Conventional wisdom says the Cold War was between the doctrines of Capitalism and Communism and that the doctrine of Capitalism won.
It doesn't look like that view was right.
The doctrine of the KGB and Stasi is winning over both of them.
It was not only rhetoric that in the fight between USA and UDSSR, there was a fight between freedom and authority. But mainly, it was a fight between different ways to regulate the means of production. Capitalism won, but that does not mean that freedom, democracy and the rule of the law will survive that victory.
China shows that you can have a capitalst economy in a (not a real one, but wanting to be) communist country.
Wanting to be? I'm afraid that China would never want trying again in the current reign. China just has not yet figured out which model of heaven could be used to replace the communist one. It is really a tough job to propose for a egalitarian heaven in an age of quickly increasing rich-poor gap.
But there are other examples. Take Stalin, under his reign there was a limited (but successful) effort to produce food using a free economy, which he shot down. Which was tragic given the food was needed.
But that leads to far. I mainly meant that the existing systems claiming to be communist aren't, and some were able to use the tools of capitalism without becoming a western country, e.g. without becoming an indirect democracy - thus showing that capitalism is an economic model, not more.
If you consider large government bureaus (public, or "private" via regulation, like, say, Verizon) to define "capitalism" just because there are large amounts of money involved ("capital"), you are defining the term by non-essentials. There were also large amounts of money in the USSR.
Capitalism lost because of European intellectual influences in America; the existing defense of the ideas of the founding fathers was insufficient to stem the tide.
I love how libertarians redefine words to mean what they want!
What he's referring to in mainstream libertarian literature is called "anarcho-capitalism". This is well known in the libertarian sub-culture. A distinction the above commenter likely just doesn't know yet.
Very similar to how everyone seems to perceive socialism to be authoritarian-communism. Fallacies are everywhere, hardly unique to libertarians.
In fact, I know presiely what "anarcho-capitalism" is, and I totally reject it.
An actual system of freedom (which capitalism falls out of) requires people to be protected from the initiation of force by a government. Anarcho-capitalism is simply a power vacuum that will be filled (99% of the time, in a dangerous way).
Moreover, I am not a libertarian, I am an Objectivist (the philosophy the libertarians stole 10% of and started taking out of context when they started their modern movement).
To respond to your other point, the fundamental political axis is freedom on the one side, and authoritarianism on the other. It doesn't particularly matter if that is wrapped up as socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever.
Capitalism and free markets just "fall out of" a government that does not coerce people, and does not allow people to coerce people.
I already provided some evidence that my account is proper. I mentioned the issue of improperly defining things by non-essentials. I don't think you have presented a viable counter-argument.
Wrong. Capitalism is synonymous with free enterprise, not free markets. And free enterprise simply means that enterprises (rather than states) own the means of production.
IMO, we need to start talking about workplace democracy if we're going to continue to entertain the idea of corporate controlled society, so that the common person can at least get their vote back (indirectly, by choosing who leads the company which bribes officials...).
That said, many, many, people believe that most people are not competent, and need to be taken care of/controlled/limited.
Arguments I usually have to fight against are: What to do about crime. What to do about "evil" people. What to do about property rights. What to do about control in decisions.
There is a simple solution to all the problems you mention, which is to have a government that uses retaliatory force, but not initiatory force.
America had one for about a century, and now there is the intellectual machinery needed to go back to that system and to define and defend it much more vigorously. Unfortunately, a majority of "advocates for freedom" are mucking around with things like "libertarian socialism" and "anarcho-capitalism" which are contradictions in terms and won't work.
Unfortunately for you (until or unless you stop fighting the truth), objective knowledge is possible.
There is no such thing as a "free enterprise" without a "free market", and vice versa.
To the degree you do not have a "free market," you have government regulation. To the degree you have government regulation, successful enterprises are organs of the state.
Free markets == free enterprise == capitalism. Why? Because they all just fall out of "the government only uses force to stop other people from initiating force and retaliating against them when they do," which is a proper government. And, as a sidenote, this is what the US Founding Fathers set up, to the closest extent they could.
Your understanding of what is meant by "free enterprise" is false. Source: I have a degree in Economics and wrote my senior's thesis on this subject.
"Free enterprise" in this context means the enterprise has internal freedom - i.e. it is owned and controlled by non-state actors, as in people like you and me. These non-state actors can do whatever they want. Yes, there are still rules and regulations they operate under, but this does not mean that they are not free.
The language "free enterprise" is specifically used to distinguish capitalism from communism, where the state controls the means of production, i.e. the enterprises (e.g. factories) are owned by the government, which typically exerts authoritarian control over them and determines what should be produced and how. The enterprises in communism have no internal freedom: they follow the government's orders. If the government says the factory should produce computers, that's what the factory produces. If the governments says it should produce tanks, that's what it produces. Whereas in capitalism, enterprises can produce whatever they want as long as they do it legally. They are still free.
Under rules and regulations, an enterprise is not free to allocate its capital at it desires, produce the products it desires, market them in the way it desires, and sell them to who it desires.
The degree to which that is true depends on the scope of the rules and regulations. If the only one is that there is a 5% income tax, the enterprise loses 5% of its freedom to allocate its capital. In reality, in our mixed economy, companies operate under many, many restrictions. In areas like finance and telecom, we have full-on regulatory monopolies: an enterprise has no freedom without permission, and new permissions are not being granted.
I am fully aware that academic economists consistently define things according to non-essentials, and the only thing I can do is reject that. A "free enterprise" must mean what the words "free" and "enterprise" mean in the English language. Anything else is a barrier to rational thinking.
If economists want a word for an enterprise that can "do whatever it wants, but still operates under rules and regulations," they (properly) have to make a new word for it, not re-use existing words that mean something different.
Actually, though, there already is a word for that: a "contradiction." An enterprise cannot be free and not-free.
Unfortunately, many academic economists want to "earn" their bread and butter by peddling contradictions to students and the public, and they deserve the very highest moral condemnation for it.
Why? Because that kind of behavior leads to recessions (such as the perma-recession we are currently in), depressions, and the rise of authoritarianism (fascism being one example from recent history). It leads to suffering and mass-killing.
Source: Reality.
To the degree that you are a victim of this, you should rethink your views. To the degree that you are a perpetrator (if at all), you should be ashamed of yourself.
Sorry, this is an extremely naive point of view. I'd even call it juvenile.
The mature way to look at it is this: the enterprise is paying 5% of its income as tax in order to have the freedom of using roads, having access to security (police, firefighters, etc.) and use all the infrastructure established by government.
>>A "free enterprise" must mean what the words "free" and "enterprise" mean in the English language. Anything else is a barrier to rational thinking.
In the very English language you speak of, context defines a lot of the meaning. And the context here is a discussion of economic terms. You can reject that all you want. The fact remains that "free enterprise" means what it means, not what you want it to mean.
I'm going to have to refrain from responding to the rest of your post, as it simply reads like a bunch of anti-intellectual nonsense.
> The fact remains that "free enterprise" means what it means, not what you want it to mean.
You have ignored my point that your definition is a contradiction in terms.
Moreover, our discussion is a discussion about politics and the economy, not an economics textbook or paper.
So why don't you just make your argument in plain English?
Because it relies on invalid definitions to get it to appear to make sense.
That would be an unsubstantiated allgeation if I had not shown that your term is contradictory. I did.
> I'm going to have to refrain from responding to the rest of your post, as it simply reads like a bunch of anti-intellectual nonsense.
I don't think people who peddle contradictory terms deserve the title "intellectual," so I don't think my comments were anti-intellectual.
If you actually see a contradiction between my analysis and reality, you should be able to state it simply. That you didn't point out such a contradiction, suggests to me that you don't actually see one.
As a sidenote, I have enough respect for some economists to find it hard to believe that they are all using the term in the way you say. Of course, many economists simply (and reasonably) stay away from any political topic.
Near as I can tell a purely capitalist system is likely to become a surveillance system, since it more effectively allows for the production of surveillance tools. Surveillance is the ultimate competitive advantage. Almost no one can win against you in the market if you have "total informational awareness", especially if you have no scruples with respect to how you use that information and people are largely unaware of how much that surveillance is costing them.
The person conducting the surveillance can see its benefits, but the victim can't fully grasp its harm. Surveillance is capitalism's way of boiling frogs for fun and profit.
“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything. With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed. Whoever molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes, or pronounces judicial decisions.” -- Abraham Lincoln
The basic distinction is your data versus data that's about you. If I own a store, and make a note that 001sky came in to buy a box of cookies at 2:00pm on January 23, 2005, that's my paper. It's not your paper. I can claim 4th amendment protection if the FBI breaks into my store and takes that note, but you can't. That's the legally relevant distinction between data and metadata.
I'm not sure this is logically possible. The metadata retention by the telco's is an artifact of their business process (minimize fraudulent billing liability)[1]. A similar process did not exist for mail until the government mandated and paid for it. Now, every piece of mail is photgraphed ("to collect the 'metadata' ")and the images are recorded. That notwithstanding, the entire notion of such meta-data is strictly an artifact of technology. There is no analogue in pure verbal speech, in other words.
[1] There is no need for them to retain it or to otherwise "posess" it in an-other-than-temporary-like-snapchat-way.
> That notwithstanding, the entire notion of such meta-data is strictly an artifact of technology. There is no analogue in pure verbal speech, in other words.
Sure there is! Before mail was scanned for delivery purposes, you could always have called a postal worker to testify about what he read on the outside of the envelope. Before store cameras, you could have always called a store worker to testify about when he saw 001sky enter and leave the store and what he saw 001sky buy. Before automated call tracking, you could always have called a phone operator to testify about when 001sky placed a call. Technology makes it easier to collect metadata, but it does not turn "data" into "metadata."
(1) That doesn't change the essential characteristic of whether it's your data, or data about you. The datacard in my FLIR camera is (a) my data; and (b) about you. Neither of these qualifications are insurmountable. The courts have not tripped over this technicality, because the <purpose> of using the FLIR instrument is not considered a reasonable use of technology, when it has the impact of making surveilance <unavoidable> per-se.
(2) The post office example. This raises two issues: (a) technology; and (b) scale. Mail by post is distinct from verbal speech and generates metadata because of the need to address an envelope. Its low technology, but this is an artifact of the technology. With respect to scale, what is 'reasonably' to collect is a function of resource expenditure. As the cost of collection decreases, the amount of data 'reasonably' collected <increases>. But that is beside the point of where my <reasonable expectation of privacy> has changed or stayed the same.
(3) Scale, generally speaking. eg: Technology makes it easier to collect metadata, but it does not turn "data" into "metadata." The express purpose of the meta-data programs is to turn <meta> data into <data>. This is sort of the fundamental question at the heart of the matter, from a constitutional perspective. The purpose of these systems is to surveil beyond the scope of what would normally be perceived as reasonable. In that regard, it is aking to using FLIR to make surveilance <unavoidable per-se>. Or at least that is an argument which should be ajudicated. Perhaps by legislation, as well, once a more coherent framework has been set forth by the courts. In otherwords, now that these 'edge cases' are being swept up into the norm.
Not really, its still the persons, houses, papers, or effects of "the people" no matter which of the people it belongs to.
There's this weird idea which seems to have emerged from the use of the exclusionary rule as the main (and pretty much exclusive) remedy for violations of the Fourth Amendment that the Fourth Amendment only applies when the person about whom information is sought is the person whose person, houses, papers, or effects are being searched or seized, but there is nothing in the text of any reasonable context of the Constitutional language itself to support that, its simply a byproduct of an inadequate remedy (which, in fact, that aspect reveals to be inadequate) that seems to have worked its way back into the way that the language is read.
Second, ("th[e] weird idea... that the Fourth Amendment only applies when the person about whom information is sought is the person whose person, houses, papers, or effects are being searched or seized") doesn't stem from the exclusionary rule, but rather the subpoena power. The subpoena duces tecum (subpoena for the production of documents) predates the 4th amendment by quite a bit, appearing in England in its modern form sometime in the 1600's. While an overly broad or abusive subpoena can be a 4th amendment violation (but against the person at whom the subpoena is directed, not against the subject of the documents sought), they are presumptively reasonable.
Outrage doesn't make you right; at this point it's just making hn boring.
boorish.
You'd think all these experts would have bothered to read up just a little bit on SCOTUS cases like Smith v Maryland, etc, but I guess it's just easier to grunt Freedom.
I actually disagree...common sense is in fact an argument...in fact it is a 4th Amendment legal argument. When a Court hears whether a search and seizure was reasonable common sense arguments often prevail. For example, you have reasonable expectations of privacy if you were in an old school public phone booth, but not on your cell phone in public...you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in your trash, that is until it hits the curb then the government can seize it (without a warrant) and use it against you in trial.
As interesting as Rayiner's points are, even if he is citing case law/legal precedent it does not make him right. At the end of the day it only matters what 9 people think, and guess what more often than not those 9 people are at odds with one another, and often to the tune of 5-4 - nevertheless what the majority/plurality of those 9 opine becomes the law of the land, still that does not make any of them right either.
One of the more interesting 4th Amendment issues is that it only applies to the Government, so the Government can not simply have a private citizen seize evidence without a warrant and use it as evidence, but they can use unlawfully obtained evidence so long as they did not direct the individual who originally obtained it...think how the Government used the photos hacked by Anonymous in the Stubenville Rape case. Ironically I think this could be one of the strongest arguments is that telecoms are actually working on behalf of the Government to obtain evidence they could otherwise not get without a warrant - in fact I would go so far as to say the Government is paying telecom companies to do this on their behalf.
The text of the amendment does not clearly support your position. Indeed, the focus is clearly on personal things (house, person), not things possessed by third parties.
Those microphones and cameras in public places are there for your protection. We'll never abuse that, trust us. Oh never never never.
("Hey, this guy voted Replubricatic last election, stick him on the list, too. Hey, he gave money to my opponent!")
Wiretaps and documents hosted on the "cloud" are somewhere in-between. The first time the Supreme Court considered the Constitutionality of warrantless wire taps, it found that they were not protected by the 4th amendment. In the 1960's they overturned that precedent, but using reasoning that really only makes sense in an analog context where your voice directly modulates signals on a wire, and there is no intermediate storage.
Call records are further removed still. They're not a recording of your voice. They are generated by the telco, for the telco's own purposes. They are never in your possession, and you don't even know their contents. It's a huge stretch to say that they are nonetheless "your" papers.
Finally, microphones and cameras in public are clearly Constitutional. Whether they can be abused is irrelevant. The 4th amendment is not a prohibition on anything that can be abused. It's a prohibition designed to protect peoples' physical persons and their property rights from government searches.
Do you have a property right in your Google Drive? Do you pay rent? Can you sue Google if they negligently lose the contents? Does Google have any obligations to give you say 30 days notice before they shut down your account? These reciprocal obligations are the difference between renting a garage to store your papers (which would fall within the 4th amendment), and simply leaving your papers in a friends' garage (which wouldn't).
"Secret court" and "All this stuff we've collected? We haven't actually collected it until we look at it" and oversight by people who are clearly invested in keeping things cozy. This is all madness. How did we get here?
I might not know enough to know where to draw the line, but I know enough to know that it's gone wrong, and that erring on the side of severely restricting this kind of behavior and shedding light on what has happened is probably the best course of action.
You need to understand the context. People did not store information about their private communications with third parties in 1776. Can you call AT&T and ask for someone else's records and get them? Why not? Things you wish to stay private do stay private unless a warrant is issued citing probable cause to violate your privacy.
People stored all sorts of private information with third parties in 1776. They had accountants and bookkeepers and suppliers and vendors, etc.
> Can you call AT&T and ask for someone else's records and get them?
Can you call up Ernst and Young and ask for someone else's accounting records? No, but the government can.
The test isn't "things you wish to stay private." It's "reasonable expectation of privacy." It's an objective test, not a subjective one. And I find it very difficult to understand how anyone could have a "reasonable expectation" of privacy in information generated by a third party for its own use, that's exposed to god knows how many engineers and system administrators.
But if you're going to argue that this objectively means "reasonable expectation that your privacy will be respected in this case" rather than "reasonable expectation that your privacy should be respected in this case" then you have reduced any protection to something meaningless through circular logic. By this kind of argument, anyone can violate your privacy, in any way, for any reason, and it's all OK as long as they make sure you know it's happening.
That's what the reasonable expectation of privacy test has always meant, so its not reducing it at all. Whether its meaningless or not, well, actual actions by government have been found to violate it, so its clearly not a null protection, even if it isn't what you'd prefer.
Obviously I disagree with you and rayiner over how ambiguous that phrase is, but that doesn't really matter. This entire HN discussion is about a call to change the situation, in particular, the current behaviour of the US government and the laws that the US government argues permit such behaviour. Arguing that something is OK because it's what the law currently says doesn't seem to advance that debate in any useful way.
Most of the NSA programs that have been exposed to date are not "clear" violations of the law. They are attempts to operate at the boundaries of the law as currently understood, but they seem to reflect a genuine attempt to stay within those boundaries.
Distinctions that people on Hacker News dismiss because they have a broad-based ideological opposition to surveillance, like "metadata versus data" or "U.S. persons versus foreigners" are in fact the operative markers delineating the bounds of the law.
Merely following the law doesn't turn a bad idea into a good idea, or justify a program, but it does say something about whether people are acting in good faith. What doesn't advance the debate is saying that people in the government must be acting in bad faith because they are "clearly" violating the law, when in fact you just don't understand what the law is.
I think this is where we have slightly different points of view.
In the general situation we're discussing, i.e., state surveillance, the people who make the laws and the people who should be following them are the same, or at least closely related. In that context, to demonstrate good faith, I think you need to make good laws and then follow them.
There is an interesting wrinkle in the US that we don't have here in the UK because the US Constitution is theoretically out of reach of the current government. However, as usual actions speak louder than words, and as an outsider it doesn't appear that having a written constitution is a reliable safeguard any more (on many issues, not just the surveillance one). Again, the people who might be acting unconstitutionally and the people who would judge them are cut from the same cloth.
Because of these inherent conflicts of interest, I don't think that merely following the letter of the law is sufficient to demonstrate (or, equally, demonstrate the lack of) anything very interesting.