17 ms·
It is heartening to read that a small percentage of the technical community is now willing to admit that the majority of the developed world's problems are poli
by FD3SA 13y ago
It is heartening to read that a small percentage of the technical community is now willing to admit that the majority of the developed world's problems are political. Specifically, the metastasising bureaucracy which is emboldened with each successful power grab is becoming increasingly difficult to dislodge since they've built up so much momentum.
This is an excellent start, but a mere tip of the iceberg. The political malady is more malignant than most imagine [1].
1. http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_nothing_like_a_democracy/ http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_noth...
- marcuspovey 13y agoAbsolutely, the problems are political. But there's a technological component as well. A combined approach will, I think, have the best chance of success. We fight like hell to fix the political problem, while at the same time making sure that people have, and know how to use, the technological tools that can protect them. It is naive to assume that just one aspect will do the job.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoAdmittedly, sometimes the two kinds of problem combine into just-plain-silliness. For instance, I got my first paycheck from my internship yesterday. As in, I got a physical check, because in the middle of Silicon Valley, a high-tech start-up's third-party payroll contractor is so damn backwards that they simply can't issue a direct deposit for at least one pay period if not more. Problem being, my bank accounts are on the American East Coast and in Haifa, Israel respectively. I now have a nice, healthy paycheck and have to call the other side of the country to figure out how to deposit it, because the damn payroll system is too backwards and stupid to do an electronic transfer like the entire rest of the developed world. And no, my bank doesn't have a mobile app that lets me deposit checks through my phone. I checked. /just-plain-silliness /MURRICA
- mdakin 13y agoAgreed. I also believe there is a sociological component. A situation such as we have is only possible when a critical mass of engineers/scientists/creatives/technicians consciously choose to work on anti-human technology. The political assholes could not develop this anti-human technology on their own.
- baddox 13y agoThe sad thing is that even among the people willing to admit that the majority of the developed world's problems are political, most of them are under the delusion that more/better/different politics is the solution.
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoSo you're an anarchist? Because if you're going to pretend that anarchy or proprietarianism is somehow not politics, then I've got some news for you.
- pessimizer 13y agoOr a libertarian, pretending that a police state enforcing a total ordering of property and any contract that can be conceived of isn't politics.
- baddox 13y agoNot all libertarians advocate anything resembling a "police state enforcing a total ordering of property and any contract that can be conceived of."
- eli_gottlieb 13y agoI already said "proprietarian". Please use the proper terminology rather than Applause Light words like "libertarian", which imply that "liberty" and "This Specific Ideology" are equivalent.
- pessimizer 13y agoI don't know what proprietarian means, and I tend to call people what they want to be called.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoI wouldn't call any person who advocates an oppressive police state a libertarian.
- saym 13y agoI remember Penn Jillette describing government as a ratcheting mechanism: a situation where once a bolt is tightened, the tool only recoils to tighten it further.
- jgg 13y agoYou literally reposted one article that was posted here days ago and used that as a citation to make a sweeping generalization about the "technical community" at large. Alright, that's cool... I would guess that most who pay attention realize that the problems of the world are political on the surface. Like always, most people flock elsewhere because they feel powerless to change a political issue with direct political action. Plus, questioning authority is scary. However, it all ends up being more sociological than political. The ideal behind the US involved the citizenry being able and willing to regulate the government, by whatever means, when the time came. This was done with the knowledge that power can corrupt and turn people into abusers, coming from people who were living under an abusive power. This hasn't been realized on a large scale in any recent event. Now we're staring down 10 years of really, really bad ideas that have stripped us of even more rights and have destroyed many literal and implicit ideals of the Constitution, and only now does a sizable portion of the population look back and say, "Well, shit!" If you fixed the government with the snap of your fingers, the problems would reinvent themselves given enough time. Since the state is by definition the body which has a monopoly on "force", if you got rid of the government, you will never convince me in a million years that another one wouldn't rise up in its place. I believe whole-heartedly that the state is inevitable. Thus, the majority of the developed world's problems are humans. We've had the same problems with a revolution bringing enlightened ideals that are slowly corrupted and taken away by a bloated, crumbling empire many times over. History is one giant, depressing cycle. I think the most realistic hope is to keep finding ways to build a state that insure as much independence and individuality as possible, while protecting given rights from the wills of those in power or those others in the said state. An enlightened society of individualists able to get along from day to day using only voluntary interactions, who don't care about stepping on others for power (and don't have any sanctioned way to do so) is a nice ideal, but one I don't see coming true without some drastic level of human evolution.
- tootie 13y agoThis isn't an issue of expansive bureaucracy. In fact, it's the opposite. The lack of controls on the executive, and the national security apparatus in particular. There's nothing about this case that goes beyond 1 or 2 agencies that have existed for decades and do a lot of legitimately useful things. They just need to stop issuing blanket warrants. That's it.
- jlgreco 13y agoRemember "trust, but verify"? Well, I don't trust these agencies. Worse, I have no way to verify that they are doing what they claim and that they are not doing things that they aren't claiming. We need to fix a lot more than just "issuing blanket warrants". We need to fix other things before we can even attempt to fix that.
- ctdonath 13y agoWe need to fix a lot more than just "issuing blanket warrants". Thing is, "issuing blanket warrants" is flatly illegal. In particular, "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." A warrant to the effect of "drift-net fishing expedition" is not acceptable.
- jlgreco 13y agoOf course it is flatly illegal. The problem is that we are not in a position to verify a fix. We would have to take their word that the problem has been fixed, but obviously they cannot be trusted.