4 ms·

Is Europe sliding into feudalism? The impression is that the government/megacorp complex are the lords, everyone else should accept their place as a serf and do

Is Europe sliding into feudalism? The impression is that the government/megacorp complex are the lords, everyone else should accept their place as a serf and do whatever they’re told.

croes 1y ago
Where is the difference to the US, China or the UK? Governments often try that kind of nonsense. Usually against organized crime, terrorism, child abuse. But in the end it’s just used for the heavy crimes like copyright infringement
- cobbzilla 1y ago
  The US, at least, has a Bill of Rights that would make this illegal, it would definitely violate the 4th Amendment and maybe the 1st too.
  - Nifty3929 1y ago
    I hope you're right.
  - cobbzilla 1y ago
    That said, it’s not all roses in the US. There are many backdoors the government uses like issuing subpoenas to tech companies to get their data. Sometimes (like the notorious NSLs, National Security Letters) the order is secret and the company can’t even talk about it. This is also why the Snowden revelations were significant— arguably what the NSA is doing (mass, untargeted surveillance) is illegal, but so far (iirc) courts have said nobody has standing to challenge it. Various groups are still trying.
  - lawn 1y ago
    The administration and the people will just shrug and move on, like they've done with all the other crap they've shrugged at.
  - croes 1y ago
    The EU countries also have constitutions with laws that make that illegal. Still they try because there is always an exception that allows breaking those laws. Chat control isn’t something the EU invented, they tried to implement CSAM in Apple devices and the whole chat control thing in the EU was heavily lobbied by Thorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization)
    - pessimizer 1y ago
      > The EU countries also have constitutions with laws that make that illegal. I don't think they do. They have constitutions that guarantee "Freedom of Speech" or "Expression," but don't define those terms in any way. I don't know that any of them lack legally prohibited political speech laws. I feel the US was the origin of this "Hate Speech" nightmare that has been growing to encompass all of Western politics over the past 30 years, but the irony is that you can do slurs all day long in the US, to anybody you want, whenever you want. You will probably be ejected from the premises, though. In the US, the speech still has to be connected to a crime. In the EU, the speech itself is the crime.
      - account42 1y ago
        That's because the US has the convenience of owning the megacorporations that control every facet of our lives. The government doesn't need the ability to restrict your speech and monitor you if FAANG happily do it for them.
    - kodisha 1y ago
      Oh no.... I went deep into this rabbit hole and did a lot of reading on how this org is pushing it's agenda in EU. I hate this Hollywood idiots with burning passion.
  - NitpickLawyer 1y ago
    The 1st, 4th and 5th have been repeatedly and systematically weakened both in practice and through the courts though. 1st - gag orders issued by secret courts, no trial, no apeal, can't even talk about it (can't even talk about the gag orders themselves, basically a gag order on a gag order). We only found out about it because Yahoo (out of all of them, the least you'd think would fight this) briefly tried to fight it. All the top CEOs got them. Yahoo briefly tried to fight it at some point and some court docs got out, but it wasn't much. 4th - multiple cases of confiscating cash without a trial, probable cause or anything of the sort. It's called "civil forfeiture", it's been done at both state and federal level, and it's so insanely full of mental gymnastics that at some point they tried to argue in court that "the person is not suspected of anything, the money is suspected of a crime". Bananas. 5th - there's a case where an executive was caught up in some investigation, and she was being held in contempt (jailed) over not divulging an encryption password. I haven't checked on the case in a while, but the idea of holding someone in contempt for so long defeats the purpose, and the idea of having to divulge passwords vs. having to provide a safe combination was apparently lost on the courts.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - cobbzilla 1y ago
      You might not like this example, but the relatively recent evolution of 2nd Amendment jurisprudence, significantly strengthening gun rights, is the result of many impassioned, dedicated groups, lobbying the public and the government for decades. The lesson is: stay active, stay vocal, stay in the media, and prepare for a very long haul. And file lots of lawsuits challenging everything!
  - rwyinuse 1y ago
    I'm not convinced the US will even have fair elections a couple of years from now. Do those amendments really matter, when those in power are doing everything they can to break down the rule of law, and turn the country into yet another autocracy? EU may be sliding towards feudalism, but America is definitely farther down that road than we are. Current administration's relationship with tech billionaires is a concrete proof of that. I have no faith in politicians of either part of the world.
  - 9dev 1y ago
    It takes a firm believe to still pretend the bill of rights would be adhered to. You have a convicted criminal as president with ties to child traffickers, taking foreign bribes on live TV, scamming voters with crypto, while punishing universities for teaching the wrong things and imprisoning people without due process for having the wrong opinion. All the while SCOTUS elevated him above the law; now he actually could shoot somebody on fifth ave and he’d really not have to fear prosecution. Are you sure you want to make this point?
  - impossiblefork 1y ago
    The EU also has laws that make it illegal. It annulled a previous law with some of these provisions, the so-called Data Retention Directive.
    - nickslaughter02 1y ago
      > The EU also has laws that make it illegal. For now.
      - impossiblefork 1y ago
        I think it's hard to end though. It would require basically re-doing the ECHR and probably other EU treaties, and that just isn't going to happen any more than anyone will make amendments to the US constitution.
  - userbinator 1y ago
    From what I've seen, the US also has a more "rebellious" culture than the EU, for lack of a better term; laws are viewed less as an absolute and the population is far more willing to break them if the consequences are perceived as minor. This is bipartisan; examples that come to mind include: electing a convicted felon, helping illegal immigrants stay in the country, and going 10 over the speed limit.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    Hrm. Remember this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip Ultimately the US government's key escrow fixation largely faded away, and it was never clear whether it would stand up in the courts, but it still shows up from time to time. It's quite possible that this would conflict with the EU's can't-believe-it's-not-a-constitution (the Lisbon treaty) if passed, too; for a prior example see the defunct data retention directive, which was nuked by the ECJ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
- ronsor 1y ago
  The UK is politically, culturally, and geographically close to Europe. China has always been authoritarian (and hyper-centralized). The US is working hard to copy bad ideas from authoritarians, but can't do it in exactly the same way, otherwise the ability to criticize the EU, UK, and China is lost.
  - pmlnr 1y ago
    > The UK is politically, Europe generally has constitutions, and not precedence laws, which is a massive difference. > culturally Debatable. As a Hungarian, living in the UK. > and geographically close to Europe This one is true.
  - rrr_oh_man 1y ago
    > The UK is politically, culturally, and geographically close to Europe. Closer than to the US? I'm not sure about the first two. The latter is also debatable, at least from the UK's point of view. Ireland feels closer to Europe than the UK does.
    - Barrin92 1y ago
      >Closer than to the US? Much closer. It's a unitary state with a monarchy and parliamentary sovereignty, it's highly centralized economically and culturally. It's more European than much of Europe. Post war Germany, republican and decentralized economically is structurally more like the US than Britain. The only reason people in the US tend to identify with Britain is Anglo-Protestant identitarianism. Britain in reality operates a lot like France or Russia, an overwhelmingly strong capital and grand historical old world nationalism with relatively weak constitutional or formal limits on government.
    - peanut_merchant 1y ago
      I get that maybe you meant culturally, but Ireland is a member of the EU whereas the UK is no longer. This forces a tighter alignment so makes your point about Ireland redundant. The UK has continuously been pulled between it's dying imperialist vision of itself as a world power, it's close but conflicted ties with the US, and it's similarly close and conflicted ties with the EU.
- ahoka 1y ago
  The difference is that PRISM was done as a black op, and this is out in the open.
  - account42 1y ago
    Since PRISM is widely known now and there have been no real consequences there isn't a meaningful difference.
grunder_advice 1y ago
Europe never abandoned the elitist mindset of a ruling elite lording it over the masses.
RickS 1y ago
This video by Benn Jordan makes the case that yes, traditional capitalism and empowerment by way of ownership are eroding in favor of a rent-seeking subscription economy. This economy requires continuous payment for participation with services that are not only merely loaned to us, but are loaned under the constant threat of banishment if we fail to contort ourselves to comply with nebulous, ever changing terms set by orgs that don't care about us. One such contortion is the agreement to be surveilled at all times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtrNXdlraM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtrNXdlraM

Is Europe sliding into feudalism? The impression is that the government/megacorp complex are the lords, everyone else should accept their place as a serf and do whatever they’re told.

croes 1y ago

Where is the difference to the US, China or the UK? Governments often try that kind of nonsense. Usually against organized crime, terrorism, child abuse. But in the end it’s just used for the heavy crimes like copyright infringement

cobbzilla 1y ago
The US, at least, has a Bill of Rights that would make this illegal, it would definitely violate the 4th Amendment and maybe the 1st too.
- Nifty3929 1y ago
  I hope you're right.
- cobbzilla 1y ago
  That said, it’s not all roses in the US. There are many backdoors the government uses like issuing subpoenas to tech companies to get their data. Sometimes (like the notorious NSLs, National Security Letters) the order is secret and the company can’t even talk about it. This is also why the Snowden revelations were significant— arguably what the NSA is doing (mass, untargeted surveillance) is illegal, but so far (iirc) courts have said nobody has standing to challenge it. Various groups are still trying.
- lawn 1y ago
  The administration and the people will just shrug and move on, like they've done with all the other crap they've shrugged at.
- croes 1y ago
  The EU countries also have constitutions with laws that make that illegal. Still they try because there is always an exception that allows breaking those laws. Chat control isn’t something the EU invented, they tried to implement CSAM in Apple devices and the whole chat control thing in the EU was heavily lobbied by Thorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorn_(organization)
  - pessimizer 1y ago
    > The EU countries also have constitutions with laws that make that illegal. I don't think they do. They have constitutions that guarantee "Freedom of Speech" or "Expression," but don't define those terms in any way. I don't know that any of them lack legally prohibited political speech laws. I feel the US was the origin of this "Hate Speech" nightmare that has been growing to encompass all of Western politics over the past 30 years, but the irony is that you can do slurs all day long in the US, to anybody you want, whenever you want. You will probably be ejected from the premises, though. In the US, the speech still has to be connected to a crime. In the EU, the speech itself is the crime.
    - account42 1y ago
      That's because the US has the convenience of owning the megacorporations that control every facet of our lives. The government doesn't need the ability to restrict your speech and monitor you if FAANG happily do it for them.
  - kodisha 1y ago
    Oh no.... I went deep into this rabbit hole and did a lot of reading on how this org is pushing it's agenda in EU. I hate this Hollywood idiots with burning passion.
- NitpickLawyer 1y ago
  The 1st, 4th and 5th have been repeatedly and systematically weakened both in practice and through the courts though. 1st - gag orders issued by secret courts, no trial, no apeal, can't even talk about it (can't even talk about the gag orders themselves, basically a gag order on a gag order). We only found out about it because Yahoo (out of all of them, the least you'd think would fight this) briefly tried to fight it. All the top CEOs got them. Yahoo briefly tried to fight it at some point and some court docs got out, but it wasn't much. 4th - multiple cases of confiscating cash without a trial, probable cause or anything of the sort. It's called "civil forfeiture", it's been done at both state and federal level, and it's so insanely full of mental gymnastics that at some point they tried to argue in court that "the person is not suspected of anything, the money is suspected of a crime". Bananas. 5th - there's a case where an executive was caught up in some investigation, and she was being held in contempt (jailed) over not divulging an encryption password. I haven't checked on the case in a while, but the idea of holding someone in contempt for so long defeats the purpose, and the idea of having to divulge passwords vs. having to provide a safe combination was apparently lost on the courts.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - cobbzilla 1y ago
    You might not like this example, but the relatively recent evolution of 2nd Amendment jurisprudence, significantly strengthening gun rights, is the result of many impassioned, dedicated groups, lobbying the public and the government for decades. The lesson is: stay active, stay vocal, stay in the media, and prepare for a very long haul. And file lots of lawsuits challenging everything!
- rwyinuse 1y ago
  I'm not convinced the US will even have fair elections a couple of years from now. Do those amendments really matter, when those in power are doing everything they can to break down the rule of law, and turn the country into yet another autocracy? EU may be sliding towards feudalism, but America is definitely farther down that road than we are. Current administration's relationship with tech billionaires is a concrete proof of that. I have no faith in politicians of either part of the world.
- 9dev 1y ago
  It takes a firm believe to still pretend the bill of rights would be adhered to. You have a convicted criminal as president with ties to child traffickers, taking foreign bribes on live TV, scamming voters with crypto, while punishing universities for teaching the wrong things and imprisoning people without due process for having the wrong opinion. All the while SCOTUS elevated him above the law; now he actually could shoot somebody on fifth ave and he’d really not have to fear prosecution. Are you sure you want to make this point?
- impossiblefork 1y ago
  The EU also has laws that make it illegal. It annulled a previous law with some of these provisions, the so-called Data Retention Directive.
  - nickslaughter02 1y ago
    > The EU also has laws that make it illegal. For now.
    - impossiblefork 1y ago
      I think it's hard to end though. It would require basically re-doing the ECHR and probably other EU treaties, and that just isn't going to happen any more than anyone will make amendments to the US constitution.
- userbinator 1y ago
  From what I've seen, the US also has a more "rebellious" culture than the EU, for lack of a better term; laws are viewed less as an absolute and the population is far more willing to break them if the consequences are perceived as minor. This is bipartisan; examples that come to mind include: electing a convicted felon, helping illegal immigrants stay in the country, and going 10 over the speed limit.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  Hrm. Remember this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip Ultimately the US government's key escrow fixation largely faded away, and it was never clear whether it would stand up in the courts, but it still shows up from time to time. It's quite possible that this would conflict with the EU's can't-believe-it's-not-a-constitution (the Lisbon treaty) if passed, too; for a prior example see the defunct data retention directive, which was nuked by the ECJ: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
ronsor 1y ago
The UK is politically, culturally, and geographically close to Europe. China has always been authoritarian (and hyper-centralized). The US is working hard to copy bad ideas from authoritarians, but can't do it in exactly the same way, otherwise the ability to criticize the EU, UK, and China is lost.
- pmlnr 1y ago
  > The UK is politically, Europe generally has constitutions, and not precedence laws, which is a massive difference. > culturally Debatable. As a Hungarian, living in the UK. > and geographically close to Europe This one is true.
- rrr_oh_man 1y ago
  > The UK is politically, culturally, and geographically close to Europe. Closer than to the US? I'm not sure about the first two. The latter is also debatable, at least from the UK's point of view. Ireland feels closer to Europe than the UK does.
  - Barrin92 1y ago
    >Closer than to the US? Much closer. It's a unitary state with a monarchy and parliamentary sovereignty, it's highly centralized economically and culturally. It's more European than much of Europe. Post war Germany, republican and decentralized economically is structurally more like the US than Britain. The only reason people in the US tend to identify with Britain is Anglo-Protestant identitarianism. Britain in reality operates a lot like France or Russia, an overwhelmingly strong capital and grand historical old world nationalism with relatively weak constitutional or formal limits on government.
  - peanut_merchant 1y ago
    I get that maybe you meant culturally, but Ireland is a member of the EU whereas the UK is no longer. This forces a tighter alignment so makes your point about Ireland redundant. The UK has continuously been pulled between it's dying imperialist vision of itself as a world power, it's close but conflicted ties with the US, and it's similarly close and conflicted ties with the EU.
ahoka 1y ago
The difference is that PRISM was done as a black op, and this is out in the open.
- account42 1y ago
  Since PRISM is widely known now and there have been no real consequences there isn't a meaningful difference.

grunder_advice 1y ago

Europe never abandoned the elitist mindset of a ruling elite lording it over the masses.

RickS 1y ago

This video by Benn Jordan makes the case that yes, traditional capitalism and empowerment by way of ownership are eroding in favor of a rent-seeking subscription economy. This economy requires continuous payment for participation with services that are not only merely loaned to us, but are loaned under the constant threat of banishment if we fail to contort ourselves to comply with nebulous, ever changing terms set by orgs that don't care about us. One such contortion is the agreement to be surveilled at all times. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtrNXdlraM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gqtrNXdlraM