Nope, by a German speaker in good but imperfect English
246 karma · joined February 19, 2018
The fallout from BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill comes to mind. British executives failed to provide the gushing (but meaningless) apology the Americans expected until it was too late, and they were skewered in the American press for it. And that particular example concerns two closely related cultures. The results are often more jarring when quite dissimilar cultures are involved.
Edit: I looked at the previous replies. All of this talk of 'society' this and 'we' that is of no use whatsoever when you are talking about global phenomena and companies like Facebook/Twitter/etc. Under the given circumstances, the ethical questions are much larger. The problem is probably totally intractable.
It might seem like a stretch, but I suspect that ultimately all of these platforms are going to end up being carved up by regulators, co-opted by governments, subjected to national firewalls, etc. on account of their potential for mischief, misuse, disinformation, misinformation, open source intel gathering by hostile powers, meddling, etc.
Many of the conditions that accompanied falling fertility rates in Europe and America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are now evident in the developing world.
New York City has seen over 18,000 deaths directly attributed to Covid-19. The actual number may be higher, but probably isn't lower. How many actual (including undetected) cases would there have to be in NYC to produce the given number of deaths at any given IFR? Figures at the low end suggest a number of cases far in excess of the total population, so they are naturally impossible. The real IFR is somewhere between the lowest plausible number based on the total population and the implausibly high case fatality rate (based on detected/confirmed cases).
Anyone want to do some math on that?
I don't doubt that this stuff happens. The web is full of filth and excrement. But using the language of moral panic to sell a dubious service is just crass.
If we must wade into the debate about whether kids should have access to it, my answer would be a resounding no. I know of ten year old girls with smartphones. I try to tell people that those things are portals to hell, and they look at me like I have two heads.
The web has morphed into a raging monster, and 'mobile devices' are the devil incarnate.
We should step back from the abyss, or at least refrain from looking into it, lest we discover that we are but monsters ourselves, and the abyss is only a mirror.
Again, this is not about a 'police sting' or anything like that. It is about a 'project' (stunt) carried out by a private company that sells software for monitoring kids. The author works for the same company.
Surveillance has historically had three chief purposes.
- taxation, the expropriation of property or surplus value
- manpower, conscription
- maintaining order and control, eliminating threats, etc.
You can go all the way back to the dawn of agriculture and the rise of the first grain-based proto-states. The fundamentals remain much the same.
2. I generally disagree with regards to the seizure of property. You say that the seizure of criminal assets is seen as an effective crime deterrent. Who sees it as such? Is there any evidence that it works? Are you familiar with the debates surrounding 'civil forfeiture'? If not, it is worth looking into. There are jurisdictions in the US(primarily at the municipal and county level) that derive a large part of their total operating budgets from the seizure of 'criminal' assets without any sort of due process. The example of drug kingpins parking their money in real estate is a particularly lurid and unrepresentative example--there might indeed be a place for criminal asset forfeiture in the fight against organized crime--but at the very least the threshold should be rather high and not include petty infractions or minor unpaid debts.
3. I see your point here, and you are correct on checks and balances, but I think you are naive with regards to the role of the press and the efficacy of simply voting out incumbent officials. Having said that, I will concede that the strategy actually works best at the lowest possible tier of government, but of course that requires adequate civic engagement in local politics.
More on the free press issue. Here's a story for you. In the early 1970s, my dad worked for a couple of local newspapers in the southern US. They would send him to cover city council meetings. He commented that the reporters from the big papers would show up for about 10 minutes and leave, and then write reports as if they had been present the entire time. And that was yearly 50 years ago, when the American newspaper landscape looked very different from today. Today most of those local papers are gone altogether and the press in general has undergone a total transformation. Beyond the occasional outrage story, I wouldn't automatically assume that the press is going to do its job.
Please don't take offense at my comments and fire back an angry rebuttal. This is not meant as criticism of you or your positions. Just thoughts and debate, nothing more.
The case in question is an absolute disgrace and an excellent example of the failings of the American system of government in its present state of (dys)function. I would argue that it should be much, much harder to evict people for any reason, and that seizing private property for trivial reasons should be near impossible. Many here would agree, but in this specific case it is purely a local matter.
Sub/exurban Detroit cannot be compared to Singapore. And the problem has little to do with global population or overpopulation, but it is curiously linked to population density. Jürgen Habermas and others have written extensively about the phenomenon of 'Verrechtlichung' or 'juridification', i.e. the process by which an ever increasing amount of human interaction and social and economic life is subjected to legal regulation and codification, corresponding roughly to increases in population density that came with urbanisation, industrialisation, and the advent of urban modernity from the late 19th century on. But that is really not directly related to the given issue exept in a rather abstract way.
I suppose it's nice to know they are there as a potential SHTF food supply.
I would place the origin of this thinking in the crusading social reform movements of the 19th and 20th centuries, or perhaps more broadly in Protestantism, and later, in emerging nationalist projects (with a few outliers of course).
I think it is important to examine the origins of our ideas on compulsory education, and the crucial questions of what purpose an education system actually serves, what purpose it should serve, and how its purpose has changed over time.
I would advocate a paradigm shift in how we think about education and its place in modern society. I am of course not the only person who advocates this, but I disagree with those who would carry on the tradition of imbuing education with a social and moral mission. I would not argue against the benefits of a broad humanistic education, or the necessity of technical and vocational education in an advanced economy, but rather point out that we collectively allocate a vast amount of resources to education, and place an almost religious faith in its value. The latter points are worthy of debate.
I could write a book on the subject, and I've read quite a bit in the area over the years. I'd really love to continue with the historical side of things, as well as my own suggestions and reflections, but it's too much to properly explain here.
I knew my comment would get downvoted though. :P
This happened during the Euro crisis some years ago, and at the time it seemed that Germans with any kind of savings were desperately looking for safe places to put it. Lacking much in the way of financial literacy, many undoubtedly fell victim to professional crooks.
It's hardly any surprise that property markets across Germany started heating up around that time. Property is widely viewed as a safe bet. They call it 'Betongold' or 'concrete gold' for a reason. I know that isn't the only factor behind the vast increase in property values in many areas, but it's undoubtedly a major one, and I think we can expect this situation with interest rates to further inflate what is beginning to look like a bubble.
Nominal property values in the mid-sized city where I live have more than doubled in a decade--seems like a wild party after decades of relatively flat (real) property values.
It's something of a shock, given that earnings have hardly budged during the same period. One could argue that Germany was abnormally cheap 10 years ago in terms of both consumer goods and real estate, and it might be true, but the reality on the ground is pretty disheartening, particularly in light of political developments in places such as Saxony. I'm afraid the squeeze on people in the middle is going to fuel more political instability, or could at the very least be used to stir up trouble.