4 ms·

It's a real challenge for a society based around personal freedom. Same goes for addictive apps. I feel the conflict within me.

by teekert 9mo ago

kuerbel 9mo ago
Regulating predatory business models is not in conflict with personal freedom
- p-e-w 9mo ago
  There is no definition of “predatory business model” that isn’t simply a reflection of the majority’s values, so there absolutely is a conflict between the two. Are churches a predatory business? If the answer is no, then why are sugar manufacturers? If the answer is tradition etc., then that basically proves my point.
  - Arkhaine_kupo 9mo ago
    > Are churches a predatory business? the institution that invented Tithes? The institution that if you go and put money in every sunday will help you organize weddings and funerals which are very important dates for people? Which will take old women aside and talk about getting into heaven and helping missions in poor countries full of poor little children? That institution might have a predatory business model? The threat of hell is certainly very uncoercive yeah
    - cobblestone32 9mo ago
      While I don't disagree with the assertion that churches are somewhat "predatory" with the threat of hell etc., this statement isn't really supporting that thesis: > if you go and put money in every sunday will help you organize weddings and funerals which are very important dates for people So basically you're paying for a service? Your argument would be much better if they didn't actually help people with important stuff.
      - Arkhaine_kupo 9mo ago
        Creating a hierarchy in lets say a small town, were people who pay in can have a funeral early/better date/better priest while people who dont pay get a wednesday mid work and no one can attend so the family has to say goodbye to their loved one without people creates the kind of environment where participating is not optional. That is the kind of situation the funeral thing was highlighting, not the provision of a service, but the creation of a coercive incentive for social hierarchy and emotional support around a very difficult moment. Its the same reason predatory loans are predatory, not because loans are bad but because you find people at their lowest and provide a service where they are incentivised to make reckless financial choices
        cobblestone32 9mo ago
        I mean, there's a limited number of dates and priests. Are you suggesting there should be a fixed fee for funerals, which dates and priests being allocated randomly? That's certainly analogous to state-funded healthcare as compared to private healthcare, but unless you want the government to interfere in the church, I'm having a hard time seeing how you'd implement that. And I mean, all cultural things are "manipulation" in some sense, take the case of going to see the latest superhero movie on the release day. Of course the tickets would be more pricey, is that also coercive?
        Arkhaine_kupo 9mo ago
        > I'm having a hard time seeing how you'd implement that. Similar to shark loans, creating alternatives will always come with compromises. either we have public lenders that will lend money that will never be returned, or we leave a strata of society without access to capital. But diagnosing the predatory nature of shark loans does not mean the proposal of an alternative. I think the church model is coercive, specially when threats are existencial. Hell is beyond any threat you could make to someone who believes in it. Does not mean that I can come up witha. universal, generalisable model for providing adequate funeral rites, emotional support and remove social status from society.
shrubby 9mo ago
We have banned heroin so we should be able to ban anything else that's toxic. For us, close ones or even the generations to come. Algorithm, food, intoxicants, anything that has manipulative potential.
- teekert 9mo ago
  Well, yeah, but who are you to decide what I do with my body? I'm not hurting anyone. (Nice to meet you, I'm the advocate of the Devil.)
  - randomNumber7 9mo ago
    If I would look onto you as my obedient slavish worker I would like you to not kill yourself.
- leoedin 9mo ago
  > We have banned heroin so we should be able to ban anything else that's toxic Except banning heroin clearly didn't work so well! There's still a lot of people using it. And the profits from selling it go to criminal gangs. And the people using it often die due to inconsistent dosing. How do you define "manipulative potential"? If you ban sugar in drinks, do you ban fruit juice too? Where do we draw the line for "acceptable harm"? Personally I don't want to live in a society which bans huge numbers of things.
  - fsflover 9mo ago
    You can tax drinks based on the amount of sugar they contain. Yes, including juices.
    - teekert 9mo ago
      Yeah, in my country oat milk is now taxed as a juice, of course milk isn't. So the plant based alternative is now 2x the price of cow milk. Thanx Milk industry.
shrubby 9mo ago
And the addictive algorithm is not far away from violence. The power asymmetry behind and in the front of the six inch screen is immense.
tristramb 9mo ago
Personal freedom includes not being manipulated by commercial interests.
- joe_mamba 9mo ago
  Sure, but all successful capitalist economies revolve around supporting commercial interests which prop up the tax revenue which then hold up the welfare state and public infrastructure, QoL and freedoms we enjoy. THe big challenge is separating the good from the bad commercial interests. It's not a challenge because differentiating the good from the harmful is difficult, but because bad actor industries also make A LOT of money that buys a lot of political power and also employ a lot of people, so removing them from economy would have negative economic and political consequences. Basically it's like a dead man's switch in a mutually assured destruction weapon.
  - deaux 9mo ago
    Just because they employ a lot of people does not mean that removing them from economy would have negative economic consequences. Killing the tobacco industry for example would have incredibly positive economic consequences, despite the job loss.
    - joe_mamba 9mo ago
      >Killing the tobacco industry for example would have incredibly positive economic consequences, despite the job loss. Yeah but both tobacco industry employees and smokers vote. If they make up a large enough voter base, then this is political suicide in any democracy. Hence how it took until 2019 to ban indoor smoking in my EU country, even though it was known for a long time it's a public health issue.
- randomNumber7 9mo ago
  Personal freedom only works when someone is educated enough to make their own choices imho.
  - 9mo ago
keybored 9mo ago
Notice something curious. The correlation with discussions around regulating businesses, freedom, and social media attention. There is a strong correlation between someone making money and someone arguing that people being able to make money is about freedom. And here we are a few centuries into capitalism and people say that they are conflicted because personal freedom = making money off people. Effectively. Yet there are many freedoms that are not profitable. We just have to sit down in a chair and think it through for ten minutes. Preferably without the corrupting influence of a scren.

It's a real challenge for a society based around personal freedom. Same goes for addictive apps. I feel the conflict within me.

by teekert 9mo ago

It's a real challenge for a society based around personal freedom. Same goes for addictive apps. I feel the conflict within me.

kuerbel 9mo ago

Regulating predatory business models is not in conflict with personal freedom

p-e-w 9mo ago
There is no definition of “predatory business model” that isn’t simply a reflection of the majority’s values, so there absolutely is a conflict between the two. Are churches a predatory business? If the answer is no, then why are sugar manufacturers? If the answer is tradition etc., then that basically proves my point.
- Arkhaine_kupo 9mo ago
  > Are churches a predatory business? the institution that invented Tithes? The institution that if you go and put money in every sunday will help you organize weddings and funerals which are very important dates for people? Which will take old women aside and talk about getting into heaven and helping missions in poor countries full of poor little children? That institution might have a predatory business model? The threat of hell is certainly very uncoercive yeah
  - cobblestone32 9mo ago
    While I don't disagree with the assertion that churches are somewhat "predatory" with the threat of hell etc., this statement isn't really supporting that thesis: > if you go and put money in every sunday will help you organize weddings and funerals which are very important dates for people So basically you're paying for a service? Your argument would be much better if they didn't actually help people with important stuff.
    - Arkhaine_kupo 9mo ago
      Creating a hierarchy in lets say a small town, were people who pay in can have a funeral early/better date/better priest while people who dont pay get a wednesday mid work and no one can attend so the family has to say goodbye to their loved one without people creates the kind of environment where participating is not optional. That is the kind of situation the funeral thing was highlighting, not the provision of a service, but the creation of a coercive incentive for social hierarchy and emotional support around a very difficult moment. Its the same reason predatory loans are predatory, not because loans are bad but because you find people at their lowest and provide a service where they are incentivised to make reckless financial choices
      - cobblestone32 9mo ago
        I mean, there's a limited number of dates and priests. Are you suggesting there should be a fixed fee for funerals, which dates and priests being allocated randomly? That's certainly analogous to state-funded healthcare as compared to private healthcare, but unless you want the government to interfere in the church, I'm having a hard time seeing how you'd implement that. And I mean, all cultural things are "manipulation" in some sense, take the case of going to see the latest superhero movie on the release day. Of course the tickets would be more pricey, is that also coercive?
        Arkhaine_kupo 9mo ago
        > I'm having a hard time seeing how you'd implement that. Similar to shark loans, creating alternatives will always come with compromises. either we have public lenders that will lend money that will never be returned, or we leave a strata of society without access to capital. But diagnosing the predatory nature of shark loans does not mean the proposal of an alternative. I think the church model is coercive, specially when threats are existencial. Hell is beyond any threat you could make to someone who believes in it. Does not mean that I can come up witha. universal, generalisable model for providing adequate funeral rites, emotional support and remove social status from society.

shrubby 9mo ago

We have banned heroin so we should be able to ban anything else that's toxic. For us, close ones or even the generations to come. Algorithm, food, intoxicants, anything that has manipulative potential.

teekert 9mo ago
Well, yeah, but who are you to decide what I do with my body? I'm not hurting anyone. (Nice to meet you, I'm the advocate of the Devil.)
- randomNumber7 9mo ago
  If I would look onto you as my obedient slavish worker I would like you to not kill yourself.
leoedin 9mo ago
> We have banned heroin so we should be able to ban anything else that's toxic Except banning heroin clearly didn't work so well! There's still a lot of people using it. And the profits from selling it go to criminal gangs. And the people using it often die due to inconsistent dosing. How do you define "manipulative potential"? If you ban sugar in drinks, do you ban fruit juice too? Where do we draw the line for "acceptable harm"? Personally I don't want to live in a society which bans huge numbers of things.
- fsflover 9mo ago
  You can tax drinks based on the amount of sugar they contain. Yes, including juices.
  - teekert 9mo ago
    Yeah, in my country oat milk is now taxed as a juice, of course milk isn't. So the plant based alternative is now 2x the price of cow milk. Thanx Milk industry.

shrubby 9mo ago

And the addictive algorithm is not far away from violence. The power asymmetry behind and in the front of the six inch screen is immense.

tristramb 9mo ago

Personal freedom includes not being manipulated by commercial interests.

joe_mamba 9mo ago
Sure, but all successful capitalist economies revolve around supporting commercial interests which prop up the tax revenue which then hold up the welfare state and public infrastructure, QoL and freedoms we enjoy. THe big challenge is separating the good from the bad commercial interests. It's not a challenge because differentiating the good from the harmful is difficult, but because bad actor industries also make A LOT of money that buys a lot of political power and also employ a lot of people, so removing them from economy would have negative economic and political consequences. Basically it's like a dead man's switch in a mutually assured destruction weapon.
- deaux 9mo ago
  Just because they employ a lot of people does not mean that removing them from economy would have negative economic consequences. Killing the tobacco industry for example would have incredibly positive economic consequences, despite the job loss.
  - joe_mamba 9mo ago
    >Killing the tobacco industry for example would have incredibly positive economic consequences, despite the job loss. Yeah but both tobacco industry employees and smokers vote. If they make up a large enough voter base, then this is political suicide in any democracy. Hence how it took until 2019 to ban indoor smoking in my EU country, even though it was known for a long time it's a public health issue.
randomNumber7 9mo ago
Personal freedom only works when someone is educated enough to make their own choices imho.
- 9mo ago

keybored 9mo ago

Notice something curious. The correlation with discussions around regulating businesses, freedom, and social media attention. There is a strong correlation between someone making money and someone arguing that people being able to make money is about freedom. And here we are a few centuries into capitalism and people say that they are conflicted because personal freedom = making money off people. Effectively. Yet there are many freedoms that are not profitable. We just have to sit down in a chair and think it through for ten minutes. Preferably without the corrupting influence of a scren.