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You know, I thought of another fallacy behind all this stuff.
We're told this is to prevent the next 9/11, but there's a problem with that. It's very unlikely
You know, I thought of another fallacy behind all this stuff.
We're told this is to prevent the next 9/11, but there's a problem with that. It's very unlikely -- for basic political reasons -- that this will be used to investigate the rich and powerful.
Huh? I thought people in caves in Afghanistan attacked us cause they hated our freedom?
The cave dweller thing is probably the biggest lie about 9/11. Bin Laden was rich, from an even richer family, was financed by some of the richest people on Earth, and had state support.
The next Osama bin Laden probably owns stock in the companies that are acting as contractors for the NSA right now. Or if he doesn't, his supporters and financiers probably do.
Case in point:
So now the DEA is using it to bust drug dealers. Why isn't the SEC using it to bust criminals on Wall St.? Think about it. Who's richer? Who's more connected? Who's gonna lawyer up and bust your chops hard if you come after them? Who's got friends and family members who might actually sit on committees in Washington that oversee your project?
Edit:
Given the above, I also consider it a good possibility that systems like this could be used against us. Recall 9/11 again. They were our planes that were flown into our buildings, not someone else's. What's the probability that a well-connected rich state-linked international terrorist will use systems like this to gather intel against the United States itself in preparation for a terrorist attack.
Want to smuggle in a nuke? Wouldn't it be helpful to pull all the personal information and movement schedules for all the people who work security at the Port of Long Beach...? to give just one example. That could be made to look like a routine investigation quite easily, and if Snowden can exfiltrate so much data so can someone else-- especially someone with a higher level of expertise and sponsorship.
How many NSA analysts have access to these systems? How much does that job pay?
And do any of them have dangerous personality traits or ideological affiliations? Guerilla domestic terrorism from within is also a possibility. Remember this?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks
Osama bin Laden didn't go to Harvard. His (half?) brother, Abdullah bin Laden, graduated from Harvard Law School.
I stand corrected. Thanks. Edited my original post. But the point remains unchanged. He was not an isolated kook with no money or connections, and his supporters and his financiers definitely were not.
To illustrate my point, here's a solid gold Mercedes: http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/03/white-gold-mercedes/ http://www.greenprophet.com/2010/03/white-gold-mercedes/
Kooks in caves with no connections. Yeah.
"I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws."
-Sir Thomas More, "Utopia", 1517
> So now the DEA is using it to bust drug dealers. Why isn't the SEC using it to bust criminals on Wall St.?
Because the SEC is captured. [0]
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
There's kooks out there who think the DEA is captured too. Obviously that's a ridiculous paranoid notion. It's not like there's any money in illegal drugs or anything, and everyone knows being a middle manager at the DEA pays the big bucks.
What I'm fundamentally getting at in my OP is elite deviance:
http://www.amazon.com/Elite-Deviance-Edition-David-Simon/dp/0205571956 http://www.amazon.com/Elite-Deviance-Edition-David-Simon/dp/...
The NSA will not protect us from the deviance of those with real power, because those with real power can fight back. Those with real power are also those who have the resources to execute a real worst-case-scenario attack-- exactly the kind of terrorist attack this is supposed to be protecting us from. If somebody nukes New York it will not be an anti-government windbag with an Internet connection who just got fired from their job and decided to search for "how to build an atomic bomb." It will be an elite deviant, supported by a network of elite deviants and powerful ideological sympathizers. Someone with the motive and the means to execute on such a thing.
This system might detect motive with some probability of success, but it will not be used against those with means because those people (and their supporters) will pull strings and hire million dollar attorneys. (Or turn agents, pay off managers at government contractors, etc.)
I also have serious doubts about whether it'll stop the next Boston bomber or Timothy McVeigh either, but for different reasons: small players easily vanish into an ocean of false positives. There are mathematical limits that come into play here-- it's why undirected fishing expeditions in seas of scientific data are rarely successful.
This project is a dangerous, politically and socially irresponsible pork-barrel boondoggle that creates far more opportunities for crime and corruption than it prevents. Limits to government power and requirements for judicial oversight (a.k.a. peer review) aren't arbitrary whims or kooky notions supported by paranoids. They're a lot like the OSHA rules put in place at factories and industrial facilities. They are there to keep people from getting hurt and to keep expensive, dangerous accidents from taking place.
It's inevitable that the rich/powerful will use it against each other too. I guarantee that because of Snowden's actions, the next presidential election will see campaigns treating electronic communication as untrustworthy and will have new strategies/policies for communicating sensitive information. Accusations of illegal snooping will be made to sway public opinion.
Eventually, someone will actually get caught with their hand in the NSA's cookie jar.
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Not to mention our truly massive intelligence system - which is actively violating every notion of privacy the US has ever enjoyed - failed to even come close to stopping the Boston bombing, nor was it responsible for finding or stopping the suspects.
A hundred billion a year spent on fraudulent security theater.
>There is zero competition of ideas in political science
I think this is because political science, to me, seems like a lagging indicator of whats going on in the political sphere of the world (at least when it comes to "current issues").
It is also very telling that established powers feel very threatened by Nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twenty-somethings who haven’t talked to the opposite sex in five or six years, yet academics seem to not be able to clearly frame what is really going on (maybe to the benefit of those who are marginalized by the status quo for that knowledge will most assuredly be used against them).
Though Hayden hinted about it, there are some fundamental things going on here that stand in the way of such analysis, after all one cannot truly fight that of which one does not understand…
If I understand correctly, when I make a nice app for a friend and you find out how much did he pay me, you will take out your gun, point at me and force me to give you money to sponsor some people who you believe earn less than you think they deserve? This does not sound libertarian at all.
How about: you do what you think is good for people and I do what I think is good for people. And we don't try to force each other to change our opinions. If you have something to say, put your gun down and make your arguments. Like we do here, over the internet.
Edit: if you propose some tax system, who do you think should execute it? Who should carry a gun to force people to give money? Who will watch the people who carry guns? Who will decide when the force was applied incorrectly? Will you have a moral system when 50%+1 majority can switch morality of murder by 180 degrees?
You don't understand correctly. Socialism is simply worker control of the means of production, states, taxation, etc are entirely orthogonal. "Libertarian socialism" does not refer to social democracy, it refers to socialism. Furthermore, before the 1950s, "libertarian" meant socialist.
"Libertarian" used to be the opposite of "authoritarian":
"The real division is not between conservatives and revolutionaries but between authoritarians and libertarians." -George Orwell, 1948
Because of the debasement of language, "libertarian" can now mean "creepy rightwingy person" or "antigovernment nutjob", depending on which flavor of Statism one prefers.
Totally. This is the underlying cause of why, since capitalist social and economic relations are inherently authoritarian.
I believe by some sort of Rule of Discussions I am required to mention that Orwell was a socialist, to the point of picking up arms in Catalonia.
Makes me chuckle every time I see a Republican quote 1984.
Yes, badges can so oversimplify and mislead.
From Wikipedia:
Democrat: is a proponent of democracy
Republican: An advocate of a republic, a form of government that is not a monarchy or dictatorship
Libertarianism: a set of related political philosophies that uphold liberty as the highest political end.
All of them sound pretty great to me, to the point I could easily choose to be a republican libertarian democrat. Heck you could even probably be a republican libertarian democratic anarchist.
So by describing socialism as orthogonal to taxation are you attempting to imply that socialism can exist without taxation? How exactly does that work? What does it in practice mean for "worker control of the means of production" to be enacted without violent centralised control administered by a political entity?
"Worker control of the means of production" sounds an awful lot like classical marxist communism and all the associated implications. And thus the off in the reeds tangential strangeness associated with private vs personal property, ad et al.
I'm not attempting anything, I'm telling you how socialists define and use the term 'socialism.'
> How exactly does that work?
It depends on what kind of socialist you're talking about, and at what scale. For example, the Mondragon corporation is a form of socialism. It's a worker co-operative with 80,000 employees. Another example of socialism at a larger scale is revolutionary Catalonia, where Orwell fought. For three years, the entire region was run in a socialist manner. Most industries operated under trade federations, and the rural areas also collectivised. Unfortunately, due to some squabbling between communists and anarchists, when the fascists showed up they got steamrolled.
> "Worker control of the means of production" sounds an awful lot like classical marxist communism and all the associated implications
You're close but wrong. There are two main forms of socialism: utopian and scientific. Marxism is the 'scientific' form, but communism is a classless, stateless, moneyless (maybe) society. In the Marxist framework, socialism is a step on the path to communism, not the same thing.
But regardless of which kind you're talking about, workers run things rather than capitalists.
> It depends on what kind of socialist you're talking about, and at what scale. For example, the Mondragon corporation is a form of socialism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_corporation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_corporation
At the smaller scale; Intriguing stuff, but from reading this it sounds a whole lot like just another company with an interesting incentive scheme for employees and shareholders? From reading through that it seems to be just another market participant rather than some top down re-organisation of the entire market system itself.
On the subject of revolutionary catalonia, it sure does sound more like what my initial perception of socialism really is, people being forcibly compelled to toe the communist party line with threats of death, ad et al. Against that backdrop I suppose it is unsurprising that the anarchists and communists were squabbling, and this is what I was aiming at with my initial criticism of socialism as a necessarily "political" entity rather than just another voluntary participant subject to the same market forces as all the other voluntary participants. And thus vulnerable to both poor market performance relative to the competition and also the negative externalities of being focused on politics rather than actual material results.
> workers run things rather than capitalists.
Doesn't that once again reduce to "workers control the means of production" and then you're left with workers councils figuring out what's personal vs private property and all the political nonsense that goes along with that, munging the entire thing once again at scale into a necessarily authoritarian and political entity?
If I take your friend's phone and you find out about it, would you take out your gun, point it at me, and force me to ...?
I expect the answer is "yes", so I'm assuming that for the remainder of this response - if the answer is "no" then let me know and I'll respond to that.
I would contend that the reason you would be okay with responding to theft with (ultimately) violence is because it violates a social agreement (property rights) that our society has predominately agreed to adhere to. I do not see any inherent philosophical reason that violation of other aspects of our social compact (taxation) is different - if you believe it is, either inherently or as a matter of practicality - please explain your reasoning.
My only problem with such philosophies is that they tend to ignore human nature. Really nice in theory, but in practice, some thugs will always organize to control the masses. That's a lesson in History, not a dumb statement.
One might argue that now it's different, people have access to much more information than before, and that given enough time to educate the public enough on these matters of government, the Anarchist or Libertarian movements could gain critical mass and truly work.
I think not, simply because that would do nothing to change human nature. Most people, no matter how rational they can be in their everyday life, have emotions and desires, which aren't rational. Thus my impression that organized groups of people would always strive to control the masses.
> Really nice in theory, but in practice, some thugs will always organize to control the masses.
AKA "Government".
Anarchy is about order without a state. Not chaos. It will take work, and probably incremental evolution rather than revolution, to get to that state. The goal is to become more free. Living under the boot of oppression -- whether from the government itself or a mafia-like criminal gang -- is not freedom.
> some thugs will always organize to control the masses
So the solution is to preemptively install an organization of thugs to control the masses?
I don't think your assessment of human nature is fair. At some point in history, having a king was an improvement upon existing social conditions. Going from constantly warring tribal society to one united under a king meant safety and relative prosperity and was in fact a social gain, though we tend to think of kings only in a negative context at this point. The autocrat pilferers.
However, we inevitable evolved past the need for kings. With wider spread literacy, trade, communication, etc… individuals became more capable of guiding their own society, thus democracy emerged. Your average 6th century peasant had as much use for voting as they would've for string theory.
I'm not saying we're there yet, but to say there's never to be a time when we evolve past the need to make decisions for our societies via government, even a "democratic" one, is foolish, I think.
One day I think we will look back on democracy as we do upon kings now.
> One day I think we will look back on democracy as we do upon kings now.
Yup. Personally, I think tolerance and total pacifism would be needed in this next evolutionary step, so it'll probably take a few wars for us to be tired of conflict...
I can already see many young people being disillusioned by politics, war, and nationalism. But many still adhere to those ideologies as well.
You're probably right. I'm definitely an idealist but I'm an odd case. I believe in total pacifism and confederate municipalism. I also believe that good only comes from grief. We'll have to die/suffer/make a lot more mistakes if we're going to be able to function as a consensus based anarchy.
I don't think the DEA is at nearly as much risk of being captured by those they're meant to regulate compared to the SEC. Power and money are extremely concentrated on wall street, and there is a well-documented revolving door between wall street and the SEC that I don't think exists between drug dealers and DEA officials. [0]
Totally agree with the rest of your posts.
[0] http://www.pogo.org/our-work/reports/sec-revolving-door.html http://www.pogo.org/our-work/reports/sec-revolving-door.html
> "Worker control of the means of production" sounds an awful lot like classical marxist communism and all the associated implications.
Marxism is form of socialism (as are its descendants Leninism, et al.), so, yes, they include at least reference to "worker control of the means of production". The difference between authoritarian socialisms like Leninism (I'm going to leave out "Marxism" because there are problems with categorizing it -- libertarian socialist often see the roots of libertarian socialism in Marx and see Lenin, et al., as diverging from Marx in important ways -- which make it non-helpful in this context) and libertarian socialism is that authoritarian socialism uses the state as the vehicle for worker control of the means of production in a top down manner, and libertarian socialism prefers more direct, decentralized worker control (different strands of libertarian socialism have different particular programs, but one form is worker control by "worker's councils" or labor cooperatives controlling the particular factories or firms.)
Libertarian socialists often criticize authoritarian "socialist" regimes, particularly Leninist-style Communist ones, as creating state capitalism, because you end up with a party elite that controls the means of production which ends up with the same kind of oppressive power relationship with the powerless common worker that socialist critics of traditional capitalism criticized in capital, stemming from the same source (narrow control of power over the means of production.)