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By definition totalitarian and will of the people are disjoint. Totalitarian systems are centralized. The people deciding, each of their own, to shun that which
by shadowgovt 3y ago
By definition totalitarian and will of the people are disjoint. Totalitarian systems are centralized. The people deciding, each of their own, to shun that which their consciences tell them is harmful to their society is the opposite of totalitarian. If KF can't find a home with any provider, and if providers they do find a home with are themselves shunned... That's just two tribes circling the wagons. Totalitarianism would look a lot more like some force external to those operators stepping in and forcing them to interact, regardless of their will.
And that's the rub. If we don't trust the owners of the machinery to decide how it is used, what's the proposed alternative?
If we pass laws to tie the hands of corporations on who's data they must carry, then we've taken the cudgel away from the Hurricane Electics of the world and given it to the Richard Blumenthals.
I trust corporations about as far as I can throw them, but I trust them more to decide what bits are on the wire than I trust governments.
- cf141q5325 3y agoMaking sure that we have robust system in place that makes silencing dissenting voices impossible. Because it does not work, you have nobody (and no institution) competent enough to decide this. And we will have to rely on this system if history is any measure. Just wanting this to work is not a valid strategy. You can and should know better.
- shadowgovt 3y agoSo your alternative to distributed corp-by-corp decisionmaking is... A centralized set of rules, from a central authority, that corps must abide. That looks a lot closer to totalitarianism than "KF has to keep changing who it works with because individual companies think they're not a good client."
- cf141q5325 3y agoThe only way you can equate censorship with banning censorship is if the death penalty and the bill of rights are also both just laws. The difference here is that its impossible to push society into a censored echo chamber through banning censorship. You cant create the dangerous blind spots this way that are at the core of totalitarian risks. You really should read up on totalitarianism. Your definition is quite distorted and you hit a lot of the marks when ignoring consequences in favor of frames. I can recommend Meerloos Rape of the Mind.
- shadowgovt 3y agoYou're treating freedom of speech as something beyond what it's protected as. I fundamentally don't see it that way. It's a useful tool to promote good governance. It's a constraint upon the government's right to build an echo chamber around the leadership, which is comfortable for leadership but eventually leads a government to topple for failure to address the needs of the people. The natural right that exists in the absence of a Bill of Rights is freedom of association - you can say what you want, and someone can tell you to piss off and go away for your trouble. They can also ignore you. And they are definitely not obligated to echo you, nor to do business with those who listen to you. That's the natural order you're alluding to by suggesting I'm saying the Bill of Rights is "just laws." > The difference here is that its impossible to push society into a censored echo chamber through banning censorship a) government bans censorship b) people can say whatever they want c) people use that liberty to conspire to commit crimes d) the commission of those crimes, at scale, overwhelms the state's ability to enforce e) totalitarians exploit this arrangement to depose the previous emasculated government and install their own... Which includes establishing rules to disrupt conspiracy to commit crimes so they are not themselves deposed. f) society is now a censored echo chamber The US does not currently protect freedom of speech to the level you're describing. No large functional government does. There is no evidence such blanket, wide-open protection is actually a virtue for a functional government or society.
- cf141q5325 3y agoI dont care what it is protected as, i am telling you what automatically happens once you try to poke holes into it. It shouldnt be a surprise to anyone with a functioning relationship to reality. Picture it as a shared communication bus everyone uses for navigation where somebody added a hidden packet drop you cant compensate for or detect. If you try to use that thing you are going to crash. Because you have no ability to determine how much gets dropped. And how much bullshit cant be challenged anymore. Thats the line in the sand for cascading failure. It cant work. Those blind spots cant be detected, managed or compensated for. They are like a metastasizing cancer. That blind spot is at the core of totalitarian regimes. Group think sets in and suddenly your farmers are told to plant the crops closer together to utilize the proletarian solidarity between the plants. Anyone who doesnt gets gulaged and the rest starves. Its worth mentioning that my local constitution has a clause that simplified means anyone trying to get the society to e) can be shot by anyone. How ever much of a paper tiger this is, having had two murderous totalitarian regimes in the last 100 years its generally considered a good idea and the way back out. That you have to rely on a extremely thin argument like it probably being necessary to uphold the rule of law should have you reflect. You are arguing with an abstract model of what ought to happen according to your favorite ought-to-be model while i am telling you what will happen if you dont prevent it. We have seen it times and times again, if you dont try something different the results will replicate. Acting in denial of reality is totalitarian. Thats how we got all those mass graves. They werent created by evil caricatures but stupid people caught up in a drunk fever and Zugzwang with disabled breaks.