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He is right but I hate people talking about the government like it's some random entity. You are able to vote, you can decide who is the government AND here com
by theCrowing 4y ago
He is right but I hate people talking about the government like it's some random entity. You are able to vote, you can decide who is the government AND here comes to the kicker you can even be IN the government. You just prefer to not be, you prefer to build artificial stuff to circumvent what your elected government does. It's so counterintuitive.
- newZWhoDis 4y agoHow do I vote out the FBI/CIA/NSA/ATF? The politicians change and they all stay the same or get more powerful
- theCrowing 4y agoWell, get elected write a bill and find allies. That's how.
- z3c0 4y agoWho would have thought it could be so simple?
- theCrowing 4y agoNobody said it is easy and that's why you don't do it and prefer to write sarcastic comments on the internet.
- z3c0 4y agoYour self-righteous indignation is really no better, posting to others that their solution is obviously a task so grand that most who endeavor to attempt it fail (aka every candidate who doesn't get elected.) It reads like a very shallow attempt at pragmatism.
- theCrowing 4y agoAct and the whole world will move.
- kragen 4y agowe have a working solution to the problem of the cia snooping on political dissidents and for some reason you want us to abandon it and switch to a solution that won't work why is that
- tensor 4y agoI don't think that poster is saying to ban Signal. A minority of people want to ban Signal. As it is Signal is legal and that's good. Democracy is also good. And yes people should participate in democracy rather than simply posting angry internet comments. Participating in democracy is also good.
- kragen 4y agowell, democracy is better than dictatorship or monarchy, but that's damning it with faint praise democracy didn't save the cherokees or the melians because they weren't voters
- theCrowing 4y agoNo, you believe you have a working solution, but you can't verify it. You know how you could verify it?
- kragen 4y agoa critical press free of official censorship and intimidation which can protect its sources with free software and strong encryption (verified by free academic inquiry into its security) and funded anonymously by strongly anonymous cryptocurrency
- theCrowing 4y agoand how could one make sure that the press is free?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoWow, it's so simple and easy, how has no one thought of that before and tried it?
- theCrowing 4y agoNobody said it is easy and that's why you don't do it and prefer to write sarcastic comments on the internet.
- School-Cotton 4y agoWhy aren't you doing it, then? Oh, right, because it's impossible.
- theCrowing 4y agoBut I am, we fought a lot of battles and won over the last years with the previous German government, got the new one to adopt most of our (CCC) proposals and are now fighting again because of some proposals are again overreaching.
- School-Cotton 4y agoWe aren’t talking about Germany, we are talking about the US (the article that sparked the discussion was in the New York Times). The US has an entirely different (and much less fair or representative) political system to Germany.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoSimplistic "but hard" proposals beget sarcastic replies. I could enumerate some reasons why what you said is overly simplistic and ignores some harsh realities but I expect the response to be another variant of "no one said it would be easy". I guess no one is allowed to have an opinion on a topic without being prepared to martyr themselves for it?
- 4y ago
- eternalban 4y agoThis is a classic problem. You have political and institutional elements in every system. (In the old days, the institutional elements were the clerics of various religions.) A solution is to indoctrinate bureaucratic elements of government to follow political leadership, but this trick only works in authoritarian systems, like USSR, and requires periodic show trials and executions, or in the military (thus: bootcamp). This is one of the areas where machine intelligence could end up saving the day for humanity. Bureaucracies can potentially be replaced in toto by informational systems at some point. I think only then will we get to try actual democracy democracy.
- 8note 4y agoYour vote is one vote among many. You need to convince everyone else to vote with you too, including the politicians that get elected. Otherwise, you need to run for yourself. You won't get what you want done if you don't participate, and voting is the bare minimum of participation you can do
- kodyo 4y agoVoting does fuck all and everybody knows it. The only beneficiaries of the ability to vote are the tyrants who get to blame the result of their depravity on the people they oppress: the "voters."
- juuular 4y agoMaybe federally (or even state-wide). Locally you can have a MASSIVE impact, and local politics in many ways trickles up to the national level. edit: ymmv, hard work & organizational skills still required
- School-Cotton 4y agoMy neighborhood council is not the one doing mass wiretapping. That’s the federal government (and, presumably, the central governments of other countries too).
- newZWhoDis 4y agoLocal politics is a sham. My local AT&T fiber node is not being tapped by my local government. Traitorous elements within the NSA conspired to defraud the United States by violating our constitutional rights and tap my local fiber grid. If you make $150k/year half your paycheck goes towards funding traitors to the United States of America, funding people actively seek to undermine the constitution.
- the_only_law 4y agoHow? If I live in a town/city/state/whatever where 70% support party X unquestionably what good is voting in the elections going to be if I support the Y candidate? I’ll always be outvoted unless the local majority absolutely fails to show up. I met a guy running for congress a couple years back and had some discussion. We didn’t align politically but he seemed like a genuine guy who cared about helping people in his district more than reciting the party line and joining in on culture wars, and ultimately that screwed him out of the election. The only time I can’t understand voting is in swing places where a small margin can make a difference, but even then I wouldn’t vote given some of the people on both sides running.
- PeterisP 4y agoYou don't, because most voters do want FBI and CIA and NSA and ATF to do their jobs and want the government to assign sufficient resources to stay the same or get more powerful. Politicians explicitly argue for such policies, and gain votes because of them, not despite them; this direction isn't one of those where politicians verbally support one thing and act otherwise, they put this stuff in their speeches and ads. You should convince other voters to agree with your policy first, and if you can't, then you should concede that FBI/CIA/NSA/ATF shouldn't get voted out even if you want them to.
- newZWhoDis 4y ago>because most voters do want FBI and CIA and NSA and ATF to do their jobs The primary means through which said voters learn about these institutions are controlled by said institutions. The FBI/ATF murdered hundreds of people at Waco, the CIA murdered the elected president of the United States. These are not passive institutions that serve the people, they are hostile mafias hell bent on our subjugation, and inherently incompatible with the concept of democracy.
- chimineycricket 4y agoI think it's idealist to think any of these things will help even one bit with the problems Parent is talking about.
- theCrowing 4y agoAnd it's not idealist to believe the opposite?
- chimineycricket 4y agoNo because that's not ideal. But it is realistic.
- theCrowing 4y agoagree to disagree.
- Xeoncross 4y agoThe world seems to have a number of governments that don't respond kindly to criticism from their own citizens, so that leaves other governments the job of restraining them.
- onetimeusename 4y agoI don't really like this idea that voting will fix all problems and dangers in government. In fact, voting could be a cause of the danger. It is called tyranny of the majority.
- tensor 4y agoAnd that's why governments are more complex than straight democracy. I love how people bring up the tyranny of the majority as some counter to modern democratic government, all the while providing no viable alternative. What, do you want the tyranny of the minority? Are you proposing some sort of fascism?
- MarkPNeyer 4y agoWhat about a majority of people agreeing that adults should leave each other alone?
- krapp 4y agoThey don't. So what now?
- diego_sandoval 4y agoUse signal.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- onetimeusename 4y agoI am proposing that people have certain rights even if you don't want them to.
- spritefs 4y agoCorrect in theory but completely wrong in practice
- BeFlatXIII 4y agoMore so to circumvent the dim-witted will of my neighbors.
- theCrowing 4y agoAnd he thinks you are the dim-witted neighbor so to get an actual idea if you or he is dim-witted you need outside data.
- kodyo 4y agoThe idea that dim-witted neighbors get to have a say in how you live your life is kinda gross.
- nibbleshifter 4y ago> AND here comes to the kicker you can even be IN the government This is (in many cases) a lie. The system is set up in a way that only the political class can realistically run for political office.
- theCrowing 4y agoproof it. the last election cycle tells a different story.
- britneybitch 4y agohttps://www.breitbart.com/politics/2014/08/12/study-you-have-near-zero-impact-on-u-s-policy/ https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2014/08/12/study-you-have... > the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy What Signal is doing is infinitely more effective than voting for this year's media-approved career politician.
- theCrowing 4y agoAnd one simple bug or a bad actor could bring it all down.
- thelamest 4y agoCounter: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-study https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-... (and it isn’t a left vs right thing, Vox is replying to a whole bunch of coverage from all angles; I’ve mostly seen Gilens&Page posted from the left).
- juuular 4y agoIf only you hadn't used Breitbart, funded by the very people who seek to ensure most people have a near-zero impact on public policy.
- onionisafruit 4y agoI have the ability to participate in a handful of governments by voting. There are countless government officials around the world who might like access to my signal conversations. I don’t have any say for most of them. That’s why I’m glad I can use a service like Signal offers.
- kodyo 4y agoWhy would I want to be in the government unless I wanted to impose my will on someone else? People like that are the people I least want to be governed by.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- MarkPNeyer 4y agoYour government is torturing and killing people on your behalf. Are you cool with that? Or is voting ineffective at stopping them?
- theCrowing 4y agoAh...yes, the everyone on the internet is American approach. If you live in a country that's fucked up in your own views without doing the bare minimum (ie. vote) against it the one who is fucked up is, YOU.
- MarkPNeyer 4y agoWhich country do you live in where you think they aren’t doing this?
- yucky 4y ago> you can decide who is the government Not really, not in any meaningful way. We can vote for a handful of people every couple of years, but we get no say in the many thousands of people actually running the government from administration to administration, and with no oversight from the people.
- ilyt 4y agoVoting is least worst system. Majority have no clue about who exactly they are voting in and will fall for same lies every election
- koz_ 4y agoBy that logic one shouldn't ever criticise let's say, Google (a separate entity), because in theory one could get a job there, work their way up to be CEO and then change how the company works. In fact, why ever criticise anything or express any opinion when instead you could be 'doing something about it'? I think it's okay for people to express their opinion on the internet, and it's not a moral failing that they are doing that instead of, as you suggest elsewhere, running for office, getting elected, writing a bill and finding allies.