I always hate the framing of something being "capitalistic greed". The market has decided that they don't care about their privacy. You are complaining about the wrong people, you should be complaining to your fellow consumers/users. I've lost count of the number discussions I've had with people where they said they don't care about their privacy.
As for legalities. It is a global world. There is no way to enforce this effectively globally. This is a pipe dream.
Also data in some cases must be shared with partners, those might be payment processor, ID checks etc.
The market is literally fueled by people full of capitalistic greed one-upping each other and forcing others to play by the same rules. It's a capitalistic greed optimization engine. For all benefits we yield from it, it's still fair to call it capitalistic greed and notice the ethical failures the market strongly encourages.
I cannot stand the gas-lighting here. Your perception of capitalism is one that is framed as a winner takes all mentality that been sold to you by propagandists.
Capitalism is about free market trade. You provide something and people choose whether they want to buy it or use it. People add greed qualifier in there so they can frame it as something illicit going on.
The fact still remains that if people cared about their privacy (and there is no evidence they do), they wouldn't use these sites.
Before it was done online. Store cards used to track purchases and spending habits in store in the same way that sites do today (however at a much greater scale) and customers were given vouchers in return.
In much the same way. Almost all the local stores have dissapeared to be replaced by large corps that can provide everything in super stores and in much the same way that is the fault of the consumer by not supporting their local stores.
> For all benefits we yield from it, it's still fair to call it capitalistic greed and notice the ethical failures the market strongly encourages.
No the failing is on us and the users of the site for using these services when we were warned by many people that this would be the case. Pretending otherwise is passing the buck.
I agree, the consumer has responsibility here, and leverage.
But that does not absolve the producer. They are still using ethically questionable methods.
The market doesn’t get to decide the rights and wrongs. It just allocates resources. That we have to do collectively if we want to call ourselves democratic.
But the free market literally cannot exist? The free market won't bring you back to life so you can "choose a different competitor" if it kills you.
That food? Bad. Dead. That tool? Dangerous. Dead. That work on your house? Dangerous. Dead. That car? Unroadworthy. Dead. Those aircraft parts? Counterfeit and not to spec. 300 people dead.
Every single thing humans do is already regulated in some way. Why? Because humans in the end, like all animals, try to achieve the best least effort : highest reward ratio they can.
In the modern world, these regulations need to be extended to automatically cover modern technologies and prevent inherent harm. They shouldn't be overbearing. They shouldn't be pointlessly excessive. But they are required for all things.
Many people think capitalism is greedy because they have literally spent a lifetime experiencing greed fueled capitalism first hand, not because they sit on YouTube watching propaganda videos.
> But the free market literally cannot exist? The free market won't bring you back to life so you can "choose a different competitor" if it kills you.
Life is full of risks. Lots of things were approved by bother government and experts in the past that was bad for you.
> That food? Bad. Dead. That tool? Dangerous. Dead. That work on your house? Dangerous. Dead. That car? Unroadworthy. Dead. Those aircraft parts? Counterfeit and not to spec. 300 people dead.
The FDA has stopped people from getting medication in the US that are over the counter medicines because they haven't been approved for use. It is a double edged sword.
>Every single thing humans do is already regulated in some way. Why? Because humans in the end, like all animals, try to achieve the best least effort : highest reward ratio they can.
Unfortunately. What has the current light regulation on the web brought us cookie popups that are irritating that people just click through and a GDPR warnings that don't actually solve the problem of collecting your data. I don't hold out much hope for future regulation, which btw will favour the big tech players that have been collecting our data thus far. BTW you don't know the names of many of them, because they are B2B players and provide services to the companies we do know the name of.
As for "best result for least effort". Well it depends how it manifests itself. It can either be laziness or efficiency. The latter is not a problem.
> In the modern world, these regulations need to be extended to automatically cover modern technologies and prevent inherent harm. They shouldn't be overbearing. They shouldn't be pointlessly excessive. But they are required for all things.
Inviting any sort of regulation will involve government. Government will try to justify itself by demanding more regulation. It will always be overbearing and that will cement these players in place.
At the moment, we have the best chance of these players being toppled. People are looking at alternatives to big tech and are going to smaller players, mainly due to censorship. The trickle has now become a stream, sooner or later it will be a flood. However because of regulation on the horizon (which doesn't address any of the issues we care about)
> Many people think capitalism is greedy because they have literally spent a lifetime experiencing greed fueled capitalism first hand, not because they sit on YouTube watching propaganda videos.
I suspect you are confusing corporatism (which is a form of fascism) with capitalism (which is a party of liberty).
As for propaganda. I never said anything about Youtube. Don't put words in my mouth. I am talking about how hollywood, novelists (since the 19th century), newspapers have framed it since forever. You are soo fermeted in it you don't even realise it is propaganda.
> What has the current light regulation on the web brought us cookie popups that are irritating that people just click through and a GDPR warnings that don't actually solve the problem of collecting your data. I don't hold out much hope for future regulation,
GDPR is quite decent as laws go; the problems you mention happen because the regulation enforcement is too weak. Displaying a cookie popup was never anything but an admission that you're doing something you're not supposed to. GDPR notices again mostly give the same evidence. A lot of them aren't even compliant. I honestly wish DPAs of EU member states would start beating these companies down until this bullshit stops.
> I suspect you are confusing corporatism (which is a form of fascism) with capitalism (which is a party of liberty).
Potayto, potahto. Capitalism structurally favors something resembling corporatism, because capital compounds - the more you have of it, the easier it is to get even more. The market is a dynamic system - what matters is what it evolves over time into.
> GDPR is quite decent as laws go; the problems you mention happen because the regulation enforcement is too weak. Displaying a cookie popup was never anything but an admission that you're doing something you're not supposed to. GDPR notices again mostly give the same evidence. A lot of them aren't even compliant. I honestly wish DPAs of EU member states would start beating these companies down until this bullshit stops.
All that sites will do is do a cost assessment of whether it is worth serving those in the EU and just block the IP range and people that want to use those services will just use VPNs anyway (which is what I do when I am banned by IP from a site because of the GDPR rules).
>Potayto, potahto. Capitalism structurally favors something resembling corporatism, because capital compounds - the more you have of it, the easier it is to get even more. The market is a dynamic system - what matters is what it evolves over time into.
No it doesn't. Corporatism is a collusion with government. If governments were smaller, buying influence wouldn't be effective. You don't even understand what you are arguing.
Yes the market is a dynamic system that why if you allow it to operate freely those companies that are abusing their position will start to lose market share when other competitors that don't will be more attractive to consumers. However once you involve regulation, then that mechanism doesn't happen because you just raised the bar higher for all the would be smaller players.
Again you always want to frame it in the worst light.
Anyway. Fuck this site, dissenting opinion is frowned upon here. So much for the hacker part.
The major barriers to competing with Google/Amazon/Facebook etc are not regulatory hassles, by far. Even in highly regulated industries, like space launch vehicles, the additional cost of compliance over your own due diligence isn’t the biggest barrier.
Also, consumers on average do a bad job of managing anticompetitive behaviour and harmful externalities, even if they know about them. Convenience and habit are strong motivators. And we need regulation to disincentivize companies from outright lying in the first place.
Companies and people in a fully free market system won’t magically become rational automata that behave ideally. We’re only human. Our superpower is the ability to collectively leverage our individual specialization. Foresight for negative externalities is a specialization that needs regulation to be effective.
There's plenty of room for dissenting opinion here. But if you're going to offer up an argument for capitalist-libertarianism that isn't any more than a largely evidence-free rehash of the same positions that filled talk.politics.theory on usenet in the 1990s, then yeah, you're probably not going to see a lot of support. Offer up a cogent, evidence-filled position that genuinely causes people to say "huh! gonna have to think/read about this ..." and I'm fairly sure you'd see a different response.
I've given my rationale. Calling it evidence-free when there are thousands of examples where it works and almost everytime there is government involvement it happens to be a mess. So piss off with you patronising response.
Thanks for your reply, it was really interesting and gave me some things to think about.
I agree that government intervention is not ideal, as government is also often dumb, evil or incompetent. But that's more our failure to set up a political system where only the best, skilled, most ethical, least selfish people can rise to the top. We are nowhere close.
Propaganda: I wasn't putting words in your mouth intentionally, I see your point though. It was a description of how your words felt to someone making a critism of capitalism, that for me to dare criticise I must be propaganda-ised.
I don't watch movies. I don't have a TV. I don't read newspapers. I read a lot but a broad spectrum of works from a variety of times.
I like your distinction between capitalism and corporatism, it's a great point. I wonder though: Corporations exist inside of capitalism, so isn't it a failure of capitalism to bring outrageous cooperations to heel?
I dislike your "fermeted" comment, you literally followed an accusation of fallacy from me to you, with a whole bunch of actually intentioned fallacy of your own?
A sort of freedom. Not free from taxes, free from interference. But that's really never the case.
Say you buy something from a store, and you expect their use of your data to follow the terms on the loyalty card. They've got a bunch of commercial-code laws that protect them. You can't pay with counterfeit money, or give yourself a 2-for-1 discount. If you use credit and don't pay, men from the state with the right to use violence come and collect for the store. They're totally legally protected. But how are you protected? Only at the end of a hugely expensive court case in the best outcome, but probably not at all.
The potential risk to the store from you is limited to the cost of goods, the risk to you is almost unbounded. You might lose healthcare coverage, or your boss might buy your data and use the store to link your id to your pornhub usage and fire you. Minimal, limited risk for them, huge unbounded and unprotected risk for you.
But then you discover after buying your gallon of milk, that they (knowingly) sold your data to someone who then sold it to, let's say an insurance company, in direct violation of the words on the back of the card. Now, how do you get made whole?
So, no. I don't actually feel that the free market meets that description for 99% of transactions. Between two citizens over a used lawnmower, yes. Between Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, yes. But between you and the supermarket - not even a little.
> Your perception of capitalism is one that is framed as a winner takes all mentality that been sold to you by propagandists.
Not really. My perception comes from thinking about the market as a dynamic system, and not a static picture described by pro- and anti-market propagandists.
> Capitalism is about free market trade. You provide something and people choose whether they want to buy it or use it.
That's a "motte and bailey" defense. Such a perfect free trade almost doesn't exist, and very few are privileged to partake in it. Market offerings aren't independent - they're in competition, which means a lot of possible products aren't provided, and those that are face competitive pressure to provide less value for more price.
The most important thing to recognize is that the market, as a dynamic system, optimizes for profitable companies. Not for maximizing value these companies deliver to their customers. Usually, providing value is the most straightforward way for profit. But there are other ways - ways to provide no value, or even negative value while still netting additional profit - and the market takes them as much as it can. Vendor lock-in and surveillance are just few ways of making money by providing negative value-add.
> People add greed qualifier in there so they can frame it as something illicit going on.
Not illicit. Immoral. Because after all is said and done, the market is still entirely made of people and their decisions, which get to be evaluated through the lens of ethics.
> The fact still remains that if people cared about their privacy (and there is no evidence they do), they wouldn't use these sites.
They care and they will use them anyway, because the market doesn't provide any other option.
> Store cards used to track purchases and spending habits in store in the same way that sites do today (however at a much greater scale) and customers were given vouchers in return.
In the store. Not across stores. And they gave vouchers back, not shoved extra ads in your face. And that's without touching the qualitative difference between a human clerk doing the surveillance and automated systems doing the same.
> Pretending otherwise is passing the buck.
I hate to invoke the concept of "victim blaming", because it's usually invoked very unreasonably, but - you can't expect individuals to be able to rationally make market decisions while working their asses off trying to make ends meet, having their attention DDoSed, and facing against compounding improvements in manipulation techniques (courtesy of the market). I'm willing to cut regular folks some slack, and instead focus on the people running these companies, who had a clear choice, and chose to engage in abusive practices. You don't impulse-adopt business models, so you can't excuse it as a moment of weakness either.
(But then I'm willing to cut these business folks some slack too; in many cases, it's the market pressures that force to choose the abusive option - which leads us back to my original point: the market is a capitalist greed optimization engine. It promotes business people who think that, much like your margin, your ethics are their opportunity.)
> Not really. My perception comes from thinking about the market as a dynamic system, and not a static picture described by pro- and anti-market propagandists.
Nonsense. Your framing is exactly the same. Don't gaslight me on this. I am not naive.
> That's a "motte and bailey" defense. Such a perfect free trade almost doesn't exist, and very few are privileged to partake in it.
Yes the free market doesn't exist because governments stick their noses in.
>Market offerings aren't independent - they're in competition, which means a lot of possible products aren't provided, and those that are face competitive pressure to provide less value for more price
What a load of nonsense. It is because of the free market we have niche products (Amiga accelerators would exist and that is pretty damn niche).
> The most important thing to recognize is that the market, as a dynamic system, optimizes for profitable companies. Not for maximizing value these companies deliver to their customers. Usually, providing value is the most straightforward way for profit. But there are other ways - ways to provide no value, or even negative value while still netting additional profit - and the market takes them as much as it can.
You are speaking out of both sides of your mouth.
> Vendor lock-in and surveillance are just few ways of making money by providing negative value-add.
If vendor lock in a problem if the customer is happy with it? It is up to the individual customer to decide.
> Not illicit. Immoral. Because after all is said and done, the market is still entirely made of people and their decisions, which get to be evaluated through the lens of ethics.
That is splitting hairs. No you want them to be evaluated through the lens of ethics because it benefits to do so in this argument.
> They care and they will use them anyway, because the market doesn't provide any other option.
You don't need yourtube, you don't need facebook, you don't need a lot of this nonsense.
> In the store. Not across stores. And they gave vouchers back, not shoved extra ads in your face. And that's without touching the qualitative difference between a human clerk doing the surveillance and automated systems doing the same.
You have no idea if that data wasn't sold to anyone else. The vouchers are in themselves ads.
These store cards proved two thinds. The first being that people will willingly give up their details for some trickets, and two that tracking customers and optimising via that works. It was a stepping stone.
> I hate to invoke the concept of "victim blaming", because it's usually invoked very unreasonably, but - you can't expect individuals to be able to rationally make market decisions while working their asses off trying to make ends meet, having their attention DDoSed, and facing against compounding improvements in manipulation techniques (courtesy of the market). I'm willing to cut regular folks some slack, and instead focus on the people running these companies, who had a clear choice, and chose to engage in abusive practices. You don't impulse-adopt business models, so you can't excuse it as a moment of weakness either.
Yes I do expect individuals to able to rationally make decisions. People have been told for years and year and years on end what these companies do and they don't care. So it is their fault.
All modern police forces are modelled to some extent on Robert Peel's ideas (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles). That includes to some extent the US police as well. The notion that US police just go around slinging guns around like some gun toting cowboys (while it does happen) is propaganda.
The police in the UK can be just as corrupt and inept. However there is a need for armed police in the UK. Just go to live leak or any of the clip sites and you can find all the videos where there are 10 officers trying to take down one maniac with a machete on a council estate with harsh language and pepper spray.
> Maybe making a regualr speeding fine a life changing amount rather than the negligable sum it is now would improve people's behaviour, raise some much needed revenue and save a few lives too
The fine is negligible if you are well off. It isn't if you aren't. If you get points (for SP-30), the increase in insurance is about £300-400. So the actual cost of the fine is closer to £400-500 which is the rent for the month.
There has already been talk of making the fine be adjusted to how much you earn.
I personally am aware of many people that were speeding at well over 100mph. When they went to the majestrate they were let off with 6 points. People get away with things that should get them a suspension all the time.
Driving in the UK is stressful enough. If I've driven down the motorway for long periods I am normally wondering if I've got a ticket because of the variable speed limits. I have no intention of breaking the speed limit, but I honestly don't know if I had because the speed limit in some places can be changing all the time. Great so I have more things to worry about when I drive to work. Brilliant.
Most of the drivers that drive at extreme speeds are usually very rich (they are always driving Mercs, Range Rovers, Audis and BMWs) and don't typically give a toss about the fine or the points.
Also there are many people (usually immigrants) who drive without a valid license and insurance.
I actually used to live near there and have driven down that road numerous times.
* @7pm in the morning in the winter the whole area can be fogged up and it was dark. I've driven down and cycled down there when it wouldn't have been safe doing 15mph.
* Animals can be hard to see, even in good conditions. Especially the donkeys, they are grey, on a black road and the sky is normally grey in England. Many of the animals there have high-vis collars to make them more visible at night.
* It depends what section of the road. In one section of that road the visibility is excellent (when there isn't fog). In another stretch even in the summer,
the visibility is weird due to much of the road being in partial shade due to the trees.
* Drivers go much faster than the 40mph limit in that area almost all the time, especially on the high visibility parts. It doesn't help that if you come off the M25/A31 you would have been going about 70mph and so doing 40mph makes it feels so slow that you can step out of the car.
* The three A-roads near are either blocked due to heavy traffic especially in the summer (infrastructure in general is a joke in Hampshire and Dorset) or they don't go where you want.
I agree visibility can be poor but is easilly mitigated by driving at a suitable speed. The only problem, of course, is other drivers behind getting frustrated and overtaking recklessly. The other day one person was so determined to pass me that he almost hit a car coming in the other direction. For all that he arrived in Fordingbridge (2 miles further on) literally 3 seconds before I did.
> I agree visibility can be poor but is easilly mitigated by driving at a suitable speed.
Not at all. I've been driving at what seems like a sensible speed for the conditions and suddenly there is a deer right in front of my car. You cannot see some of the animals until you are right on top of them.
The fact is that there is too much traffic, there is insufficient infrastructure (and you probably can't add a lot because you will spoil the place) and there are animals freely roaming around. It is recipe of animal deaths in that area.
I dunno what the answer is. Paying the police to put up another gatso van isn't going to solve it though.
Yes, I suppose there are extremes and I've had a similar experience although, regarding the original link, I find it difficult to believe it possible to kill 3 donkeys in one go by driving at a sensible speed in such circumstances?
> It was always thus. In fact, until the ‘60s, a girl had to rely on her beauty and personality to eat and survive, i.e. by marrying.
The way this is framed today by people is soo disgusting.
1) Women did work before 1960.
2) Two incomes are better than one. Married couples are better off financially. Many women worked part time while the children were at school or in the evenings when the husband was back at home. I know this because my grandmother did and many of her friends.
3) A married couple typically provides the best environment for raising children. Most people want children.
4) Most people were dirt poor in the past in the western world by today's standards.
The disgust is very much in the eye of the beholder, I guess. The reality is that priority n.1 for a woman pre-1960s was to get married and priority n.2 was to bear kids; otherwise, men-dominated society would see her as “useless” and ostracise or abuse her, consider her inferior and unworthy, and effectively condemn her to a life of poverty (unless she had an inheritance to manage). That was the case for centuries, or rather millennia; the further back you go, the more violence was so widespread that a single woman (outside the elites) could not practically defend herself in everyday situations, hence making it basically impossible to have an independent life. Being disgusted by the strategies devised to survive this situation is like being disgusted at animals evolving to escape their predators.
We now see the vestigial remains of this “natural state” in western countries, thanks to the changes brought by mass-industrialization and consumerism (both forces being constantly hungry for bodies, and hence working as Great Levellers between sex, race, age, culture, etc) but it’s still very much present all over the world - the problems in Afghanistan or Pakistan are well-reported, for example, but hardly unique.
> The way this is framed today by people is soo disgusting.
> Most people were dirt poor in the past in the western world by today's standards.
You have just adjusted one simplification to end up over exaggerating another one. A boomer's family could live off one salary. Since then women have joined the workforce and kind of the whole world by moving (migrating) or remote. While it is definitely true that those "none westerners were dead poor in the past compared to today" there is a 20+ year long wage stagnation in the west and increase in prices on some of the very fundamental needs like housing, which results in memes about gen XYZ not being able to afford them, create stable conditions, have a spouse and then a family (kids).
Anyway, we are in this together, always on(line), connected, one global world and it depends how you view it: Appreciate the advancements the non-western world has made or focus on the gap they still have to the west. Though this all comes to the expense of the western world, which is kind of required to close the global gap.
You make that sound like a bad thing? There are some that believe (as I do) that democracy will leads to oligarchy. But then again I've been reading a lot of Rothbard recently.
As for populism in a democratic system is a symptom of politicians/political parties not being seen by their citizens to be taking actions in regards to thorny subjects such as immigration, globalisation and law enforcement.
Rothbard ended up as extreme paleocon, and his adherents such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe developed his line of thinking to its logical conclusion:
"In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one's own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving and protecting private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance toward democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise, in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They – the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centered lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism – will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order."
(Then neo-reactionaries took it from there, ditching all the excuses to present this state of affairs as "libertarian", and correctly calling it the new feudalism.)
These conversations always go like this. It becomes tedious.
1) I don't care what Rothbard became in the end. It is completely irrelevant. Rothbard's critique of the state is an interesting perspective and some of them seem particularly apt when the leviathan of government is eroding people's rights because of COVID.
2) As for the Hoppe quote. The "neo-reactionary" you mention can be counted on one hand. The activist left (which is why that quote is on wikipedia in the first place) will take quotes and call someone alt-right based on one spicy paragraph in a book (which is exactly the trick you've tried here and I am not that naive to fall for it).
I haven't read "Democracy the God that failed" (yet) and I will decide for myself once I've read the book. I very much doubt it is a new feudalism and I very much doubt you've read the book either.
From watching him speaking. Hoppe's construction seems to be that given the choice between King and a Politician, a King would be better. His rationale for this is sound IMO. The most important part of it (for me) is a King will care about his legacy and a politician typically won't.
My own feelings is that I've never thought that democracy is effective or desirable. I've found the act of voting to be completely pointless due to the fact I have nobody to vote for in the UK that represents my interests of decreasing the state.
The only time when voting is effectives is during referendums when it is a single issue. Even then it isn't effective The UK's politicians and press did everything they could to deny the referedum result (and are still doing so btw).
I have heard arguments that the whole idea of democracy itself has been perverted during the enlightenment of those putting a Christian/Individualist perspective on Athenian ideas. But I won't pretend to know the argument well enough to have any opinion either way on it.
I am going to wait. I am concerned about the amount of time and the record of the companies that have created the vaccine.
I work remotely and live on my own, so my exposure to other people most of the time is pretty minimal and I am convinced anyway I may have had it already (I had some sort of illness in April which included a sore throat) though I would have no way of knowing unless I have a anti-body screening.
Whether you are targeted for a mugging is dependant on whether the criminal thinks you are an easy target. Most muggings will be crimes of opportunity.
I used to live in a very dodgy part of Spain near Gibraltar. I was never mugged or beaten up. I've been told by people "You look like you can handle yourself". Some of work collegues which were skinner, more fresh faced got robbed, beaten and in one case had what they believe to be a gun pulled on them. I never had any problems. I don't look like an easy target due to my appearence and size, those guys unfortunately do due to their size and appearence.
As for legalities. It is a global world. There is no way to enforce this effectively globally. This is a pipe dream.
Also data in some cases must be shared with partners, those might be payment processor, ID checks etc.