For years, my two biggest spheres of advocacy have been environmentalism and privacy/anti-surveillance.
What I've noticed, with that background, is that privacy activism has steadily become more like environmental activism.
With rare exceptions (e.g. the ozone layer), environmentalism is an endless, grinding rear-guard action. Extinct species do not become unextinct. Destroyed habitats do not recover, at least not within hundreds of years. Draining the Glen Canyon Dam will not restore Glen Canyon; Church Rock will never be remediated. And the threats are endless and everywhere: 4,500 species are critically endangered right now, global warming is set for 3+ degrees Celsius, the Great Barrier Reef might die entirely.
Attacks on privacy aren't new, but they seem have changed. The Clipper Chip was a central, recognizable enemy, promoted by branches of the government citizens can relate to. 24 hour turnaround on surveillance legalization for intelligence agencies is part of a new and horrible political landscape. SOPA and PIPA were indirect attacks, part of a state-corporate partnership that lets each party do the things the other is barred from. And even those were too central and easy to oppose - now they're coming back piecemeal, in budget bills and trade agreements where they're harder to address.
And as with the environment, what's lost is lost. Repealing surveillance laws is rare and unsustainable. Fighting surveillance in open courts is impossible; fighting it in FISA courts is a Kafkaesque nightmare of secret evidence and lack of standing. Corporate data-gathering is unprovable, and user information breaches are irreversible. Stolen identities can't be changed or recaptured.
So yes: I'm tired. I'm tired, and it's not an accident, because we're on the wrong end of an asymmetric fight.
The sheer damage politicians across the world are inflicting on future generations with these privacy laws are very depressing.
Source: sitting in the gunsmith shop I work in right now
4,500 species are critically endangered right now
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/we-dont-need-to-save-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2017/12/15/53e6147c-...
Species do go extinct, but not at the rate we are experiencing today. Even if the current rate of species loss was equal to the historical rate, that does not mean that humans wish to live in such a natural state of chaos. Did American culture lose some of its heritage with the near-extinction of the buffalo? Is it any less of a failure of humankind to drive polar bears to extinction than it would be to obliterate the complete works of Jack London from the face of the Earth? That shit is cool, and we should try to preserve it for future generations.
If we always preserve what we have, there will be no room for something new to develop.
We are, in fact, in a mass extinction event right now, with extinction rates estimated at 1-2 orders of magnitude greater than any previous such event.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
> If you can see the sun, we shouldn't have all these animals dying.
Not all previous mass extinctions have involved the sun be blotted out by impact or volcanic events, though several have.
As long as you don’t have any attachment to anything more narrow than “all life on earth” (e.g. your family, language, city, country, culture, species, ...) thriving for a long time into the future, there’s no reason not to just shrug at whatever impending apocalypse.
No, they haven't; extinction rates in the current mass extinction event are much higher than previous ones.
But putting in practical terms of "what do I have to gain?", let me say this: every species is carrying unique genetic information that we can learn and employ to our advantages. Maybe a particular species doesn't have anything we can use right now, but might have in the future. Letting it be extinct mean we lose that information forever.
Genetic information is like nature's source code. Now imagine we can't write code, we can just use what's already out there. Every time a species dies, it's source code forever lost.
Like... plants in the Amazon forest. A lot of them served as the material for medicine. We used their "source code" to fight diseases, and fix human problems. And we are losing genetic source code we never even had time to analyze yet!
There are animals that can kind of rejuvenate, and they never die of old age. Imagine being able to "steal" their code and use it to make our health better! If they go extinct, we lost that source code. Forever.
There's no going back, no un-extinction. And we can't go to other planets to analyze their animals, since we haven't found alien life yet. All we have is the life that is available, and we're getting rid ot that life fast.
And they're going out of business. Isn't that evolution?
The short version - pandas are just find for their habitats, and aren't going out of business.
The traits of pandas sound odd, but they're actually common to lots of highly-successful animals. They mate just fine in the wild and are bulk feeders that can easily consume lots of low-efficiency food. Their population hasn't been in any kind of steady decline, but has plummeted twice, each time when large portions of their habitat were destroyed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/2rmf6h/til_t...
How many new species has evolution produced in that time? Zero?
I think that the world as we know it is valuable to us because we enjoy it, and nothing more. If we can't appreciate the beauty of life (most of us can't persist on the pure beauty of mathematics or conceptual analysis), what's the point?
In terms of shaping a planet the way we want, we can do that on earth, and more so if we figured out how to live without being dependent on other earth organisms.
Bonus points if you give it a name involving patriotism, freedom, economic or personal health, or a backromym that spells out the same.
Indeed, and this "cognitive dissonance" technique is so widespread now that you can generally invert the message to find out the actual intention of the legislation is. Examples:
If you are cutting taxes for the wealthy donor class say it is bill to "help the middle class and the poor."
If you want to take health care away from people say "it is a bill that will help the American people."
If you want to empower a monopoly just state that "this is a bill designed to foster competition."
We've assimilated so many political positions into our cultural signaling subroutines that almost every issue is seen as "identity politics" nowadays. This occurs by design, because political profiteers are profited by creating clear boogeymen and corralling "their side" by shaming them for even considering the other side's POV.
We need to get back to a political ethos based on mutual respect, and an understanding that the "other side" is not an evil, but rather a check that is necessary to keep things balanced and smooth. Conservative principles do not arise out of the liberal caricatures that Republicans hate the poor, and liberal principles do not arise out of the conservative caricature that Democrats are communists vying for totalitarian economic control.
We cannot see each other as separate tribes and expect to succeed. We have to see each other as people of goodwill, on the same team, working for the same ultimate purposes.
Politics has been commoditized into television entertainment. There is no better indicator of this than TV showman Donald Trump employing those tactics to win the presidency. And like everything else on TV, what start out as mild differences gradually become "Flanders-ized" [0], and we hardly realize it until we look back to see how it was.
There are going to be winners and losers in any political action. That's a reality of political life and it's why we have the carefully-designed representative government systems that we have.
We need to acknowledge and weigh the costs on both sides instead of ignoring one side of the equation and saying "This bill ONLY exists to hurt Class Y!" or "This bill is great and has no negative consequences for anyone!"
Regardless, changes in technology including air travel, telecommunication, and 24-hour live news have permanently shifted our political landscape. We should think about how we can change our processes, our use of this technology, and/or both to ensure that we maintain a coherent and peaceful union, and stop the polarization. Polarization only serves the interests of pirates and opportunists.
[0] http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Flanderization
For example, the Democrats compromised on deficits. The Republicans insisted - deficits are important. Okay, we disagree. However, we'll respect some deficit rules to help keep it down. Okay.
Hey, Republicans have majority! First thing to do, massively increase deficits!
Let's now re-negotiate with that side?
Trying to repeal health care provisions as your most pressing piece of legislation but not bothering to have an alternative plan to present to the population as a replacement.
Passing legislation which gives permanent tax breaks to corporations but then only temporary breaks to regular people(expires after 8 years.)
Repealing internet regulation in a monopolistic environment.
Please help me to understand how any of the above provides benefit to the average person? Where is the grey part of the spectrum I am not able to see. And by grey I mean the average voter being better off because of it.
I am not sure why you are reframing the context as left vs right. It's not about that, its about governments that represent people and not corporations and campaign contributions.
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Health care repeal: Insurance premiums have skyrocketed since the ACA went into effect. Just this year, I know a small business owner whose premium for high-deductible family plan has gone up 2.5x. My employer-provided health insurance premium increased a little (relatively at least), but both the individual and family deductibles jumped by about 40%.
Repealing the ACA doesn't include artificial price controls, etc., but the common belief is that the ACA is one of the biggest reasons that premiums have gone up, and that repealing it will allow them to come back down.
I understand that the causal relationship is arguable, but you asked for a perspective on how it helps the average person. The perspective is that the average person who isn't getting subsidized health insurance is getting raked over the coals (along with their employer, who usually pays 60-80% of the monthly premium), and that perspective is absolutely reflected in the real world where people are being forced to pay thousands more for less than they had last year.
"Without a replacement" isn't considered a big issue because it's not like repealing the ACA shuts down the medical facilities/industry in any real way. They'll continue to operate and health care will still be available. Everyone is not going to die because the medical system reverts to the regulatory structure that was in place five years ago. The insurance situation will get better for some and worse for others, but that's at worst a lateral movement, and it's arguably a positive because it allows people to forgo health insurance altogether again, which means the insurers will have to offer something for the "Well I'm not even going to bother" crowd.
This is another situation where polarization has caused us to miss the forest for the trees. The medical-industrial complex in this country is completely out of control. Completely. Everyone knows this. We need an elegant solution (and most conservatives don't consider a blank check from the government elegant), but we're not going to get one with each group playing off of each other and their politicians just toggling the situation in favor of their base every 4-8 years.
We have to hold our politicians accountable and demand something that is workable and stable for everyone. The heart of the matter is that the insurance companies have got to go, but we're never going to get other traditional conservatives on board with that if we don't engage in a real dialogue and build up trust.
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Permanent tax breaks to corporations with temporary to non-corporations is a polarizing misdirection. People comprise corporations and cutting corporate taxes means that more of that money is available for normal people who've earned it to use and deploy, rather than for the government to appropriate and reserve for the purposes of a handful of unmovable bureaucrats. Most conservatives consider this a default good.
The permanent nature of the corporate tax cut is not an insult unless you choose to make it one. Every dollar of corporate tax does not have to be replaced by a dollar of individual tax; the goal is to pay less tax, not just to shift it around.
If the the corporate tax rate was too high, it should be brought down, regardless of the implementation details on the individual tax side. The overall goal is to keep direct taxes minimized in general.
How does this help the average citizen? First, there is individual tax relief already baked in for at least 8 years. That's an immediate tax savings and that's great. Second, allowing resources to flow to the people who are capable of commanding them from the marketplace allows these people to expand their operations, hire others, develop new technology and goods, etc. etc. -- all the basics of our economy. And perhaps the key difference is that conservatives see themselves not just as potential indirect beneficiaries from a prosperous and competitive marketplace, but direct beneficiaries as shareholders (i.e., anyone with a 401k or retirement account), entrepreneurs (supposedly many people on HN), and full market participants. They don't see it as zero-sum, where one person's prosperity is their poverty.
That sentiment, that access to the marketplace is unequal and that corporate tax savings do not benefit individuals, may be a good perspective or vein to hit on re: unspinning a polarized atmosphere. I think it has been taken to extremes on both ends, with liberal-leaning persons seeing corporations as vicious vampires and conservative-leaning persons seeing them as infallible bastions of righteousness. We have to get back to the middle, where we can help wipe the biases off each other's windows and see things clearly.
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Net neutrality is an example of polarization run amok, because I think that there would be a lot more bipartisan support for a real solution if there wasn't a sentiment that agreeing with "the other side" was an automatic stain. Some conservatives understand the issue and oppose net neutrality for idealistic or technical reasons, but I think that most people who aren't simply repeating a party line know that something is broken and needs fixed one way or the other, whether they agree with the technical implementation under Title II or not.
To claim that this year's net neutrality repeal will have a significant immediate effect, positive or negative, is reaching, IMO. To the extent that telcos feel emboldened by the FCC's ruling, they will move ahead conservatively, because they know the backlash is dangerous. I don't expect to see any substantial user-facing changes any time in the next five years, and rather just expect the telcos to go back to using their ability to prioritize traffic as a bargaining chip with big tech companies, who are consuming a lot more bandwidth than would be feasible under a metered billing model.
Title II is a large regulatory burden, and rules like net neutrality are concerning because while they may stop Comcast from acting as scummy as humanly possible, they can also be wielded to quash small local ISPs (which, on more than one occasion, have been the only way I've been able to get decent internet access due to collisions of incompetence on the part of property owners and telcos) or emerging networks that are sufficient for lightweight transmission, and try to implement useful packet prioritization to stop whales from hogging all of the network's bandwidth.
Conservatives also hold minimal regulation as a principle, not because they want to hurt anyone whom a regulation may help, but because they've seen the other side of the coin, where big companies hijack well-intentioned programs or laws to quash competitors, technical advancements, and so forth.
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These are subjective perspectives informed by individual life experiences, and it's necessarily colored by our private biases, and that's exactly why we need each other. We need to keep each other honest, assuming good faith, and helping one another see where something is going too far afield. This can't be done under the default pretense or assumption that the other person is inherently wrong, evil, disingenuous, stupid, or deserving of punishment. That baseline self-awareness that we all need tempering, and that baseline respect for others that allows us to accept it, must be restored.
Most of the time, people on either side of the aisle are not going to end up fully agreeing with each other, and that's the whole point. We have to be able to disagree and accept compromises without impugning the character of the other.
On the grand scheme of things, it's only a small handful of people who are actively malicious, and the best gift we give them is taking their bait and bitterly bickering over intractable issues derived from personal background and context, instead of working to foster collaboration and compromise, grateful for the benefits of healthy and diverse civil discourse.
The polarized atmosphere allows manipulators to go hog wild, whether they're cold bureaucrats or greedy industrialists, because there are bad guys in both camps (in fact, these guys usually end up teaming up against the masses). We have to stop wasting rage on other people of goodwill while the true exploiters make off with the jewels.
At this rate, we won't realize what's happened until everything valuable is gone and the building is a smoldering ash heap.
No, taking important things like health care away from people and not presenting any kind of a replacement is a huge deal.
>"Net neutrality is an example of polarization run amok, because I think that there would be a lot more bipartisan support for a real solution if there wasn't a sentiment that agreeing with "the other side" was an automatic stain."
Again all you can do is reframe reality into people being led astray by cable news pundits. Do you believe the majority of the population in the US are dummies? Where was the solution that was posited? Oh wait, there was none. Another subtractive, zero sum motion.
>"These are subjective perspectives informed by individual life experiences, and it's necessarily colored by our private biases,"
Again with the "there's no real issue here" - this is just people being led astray by the political media. Plenty of people with good critical thinking skills believe that their governments are representing moneyed interests ahead of them. I find your whole reductionist view that this is all just a big misunderstanding brought on by biased news media to be not only insulting but dangerous.
Again, this isn't about "left vs right" or "blue vs red" its about governments that prioritize the will of moneyed interests over people. The "other side" that people are worried about isn't a democrat or a republican the "other side" is a government that is not acting in their citizen best interests.
Referring to "the citizen's best interest" is a tautology; political dialogue fundamentally arises from differing perspectives on how those interests are best served. In a free country, political discourse and representative government is the process by which "the citizen's best interest" is determined.
But I want to avoid the nitpicks. The issue is that when we hear coherent, valid perspectives that don't align with our own, we feel "not only insulted, but [endangered]". That's the sentiment we have to get away from.
I feel like I spent a pretty good amount of effort fulfilling your request. I presented reasonable perspectives that describe how the policies you mentioned can be interpreted to benefit the average citizen. That doesn't prove they're perfect or that they have no downsides, and it definitely doesn't mean that you'll agree. But as a society, we need to be able to engage in this dialogue without name-calling, threatening, or berating -- without condescension -- if we want to be able to stay stable and unified.
This is obviously not a simple task. What things could help us improve the mutual toleration and respect for actually-different POVs and the people who hold them? How can we refrain from hyperbolizing issues (e.g., pretending that a change to the current insurance regulations will leave scores dying in the streets, or conversely the confiscation of private medical facilities and destruction of all private medical industry) and present them in a way that allows each other to acknowledge the middle ground and agree to disagree?
No you haven't and that's the amazing part. You have spent hundreds of words contending a position that I never posited in the firs place. I have repeatedly states it wasn't about partisan politics but it was an issue with a system that increasingly only works for moneyed interests. It doesn't matter whether that money is from the left or for the right.
Yet for all of your talk about understanding and respect and toleration you have chosen to completely ignore my original and repeated premise. The irony is incredible.
"Patriot act"
All "right to work" laws
Our system is definitely broken, but I have no idea what type of changes might prevent these abuses
Simply put, no person may add content to a proposal that is not directly related to the original proposal. You want to add a rider to an HHS funding bill to also fund your pet project? Too bad. You want to include language in a standard farm bill about the second amendment? Not gonna happen.
Under these rules, proposals/bills are forced into MUCH smaller packages and the ability of any particular legislator to sneak in lobbied language becomes stymied.
Congress does not have these simple rules in place. We should force them to adopt the relevant section(s) of Robert's Rules of Order.
Elect enough people willing to self-regulate and pass those bills. The current climate with lobbying money won't ever pass something like that.
As long as a human or group of humans is capable of removing choices for others, there is will be no possible idea of how to prevent the abuse.
The Permanent Lie, Our Deadliest Threat https://www.truthdig.com/articles/permanent-lie-deadliest-th...
This seems to me a good and complete answer as to why everything seems so hard. It's because everything that occurring is based on the "permanent" lie. The powers that be, be the deep state or whatever, cannot acknowledge facts or reality because it will loose its power. The sad part is that I think we also live in our own permanent lie in order not to see the homeless on the sidewalk, acknowledge the cow/chicken/etc raised in factory farming, the use of tax dollars to overthrow governments and kill untold number of people around the world, etc. Lots of issues that I think we need to tackle personally if we want society to do it too.
So what is your permanent lie?
I'd be happy to give EFF posting ability for this issue on my social media accounts. And I'd be fine with them using my voice and signature to generate voicemails and letters to my elected officials. if they abuse that power (which I doubt they would) I bet they'd be much more responsive to "their constituents" and also social media at least it's easy enough to de-auth integrations.
- call it Automated, Permissioned Grassroots Campaigning
- Users permit designated Orgs to post on their behalf on social media and other online forums
- Users guide priorities & tone of posts
- ML for content generation
- Aided by collaborative computer-human workflowReally it's just about changing EFF's emails from "Act now!" to "We're about to do this on your behalf! (opt out if you want)."
The next time you are working, totally in the zone, or in a research meeting talking about fascinating new technology, or really doing anything of substance, just stop. And think about the fragile shit happening with policy changes and tweets. what. the. fuck.
You're not thinking that if the Democrats manage to take the White House, that this situation will improve - are you? I mean, most of this damage was done when Pres. Obama was in the White House and the Congress skewed more toward Democrats. The idea that the Democrats will defend our privacy and 4th Amendment is absurd.
But still, yes, I feel democrats have a better chance of at least listening to constituent concerns about privacy. The GOP wallies about small government, except for the military and they view the NSA/FBI/CIA as the same.
But even if not--I don't see it improving with another R in power either. Or do you?
Trump's views on privacy are obvious and awful, yes - he has Sessions as AG.
But Dianne Feinstein is one of the fiercest surveillance advocates in Congress. Hillary Clinton had vastly more support from intelligence agencies than Trump did, and refused to condemn what was described in the Snowden releases.
Meanwhile, Rand Paul ended bulk phone record collection for a few hours in 2015, defying much of both parties to do so. He filibustered over drone strikes, and promised to restrict NSA searches if he was elected.
There's a lot to dislike about Rand Paul, and libertarians aren't the only people opposing surveillance - Bernie Sanders made similar promises from the far opposite end of the spectrum.
But I think framing this as "bad under Democrats, hopeless under Republicans" makes it harder to address the problem. The mainstream of both parties are similarly awful, even if the Democrats talk a bit more softly about it, while the fringes of both parties are often strong surveillance opponents.
Referring to Libertarian and left-libertarian as opposite ends of the spectrum is a grave disservice, and feeds directly into our contemporary fallacious polarization.
Either view it as a two-dimensional circle, or just ignore the secondary "Left"-"Right" marketing and analyze the primary characteristic of libertarian-authoritarian.
I certainly agree that framing political beliefs themselves as linear is misleading, though. I should have been clearer about that.
It's entirely possible to say "this is a false dichotomy, both parties are fundamentally hopeless on this issue" and also say "third party candidates are completely unelectable".
I'm not entirely fatalistic; I think "a major party greatly realigns its views on privacy" is possible, if hard and unlikely. I mentioned Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders as contrarian voices each pulling their party away from bulk surveillance, and I hope we'll see more such voices in the future. A realignment looks increasingly possible, and increasingly necessary. But I honestly don't think "third parties are powerless" should be seen as a reason to have any hope at all for our existing options.
Partisanship is one hell of a drug.
As well as politicized and weaponized.
Isn't this what elected officials are ment to do on our behalf?