The state of democratic control over surveillance in France
serendipity.ruwenzori.net
serendipity.ruwenzori.net
Ask yourself a question: in practical terms, what power do you as a citizen have? Government can do all sorts of shit to you, but the worse that can happen is that someone somewhere as a scapegoat will be fired, or not re-elected, or not having a bonus in the end of a year. And non-governmental person will have hard time going through labyrinths of bureaucracy where no one is ultimately responsible for anything (ultimately, "voters deserve the gov they elect", the best excuse ever).
You as a person, if you misbehave, you'll get all sorts of troubles from government that no government official will ever get from you. Your bank account can be frozen. Your passport can be revoked. Your business is never fully compliant with myriads of laws and their interpretations and can be shut down any day. Your taxes are not always perfectly declared because the whole process is so complex, you can never do it "right".
You can vote for some dude or gal and blame them on the internet. But that's not power at all. You cannot vote for not having a government. You only vote for someone to control parts of your life.
The truth is: it does not matter what government does good to you. Only thing that matters is how conflicts are resolved. In your private life you resolve conflicts on voluntary basis. You pay for service if you like it and don't pay if you don't. You can go writing about how Facebook is not nice to you, but you can always sign out and they will not run after you. Also, Facebook does not have guns and trained professional sadists.
Government "solves" conflicts by force. Only government has trained sadists with well-oiled guns. Only they can shoot people and get away without imprisonment. Only government bullshits everyone how it is important and how loving government is the same as loving society. If you disagree with the government, you have no power and a gun pointed at you. All the time. You don't (re-)negotiate with government like you do with a waiter in a restaurant, your landlord, employer, employee or a business partner.
If you dislike the war on drugs, the most effective way to protest would be not to support it with your money. But you cannot. You MUST pay your taxes and you MUST use your local currency (with hidden tax called inflation). You, of course, can run away and live under another government with all the same features.
If you think that government is legitimate, then you must have some theory of justice. I don't have any theory of rights or justice, I'm just pointing out the violence that government tries to hide. If you are okay with it, then please don't get upset when government spies on you or kicks you in the ass. It's just how things tend to be when you allow violence to be at the root of your ideology.
Suppose we are in a developing nation (I'm from Russia, born in 1980-s, by the way). And you want government and I don't. I fully respect your choice, morals and ethics. I disagree with you, but I will never imagine to coerce you not to act on what you think is good. Will you give me the same respect? Will you allow me to withdraw my participation from government activity, not to pay my taxes, not to use the money you want when cooperating with other people? Or will you call the cops? If you will, would you hesitate to threaten me directly, or will you cowardly make a call and try to avoid knowing all the details of what cops do to people?
Not saying government is perfect, and I agree with you that if you don't accept the society's government you are still coerced to live in it, but you can't really just choose to not take any part in it. You accept it, leave, or try to change it.
In short, is my personal liberty a right? Or is it subject to the privilege of my citizenship?
Government, rape and theft exist. We cannot get rid of them, we can protect ourselves. That's reality. But we don't derive moral justification from reality. Theft does not become moral because it exists. Government does not become moral because it's inevitable. It becomes moral because of some principle that you hold. So saying "you can't really just choose to not take any part in it" does not invalidate any of my argument.
Now, society != government. Society is 95% anarchy. People voluntarily trust each other, deal with each other, live closer to people they like and further from people they dislike. They choose what to eat, whom to marry etc. Then, there is small group of self-proclaimed religious guys who self-identify with the whole society and also claim the right to use violence because of some mystical "social contract". No one was signing this contract. And even if some dudes in 1787 signed some piece of paper, it has nothing to do with you or people around you. It's just a belief in magical lines called "borders" that suddenly change the moral nature of a man. Within the "border" a man in a costume can arrest someone, but outside the "border" he cannot.
That's simply religious nonsense. If we were in 1241 when everyone believed in god, miracles and priests, it wouldn't make me stupid or extremist. It would make everyone else around stupid and arrogant. Even if there are 99% of them.
Government is a PART of society. Along with other norms (like what we consider acceptable in social situations).
Also, government is set up to protect from rape and theft. You're right, government often has immoral shortcomings, but most people believe it is better than anarchy. No one was signing this contract? Most people agree with the need for cops.
I'm not saying government does its job ideally. I'm not saying the majority wanting something makes it right. All I was saying in the comment was that if society wants something, and you disagree and want to be isolated from, while living with, that society, then there will be problems. If, on the other hand, you just want the society to not have a government (either at all or just not the current incarnations) then that is different.
I believe in natural rights, not designed in the human framework sense, so I totally agree with you on what democracy is actually: mob rule of the majority. Proponents of government actually must accept its truth: wealth transfer at the point of a gun. I live in India (a high-tax and high-tax evasion socialist paradise where even the roads are not good) and I wouldn't pay taxes at all, since I get nothing in return. But poor people get a lot (and of course, rich politicians steal most of the money), but there is no point in denying the truth: but for the State's implied threat of violence, I would not fork out what I earned. Period.
It's not any more magical than to claim that you have exclusive rights over everything that's inside some lines called "property limits", and that you even have the right to harm people who cross those magic lines without your consent.
When you're old, it's easy to be an obedient minion.
> But go spend any significant time in a developing nation that lacks basic infrastructure, get close to the people living there, learn about their struggles and their dreams, and then come back and tell me that the solution is to abolish government.
Just because government isn't the answer doesn't mean destroying it is.
> But go spend any significant time in a developing nation
These developing nations seems to have plenty of government and regulation to go around considering their non-existent economy. Shouldn't they be fat and filthy rich by now?
Which nations are you referring to, specifically?
Please explain why vote participation increases with age then?
I made this illustrative graph: http://i.imgur.com/Uhdub5G.png
edit: made the axes clearer.
Someone needs to read some Hobbes, and then carefully study the history of the past 300-or-so years.
Clearly not true: "Employees of private military company CACI and Titan Corp. were involved in the Iraq Abu Ghraib prison scandal in 2003, and 2004."
You may equally say that newspapers are private, but there is a very strong pro-government bias if you MUST have a gov license to operate or trained people will come in and take your property and you. And then people blame "capitalism" for when media fails to explain how government is fucked up.
It's not even remotely related to the article.
Why is this not d/ved to oblivion? Are you even from France?
What he's stating are facts. Re-read the sentences one by one. They're the underpinnings of our society and they're no fun to hear, and most people don't even realize that they're there, but it's the reality of things.
Pick any one paragraph and approach it from a devil's advocate, try and argue against it yourself. For every one a clear counter point should immediately jump to you mind or you need to do some serious and unbiased research into history, politics and sociology.
That democratic governments are sued, that they do censure themselves, that politicians do resign in disgrace, that they are thrown out of power peacefully, that police officers are prosecuted for excessive force, that enquiries are done into police shootings, that many police forces fire less bullets in a year than a single gun enthusiast might in a week at the shooting range.
You'll rapidly see how preposterous the whole rant is. He claims that he cannot renegotiate the power they grant to their government. But anyone in a democracy can become a politician and gain that power or a political activist and energise a base until the government starts negotiating. But it cannot be a person on their own. They must be able to convince many others.
He just can't be bothered.
So no facts or reality, just an extreme political opinion not discussing the article at all, which is precisely why these discussions aren't a good fit for a programming, tech and startup board.
The post is very relevant, this thread, not.
Sure you can argue for or against the double edged sword that is government– and I'm sure most "reasonable people" would argue for it. But saying that the basic tenets that oleganza wrote about are wrong is patently lying to yourself.
If you don't pay your taxes, don't agree with a court's verdict, don't pay a fine that you got– guess what, ultimately things will be resolved by holding you against your will in a little concrete cell, and if you try to get out of it, violence will be used against you.
> But anyone in a democracy can become a politician and gain that power or a political activist
Have you been following the news recently? Do you see what happens to activists? As for the argument "anyone can become politician and have power", I find staring at the pictures on this page to be pretty self-explanatory wrt that argument: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_United_States_...
You can dismiss it all if you want, but you're only fooling yourself.
Now, it's offensive that you call my view "extremist". It's not me who teaches you how to leave, makes apologies for taxation, inflation, controls, restrictions, violent intervention and threats. It is people with guns who are "extremists" because instead of seeking peaceful solutions, they "solve" everything by decree and a gun.
I will never ever pose a threat to you or your lifestyle. If you like your government, party or president - that's fine. I will never threaten you based on your beliefs. Now will you threaten me based on my beliefs? I don't want to participate in your club, receive "services" from it or support your laws or president. Will you respect me like I respect you?
Democracy is a pretty fucking peaceful solution in most developped nations to solve things. The guns are there to protect the democratic system, because if there's nothing like that, people have been shown to not follow the rules decided by the democratic system.
Empirical evidence is a lot more convincing than your personal theory on how things "should" work.
You have just presented a justification for guy A killing guy B for now forking over his part of income to guy C.
Now you need to decipher "democratic system" and what does it mean in reality.
I my view, it's a label for a system where opinions of some people must be forced onto others using force based on some sophisticated paperwork called "voting".
I think you'll find that the large majority of people agree with the third point, and even without democracy, the will of the large majority will impose itself onto everyone except in very few cases.
The fact that majority of people can force anyone in minority to comply does not say anything about morality.
I point out that people tell themselves that it is okay if majority seemingly "decide" to to allow someone to kill some people. I question that belief which oddly looks very similar to any religious dogma.
You advocate for "progress" and "democracy is the lest worst". I'm fine with it, live your life and participate in democracy. But let me politely disagree with you. Will you not participate in "majority" that tries to kill me if I don't give them my stuff?
You have just presented a justification for guy A killing guy B for now forking over his part of income to guy C.
Second, in other words you say "I don't know how to protect myself against random violence without centralized violence, I will advocate imposing that violence on everyone around."
Don't get me wrong. I don't advocate "guns are bad" or "guns are good" here. If you want to set up your protection club with helicopters and ninjas, I have nothing against. But do you say it must be imposed on me? Only because I somehow benefit under umbrella of your enterprise? In other words, you want to force me to pay for your business model when it's you who bothers about security and cannot figure out how to pay for it voluntarily.
What's to stop consolidation amongst the security companies? What would prevent them from using their monopoly of force to set up whatever government they liked?
That's essentially how central government formed in the first place. Why wouldn't it just happen again?
I think government is only possible when many believe it's good. It's not only raw violence. If people see violence they don't like it. That's why government tries hard hiding it under abstract concepts.
People aren't arguing with you because they like the fact that the government uses force. The argument is that if you eliminated the government, the alternative (private dictatorships) would be even less accountable.
Certainly people are susceptible to a kind of strange loyalty to governments, but if you remove the government that won't just disappear. People will just become loyal to the most powerful mob for protection. That's what happened before. It's up to you to explain why it would be any different now.
> The argument is that if you eliminated the government, the alternative (private dictatorships) would be even less accountable.
If you are right and private defense organization would collapse into one, then why there is no single government? (Moreover, some of states(like USSR) get decomposed into few more, so the number of states even grows). Why do you assume there is no reason to prevent a number of PDO turning into violent one?
There are great books: Murray Rothbard's "For a new liberty: libertarian manifesto": http://mises.org/document/1010/
David Friedman's "The machinery of freedom": http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
We can equally ask why, if your libertarian philosophy is so naturally stable, it has not emerged into the world yet?
It doesn't really affect my argument(if all states didn't collapse into one over past couple of centuries, then multi-government system is quite stable), but I am quite interested in the source(out of pure curiousity).
> The USSR is a special case because it was actually based on ideology and not just strength
Almost all states utilize some sort of ideology. In fact, I agree that ideological component was really strong in the USSR, but the USSR did use raw power - it annexed baltic states for example.
Also, there are other examples: Czechoslovakia, South & North Sudan.
> We can equally ask why, if your libertarian philosophy is so naturally stable, it has not emerged into the world yet?
I would define stable as "won't collapse once established". The problem of stability is orthogonal to the problem of establishing. It is not easy to organize a market anarchy when all territory is occupied by the state(note: you cannot easily organize another state either, though existing states are relatively stable). In past there were more or less "anarcho-capitalist" societies which lasted for thousands of years: medieval iceland, medieval ireland.
Iceland: http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Iceland#Medieval_Iceland_and_Anar...
Ireland: http://pucksmith.blogspot.ru/2013/02/libertarian-ancient-ire...
They don't need sadist these days. Upstanding normal people do just fine.
I'm pretty sure soldiers were never largely composed of particularly sadist people.
My point: it all does not matter in the slightest. If you enjoy something government does, that's great. Good for you. I will never think taking it away from you. But please also allow me not to participate, not to pay and not to be threatened as a consequence of YOUR preference.
There is always theft and rape and lies around us. But we don't justify them just because we see them. Only some moral justification gives government huge size and power. People believe that while theft and murder are bad, when government does it according to some scripture, they can be good. It's just like any double standard in any ancient religion.
I am absolutely not surprised. I've been whistling the Cowboy Bebop Intro since before I could spell "legal nihilism."
This planet is a joke. And it's because probably .3% of You (here in this "hacker community") will know half of what I'm talking about. Snowden playing hop-scotch around Europe is "hacker news."
lulz argue over the flippantness or "integrity" of headlines until you realize you've described your own simulation.
Previous poster said all of that -- all of language, all of that "thinking outloud" -- ultimately to stick you with the oh-you-shouldn't-be-surprised "I don't have any theory of rights or justice, I'm just pointing out the violence that government tries to hide."
Of what Noam Chomsky has said time and time and time, and time, and time, and time, and time time time time motherfucking time again: "See, people with power understand exactly one thing: violence."
It's like you GUYS ACTUALLY do not read, and if you do, we ALL know EXACTLY what it is you've read.
We are not prepared. We "hackers" today will be the anthropologists of this dystopia; nothing more.
It's like you're all hiding the belief that philosophy has not progressed since the time of Plato, and you don't want to admit it. Now I have to watch you all become your own little Socrates, from pg all the way down to the bottom of the barrel -- "hey, get a degree in philosophy sneee! it'll make you more well-rounded! sneee! haha! we're life hacking with the remnants of the failed capitalism cut us some slack -- play ball! sneee!"
Call it rambling, because you CHAPS just overanalyzed a whack-a-mole game (i.e., Snowden) all over my Web. Would MOST of you PLEASE go read a modern legal philosopher?
(1) you put locks on your car, apartment and bike. You have passwords. You don't tell people left and right where you live and how much money do you have. You have insurance. You hire guards, set up cameras, build up reputation with people you work with. You document your agreements to show to others in case of a conflict. You choose safer districts and don't go where it's unsafe. You choose to live with other people seeking peace and protection, rather than with crazy lunatics. You minimize risk voluntarily: individually or together with others. Without any "moral theories" or justification for any violence.
This response is exactly the problem: "Live and let live." In the face of anarchy, this is not a mature or safe philosophy to hold for oneself or to recommend to others.
You have to understand that we are talking about (A) a legal system and (B) a moral system. We generally have moved away from absolutist moral systems, thus becoming more "error prone" there. At the same time, we all fully admit to the _belief_ that morality is "fuzzy" or "vague." So we allow for interpretation. However, no one will say thus vagueness entails a lack of any coherent system all together. So, they deduce that it must come from some supernatural substratum. Whatever. Belief in whatever you want in terms of metaphysics, but we are still in agreement about the phenomenological structuring of morality: it is underpinned by our capacity to agree or disagree. The moral system is available in virtue of our capacity to go one way or the other. Of course, the only "response" to a moral nihilist is to "slap" that person.
That's all within the framework of morality. What happens when we say it is METAPHYSICALLY impossible for there to exist disagreements at the LEGAL level of critical thinking? So ASSUMING that morality is the bedrock of legal systems, we're suggesting supervenience of properties related to the "spooky" properties that belie moral disagreement. Thus, legal systems (assuming the parasitic nature of the legal on top of the moral) become "error prone" and by John Mackie's argument: essentially erroneous.
We admit that law can be an artform. Who wants to allow for Dadaist lawyers ?
"That's a-legal" is just a can of worms, and you hackers are going to fuck it up.
How can peaceful (even ignorant) people fuck things up? Unless they pull the trigger, it's someone else who is to blame. E.g. one who pulls the trigger.
Guns don't sell guns.
Laws don't kill, right. People do. I point out that people kill only because they believe that law is "good". I point out that assumption and highlight how dangerous it is.
"There are evil violent people in the world. To protect from them we must allow violence only to a selected group of people and disallow to everyone else." I wonder who will end up among these people.
Will you point a gun at me if I don't agree with your theory of law and justice? If I withdraw my income and do not obey your laws? (Provided I don't make any threat on you directly or indirectly.)
Alain Badiou, Murray Bookchin, Noam Chomsky. The only reason we're all seemingly fucked is because the U.S. DID a decent enough job to lock down knowledge and disseminate according to their time tables.
I'm not going to answer your thought experiment. I've been through it too many times. Go read HLA Hart. Go read Donald Dworkin. If all you can think in terms of is coercion, you are NOT in a good spot intellectually to deal with these problems. "So what if I hold a gun to you?" is so demonstrably non-critical, HLA Hart had to write a book "The Concept of Law" in order to demolish it with VERY, VERY, VERY boring to read, DRY analytic philosophizing.
Stop feigning dissent, and actually start reading.
Again: if I simply don't agree with you and don't give you a penny from my peaceful income, will you point a gun at my head? Will you endorse someone to do that? Yes or no?
We're getting muddled here. Stop asking "me" as if you are asking me, this user: wittysense. Whatever I personally would do is irrelevant, and the answer to your questions are NOT easy. They don't come easy. You don't just get the answer to these questions in passing in line at a coffeeshop, dude. And no one is calling these books with positive, pompous, bourgeoisie descriptors.
I said DRY. BORING. ANALYTIC. BORING. I didn't have fun reading this crock of shit, and I don't think I'm cooling on behalf of it. But talking about "what if they point a gun at me" premisses is so uncritically off the mark, and absolutely not at all even the beginning stages of how these people are thinking at an international or federal level.
The only way we can avoid fucking it up is by giving ourselves the opportunity to understand the conceptual schemes they are using. They use these schemes to produce vagueness and unclarity which results in MISMANAGED human lives (people shooting people because they follow orders) which results in SOMETIMES carnage and death. Yes, sometimes people just mug you. Shit happens. We're talking about GLOBAL if not effing INTERGALACTIC surveillance.
THIS is not a "shit happens" scenario. We need CRITICAL THINKING. May I say "critical thinking" without seemingly advancing some posh 1% tone? Everyone agrees with critical thinking. I am here trying to point you in the direction of those people who have given us critical thought on concepts like "amorality" and by analogy "alegality."
I'm [not] going to teach it to you. I had to read it myself, and I am quite confident I am not WAY of the mark. I can say "I have a degree in philosophy from a top school" but that won't convince anyone of my points. So I'm not arguing in that way. I'm telling you that "I have a degree in philosophy" at least affords me the telling of which authors one should read. Have SOME faith in that. Or just bloody a Google search. "Error Theory" "amorality" -- my typings here are DENSE with connected keywords.
"What if the President points a gun at you?" is the obvious response. It is RADICALLY different from "What if Joe points a gun at you?" You're asking the latter. I'm underlining the former. Why are they different? Why is one representative of this debate and the other not?
[EDIT: Some of my typos are so bloody self-defeating.]
Oleganza's question is simple: If I disagree with your morality or legal system, what would you do about it? If your answer is to say that I shouldn't ask you but read a book, then your value to me in a mutual free society is quite low and of course I don't intend to live at your expense. Therefore, I reject your "we" and "everyone" since those words imply consent, which I most certainly have not given.