11 ms·

Serious question though, which applies to both the Canadian truckers case and the Minneapolis example above - does a right to protest an issue also include a ri

by ff317 5y ago

Serious question though, which applies to both the Canadian truckers case and the Minneapolis example above - does a right to protest an issue also include a right to inflict economic harm (on broader society, in poorly-targeted fashion) in order to raise awareness? Is the amount of economic harm (say, %GDP of the town, region, or country) or how broadly it's targeted ("random retail stores"? "Anything that relies on ground-based trade between Canada and the US"?) a factor in how allowable it is? Where does one draw a line of reasonability here?

skrbjc 5y ago
All protests cause economic harm. How many businesses were closed and looted during the protests for BLM? What is the correct amount of economic harm in your view? What are the terms under which a protest should be allowed by a government?
colechristensen 5y ago
"Economic harm" is a really weak criterion all around for restricting protest rights and one ripe for abuse. I'm not sure if this is the only impact that a line should be drawn at all. "Public safety" is a good one, you're free to protest but there has to be adequate access for emergency services to get to people in need. "No significant destruction" is a good one, not just making a mess in the streets but when your movement starts actively destroying property, looting, etc. If you keep doing economic harm, your movement will tend to get pretty unpopular pretty quickly and the social pressure instead of government force will likely get to you in the end. Lots of people walking of the job will do significant amounts of economic harm, I don't want people in certain jobs to become effective slaves because their job is important to the economy. And also a general strike is a very powerful action which should be done from time to time, explicitly very economically powerful and definitely should be protected.
- sangnoir 5y ago
  > No significant destruction" is a good one, not just making a mess in the streets but when your movement starts actively destroying property, looting, etc This one is also ripe for abuse - outside forces have been using agents provocateurs for centuries, often undercover cops.
  - lowkey 5y ago
    Notably the Canadian government has numerous examples of employing agents provocateurs, enough examples that there is a section of the Wikipedia article dedicated to examples from the Canadian government. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur#Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur#Canada
yonaguska 5y ago
Serious question- how many rights are ok to trample, and how much economic harm is ok for a government to inflict upon its people? I can't take the claims of economic harm from the protests seriously when the govt itself inflicted unnecessary measures that destroyed lives that far outweigh the economic costs of these protests. Besides, the govt can end this issue as well, just end the mandates. The vaccines don't work against Omicron anyways.
- wk_end 5y ago
  Although not as well as they did on previous variants of the virus, the vaccines continue to work extraordinarily well against Omicron. For example, consider the latest data from California (https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/ https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/): * "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 5.9 times more likely to get COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose." * "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 11.4 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose." * "From January 10, 2022 to January 16, 2022, unvaccinated people were 21.8 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose."
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    None of those three points should warrant a mandate. For the first point, I have some doubt as many covid infections go entirely undetected. If you don't have symptoms you don't get tested and don't end up a statistic. Even the CDC says it expects there have been 4x as many infections as reported. For the next two, those aren't things which need government compelled vaccinations. You're taking a risk with your own health, I don't care if you take a risk and it kills you. If hospitals aren't able to handle the wave of patients, put government weight behind staffing hospitals better and creating temporary hospitals for overflow. The only metric that should require vaccination should be to prevent public spread, and then only if the risk to other people is beyond a threshold. It is pretty clear that omicron burned through populations regardless of vaccination status or previous infection. Forcing vaccinations could have lowered this rate a bit, but doubtfully enough to prevent everyone who was going to be exposed from being exposed anyway at a slightly later date. If you're forcing vaccinations so somebody is more likely to get infected in March rather than January, it is not worth it or a justifiable action. That seems to be the situation with the current vaccine and current dominant variant. Infection is inevitable, short term delay is the only achievable goal, therefore mandates are no longer an acceptable use of government power. Omicron isn't in decline because people were smart or safe or did what they were told, it declined because it ran out of people to infect, vaccination rate didn't seem to significantly alter this pattern around the world except for when the peak happened and perhaps how wide and tall it was.
jancsika 5y ago
> Serious question though, which applies to both the Canadian truckers case and the Minneapolis example above - does a right to protest an issue also include a right to inflict economic harm (on broader society, in poorly-targeted fashion) in order to raise awareness? Almost unexceptionally yes? Arab Spring in Egypt, civil rights lunch counter sit-ins, the protests in East Germany in 89... I'm actually having a hard time thinking of historic protests which didn't inflict economic harm.
- ff317 5y ago
  I'm not asking whether significant protests tend to cause economic harm. I'm asking whether there should be reasonable limits. I think it's easy to come up with a feel-good answer like "the economic impact of the protest should match the severity and importance of the thing bring protested", but it's hard to have good rules for where that line of reasonable-ness is. Hyperbolic example: If there was a 0.01% minority in your country/region which was violently opposed to some existing minor local law or regulation, would it be ok for them to shut down half the economy over it? Think of all the secondary damage that's doing every time someone gets upset over something relatively-small in the big picture. I think most would think that's unreasonable. It's this question that gets at the heart of when and/or if it's ok for a heavy-handed government to come in and put a stop to things. When is it reasonable for the powers that be to intervene and "stop a protest" because the toll is too high for the weight and/or popularity of the matter at hand?
Tiktaalik 5y ago
This is the irony here in that in the situations recently where environmentalists and indigenous protestors halted pipeline construction the Conservatives in parliament railed against these actions, citing economic harms. Now with these protests, causing even more incredibly severe economic harms they've demurred from criticizing the protestors.
- bregma 5y ago
  They have been actively supporting the protesters. It's not a coincidence that almost all the protests have been in Liberal ridings.

by ff317 5y ago

skrbjc 5y ago

All protests cause economic harm. How many businesses were closed and looted during the protests for BLM? What is the correct amount of economic harm in your view? What are the terms under which a protest should be allowed by a government?

colechristensen 5y ago

"Economic harm" is a really weak criterion all around for restricting protest rights and one ripe for abuse. I'm not sure if this is the only impact that a line should be drawn at all. "Public safety" is a good one, you're free to protest but there has to be adequate access for emergency services to get to people in need. "No significant destruction" is a good one, not just making a mess in the streets but when your movement starts actively destroying property, looting, etc. If you keep doing economic harm, your movement will tend to get pretty unpopular pretty quickly and the social pressure instead of government force will likely get to you in the end. Lots of people walking of the job will do significant amounts of economic harm, I don't want people in certain jobs to become effective slaves because their job is important to the economy. And also a general strike is a very powerful action which should be done from time to time, explicitly very economically powerful and definitely should be protected.

sangnoir 5y ago
> No significant destruction" is a good one, not just making a mess in the streets but when your movement starts actively destroying property, looting, etc This one is also ripe for abuse - outside forces have been using agents provocateurs for centuries, often undercover cops.
- lowkey 5y ago
  Notably the Canadian government has numerous examples of employing agents provocateurs, enough examples that there is a section of the Wikipedia article dedicated to examples from the Canadian government. [0] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur#Canada https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_provocateur#Canada

yonaguska 5y ago

Serious question- how many rights are ok to trample, and how much economic harm is ok for a government to inflict upon its people? I can't take the claims of economic harm from the protests seriously when the govt itself inflicted unnecessary measures that destroyed lives that far outweigh the economic costs of these protests. Besides, the govt can end this issue as well, just end the mandates. The vaccines don't work against Omicron anyways.

wk_end 5y ago
Although not as well as they did on previous variants of the virus, the vaccines continue to work extraordinarily well against Omicron. For example, consider the latest data from California (https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/ https://covid19.ca.gov/state-dashboard/): * "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 5.9 times more likely to get COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose." * "From January 17, 2022 to January 23, 2022, unvaccinated people were 11.4 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose." * "From January 10, 2022 to January 16, 2022, unvaccinated people were 21.8 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people who received their booster dose."
- colechristensen 5y ago
  None of those three points should warrant a mandate. For the first point, I have some doubt as many covid infections go entirely undetected. If you don't have symptoms you don't get tested and don't end up a statistic. Even the CDC says it expects there have been 4x as many infections as reported. For the next two, those aren't things which need government compelled vaccinations. You're taking a risk with your own health, I don't care if you take a risk and it kills you. If hospitals aren't able to handle the wave of patients, put government weight behind staffing hospitals better and creating temporary hospitals for overflow. The only metric that should require vaccination should be to prevent public spread, and then only if the risk to other people is beyond a threshold. It is pretty clear that omicron burned through populations regardless of vaccination status or previous infection. Forcing vaccinations could have lowered this rate a bit, but doubtfully enough to prevent everyone who was going to be exposed from being exposed anyway at a slightly later date. If you're forcing vaccinations so somebody is more likely to get infected in March rather than January, it is not worth it or a justifiable action. That seems to be the situation with the current vaccine and current dominant variant. Infection is inevitable, short term delay is the only achievable goal, therefore mandates are no longer an acceptable use of government power. Omicron isn't in decline because people were smart or safe or did what they were told, it declined because it ran out of people to infect, vaccination rate didn't seem to significantly alter this pattern around the world except for when the peak happened and perhaps how wide and tall it was.

jancsika 5y ago

> Serious question though, which applies to both the Canadian truckers case and the Minneapolis example above - does a right to protest an issue also include a right to inflict economic harm (on broader society, in poorly-targeted fashion) in order to raise awareness? Almost unexceptionally yes? Arab Spring in Egypt, civil rights lunch counter sit-ins, the protests in East Germany in 89... I'm actually having a hard time thinking of historic protests which didn't inflict economic harm.

ff317 5y ago
I'm not asking whether significant protests tend to cause economic harm. I'm asking whether there should be reasonable limits. I think it's easy to come up with a feel-good answer like "the economic impact of the protest should match the severity and importance of the thing bring protested", but it's hard to have good rules for where that line of reasonable-ness is. Hyperbolic example: If there was a 0.01% minority in your country/region which was violently opposed to some existing minor local law or regulation, would it be ok for them to shut down half the economy over it? Think of all the secondary damage that's doing every time someone gets upset over something relatively-small in the big picture. I think most would think that's unreasonable. It's this question that gets at the heart of when and/or if it's ok for a heavy-handed government to come in and put a stop to things. When is it reasonable for the powers that be to intervene and "stop a protest" because the toll is too high for the weight and/or popularity of the matter at hand?

Tiktaalik 5y ago

This is the irony here in that in the situations recently where environmentalists and indigenous protestors halted pipeline construction the Conservatives in parliament railed against these actions, citing economic harms. Now with these protests, causing even more incredibly severe economic harms they've demurred from criticizing the protestors.

bregma 5y ago
They have been actively supporting the protesters. It's not a coincidence that almost all the protests have been in Liberal ridings.