Are there enough of us to run our own country? It makes me feel dumb, but this is a serious question.
What we really need is to meaningfully participate outside of the hierarchical monopolistic systems that demand our participation. That doesn't just mean that we create and hang out in distributed networks: it also means that we make and do interesting shit there, too.
The biggest hurdle I see is that we only really use uncensored spaces to do the shit that would otherwise be censored. We don't use distributed networks to plan a party with grandma, or bitch about the next series of layoffs. We don't use distributed networks to share scientific discovery or art.
I think part of the solution is to make software that is better at facilitating those kind of interactions, and the other part of the solution is actually fucking using it. How many of us are only waiting for the first part?
I think it's an error to demand the alternatives be as good-- that might not even always be possible. But even if they're less good they're usually still better than anything we could have imagined decades ago-- they're good enough to use.
And that should be enough because we shouldn't consider handing control of ourselves to third parties to be an acceptable choice at all.
I think the main struggle is moderation. Moderation requires a hierarchy, which is much more compatible with a centralized model. I'm thinking that curation would be a good alternative. Rather than authoritatively silencing unwanted content, just categorize it well enough for users to filter what they want.
The fucking “nazi bar” analogy has ruined an entire generation. You would think after centuries of trying to stamp out competing ideas, humans would finally come to terms with the fact that it cannot be done.
Small curated groups are the only way to enforce ideological orthodoxy. You cannot force it on the public, nor can you punish the public for holding bad ideas without creating blowback and resistance.
Until we have a real way to meaningfully process natural language (I have a serious idea for that, but that's another conversation), we won't be able to automate content filtration. The next best thing is ironically similar to what we came here to complain about: attestations in a web of trust. If everything we bother to read is tied to a user identity (which can be anonymous), we can filter out content from any user identity that is generally agreed to be unwelcome. The traditional work of moderation can be replaced by collaborative categorization of both content and publishers. Any identity whose published content is too burdensome to categorize can simply be filtered out completely. The core difference is that there are no "special" users: anyone can make, edit, and publish a filter list. Authority itself is replaced by every participant's choice of filter. Moderated spaces are replaced by the most popular intersection of lists. Identity is verified by the attestation of other identities, based on their experience participating with you.
The web of trust idea is good, I have thought about it before as well, and I think there’s a couple of people who tried building a platform around it (I don’t think they got very far into the process though). I should be able to filter based on trusted people with similar taste. I shouldn’t have to accept a central authority’s notion of what is acceptable, excepting content that violates US law. That’s all I care about in terms of moderation.
Do you have an example? And was this a binding or non-binding vote?
Here is the full story:
(Source: https://archive.ph/Kiyn9)
> The commission rejected the plan to rezone the farmland [that would allow the data center to be built]. The township board followed suit, voting 4–1 to deny it. But locals quickly discovered that amid the frenzied AI infrastructure gold rush, “no” does not always mean no.
> Two days later, on Sept. 12, Saline Township was sued by Related Digital and the site’s landowners. Their lawsuit alleged “exclusionary zoning”—that the community had unreasonably barred a legitimate land use under Michigan law, and it hinged on the fact that Saline Township had no land zoned for industrial use, and that a data center qualified as a “necessary” use that could not be excluded altogether.
> The lawsuit underscored the township’s limited leverage. Even if officials had fought it, their lawyers advised them, the project could likely have moved forward via other avenues, such as partnering with an institution like the nearby University of Michigan, which can build projects that are not subject to local zoning in the same way as private developments. Meanwhile, a prolonged legal battle against well-resourced developers risked significant costs for the township, without securing concessions.
> Lucas, the town’s attorney, says the township board had little choice and did its best to be transparent. It was “between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “I’m not sure there were any good solutions.” Within weeks, the township had settled: It signed a court-approved agreement allowing the project to proceed, and construction began soon after.
> In exchange, the township secured roughly $14 million in community benefits—a relatively small sum in the context of a multibillion-dollar project, but more than 10 times its roughly $1 million annual budget. It includes funding for farmland preservation, local projects, and fire departments; along with a series of environmental and operational limits: restrictions on water use, noise caps, preserved agricultural land, and limits on expansion.
> David Landry, the attorney who represented Saline Township in the Related Digital lawsuit, told Fortune that he stands by his recommendation that the board settle with the developer. “The zoning power of any municipality—a township, a city, a village—is not absolute,” he explained. “In this case, exclusionary zoning was substantive—the municipality has to have a reason to say no. They just can’t say, ‘We don’t want it.’”
> Sarah Mills, a professor at the University of Michigan who studies land use planning, agreed that the town had few good options once the lawsuit was filed. “States determine how much authority local governments have in zoning, and those systems vary widely,” she said. “What local governments can do through zoning is highly controlled and regulated by the state.” Local governments are also often strapped for cash, making it difficult to defend against zoning challenges, she added.
> Marion, the township clerk and sole board member who voted in favor of the proposal, said this reality was on her mind when she voted yes. It wasn’t because she favored a data center, she said, but because she did not believe the town could win in a showdown with Related Digital. “They were doing studies,” she said. “They were pulling permits.” Township attorneys and consultants had warned that a denial could trigger a lawsuit—an outcome Marion said felt intimidating. “Everything was drafted and filed with the county within two days of the meeting,” she said of the lawsuit. “They had this all prepared.”
> If the township had continued to fight and lost the lawsuit, Marion said, homeowners could have been on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars in tax assessments to pay for the legal battle. “The insurance company was only going to pay for an attorney to defend us up to so much money if we decided to fight it,” she said.
The story perfectly exemplifies how little democratic control the public has over what corporations do in and do to their community.
Stop re-electing people.
Stop sitting at home projecting apathy and ennui in between WOW raids and rounds of LoL.
Mountains of evidence from history shows public has to stand up for itself, not lick boot.
Refuse to give the politicians and owner class assurances they too refuse to provide.
Most of them are old af and have no survival skills. They're reliant on the latest social memes, stock valuations not religious allegory, that are not immutable constants of physics.
Boomers looted the pension system of the prior generation to fund Wall Street. Take their money. It's American tradition.
Remind them physics is ageist and neither physics and American society afford no assurances anyone has food and healthcare.
1) Don't participate (and accept the consequences)
2) Participate (and accept potential disappointment/failure, with the benefit of having tried)
If you view 2) as fruitless unless your desired outcome is likely, you miss the potential value in the pursuit itself: working with like-minded people, building community, developing new skills, taking agency in your own life, and whatever else might come up along the way.
I don't begrudge anyone for choosing 1) (as long as they own their decision and don't force it on others), but 2) still seems like the aspirational choice I'd want to make if I could.
The status quo is nation-states in roughly their post-WW2 borders, and it's fiercely protected. The upside is stability and fewer wars, the downside is that the only way to try anything new is to co-opt an existing country. Adding to that, most countries are ethnostates that would prefer to have only a small percentage of their population be migrants. It's an easy way toward social cohesion, you just stay roughly where you're born, with people who were also born there and share the same cultural background. As we can see, it's not ideal - two lifelong neighbours can easily hold completely opposite moral values.
In other words, "we" exist only to fight against this one thing we disagree with. And even there, we probably don't all agree on how to fight it or what to do instead.
The answer to either question, really, is no. The powers that be have systematically implemented policies that keep us divided to prevent that eventual outcome.
Any new country will have these same issues, eventually, and probably a lot more that don't seem obvious on the surface.
Fighting against these sorts of monopolies seems far more likely if we can figure out what forces inside the EU and the US are driving these changes and find a way to educated the public, interest groups, and politicians about what's going on.
The problem being raised isn’t due to the size of the country though. It’s the size of the company (ie Apple and Google)
I feel that we need a better political consensus on a free society that puts the monopoly of force in the hand of democratic legitimate forces. I currently feel that all digital violence lies in the hands of a few corporations. And at the same time there is politician that like this because they can through this proxy can indirectly execute control without any political legitimacy. Sorry, I do not believe in markets as guarantees for freedom. I have read too much dystopian sci-fi for that.