Does this kind of just go with the fantasy that there will be some major revolution and hams will be the only way to communicate? Same with some gun owners fantasy that one day they'll need their small arms to overthrow the state?

It just all seems so unrealistic to me. This video shows Cuba, a country with practically no military budget compared to the US, jamming hams without problem - but the fantasy goes that somehow it would be the last bastion of free communication in the event of a American revolution?

The same with gun control, that the fact you can only get a 12 round magazine instead of the 30 round magazine is going to make a difference in "the revolution"?

Not even getting to the point that if by focusing on preparing for a destructive revolution you begin to give up on fixing things through the political process.

So what's your stance? We shouldn't allow individuals to operate ham radios or provide to their own self defense because it doesn't matter anyway?

Every organism has the right for self defense and communication, whether you or a government agrees with it.

I never said don't allow those things but don't try to justify them with "Red Dawn" type fantasies about "revolution". It's just make believe.

Rights are an arbitrary human construct.

So the right to life is a human construct? That means that it is totally okay for the police to shoot everyone they don't like.

Rights are not a human construct; they are inalienable, given by a Creator, and we will be accountable to Him for stepping on the rights of others, and He expects us to do what we can to preserve the rights of others as well.

> So the right to life is a human construct? That means that it is totally okay for the police to shoot everyone they don't like.

No, it doesn't. Language is a human construct,¹ and yet there's yaught bleep mÜOL87 øō°0o. So something being a human construct doesn't mean you can safely ignore it.

¹: Esperanto, at least, is a human construct.

Language is a human construct, yes, that cannot be ignored.

But even if there are human constructs that cannot be ignored, my example with police still stands because since the police are the power, they can "construct" rights or deconstruct them still, which means they can ignore rights if they are just a human construct, a construct that they themselves supposedly helped build.

In fact, your argument is really in favor of the ideology that the strongest deserve to rule the weak. That is not the case.

> In fact, your argument is really in favor of the ideology that the strongest deserve to rule the weak.

That's kind of irrelevant. Ideologies are great, manipulative things, seizing every argument and foothold they can to support themselves. Saying “nobody actually exists” counters “the strongest deserve to rule the weak” quite nicely, but it isn't true; arguing “people really exist” is an argument in favour of that ideology, but that doesn't make it false.

The idea of God-given rights has, historically, been the major justification behind “the strongest deserve to rule the weak”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_right_of_kings Does that make you less inclined to believe it? (The answer should be no.)

Ignore manipulative, harmful ideologies until you can shun or counter them. If the Evil Ideology monopolises certain truths, and is the only set of philosophy (that purports to be) grounded in those truths, it seems to all but philosophers like the Evil Ideology is a consequence of those truths.

You said that the idea of God-given rights was used as the major justification for "the strongest deserve to rule the weak", but that is a non-sequitur; you know that what I mean here is the God-given rights to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," which decidedly goes against the divine right of kings theory.

You said that humanism implies authoritarianism. That's the same kind of non-sequitur.

You are putting words in my mouth.

In fact, if humanism is about human agency, then I am saying that police officers who give themselves the right to shoot people are violating humanism because they violate the agency of others.

That said, rejecting God, rather His principles, will lead to authoritarianism because as man turns away from the principles of correct living, he becomes more of an animal and must be governed. Thus, authoritarianism arises.

But, aren't human police bound by/to human constructs?

I've always wondered why the "Him", "He", turns "Cap H Christians" do it out of respect, not grammar. I've been reading about Haile Selassie, often referred to as "HIM" or His Imperial Majesty.

Sure, police are bound but human constructs, but they can also change them in a whim since they have power.

And yes, I do it out of respect and would never capitalize those pronouns for a mere human, king or not.

"...they are inalienable..."

I'm not sure that word means what you think it means.

I'm not sure you know the Declaration of Independence. And I do know what it means.

"The words 'people of the United States' and 'citizens' are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the 'sovereign people,' and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty. The question before us is, whether the class of persons described in the plea in abatement compose a portion of this people, and are constituent members of this sovereignty? We think they are not, and that they are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings, who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them."

> That means that it is totally okay for the police to shoot everyone they don't like.

there's what people can do, and the consequences of it. rights are just a statement about consequences, but just a statement, which is why cops don't have the right to kill without consequences, but in practice they kill without consequences.

If rights are a human construct, then cops, who are at the top of the power pyramid, can just give themselves the "right" to shoot whoever they want.

Yet the fact that we still say it's wrong shows that no, rights are not a human construct.

sure, but it doesn't matter what we say does it?

> Rights are an arbitrary human construct.

Okay, do you have a point?

Are you saying we should just throw rights out the window?

So is authority.

> some gun owners fantasy that one day they'll need their small arms to overthrow the state?

Astan seems to have done well in proving an illegitimate state can’t be imposed on an independent polity with ample small arms.

The ability for the people to make a revolution prevents a revolution. The limits to authoritarianism of what both the govt is willing to do and what the people allow it to do is dependent on the prevalence of firearms that would be useful in that fantasy revolution. The firearms actually prevent the need for the firearms.

That doesn't compute. In some revolution you'd ignore the regulations.

Prior to the revolution the regulations give you ample freedom to use the radio to become expert at using it.

This is doubly true because ham licensees are permitted to build their own equipment or modify their equipment and use the modified equipment on the air.

The point is to use regulation to preemptively prevent the proliferation of the infrastructure and tools that will be used to overthrow you.

>Prior to the revolution the regulations give you ample freedom to use the radio to become expert at using it.

So long as you do it on their terms. And their terms include barriers to entry which tend to prevent the parts of society with the least to use from participating.

If there's not a bunch of people with little to lose sitting around with the means to revolt it's much less likely that there will be a revolt. And making sure people don't have the means is a lot easier than making sure people have something to lose.

In the US ham licensing cost fairly little $15 for the short multiple choice test to $0 -- depending on where you get licensed. All the needed study material is available for free online. Compared to the cost of a radio that shouldn't be a major barrier.

I think the most support I could give your argument is that convicted felons are barred from getting licensed. I think that is an unnecessary and inappropriate restriction -- and ones with obvious discriminatory consequences considering the race/gender/economic biases in who gets charged and convicted of crimes. But it's a bit hard to lobby against because there are creeps that try to use the radio to meet kids and that felon restriction is one of the tools people use against that.

I imagine in a revolution you don't care about regulations...

Setting aside whether OP is right about this specific legislation, generally anti-revolution legislation is about making it harder for people to prepare and organize before they start. They obviously don’t do squat once a Revolution has broken out, but that’s not the point.

As I mentioned elsewhere one of the big parts of this is a ban on encryption and heavy regulations on spread spectrum. Obviously a sufficiently capable person could implement these trivially but it hampers mass adoption. If nobody has encryption and jam resistance before a revolution, for sure nobody is going to after one starts as the types of portable radios we're talking about are not particularly modifiable.

Yeah...if it's about suppressing revolutions then it's a bit weird the FCC is letting a lot of people run around breaking the encryption and bitrate regulations.

Injecting estrogen into a pregnant woman during childbirth won't stop the child from coming out, but doing so prior to implantation can disrupt the process and prevent a pregnancy and therefore motherhood.

This analogy demonstrates that you understand the situation well… but it's a really tortured analogy. Can you think of a better one?

You lost me when you compared it to gun control.

It's less stupid than it sounds. The biggest part of it is a ban on encryption for hams and language making true spread spectrum difficult. These are the two biggest components to making radio resistant to interference by the state (eavesdropping and jamming).

I think it's much easier to explain given the practical necessity of stopping unscrupulous commercial operators from blasting out encrypted binary frequency-hopping messages to customers that clog up the hobbyist's space while not benefiting the community at all.

I'm well aware of this argument but in practice it doesn't work like that. Other countries don't have encryption bans and are fine as you're always required to ID. The nice business band radios you see in the US are often encryption capable and they're allowed to use it on their bands so nothing is stopping them from bleeding into the ham bands (the business radios are wideband enough for this). The reality is the FCC is scared of civilian encryption adoption as evidenced by the lack of any encrypted civilian bands outside of the business/police segments.

The FCC does not care if you use encryption, they just want you to pay for the spectrum. As you observed, radios that can do this are commonly available, you just can't use them on ham bands. IMHO, that's not unreasonable: if you can program a radio, you can figure out how to reserve the spectrum with the FCC too.

Encryption not allowed on ham bands because it makes enforcing non-commercial use impossible. It's as simple as that, no conspiracy theory about "suppressing revolution" is necessary to explain it.

I suspect the FCC regulations around spread spectrum, bitrate, and encryption were more about espionage.

https://hackaday.com/2018/11/26/fcc-gets-complaint-proposed-...

Furthermore, the encryption ban is not specific to ham radio. The guvmin't just wants to be able to listen in, and do so easily.

Probably because you haven't read the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Federalist Papers.

Why so hostile? What does that bring to the table?

Hostile? I don't know what you mean.

You assume they are ignorant of the Constitution, rather than assuming that they didn't understand your statement, or event that your statement was less than clear. That's at least uncharitable.

Aren't you making assumptions about my comment and motivations? What you're assuming is incorrect.

Where is ham radio mentioned in the Constitution?

The parent spoke about ham radio legislation and gun control legislation as being anti-revolution legislation. The person I responded to said the parent lost him at gun control. Since he/she didn't seem to get the connection, I replied that this is because they haven't read the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and Federalist Papers. After all, the entire point of the 2nd Amendment is so that US Citizens can overthrow the government; so, obviously, any legislation against the 2nd Amendment would be, by definition, anti-revolution legislation.

I have a feeling that even in North America, schooling is just a way to dumb down the public and is essentially anti-revolutionary legislation despite being positioned as a measure to improve education of the populace.

Not /s btw, completely serious.

I will be home schooling my children.

Also, gotta lova Bo Burnham

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jpmgFp46_E&t=112s