anon3280
The US Government is pretty impervious to change. For example, people still get arrested for smoking weed. Most o America supports decriminalizing weed.
Why is it still illegal? Shouldn't the government enact policies that most of America agrees with?
I mean... don't most of us agree that if a private company were doing any of this stuff, they would lose all their customers ASAP:
- https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/09/judge-child-porn...
- https://www.reddit.com/r/baltimore/comments/5jt6k0/where_the...
- https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/crime/sterling-correct...
- https://www.aufamily.com/forums/topic/156988-obama-nsa-discl...
- https://reason.com/2017/04/25/a-man-died-in-jail-after-getti...
- https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/what-happe...
I believe the burden of proof is on someone who thinks the US Government is a good representative of it's people.
Author: A single California-based company, Zoom, is now the foundation for education access from elementary school up through graduate school.
Me: Hah. The 'foundation' for education for the last 100 years has been the US Government, which exerts so much power over the entire system.
Author: Another challenge is that Zoom is a relatively young company (founded in 2011) that has experienced some security-related growing pains.
Me: The US Gov. has experienced security-related growing pains, but at least Zoom doesn't kill tens of thousands of people around the world every year.
Author: In March 2020, the company was widely criticized for a dubious claim that it supported end-to-end encryption for videoconferences.
Me: At least Zoom doesn't have a track record of spending billions of dollars to subvert encryption technology, wiretap hundreds of millions of people, and then lies about it.
Author: There are plenty of alternatives to Zoom, including Skype, Webex, and GoToMeeting. The challenge of course, is that Zoom has benefited from an enormous network effect.
Me: Oh how I wish there were a less-violent alternative to the US Government. At least Zoom cannot enforce it's monopoly of certain services with violence and billions of dollars of money
The US government did.
The government is the only organization "allowed" to use physical violence against anyone it wants to.
The author raises many valid points, but I think the logical conclusion of his points condemns the US legal system more than it does zoom.
Author: Having to agree to a contract with a private company in order to access public services is immediately objectionable.
Me: I agree! But unlike the US Government, Zoom doesn't make threats of violence against people that don't want to use it's services.
Author: Second, for the state to require use of Zoom is for it to promote and subsidize that company.
Me: I agree! The but the state wouldn't even BE ABLE to subsidize Zoom if it didn't first threaten me with violence in order to take a large fraction of my money.