9 ms·

The Swivel-Eyed Loons Have a Point

161 points by teddyh 3y ago

dontlaugh 3y ago
There's another fairly obvious grain of truth in the overall silly protest: ULEZ and CAZ mostly force poor people to spend money on newer cars.
- sidewndr46 3y ago
  Isn't that the point of those laws? It isn't royalty, politicians, or the wealthy drive around in 23 year old clunkers that can barely pass a road safety test. No one passes law like this and announces "The Queen of England herself will now have to replace her 1993 Toyota Corolla!"
- ouid 3y ago
  No, the plan is to force poor people into becoming pedestrians, to lower the burden of traffic for the wealthy.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    Poor people in London are already pedestrians.
  - Taywee 3y ago
    I think most people would be happier if they could drive less and had fewer cars to contend with while walking. Forcing people to be pedestrians would be likely a significant improvement for their health and quality of life. As an American in a major city, the alternative sucks. I'm forced to be a driver, car costs eat a significant portion of my income, my neighborhood doesn't even have sidewalks between the residences and shops (which are across a highway that has a cross walk with no sidewalk leading up to it), and I end up having to drive at least 5 hours every week just to work and get my kids to and from school. This increases pollution in my city and comes with a regular risk of injury and death from a car accident, which is one of the leading causes of preventable death. I'd rather be forced to be a pedestrian than a driver. Having the choice would really be great.
    - boredumb 3y ago
      There are a ton of pedestrian friendly cities in the US. Is it less viable/desirable to move to a new town than it is to force poor people back onto the bus?
      - Taywee 3y ago
        There really aren't, proportionally. Most of the cities are not reasonable to live in without owning a car. And I'd rather if the bus was an option at all. The bus is expensive and unreliable in most US cities. Getting somewhere by car that takes 20 minutes can take hours by bus due to scheduling. This is a stark contrast to London, which has an actual public transit system. Maybe I'm biased by living in Colorado Springs, where it might be particularly bad, but cities with sprawling suburbs are usually terrible for living without a car, and the US has tons of suburbs.
        boredumb 3y ago
        proportionally, sure, but there are a lot of cities you can live without owning a car in the united states. Just about every metropolitan area and nearly any city over 150k people on the west coast seem to be navigable by at most a bike.
      - xp84 3y ago
        Point not without merit, but I’d say there are quite few pedestrian-friendly places in this country unless your standards for that are very low. Most pedestrian-friendly areas might be limited to a couple blocks downtown with a little or no decent non-luxury housing available. I think adding more pedestrian-friendly places, or at least stopping building ones that are outright hostile to everyone but car-drivers, is very important.
    - carlosjobim 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - Taywee 3y ago
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    > No, the plan is to force poor people into becoming pedestrians, Poor people in London already mostly do not own cars. And also they disproportionately suffer the negative effects of pollution from cars. (1) If by "pedestrians" you mean people who get around on foot, on bicycles, on busses, on London Underground trains, on overground trains, in taxis, Minicabs and Ubers then sure, they are "pedestrians" . In my case, if I needed a car I could arrange to buy one, but where would I put it, how would I secure it and what would I do with it? It would be nothing than an expressive source of hassle and worry. It's cheaper and less hassle to use busses to commute, cabs or ubers when I need to travel other short distances, rental cars a couple of times per year. Groceries? There's a small shop in walking distance that way, and others in walking distance the other way, and a similar near the office, but the main shopping _comes to me_ not vice versa. 1) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/17/poorest-londoners-most-at-risk-from-toxic-air-sadiq-khan-says https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/17/poorest-...
- johnday 3y ago
  > ULEZ and CAZ mostly force poor people to spend money on newer cars. I don't think there's any reason to believe they mostly do this. Mostly what they do is encourage people to use public transport to get to areas well-served by public transport. The initiative behind the ULEZ in particular is that it is a strong disincentive to owning/using a car at all in these areas, not just one that happens to be an old banger. Doubly so when considered on top of the congestion charge.
  - twic 3y ago
    I think mostly what they do is stop kids breathing carbon particulates.
    - dontlaugh 3y ago
      Not really, some of the worst offenders are exempt: delivery vehicles and luxury large engine cars.
      - taffronaut 3y ago
        Here's a list of ULEZ exemptions [1]. I don't see any mention of delivery vehicles or luxury cars. [1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/discounts-and-exemptions https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/dis...
        dontlaugh 3y ago
        Luxury/sport vehicles tend to be new enough to be at least euro 6, despite having very large engines and often fewer seats, thus much higher volume of emissions per passenger compared to a small older car. Also, the fixed fee hardly matters for rich people, so even old luxury/sports cars are de facto exempt. Taxis are exempt, despite plenty being diesels older than even euro 4. Plenty of delivery vans with significant emissions are de facto exempt because the fee is negligible when compared to other expenses. If the fee was at least a percentage of income/revenue or a percentage of the value of the vehicle, it would be a bit less bad. If it also scaled measured emissions by passenger instead of using the flawed emission standards, then it might even become useful. If it also included free vehicle replacements funded with revenue from the taxes on the excessive cars, then it might even be good.
- COGlory 3y ago
  I ran into this in the real world the other day. Every year, the university I work at has raised parking pass prices (while slashing parking, but that's another problem). We've gone from $80 to $260 in the last 5 years. I recently bought a 2016 Hyundai Sonata hybrid with 180,000 miles. I found out that the university offers a 15% discount to parking passes for "low emission vehicles", presumably as some sort of incentive to fight climate change or something. They referenced a list of low emission vehicles that qualify, created by a third party called LEED: https://greenercars.org/news/list-leed-qualified-cars https://greenercars.org/news/list-leed-qualified-cars I made the mistake of scrolling through this list. On the list: 2022 M850i xDrive Coupe 4.4L V8. A vehicle of pure excess, entirely unnecessary, getting 20mpg while transporting like two people. Not on the list: my 1988 Ford Bronco with a 2.9L V6 that can haul cargo, move people and dead animals, drive off-road and gets ~20 mpg. So in the eyes of the university and LEEDS list people, it would be better for me to ditch my perfectly functional 1988 vehicle and instead purchase a brand new 2022 V8 sports coupe. This is literally just a poor person tax.
  - boredumb 3y ago
    It will end in the same way Cash4Clunkers did in the US: Poorly and hardly trying to hide the fact it's a government subsidy for the automotive industry at the expense of poor and middle class.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    I mean neither of those cars would be on the road if we were serious about climate change, right? I’m slightly confused by the existence of that list, USBGC provides LEED certification to buildings, not cars, right? Is it possible that someone at your university was tricked?
    - traek 3y ago
      > I’m slightly confused by the existence of that list, USBGC provides LEED certification to buildings, not cars, right? No, LEED credits are given to buildings for providing incentives for low-emitting vehicles. https://www.usgbc.org/credits/new-construction/v2009/ssc43 https://www.usgbc.org/credits/new-construction/v2009/ssc43
- best_one_there 3y ago
  Yes. This, mixed with the artist class pretending that poor people don't own cars, because they don't in their flatshare.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    Poor or middle-class people in London don't generally buy or own cars.
    - best_one_there 3y ago
      Approximately 50% of London households have at least one car. You need to invent a new class to put them (and me) in, I guess. Flatshare people mostly don't, that's basically it. The council estates are full of cars. If you were here it would be obvious.
      - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
        > If you were here it would be obvious "Here?" I don't know what you think you're saying; but you should not assume that you know me; who or where I am. Yeah there are lots of cars in London; there are even more people. I see also you're throwing out random numbers (50% according to who? ) that even if true, don't directly relate to or contradict what I said - "households" are not "people", "people" are not the same stat as "poor people", car owners are not evenly distributed, and IDK why "Flatshare people" are something subhuman that you scorn and exclude from counts.
        best_one_there 3y ago
        TfL have official information on this, it's not a random number. I'm not doing your research for you. The poor and middle class do drive in London. If you think otherwise you're simply mistaken, even in a back of the envelope sense. There are over 2 million cars in London, I don't know who you think owns them if not ordinary people.
        3y ago
scythe 3y ago
>The WEF’s plan for a “Great Reset” in which people “own nothing” by the year 2030 is, in fact, creepy. I like Cory Doctorow: he's a rare case of doing a good job of critiquing the establishment liberals without playing to the resurgent paleoconservatives. But one thing I really don't like is when anyone puts something true next to something not-so-true and makes it a chore to pare apart the good information from the, hopefully, mistakes. The "Great Reset" is a real WEF initiative. The idea of taking advantage of a crisis that killed millions of people to achieve some geopolitical objectives is indeed creepy. However, the "own nothing" line was never officially endorsed by the WEF and owes its existence to an ill-advised essay by a Danish politician who has belonged to three different political parties (including both socialist and liberal) and might be charitably described as careerist. It should not appear in serious critique except when it is necessary to dispel misconceptions about it.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- easytiger 3y ago
  The WEF literally posted it in a musak backed smarmy slideshow flaunting their dystopian vision https://twitter.com/wef/status/983378870819794945 https://twitter.com/wef/status/983378870819794945
  - COGlory 3y ago
    [flagged]
- kipchak 3y ago
  I think most people's introduction of the "own nothing" line was the "8 predictions for the world in 2030" video published by the WEF[1]. I think it's understandable for people seeing such a video to see it as endorsement of input from their "Global Future Councils".[2] This was also published in text form on their site[3] with reference to the Danish MPs essay, but I think most saw the video version. Overall I think the whole thing is puff that was never really intended to be seriously considered, but I think there's some meaning in what is curated. [1]https://archive.org/details/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030 https://archive.org/details/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2... [2]https://web.archive.org/web/20161125145049/https://www.weforum.org/communities/global-future-councils https://web.archive.org/web/20161125145049/https://www.wefor... [3]https://web.archive.org/web/20161125144156/https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161125144156/https://www.wefor...
easytiger 3y ago
Not far off reality. And it is palpable through another pathway that played out in real time, memeticly communicated as "the conspiracy you are suggesting isn't happening, but even if it did here's why it's a good thing" [1] which is precisely what happened in the UK regarding the 15 minute cities plans. Another point in regard to numerous things like this is that those who promote them do so largely undemocratically. They use issues that are seen as above politics (e.g. climate), then apply some very tenuous statistics that could be undermined by a child to promote them and apply them in ways that will have no measurable benefit to the vocal goal they articulated. Living in the middle of this new politics one gets a sense further that the goal is not stated. Tenuous evidence based policies are repeatedly implemented to erode people's standards of living and their ease of living. Preferring instead punishment and self flagellation from the citizenry. All with the more tangible side effect of extracting hundreds of millions of pounds from them. Not helped that local politics especially in the UK is fundamentally broken. People are voting on modern day religious grounds, not for policies, leaving a vocal minority of usually highly unempathetic and emotionally questionable people making impactful decisions about day to day life for millions of citizens. One also gets a sense of civil society as we have known it in the UK for a few hundred years of ending. The reasons are many and the actors motivations hard to articulate simply because all they want is to destroy that which currently exists; with no plan for that which replaces it [1] https://thecritic.co.uk/its-not-happening-and-thats-why-its-good/ https://thecritic.co.uk/its-not-happening-and-thats-why-its-...
- KineticLensman 3y ago
  > One also gets a sense of civil society as we have known it in the UK for a few hundred years of ending British history over the last few hundred years is underlaid by dissent and violent. We've had a civil war, war between England, Ireland and Scotland, regicide, restoration and a whole mass of protesting groups: luddites, levellers, diggers, ranters, suffragettes too name a few, and massive social upheavals caused by defeudalisation and then industrialisation/urbanisation. To be clear, I also believe that the UK is getting more, ermm, 'agitated' than it has been since WW2, but IMO this is reverting to type rather than something that has never been seen before.
bell-cot 3y ago
Yes, yes the UK's swivel-eyed loons have a point. But - outside of performative activism and spleen-venting - do they have any interest in sustained or intelligent actions which might address a few of the problems? On paper, the UK's Liberal Democratic Party sounds like the perfect place for people alarmed by a creepy, authoritarian state. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)#Ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)#Ideolog... ) Wikipedia says the Liberal Dem. Party had under 75,000 members in 2021 (a touch over 0.1% of the UK's population). The next UK general election - where their nearly-all-powerful Parliament will be elected - must happen by 28 Jan 2025. Anyone up for actually doing stuff? EDIT: Yes, the LD's have at least as much of a "Faithless Elector" problem as any political party. How much of that is due to their party having a micro-membership, and the voters having no attention spans nor memories? Vs. (example) back in the "golden era" of America's National Rifle Association - the NRA kept "forever" records on how every congressman voted on every bill of interest to the NRA, and gave their loyal members "scorecards" on the candidates before every election. NRA Membership was ~1% of America's population...but Congressmen who didn't want to become ex-Congressmen generally thought very, very hard before they voted against the NRA on anything related to guns.
- Taywee 3y ago
  Yeah, I've got the same question, and I see the same trend in American political issues. There's an obvious problem, and the left-leaning want to try to solve it by either increasing power and control of one (usually governmental) group or decreasing the power and control of a group (like the police). The right leaning ones protest this desire, but tend to not provide any ideas or solutions at all. They claim the problem is unsolvable, or not a problem, or often that it doesn't even exist. I get the paranoia, but where are your solutions? Wouldn't it be more effective to instead come up with a fix that you prefer?
  - msla 3y ago
    > The right leaning ones protest this desire, but tend to not provide any ideas or solutions at all. I think we can all look at places like Florida to see what the right has in mind, and it certainly isn't reducing the size or intrusiveness of government.
boredumb 3y ago
A lot of people loony or not are terrified of international organizations and non-democratic foundations and networks forcing down a global system of governance against their wishes and local desires, there are all sorts of reasons for this and so these people see the '15 minute' cities as a step into being less autonomous or able to travel freely which there is some truth to. The bigger problem though is that we are in a time where even the US politicians seem to defer decisions to international bodies and try to get them down stream to voters, and people are recognizing this and reacting to it with the only power and limited information they can muster.... So, yes, silly protest or loony or whatever, these people are fearful of a very real thing taking place all over the world and announced widely by the people propagating it. There is a wider issue here where some people value individual liberty and some people value order, environment or public health more. For some people seeing the WEF declare you will own nothing and eat insects, all sorts of folks saying you wont drive cars, etc etc - people can see this as an amazing step forward in [environment or equity in this case] - other people see this as a totalitarian step into removing their autonomy. It's good to keep in mind that discarding grievances as being 'woke' or 'conspiracy minded' or apparently 'swivel-eyed loonish' (this term tickles me a lot as a non UK person lol) is a good way to feel right and morally sound but the end results for society at large will probably be less than exciting.
Taywee 3y ago
> when the swivel-eyed loons claim that the COVID lockdowns were a pretense to control everyday people while rich people swanned around having a lovely time, they’re not entirely wrong. I don't really believe that it's a "pretense" but rather that people in power tend to take every opportunity to keep and bolster their power and freedom and care less about the power and freedom of the already disadvantaged. Something being leveraged for somebody's advantage doesn't mean that it was created for that advantage.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  Trying to read people's minds and intentions and looking for a master plan, rather than seeing coordination problems and simple human weakness and fault is obviously the main source of conspiracy theories. It's so hard for humans not to try to find a sensible pattern and accept that not everything make sense.
  - throwawaymaths 3y ago
    The fundamental problem is that structural incentives often look exactly like a master plan (which is why we sometimes call incentives an "invisible hand")
    - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
      Nope, invisible hand means not deliberately imposed incentives, but spontaneous creation of order from seemingly chaotic market forces.
  - the-printer 3y ago
    > Trying to read people's minds and intentions and looking for a master plan, rather than seeing coordination problems and simple human weakness and fault is obviously the main source of conspiracy theories. And mistrust in general as well.
  - mistermann 3y ago
    > is obviously the main source of conspiracy theories. Also mind reading (or simple guessing/heuristics).
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
> I would love it if my local library or community group had a couple of floating drills that were of the sort that a contractor might use – a beautifully made, well-maintained work of art that would easily replace fifty minimum viable drills in my neighborhood, digitally tracked for routine maintenance and to gather telemetry that could feed into the next product design iteration to make its successors even better. He would love this if the drill he were to borrow was (more or less) in as good of shape as his own is now. But why would that be so? Do you want to ride around in a bus that has the odor and cleanliness of the worst car you've ever seen on those gross-out subreddits? If book lending libraries don't have to deal with this (and I concede that they mostly don't have to), then it is down to the fact that the vast majority of people are semi-illiterate quarterwits who wouldn't be caught near a book if they thought there were hundred dollar bills hidden between the pages. It seems to me sometimes that the same people who have always used the "tragedy of the commons" as a counter-argument to any libertarianish comment I made are now turning around and wanting to force me to live that same tragedy of the commons. The pro-"you'll own nothing and like it" aren't very convincing to me, not even his "neighborhood drill" version. He's playing good cop to their bad cop, but the grift's still the same.
- automatic6131 3y ago
  >He would love this if the drill he were to borrow was (more or less) in as good of shape as his own is now. But why would that be so? Exactly. I would also like the Neighbourhood Makita toolbox. But then, who has the incentives to make this work? Who tracks down the person that keeps it for two months? Who sources this stuff? Who sets the budget? What else is there? A community gym? Well, top quality stuff is thousands, and there are many kinds of gym - weightlifting, gymnastics, boxing... What other resources would you want? There's no way any of this could happen and actually be good. It's just... thermodynamically going to end up crap. There are so many ways for a commons system to be shit, and only one way for it to be good.
  - owenmarshall 3y ago
    I'm a bit surprised at this sentiment. I have the "Neighbourhood Makita toolbox" today: Max across the street is into woodworking and lends his tools freely & happily rents you his time for the price of a beer or two. David will let you pull your car into his garage for an oil change because he has a nice car lift. I'm less useful, but lift my share of heavy things & set my share of fence posts and am always around when their computers act up. When I was younger I grew up in a rural area with decent poverty, and this went even deeper. Farmers knew they could each get a small mower that takes forever to clear their field, or could pool their cash and share one big PTO-driven Bush Hog that did the job better & faster. There wasn't any worry about "who keeps it nice": you washed it and sharpened the blades if needed when you were done because you know your neighbor washed it and sharpened the blades when he was. Is the rub that Cory talks about "the library" being the source, giving a vision of some faceless Other going to a big building downtown and renting the drill in exchange for their library card, nothing else, with no incentive to keep it nice for the next person? Maybe that's it; I'd argue, however, that a 15-minute city implies more libraries serving fewer people, so the Other isn't faceless, it's Max or Dave.
gadders 3y ago
I think this would have been a stronger article if he had been more even handed in his examples he had chosen. There were plenty of left wingers that ignored //edit//COVID lockdowns. And anyone who doesn't think a large motivating force for 15 minute cities is the fines revenue it will generate doesn't know local councils very well.
- ajmurmann 3y ago
  Can you elaborate on these "climate lockdowns"? Google only finds proposals. In what country did this happen?
  - gadders 3y ago
    Typo - I meant COVID Lockdowns. I'll edit if it will let me.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- ebiester 3y ago
  This is about knowing your audience. In absolute terms, it's true. I'd rather that we didn't tie 15 minute cities to very low emissions or car restrictions other than reducing parking minimums and eliminating free parking on public property. You then don't have to worry about that whole class of surveillance.
  - gadders 3y ago
    The thing is, if you eliminate free or cheap parking on local shops, people will just drive to their nearest large supermarket. The local council then complains that "the High Street is dying".
    - ajmurmann 3y ago
      One could build dedicated parking structures. Those use up less space that we can use for much better stuff, make it so that you don't have cars circling blocks trying to find parking. If a business decides that they need parking, nobody stops them from building it themselves. No reason to dictate this or have the public give up collectively owned land for this.
smcl 3y ago
The Swivel-Eyed Loons usually cannot concisely articulate what they are mad at, but in my experience mass surveillance doesn't stand out as the main thing. When I see someone going off about 15 minute cities they're usually unhinged, unstructured and involve talking about about communism, socialism, George Soros, the Jewish faith, "wokeness" and all the current hot-button issues on the right. If they really cared about mass surveillance they wouldn't roll it up with all sorts of other off-putting things that virtually guarantee the rest of us won't take them seriously. But my feeling is that they're not, they're just generally fucked off with various parts of modern-day life, possibly a bit bored and definitely a little too Online.
DarkNova6 3y ago
A very fair and nuanced article. I agree with the closing statement most of all. > Help them understand that corporate power, and its capture of government, is our true shared enemy.
best_one_there 3y ago
It's exactly the same as climate change. It doesn't matter if one of us drives a pollutey car. It matters if millions or billions of us do. The entire concept of being elite is manipulating others into having and doing less. I mean, quite literally not everyone can have the life of someone who has significant wealth even.
mschuster91 3y ago
> The thing is, the UK government has a long history of abusing this kind of power. The Metropolitan London police ran a 40-year covert operation to infiltrate, track, and disrupt trade union organizers and activists, from students to Members of Parliament. The Met also colluded with large construction firms to maintain a secret blacklist of union organizers who were denied employment and had their lives ruined. And yet, people right here on this platform routinely imply that there's no risk of such technology being abused (e.g. [1] but that's far from the only time I've had to read such hot takes)... > Our computers and phones – often devices that we ourselves were expected to pay for – were enlisted to the corporate IT system and then enshittified with bossware that spies on our keystrokes, plunders our filesystems, monitors our network activity, and for some workers, watches and listens to them constantly through their devices’ cameras and microphones. Corporate owned devices are one thing (and bad enough), but who the hell onboards their personal devices onto corporate MDMs? If corporate wants me to be reachable out of working hours they better provide me a corporate phone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36060471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36060471
- chihuahua 3y ago
  Yeah, this is where the author lost me, when he started explaining how remote work is a conspiracy to exploit employees.
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    You've got it wrong - he explains how employers use remote work as a pretext to introduce surveillance! And he definitely has a point there. The worst amount of bullshit (keyloggers, screen capture) are illegal here in Europe under labour law but completely legal in wide parts of the US.
- teddyh 3y ago
  > who the hell onboards their personal devices onto corporate MDMs? People who don’t have the luxury, or living space, to be able to own multiple devices of every type.
chippy 3y ago
It's a a great sentiment to have in hindsight but will only take another crisis for comfortable people to get rid of their "common ground" and peacetime understanding of others and be happy with whatever eroding of freedoms are needed for the greater good. We will see it happen again. The real question therefore should not be "lets find common ground now its peacetime and be friends" but "how can we be resilient to not be enemies in the next war?". It's a difficult and deep question which requires a kind of secure moral framework to operate in.
VagueMag 3y ago
> “Climate lockdowns” are a product of a conspiracist’s fevered imagination... "We need to act boldly now if we are to avoid economy-wide lockdowns to halt climate change": https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we-need-to-act-boldly-now-if-we-are-to-avoid-economy-wide-lockdowns-to-halt-climate-change-11600879250 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we-need-to-act-boldly-now-... "Report: World Needs Equivalent of a Pandemic Lockdown Every Two Years to Meet Paris Carbon Emissions Goals": https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/03/03/report-world-needs-equivalent-of-pandemic-lockdown-every-two-years-to-meet-paris-carbon-emission-goals/?sh=34e2e4956dee https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/03/03/re...
Symbiote 3y ago
I found a directory of British "Libraries of Things", many of which include tools. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/home-garden/library-things-directory https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/home-garden/library-things-d...
somesortofthing 3y ago
This is ignoring the fact that the material basis for the 15 minute city people's complaints and the complaints of, for example, privacy advocates are not only completely different but irreconcilable. The right-wing complaints come from a wealthy, usually retired, small business/property-owning class threatened by the march of global capital consolidating away their footholds into economic growth and placing them or their children in the same bucket as the disgusting poors they've spent their entire lives campaigning to immiserate. They aren't mad about the fact that the systems of repression they're protesting against exist, they're mad that the systems want used against undesirables might be turned against them. The surface-level rhetoric sounds vaguely similar, but look under the surface and you'll find that the people behind opposition to global capital from the right have less in common with the people who oppose it from the left than with their supposed shared enemy.
at_a_remove 3y ago
I remember when MKUltra was just some nutty idea passed around by, well, swivel-eyed loons. The idea that oil companies knew about climate change before the Summer of Love and we're ready to gaslight us for a few decades? Gibbering madness. I don't really care if the people noticing (let's call them Noticers) if they blame aliens or the Knights Templar (to make a nod to Umberto Eco), they've picked up on something.
blintz 3y ago
Generally on board with the author, but this didn’t ring as true: > Oyster payment cards are virtually impossible to use anonymously You can just buy them with cash from the machines, right? Isn’t it a rare example of a public service in the UK that does not involve a bunch of surveillance?
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  How many different anonymous oyster cards will you use. Likely one card, for years? At best it's pseudonymous not anonymous - a dataset identified by a GUID not a name. That card has a unique id, and so a large data history attached to it. Commuting habits will be evident in the data. Should the person who uses the card need to be identified, it won't be that hard to find a clear image of them using the card to enter or exit at an otherwise quiet station in that history.
ghusto 3y ago
> They’re not wrong. Just look at London, where a (again, perfectly sensible) system of “congestion charging” and “low-emissions zones” Just wanted to point out that the rich in London see this as more of a tax. i.e. Poor people are banned from driving in London, whilst it has made no difference to the rich. I knew someone who regularly sped in the bus lane, and saw the fines he got everyday as a fee for doing so. Fines make no sense unless they're weighted against your taxes (though of course, the rich find ways around paying tax too).
NoRelToEmber 3y ago
The frustrating thing about Doctorow's articles is that he makes good points, but always supports them with anecdotes or hypotheticals that make it seem only minorities have anything to worry about (and the occasional labour union). No mention of the overbearing hate-speech laws that threaten seven years jail time for something as vague as "stirring up hatred", even within one's home [1,2], the foster parents whose foster children were taken away for being members of UKIP [3], the police investigation launched targeting "It's okay to be white" posters on public lamp-posts [4], or police recording "non-crime hate incidents" by children, that will become part of their background checks [5]. It's too much lying by omission for my taste, despite strongly agreeing with the overt part of his message. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56364821 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56364... [2] https://www.nationalreview.com/news/scottish-bill-would-criminalize-hate-speech-in-private-homes/ https://www.nationalreview.com/news/scottish-bill-would-crim... [3] A couple have had three foster children removed from their care because they belong to the UK Independence Party. - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20474120 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20474120 [4] Basingstoke 'It’s okay to be white' posters spark investigation - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-59179914 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-59179914 [5] Police recording thousands of messages sent by children as non-crime hate incidents, which will show up when employers run background checks - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/05/children-warned-future-careers-could-ruined-old-tweets/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/05/children-warned-...
- colpabar 3y ago
  Well, your comment is going to be flagged for mentioning these things, just like his article would get flagged if it did the same. I am new to this person but he seems intelligent, and intelligent people understand that the plights of minorities garner more sympathy than the plights of the (western) majority. He's walking a fine line already; he's advocating for not entirely writing off the views of disagreeable people, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what everyone in power wants us to do. Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but I think that if he really does care about the examples in the article, he cares about the ones you listed too, and he just knows it's not politically correct to mention them.
fgsfds028374 3y ago
[dead]

161 points by teddyh 3y ago

There's another fairly obvious grain of truth in the overall silly protest: ULEZ and CAZ mostly force poor people to spend money on newer cars.

sidewndr46 3y ago
Isn't that the point of those laws? It isn't royalty, politicians, or the wealthy drive around in 23 year old clunkers that can barely pass a road safety test. No one passes law like this and announces "The Queen of England herself will now have to replace her 1993 Toyota Corolla!"
ouid 3y ago
No, the plan is to force poor people into becoming pedestrians, to lower the burden of traffic for the wealthy.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  Poor people in London are already pedestrians.
- Taywee 3y ago
  I think most people would be happier if they could drive less and had fewer cars to contend with while walking. Forcing people to be pedestrians would be likely a significant improvement for their health and quality of life. As an American in a major city, the alternative sucks. I'm forced to be a driver, car costs eat a significant portion of my income, my neighborhood doesn't even have sidewalks between the residences and shops (which are across a highway that has a cross walk with no sidewalk leading up to it), and I end up having to drive at least 5 hours every week just to work and get my kids to and from school. This increases pollution in my city and comes with a regular risk of injury and death from a car accident, which is one of the leading causes of preventable death. I'd rather be forced to be a pedestrian than a driver. Having the choice would really be great.
  - boredumb 3y ago
    There are a ton of pedestrian friendly cities in the US. Is it less viable/desirable to move to a new town than it is to force poor people back onto the bus?
    - Taywee 3y ago
      There really aren't, proportionally. Most of the cities are not reasonable to live in without owning a car. And I'd rather if the bus was an option at all. The bus is expensive and unreliable in most US cities. Getting somewhere by car that takes 20 minutes can take hours by bus due to scheduling. This is a stark contrast to London, which has an actual public transit system. Maybe I'm biased by living in Colorado Springs, where it might be particularly bad, but cities with sprawling suburbs are usually terrible for living without a car, and the US has tons of suburbs.
      - boredumb 3y ago
        proportionally, sure, but there are a lot of cities you can live without owning a car in the united states. Just about every metropolitan area and nearly any city over 150k people on the west coast seem to be navigable by at most a bike.
    - xp84 3y ago
      Point not without merit, but I’d say there are quite few pedestrian-friendly places in this country unless your standards for that are very low. Most pedestrian-friendly areas might be limited to a couple blocks downtown with a little or no decent non-luxury housing available. I think adding more pedestrian-friendly places, or at least stopping building ones that are outright hostile to everyone but car-drivers, is very important.
  - carlosjobim 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - Taywee 3y ago
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  > No, the plan is to force poor people into becoming pedestrians, Poor people in London already mostly do not own cars. And also they disproportionately suffer the negative effects of pollution from cars. (1) If by "pedestrians" you mean people who get around on foot, on bicycles, on busses, on London Underground trains, on overground trains, in taxis, Minicabs and Ubers then sure, they are "pedestrians" . In my case, if I needed a car I could arrange to buy one, but where would I put it, how would I secure it and what would I do with it? It would be nothing than an expressive source of hassle and worry. It's cheaper and less hassle to use busses to commute, cabs or ubers when I need to travel other short distances, rental cars a couple of times per year. Groceries? There's a small shop in walking distance that way, and others in walking distance the other way, and a similar near the office, but the main shopping _comes to me_ not vice versa. 1) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/17/poorest-londoners-most-at-risk-from-toxic-air-sadiq-khan-says https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/feb/17/poorest-...
johnday 3y ago
> ULEZ and CAZ mostly force poor people to spend money on newer cars. I don't think there's any reason to believe they mostly do this. Mostly what they do is encourage people to use public transport to get to areas well-served by public transport. The initiative behind the ULEZ in particular is that it is a strong disincentive to owning/using a car at all in these areas, not just one that happens to be an old banger. Doubly so when considered on top of the congestion charge.
- twic 3y ago
  I think mostly what they do is stop kids breathing carbon particulates.
  - dontlaugh 3y ago
    Not really, some of the worst offenders are exempt: delivery vehicles and luxury large engine cars.
    - taffronaut 3y ago
      Here's a list of ULEZ exemptions [1]. I don't see any mention of delivery vehicles or luxury cars. [1] https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/discounts-and-exemptions https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra-low-emission-zone/dis...
      - dontlaugh 3y ago
        Luxury/sport vehicles tend to be new enough to be at least euro 6, despite having very large engines and often fewer seats, thus much higher volume of emissions per passenger compared to a small older car. Also, the fixed fee hardly matters for rich people, so even old luxury/sports cars are de facto exempt. Taxis are exempt, despite plenty being diesels older than even euro 4. Plenty of delivery vans with significant emissions are de facto exempt because the fee is negligible when compared to other expenses. If the fee was at least a percentage of income/revenue or a percentage of the value of the vehicle, it would be a bit less bad. If it also scaled measured emissions by passenger instead of using the flawed emission standards, then it might even become useful. If it also included free vehicle replacements funded with revenue from the taxes on the excessive cars, then it might even be good.
COGlory 3y ago
I ran into this in the real world the other day. Every year, the university I work at has raised parking pass prices (while slashing parking, but that's another problem). We've gone from $80 to $260 in the last 5 years. I recently bought a 2016 Hyundai Sonata hybrid with 180,000 miles. I found out that the university offers a 15% discount to parking passes for "low emission vehicles", presumably as some sort of incentive to fight climate change or something. They referenced a list of low emission vehicles that qualify, created by a third party called LEED: https://greenercars.org/news/list-leed-qualified-cars https://greenercars.org/news/list-leed-qualified-cars I made the mistake of scrolling through this list. On the list: 2022 M850i xDrive Coupe 4.4L V8. A vehicle of pure excess, entirely unnecessary, getting 20mpg while transporting like two people. Not on the list: my 1988 Ford Bronco with a 2.9L V6 that can haul cargo, move people and dead animals, drive off-road and gets ~20 mpg. So in the eyes of the university and LEEDS list people, it would be better for me to ditch my perfectly functional 1988 vehicle and instead purchase a brand new 2022 V8 sports coupe. This is literally just a poor person tax.
- boredumb 3y ago
  It will end in the same way Cash4Clunkers did in the US: Poorly and hardly trying to hide the fact it's a government subsidy for the automotive industry at the expense of poor and middle class.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I mean neither of those cars would be on the road if we were serious about climate change, right? I’m slightly confused by the existence of that list, USBGC provides LEED certification to buildings, not cars, right? Is it possible that someone at your university was tricked?
  - traek 3y ago
    > I’m slightly confused by the existence of that list, USBGC provides LEED certification to buildings, not cars, right? No, LEED credits are given to buildings for providing incentives for low-emitting vehicles. https://www.usgbc.org/credits/new-construction/v2009/ssc43 https://www.usgbc.org/credits/new-construction/v2009/ssc43
best_one_there 3y ago
Yes. This, mixed with the artist class pretending that poor people don't own cars, because they don't in their flatshare.
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  Poor or middle-class people in London don't generally buy or own cars.
  - best_one_there 3y ago
    Approximately 50% of London households have at least one car. You need to invent a new class to put them (and me) in, I guess. Flatshare people mostly don't, that's basically it. The council estates are full of cars. If you were here it would be obvious.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
      > If you were here it would be obvious "Here?" I don't know what you think you're saying; but you should not assume that you know me; who or where I am. Yeah there are lots of cars in London; there are even more people. I see also you're throwing out random numbers (50% according to who? ) that even if true, don't directly relate to or contradict what I said - "households" are not "people", "people" are not the same stat as "poor people", car owners are not evenly distributed, and IDK why "Flatshare people" are something subhuman that you scorn and exclude from counts.
      - best_one_there 3y ago
        TfL have official information on this, it's not a random number. I'm not doing your research for you. The poor and middle class do drive in London. If you think otherwise you're simply mistaken, even in a back of the envelope sense. There are over 2 million cars in London, I don't know who you think owns them if not ordinary people.
        3y ago

scythe 3y ago

>The WEF’s plan for a “Great Reset” in which people “own nothing” by the year 2030 is, in fact, creepy. I like Cory Doctorow: he's a rare case of doing a good job of critiquing the establishment liberals without playing to the resurgent paleoconservatives. But one thing I really don't like is when anyone puts something true next to something not-so-true and makes it a chore to pare apart the good information from the, hopefully, mistakes. The "Great Reset" is a real WEF initiative. The idea of taking advantage of a crisis that killed millions of people to achieve some geopolitical objectives is indeed creepy. However, the "own nothing" line was never officially endorsed by the WEF and owes its existence to an ill-advised essay by a Danish politician who has belonged to three different political parties (including both socialist and liberal) and might be charitably described as careerist. It should not appear in serious critique except when it is necessary to dispel misconceptions about it.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
easytiger 3y ago
The WEF literally posted it in a musak backed smarmy slideshow flaunting their dystopian vision https://twitter.com/wef/status/983378870819794945 https://twitter.com/wef/status/983378870819794945
- COGlory 3y ago
  [flagged]
kipchak 3y ago
I think most people's introduction of the "own nothing" line was the "8 predictions for the world in 2030" video published by the WEF[1]. I think it's understandable for people seeing such a video to see it as endorsement of input from their "Global Future Councils".[2] This was also published in text form on their site[3] with reference to the Danish MPs essay, but I think most saw the video version. Overall I think the whole thing is puff that was never really intended to be seriously considered, but I think there's some meaning in what is curated. [1]https://archive.org/details/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030 https://archive.org/details/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2... [2]https://web.archive.org/web/20161125145049/https://www.weforum.org/communities/global-future-councils https://web.archive.org/web/20161125145049/https://www.wefor... [3]https://web.archive.org/web/20161125144156/https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/8-predictions-for-the-world-in-2030/ https://web.archive.org/web/20161125144156/https://www.wefor...

easytiger 3y ago

Not far off reality. And it is palpable through another pathway that played out in real time, memeticly communicated as "the conspiracy you are suggesting isn't happening, but even if it did here's why it's a good thing" [1] which is precisely what happened in the UK regarding the 15 minute cities plans. Another point in regard to numerous things like this is that those who promote them do so largely undemocratically. They use issues that are seen as above politics (e.g. climate), then apply some very tenuous statistics that could be undermined by a child to promote them and apply them in ways that will have no measurable benefit to the vocal goal they articulated. Living in the middle of this new politics one gets a sense further that the goal is not stated. Tenuous evidence based policies are repeatedly implemented to erode people's standards of living and their ease of living. Preferring instead punishment and self flagellation from the citizenry. All with the more tangible side effect of extracting hundreds of millions of pounds from them. Not helped that local politics especially in the UK is fundamentally broken. People are voting on modern day religious grounds, not for policies, leaving a vocal minority of usually highly unempathetic and emotionally questionable people making impactful decisions about day to day life for millions of citizens. One also gets a sense of civil society as we have known it in the UK for a few hundred years of ending. The reasons are many and the actors motivations hard to articulate simply because all they want is to destroy that which currently exists; with no plan for that which replaces it [1] https://thecritic.co.uk/its-not-happening-and-thats-why-its-good/ https://thecritic.co.uk/its-not-happening-and-thats-why-its-...

KineticLensman 3y ago
> One also gets a sense of civil society as we have known it in the UK for a few hundred years of ending British history over the last few hundred years is underlaid by dissent and violent. We've had a civil war, war between England, Ireland and Scotland, regicide, restoration and a whole mass of protesting groups: luddites, levellers, diggers, ranters, suffragettes too name a few, and massive social upheavals caused by defeudalisation and then industrialisation/urbanisation. To be clear, I also believe that the UK is getting more, ermm, 'agitated' than it has been since WW2, but IMO this is reverting to type rather than something that has never been seen before.

bell-cot 3y ago

Yes, yes the UK's swivel-eyed loons have a point. But - outside of performative activism and spleen-venting - do they have any interest in sustained or intelligent actions which might address a few of the problems? On paper, the UK's Liberal Democratic Party sounds like the perfect place for people alarmed by a creepy, authoritarian state. ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)#Ideology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_Democrats_(UK)#Ideolog... ) Wikipedia says the Liberal Dem. Party had under 75,000 members in 2021 (a touch over 0.1% of the UK's population). The next UK general election - where their nearly-all-powerful Parliament will be elected - must happen by 28 Jan 2025. Anyone up for actually doing stuff? EDIT: Yes, the LD's have at least as much of a "Faithless Elector" problem as any political party. How much of that is due to their party having a micro-membership, and the voters having no attention spans nor memories? Vs. (example) back in the "golden era" of America's National Rifle Association - the NRA kept "forever" records on how every congressman voted on every bill of interest to the NRA, and gave their loyal members "scorecards" on the candidates before every election. NRA Membership was ~1% of America's population...but Congressmen who didn't want to become ex-Congressmen generally thought very, very hard before they voted against the NRA on anything related to guns.

Taywee 3y ago
Yeah, I've got the same question, and I see the same trend in American political issues. There's an obvious problem, and the left-leaning want to try to solve it by either increasing power and control of one (usually governmental) group or decreasing the power and control of a group (like the police). The right leaning ones protest this desire, but tend to not provide any ideas or solutions at all. They claim the problem is unsolvable, or not a problem, or often that it doesn't even exist. I get the paranoia, but where are your solutions? Wouldn't it be more effective to instead come up with a fix that you prefer?
- msla 3y ago
  > The right leaning ones protest this desire, but tend to not provide any ideas or solutions at all. I think we can all look at places like Florida to see what the right has in mind, and it certainly isn't reducing the size or intrusiveness of government.

boredumb 3y ago

A lot of people loony or not are terrified of international organizations and non-democratic foundations and networks forcing down a global system of governance against their wishes and local desires, there are all sorts of reasons for this and so these people see the '15 minute' cities as a step into being less autonomous or able to travel freely which there is some truth to. The bigger problem though is that we are in a time where even the US politicians seem to defer decisions to international bodies and try to get them down stream to voters, and people are recognizing this and reacting to it with the only power and limited information they can muster.... So, yes, silly protest or loony or whatever, these people are fearful of a very real thing taking place all over the world and announced widely by the people propagating it. There is a wider issue here where some people value individual liberty and some people value order, environment or public health more. For some people seeing the WEF declare you will own nothing and eat insects, all sorts of folks saying you wont drive cars, etc etc - people can see this as an amazing step forward in [environment or equity in this case] - other people see this as a totalitarian step into removing their autonomy. It's good to keep in mind that discarding grievances as being 'woke' or 'conspiracy minded' or apparently 'swivel-eyed loonish' (this term tickles me a lot as a non UK person lol) is a good way to feel right and morally sound but the end results for society at large will probably be less than exciting.

Taywee 3y ago

> when the swivel-eyed loons claim that the COVID lockdowns were a pretense to control everyday people while rich people swanned around having a lovely time, they’re not entirely wrong. I don't really believe that it's a "pretense" but rather that people in power tend to take every opportunity to keep and bolster their power and freedom and care less about the power and freedom of the already disadvantaged. Something being leveraged for somebody's advantage doesn't mean that it was created for that advantage.

ajmurmann 3y ago
Trying to read people's minds and intentions and looking for a master plan, rather than seeing coordination problems and simple human weakness and fault is obviously the main source of conspiracy theories. It's so hard for humans not to try to find a sensible pattern and accept that not everything make sense.
- throwawaymaths 3y ago
  The fundamental problem is that structural incentives often look exactly like a master plan (which is why we sometimes call incentives an "invisible hand")
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
    Nope, invisible hand means not deliberately imposed incentives, but spontaneous creation of order from seemingly chaotic market forces.
- the-printer 3y ago
  > Trying to read people's minds and intentions and looking for a master plan, rather than seeing coordination problems and simple human weakness and fault is obviously the main source of conspiracy theories. And mistrust in general as well.
- mistermann 3y ago
  > is obviously the main source of conspiracy theories. Also mind reading (or simple guessing/heuristics).

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

> I would love it if my local library or community group had a couple of floating drills that were of the sort that a contractor might use – a beautifully made, well-maintained work of art that would easily replace fifty minimum viable drills in my neighborhood, digitally tracked for routine maintenance and to gather telemetry that could feed into the next product design iteration to make its successors even better. He would love this if the drill he were to borrow was (more or less) in as good of shape as his own is now. But why would that be so? Do you want to ride around in a bus that has the odor and cleanliness of the worst car you've ever seen on those gross-out subreddits? If book lending libraries don't have to deal with this (and I concede that they mostly don't have to), then it is down to the fact that the vast majority of people are semi-illiterate quarterwits who wouldn't be caught near a book if they thought there were hundred dollar bills hidden between the pages. It seems to me sometimes that the same people who have always used the "tragedy of the commons" as a counter-argument to any libertarianish comment I made are now turning around and wanting to force me to live that same tragedy of the commons. The pro-"you'll own nothing and like it" aren't very convincing to me, not even his "neighborhood drill" version. He's playing good cop to their bad cop, but the grift's still the same.

automatic6131 3y ago
>He would love this if the drill he were to borrow was (more or less) in as good of shape as his own is now. But why would that be so? Exactly. I would also like the Neighbourhood Makita toolbox. But then, who has the incentives to make this work? Who tracks down the person that keeps it for two months? Who sources this stuff? Who sets the budget? What else is there? A community gym? Well, top quality stuff is thousands, and there are many kinds of gym - weightlifting, gymnastics, boxing... What other resources would you want? There's no way any of this could happen and actually be good. It's just... thermodynamically going to end up crap. There are so many ways for a commons system to be shit, and only one way for it to be good.
- owenmarshall 3y ago
  I'm a bit surprised at this sentiment. I have the "Neighbourhood Makita toolbox" today: Max across the street is into woodworking and lends his tools freely & happily rents you his time for the price of a beer or two. David will let you pull your car into his garage for an oil change because he has a nice car lift. I'm less useful, but lift my share of heavy things & set my share of fence posts and am always around when their computers act up. When I was younger I grew up in a rural area with decent poverty, and this went even deeper. Farmers knew they could each get a small mower that takes forever to clear their field, or could pool their cash and share one big PTO-driven Bush Hog that did the job better & faster. There wasn't any worry about "who keeps it nice": you washed it and sharpened the blades if needed when you were done because you know your neighbor washed it and sharpened the blades when he was. Is the rub that Cory talks about "the library" being the source, giving a vision of some faceless Other going to a big building downtown and renting the drill in exchange for their library card, nothing else, with no incentive to keep it nice for the next person? Maybe that's it; I'd argue, however, that a 15-minute city implies more libraries serving fewer people, so the Other isn't faceless, it's Max or Dave.

gadders 3y ago

I think this would have been a stronger article if he had been more even handed in his examples he had chosen. There were plenty of left wingers that ignored //edit//COVID lockdowns. And anyone who doesn't think a large motivating force for 15 minute cities is the fines revenue it will generate doesn't know local councils very well.

ajmurmann 3y ago
Can you elaborate on these "climate lockdowns"? Google only finds proposals. In what country did this happen?
- gadders 3y ago
  Typo - I meant COVID Lockdowns. I'll edit if it will let me.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
ebiester 3y ago
This is about knowing your audience. In absolute terms, it's true. I'd rather that we didn't tie 15 minute cities to very low emissions or car restrictions other than reducing parking minimums and eliminating free parking on public property. You then don't have to worry about that whole class of surveillance.
- gadders 3y ago
  The thing is, if you eliminate free or cheap parking on local shops, people will just drive to their nearest large supermarket. The local council then complains that "the High Street is dying".
  - ajmurmann 3y ago
    One could build dedicated parking structures. Those use up less space that we can use for much better stuff, make it so that you don't have cars circling blocks trying to find parking. If a business decides that they need parking, nobody stops them from building it themselves. No reason to dictate this or have the public give up collectively owned land for this.

smcl 3y ago

The Swivel-Eyed Loons usually cannot concisely articulate what they are mad at, but in my experience mass surveillance doesn't stand out as the main thing. When I see someone going off about 15 minute cities they're usually unhinged, unstructured and involve talking about about communism, socialism, George Soros, the Jewish faith, "wokeness" and all the current hot-button issues on the right. If they really cared about mass surveillance they wouldn't roll it up with all sorts of other off-putting things that virtually guarantee the rest of us won't take them seriously. But my feeling is that they're not, they're just generally fucked off with various parts of modern-day life, possibly a bit bored and definitely a little too Online.

DarkNova6 3y ago

A very fair and nuanced article. I agree with the closing statement most of all. > Help them understand that corporate power, and its capture of government, is our true shared enemy.

best_one_there 3y ago

It's exactly the same as climate change. It doesn't matter if one of us drives a pollutey car. It matters if millions or billions of us do. The entire concept of being elite is manipulating others into having and doing less. I mean, quite literally not everyone can have the life of someone who has significant wealth even.

mschuster91 3y ago

> The thing is, the UK government has a long history of abusing this kind of power. The Metropolitan London police ran a 40-year covert operation to infiltrate, track, and disrupt trade union organizers and activists, from students to Members of Parliament. The Met also colluded with large construction firms to maintain a secret blacklist of union organizers who were denied employment and had their lives ruined. And yet, people right here on this platform routinely imply that there's no risk of such technology being abused (e.g. [1] but that's far from the only time I've had to read such hot takes)... > Our computers and phones – often devices that we ourselves were expected to pay for – were enlisted to the corporate IT system and then enshittified with bossware that spies on our keystrokes, plunders our filesystems, monitors our network activity, and for some workers, watches and listens to them constantly through their devices’ cameras and microphones. Corporate owned devices are one thing (and bad enough), but who the hell onboards their personal devices onto corporate MDMs? If corporate wants me to be reachable out of working hours they better provide me a corporate phone. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36060471 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36060471

chihuahua 3y ago
Yeah, this is where the author lost me, when he started explaining how remote work is a conspiracy to exploit employees.
- mschuster91 3y ago
  You've got it wrong - he explains how employers use remote work as a pretext to introduce surveillance! And he definitely has a point there. The worst amount of bullshit (keyloggers, screen capture) are illegal here in Europe under labour law but completely legal in wide parts of the US.
teddyh 3y ago
> who the hell onboards their personal devices onto corporate MDMs? People who don’t have the luxury, or living space, to be able to own multiple devices of every type.

chippy 3y ago

It's a a great sentiment to have in hindsight but will only take another crisis for comfortable people to get rid of their "common ground" and peacetime understanding of others and be happy with whatever eroding of freedoms are needed for the greater good. We will see it happen again. The real question therefore should not be "lets find common ground now its peacetime and be friends" but "how can we be resilient to not be enemies in the next war?". It's a difficult and deep question which requires a kind of secure moral framework to operate in.

VagueMag 3y ago

> “Climate lockdowns” are a product of a conspiracist’s fevered imagination... "We need to act boldly now if we are to avoid economy-wide lockdowns to halt climate change": https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we-need-to-act-boldly-now-if-we-are-to-avoid-economy-wide-lockdowns-to-halt-climate-change-11600879250 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/we-need-to-act-boldly-now-... "Report: World Needs Equivalent of a Pandemic Lockdown Every Two Years to Meet Paris Carbon Emissions Goals": https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/03/03/report-world-needs-equivalent-of-pandemic-lockdown-every-two-years-to-meet-paris-carbon-emission-goals/?sh=34e2e4956dee https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2021/03/03/re...

Symbiote 3y ago

I found a directory of British "Libraries of Things", many of which include tools. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/home-garden/library-things-directory https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/home-garden/library-things-d...

somesortofthing 3y ago

This is ignoring the fact that the material basis for the 15 minute city people's complaints and the complaints of, for example, privacy advocates are not only completely different but irreconcilable. The right-wing complaints come from a wealthy, usually retired, small business/property-owning class threatened by the march of global capital consolidating away their footholds into economic growth and placing them or their children in the same bucket as the disgusting poors they've spent their entire lives campaigning to immiserate. They aren't mad about the fact that the systems of repression they're protesting against exist, they're mad that the systems want used against undesirables might be turned against them. The surface-level rhetoric sounds vaguely similar, but look under the surface and you'll find that the people behind opposition to global capital from the right have less in common with the people who oppose it from the left than with their supposed shared enemy.

at_a_remove 3y ago

I remember when MKUltra was just some nutty idea passed around by, well, swivel-eyed loons. The idea that oil companies knew about climate change before the Summer of Love and we're ready to gaslight us for a few decades? Gibbering madness. I don't really care if the people noticing (let's call them Noticers) if they blame aliens or the Knights Templar (to make a nod to Umberto Eco), they've picked up on something.

blintz 3y ago

Generally on board with the author, but this didn’t ring as true: > Oyster payment cards are virtually impossible to use anonymously You can just buy them with cash from the machines, right? Isn’t it a rare example of a public service in the UK that does not involve a bunch of surveillance?

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
How many different anonymous oyster cards will you use. Likely one card, for years? At best it's pseudonymous not anonymous - a dataset identified by a GUID not a name. That card has a unique id, and so a large data history attached to it. Commuting habits will be evident in the data. Should the person who uses the card need to be identified, it won't be that hard to find a clear image of them using the card to enter or exit at an otherwise quiet station in that history.

ghusto 3y ago

> They’re not wrong. Just look at London, where a (again, perfectly sensible) system of “congestion charging” and “low-emissions zones” Just wanted to point out that the rich in London see this as more of a tax. i.e. Poor people are banned from driving in London, whilst it has made no difference to the rich. I knew someone who regularly sped in the bus lane, and saw the fines he got everyday as a fee for doing so. Fines make no sense unless they're weighted against your taxes (though of course, the rich find ways around paying tax too).

NoRelToEmber 3y ago

The frustrating thing about Doctorow's articles is that he makes good points, but always supports them with anecdotes or hypotheticals that make it seem only minorities have anything to worry about (and the occasional labour union). No mention of the overbearing hate-speech laws that threaten seven years jail time for something as vague as "stirring up hatred", even within one's home [1,2], the foster parents whose foster children were taken away for being members of UKIP [3], the police investigation launched targeting "It's okay to be white" posters on public lamp-posts [4], or police recording "non-crime hate incidents" by children, that will become part of their background checks [5]. It's too much lying by omission for my taste, despite strongly agreeing with the overt part of his message. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56364821 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-56364... [2] https://www.nationalreview.com/news/scottish-bill-would-criminalize-hate-speech-in-private-homes/ https://www.nationalreview.com/news/scottish-bill-would-crim... [3] A couple have had three foster children removed from their care because they belong to the UK Independence Party. - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20474120 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-20474120 [4] Basingstoke 'It’s okay to be white' posters spark investigation - https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-59179914 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-59179914 [5] Police recording thousands of messages sent by children as non-crime hate incidents, which will show up when employers run background checks - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/05/children-warned-future-careers-could-ruined-old-tweets/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/04/05/children-warned-...

colpabar 3y ago
Well, your comment is going to be flagged for mentioning these things, just like his article would get flagged if it did the same. I am new to this person but he seems intelligent, and intelligent people understand that the plights of minorities garner more sympathy than the plights of the (western) majority. He's walking a fine line already; he's advocating for not entirely writing off the views of disagreeable people, which is pretty much the exact opposite of what everyone in power wants us to do. Maybe I'm just being optimistic, but I think that if he really does care about the examples in the article, he cares about the ones you listed too, and he just knows it's not politically correct to mention them.

fgsfds028374 3y ago

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