maldonad0

And with no technology! Perhaps become some kind of ascetic monk.

That is not a good thing. It means they have internalized this level of control and slavery. Finding comfort in the panopticon.

If the one thing people revolt over is those companies, that consumerism, then our civilization is dead and it is not worth to save it.

Yes, time for a reset. A reset of all the influence foreign companies have on my country! It is many the times I have daydreamed of seizing their assets and pushing them out... Goodbye Apple, goodbye Google!

You are exactly right. But most people will call you crazy and that you are a tyrant against "democracy" or "rights".

It's open source, not free software.

I wamt less screens, not more.

Life is psychologically worse in the cities.

It really is materialist, as numbers in an account is a direct representation for the number of coins you have, which are spent fueling a life full of hedonistic pleasures and vices. The ego is attachment to pleasures and vices.

A materialist culture inevitably leads to this. It is the logical conclusion of a society that atomized the wholeness of life without realizing that the sum of its parts is less than the whole.

But it is the reality the collective chose. I fully expect things to get worse before they get better.

Banning methamphetamine or heroine is not tyranny.

Ruling is all about balance and drawing lines. Why is alcohol and tobacco banned for people under 18? Why are heroine and cocaine banned? Aren't these two cases examples of liberties that the government is cutting?

The government draws a line when the age to vote is 18, or when the age to drink is 18, or when it prevents you from owning an ak-47. There is no escaping drawing lines, it is inherent to life. Even when not seemingly drawing any line, you are just drawing a line somewhere due to inertia, a sort of implicit default.

Some lines are popular, such as the drinking age, others are impopular, such as tax rates, but both are necessary.

A society drunk on liberty is an evil too, as ancient philosophers already exposed, as there is no balance.

The role of the rulers of a people is not only to enforce the collective will of the people, but to go beyond it to the position of a leader. No one wants to pay taxes or a tax hike, but if there are no taxes, a state cannot be run. Here, the leaders are going beyond the collective will to protect the collective itself.

There are also plenty of cases where the collective is misguided, such in the case of the entertainment industry (and I'm including trash and sloppy TV and online content here), which is idiotizing society. Should people be throwing themselves into an abyss of hedonism instead of following the value of temperance and seeking wisdom? Yes, but many do not. The state of our current societies reflect our current values. "Got what I voted for", right? Disfruten lo votado, as we say in Spanish.

Here is where the imperative of the leader to do what is good and right is most obvious. The leaders are supposed to be the best among us, and while they often are not (again, a reflection of the values of society), this legitimizes them to make unpopular choices, up to a certain degree. The degree of power to invest in a leader is also a line that the collective draws. (As a note to this, bad leaders like Trump are both a reflection of the values of society, and the result of good leaders failing to do what is right and good. There are other factors, but these are the most important ones.)

When governments decide to ban social media (which is different from censorship, if only the medium is banned and not the message), a line is being drawed, and in my opinion, it is a good line to draw.

The gaza war is all over the news.

It is the moral duty of the ruler to care for the ruled, and to do what is right to protect them. Just like cocaine or heroin or alcohol are banned for their harm to society, social media must be.

Good! Every country should ban social media. Enought of this psychological poison. Messaging apps are enough for long distance contact. For small scale, specialized discussion, there are forums. Mass many-to-many platforms have to go. But overall, it is imperative that people go back to "living" in the real world, instead of the fake reality created by social media.

Looks like btop but M$.

I used to run a forum that blocked IPs from outside Western Europe. I had no interest in users from beyond. It's not all about money.

Ha! I meant it. Every system has its pros and cons. I find quite a lot of modern democracies to be extraordinarily dishonest and shortsighted, pretending to be ruled by the people while the same oligarchy has in fact been ruling since time immemorial, and I hate it when I am lied to my face.

As another commenter said, democracies pride themselves in being transparent and true to themselves, things that are needed to be able to choose your collective destiny wisely, which is in turn the core a working democracy.

At least the Sultan of Oman is honest about him ruling and not me! We pretend to live in democracies while we live in oligarchies, because if we admited democracy has been corrupted, the house of cards would fall, since we have been building our worldview and values on the position that they are more just than others because it's the will of the people.

Finally, I'll add that liberalism is not unique to democracy, but able to fit into other governing systems.

I think there are better systems than democracy, one of them being mixed systems. Monarchism at the head of the country, democracy at the city level, and a parliament composed half and half of democratically elected local municipality representants and experts.

Democracy is a form of power organization. Liberalism is system of ethics.

In small groups, democracy is synonomous with consensus.

The author is conflating democracy with liberalism.

Democracy, or "Democracy"? Did the people have any choice in the Patriot Act and many others? On the actions following the 2007 crisis and the extraordinary bailout? Do EU citizens have any choice in the actions of the EU Comission, like Chat Control?

Democracy only exists for a short time after a revolution. After a while, the power permanently consolidates in a number of elites and the democracy becomes "democracy", that is, little more than a show.

The only time democracy works incorruptibly is in small groups where everyone knows each other and everyone knows what's going on.

It's not that either.

It's not a mistake. It's meant to misled.

I can sense the scream of a million bubbles popping up. I see it in the tea leaves.

Maybe spoofing source IPs.

And there is no non-violent solution

The average person (and more if younger) is illiterate these days and unfit to hold any position of significant power. Source: I work with them.

Excessive pragmatism leads to utilitarianism which is anti-human.