manage everyone (they always did), that the schooling system produces people that are incapable of seeing the outside the box (and yet believe that they are free, nay - they 'know' it), that finance is the main weapon in the wealth extraction, that it is planned for us to move to technocracy (with a bio-medical-wallet-etc-id, tracked everywhere in spy-cities, not allowed to even leave your 110sqft micro-flat unless the computer says so), that all the disasters we face have resulted in incremental steps towards this aim (911, covid). Its a lot to consider! That we have been harnessed and put to work creating someone else's heaven on earth (and hardcore slavery for the rest) is a bitter pill to swallow. And the techies here have recently been the greatest driver of this change. Their livelihoods do depend on it. Anyway, good on you, for bringing some of these issues up.

bilbo0s 5y ago
Not that I disagree with the underlying ideas, but I'd argue we're not slaves. I'll concede that in practice we can definitely be thought something more akin to peasants, but what we live in today is not slavery. Now, is being a peasant, with all the concomitant limitations on one's livelihood any better than being a slave to the mental health of the bright and ambitious? Perhaps not, but it would be significantly more deleterious to their physical health. I also understand that reasonable people can debate whether physical or mental health is more important.
- verisimi 5y ago
  If I am forced to give any percentage of my income to a government I do not want, I think that is slavery. You wouldn't think it ok if an individual forced you, or the mafia. The government is just big mafia. But that is not really the nub of it. Slavery is really a mental state - having been through the system we have been propagandised that the government is a good thing, it's the right way to manage ourselves - anything else is very bad. This is the creation of the slave mentality, putting the policeman inside your head, so that you feel highly uncomfortable just considering non-standard ideas - they are thoughtcrime. Thoughtcrime egs: that news is just another show, a serious type of advert. That pharmaceutical companies will run world wide campaigns, seconding governments, drafting laws, to poison millions - this will fill up their pipeline with sickness for the coming decades.

long_time_gone 5y ago

Gun control in the 1880s Old West: "The laws of Tombstone at the time required visitors, upon entering town to disarm, either at a hotel or a lawman's office. (Residents of many famed cattle towns, such as Dodge City, Abilene, and Deadwood, had similar restrictions.)" "Dodge City, Kansas, formed a municipal government in 1878. According to Stephen Aron, a professor of history at UCLA, the first law passed was one prohibiting the carry of guns in town, likely by civic leaders and influential merchants who wanted people to move there, invest their time and resources, and bring their families." https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-180968013/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/gun-control-old-west-...

queuebert 5y ago
Probably unconstitutional, but never challenged in the Supreme Court, I believe.
- long_time_gone 5y ago
  It would have been perfectly Constitutional until the Supreme Court changed their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment in the Heller case. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller
  - queuebert 5y ago
    IANAL, but I think there was no interpretation until the Supreme Court made that ruling. The Second Amendment was in a quantum state before that, both an individual right and not. When it becomes necessary to clarify something, then SCOTUS collapses the wave function in that particular area of law.
    - long_time_gone 5y ago
      John Paul Stevens was a lawyer and a judge on the Supreme Court. He disagrees and includes actual court decisions and opinions. >the Miller Court unanimously concluded that the Second Amendment did not apply to the possession of a firearm that did not have “some relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” And in 1980, in a footnote to an opinion upholding a conviction for receipt of a firearm, the Court effectively affirmed Miller, writing: “[T]he Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have ‘some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.’ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-stevens-court-failed-gun-control/587272/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-...

EGreg 5y ago

Yes and no. You see, "private property" was a step up from Feudalism. It allows you to own things. For example, the Web disrupted AOL, MSN, Compuserve, cable channels, radio stations, journalism, etc. But then, people started to just make their own "private" sites bigger. "I built it -- I own it!" OK, so Mark Z owns facebook, Jeff Bezos owns Amazon, and so forth. Our public discussions take place on "privately owned" platforms (really, owned by Wall Street bigwigs, but even they can't vote Mark Z out, they try and fail every year). So basically the current system has led to a bunch of surveillance capitalism. That iPhone and Kindle can yank the apps and books you "own" out from under you. That Alexa and Siri listens to whatever you say all the time. That car you "own" will also soon have a bunch of software downloaded to make sure you are limited in what you can do -- which is probably the scariest thing because some sleeper attack can make all cars suddenly crash into gas stations at once. In short ... your ideas of "private ownership" work on a small level but then you get these large corporations that continue "owning" things, and not giving them to you (infrastructure, backend software, AI data sets, you name it -- even "intellectual property" of patents and copyrights). This IS a feature of capitalism, that we might want to rein in. Perhaps there should be a principle that courts would enforce private property less and less when it came to scale. So on a small scale (enforce my right to chattel property, my first 3 houses etc.) it's fine. But just what does it mean that I "own" 999 houses, and see no lessening of my ability to evict people ACTUALLY living in the house as squatters, just because I contracted with a bank and some "People with Guns" to enforce some "deed of ownership"? The land used to belong to some natives hundreds of years ago, or some other group that the current group just "took" from them. What moral system are you going to appeal to, that would allow unlimited private property ownership? Even John Locke's "homsteading" concept had a "proviso" saying that you should only own that which you can reasonably use. Even Adam Smith writing about the "invisible hand" was actually writing about how the Rich are led by an invisible hand to distribute goods equally (in his time) because they can only eat so much. We see this pathology in online systems as well. Just like Bitcoin and Ethereum allow sending unlimited amounts of money in a fixed time for a fixed fee, this necessarily causes a bottleneck somewhere (proof of work miner, for instance, or everyone storing everything, leading to "flash loans" and other crap on the "world computer"). Actually, they charge the maximum fee for every transaction (even sending 5 cents) because the entire network secures everything. It's built for really huge transfers. It can be summarized like this: "Centralization is bad, and happens through enforcement of some rules. The resources to enforce rules should therefore not be deployed for unlimited value of ownership by accounts, they shouldn't even be centralized (e.g. proof of work mining elects one "consensus leader", or Facebook has a huge centralized server farm) to the point that you get these pathologies: the elites at the top are out of touch with the people who are ACTUALLY using the products / services. Same with politics / states / etc. Keep it decentralized whenever you can.

deeg 5y ago

I couldn't disagree more. Today's American society has way more liberty than it did in 1912. Blacks, women, Native Americans, LBGTQ+, other minorities: all live better today than whatever period you want to choose. Native American children were forced from their homes into institutionalize schools. In NYC tenements the police conducted midnight raids to force people to be vaccinated for smallpox (a worthy end but a terrible means). Women didn't have the right to vote. As others mentioned, Jim Crow ruled the South. There really is no comparison.

peakaboo 5y ago

I don't think the US is free at all, and would be interested in seeing facts that back it up. I see a country run like a corporation, where media, tech and science are carrying out very specific instructions from their handful of billionaire owners to steer the ship where they want it to go. You can think what you want in the US but you cannot express it publicly if you have a significant following. You will get blocked, censored, ridiculed etc. Maybe you mean something else with freedom? Freedom to carry out work and get payed for it? Sure.

HDMI_Cable 5y ago

> To the point the FED was created in 1913, research why it was created - not just wikipedia, get some books published between the 20 to 60s. Do you have any sources on this? I’m not trying to degrade your point though, just curious about the topic.