Comment by Bjartr | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bjartr | Hacker News Reader

The link under "would be introducing measures"[1] has the full statement from the councilmember where he describes the proposals he will be bringing:

> A Modest Proposal for Digital Device Prohibition: A total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits.

> A Modest Proposal for Total Surveillance Abolition (Residential & Commercial): A total ban on all outward-facing cameras

> A Modest Proposal for Total Municipal and Commercial Decommissioning: A total termination of all internet services and electronic record-keeping

For those that didn't catch the reference, he's alluding to the 1729 publication by Jonathan Swift, author of Gulliver's Travels

>A Modest Proposal For preventing the children of poor people in Ireland, from being a burden on their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the publick.

Which was a satirical work suggesting that the Irish poor's financial woes could be addressed by eating children, thus feeding people while reducing resource demand.

[1] https://www.banderabulletin.com/article/3093,council-votes-t...

Openly admitting he’ll be wasting taxpayer time and money on frivolous proposals because he didn’t get his way through the democratic process. Thankfully the democratic process can go against him even further and remove him from office at their next opportunity and he can find somewhere else to throw a tantrum.

I don't see how you can be at all engaged with local politics and not be familiar with performative (and even temper-tantrumy) proposed resolutions and ordinances.

That the resolutions are literally titled "modest proposals" makes this article so much cringier.

It sounds like you're saying the parent shouldn't be critical of this practice because it is common, which obviously doesn't follow, but I could be interpreting your comment wrongly.

This article is deceptive. I'm not talking about the parent commenter; I'm talking about the 404 Media piece that pretends the Bandera city councilmember is seriously proposing to ban cell phones.

To be fair, the council member appears to be an idiot.

If not, he is leaning all the way into a false equivalence comparing a cell phone one has personal control over to a nationwide network of spy cams that no regular citizen controls.

So which is it? Idiot or bad faith actor?

He's using political rhetoric (ultra-common rhetoric among normies) that you disagree with. Neither category you propose fits for me, based on the limited information I have.

reductio ad absurdum is what I think you are referring to.

But again, that’s not what this is. Taking away all cell phones, which are a lot more useful than the camera function it shares with flock, is not an equivalent move.

The issue is people don’t want their town covered in cameras they don’t control and has been shown to be abused nationwide. How on earth is removing internet access to the populace even in the same ballpark?

This is a tantrum by someone who I suspect was set to gain financially by signing a contract with flock.

I've lived in places with really strict regulations on surveillance cameras and it's actually pretty cool to know humans have to individually look at camera footage (no mass slurping), police can only access it with regards to an actual crime report submitted by an identifiable person, and it's deleted after 3 days unless that happens.

When I dropped my wallet the security guard still had no issue checking the camera footage.

Those first two are great if adopted by and for their local government office.

Third one makes no sense.

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