It is heartening to read that a small percentage of the technical community is now willing to admit that the majority of the developed world's problems are political. Specifically, the metastasising bureaucracy which is emboldened with each successful power grab is becoming increasingly difficult to dislodge since they've built up so much momentum.
This is an excellent start, but a mere tip of the iceberg. The political malady is more malignant than most imagine [1].
The sad thing is that even among the people willing to admit that the majority of the developed world's problems are political, most of them are under the delusion that more/better/different politics is the solution.
The choice to go full anarchist/minarchist is also a political choice. Any sort of (non-)governance/agreement of/with other people is a political choice.
It's a political choice in the sense that it's the choice to refrain from politics. It's analogous to atheism being the choice to refrain from believing in theism. Anarchism isn't politics, and atheism isn't religion.
Politics is how people agree between them (or are forced by others) to go about their lives.
You cannot "refrain from politics" anymore that you can "refrain from life" or "refrain from society".
As long as you are subject to law, for example, you are participating in politics (as a passive subject at least).
Or as long as you need to use any common infrastructure, from roads to water, you are participating in politics.
Anarchism itself is very much politics, and has a long history of political involvement that takes 200 volumes to recount, from the International to the Spanish Civil War and on.
The only alternative to politics is to go to some cabin in the woods and hunt for your food, but I don't think that's what you have in mind.
> Politics is how people agree between them (or are forced by others) to go about their lives.
I want to be clear about my definitions to avoid semantic arguments. Sure, in a casual context the word is used that way (e.g. "office politics"). I mean to use the more specific definition, which refers to the organization of government, so I don't refer to all social organization as "politics." For another usage similar to mine, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-politics.
The point others are trying to make here is that it's completely self-serving to call one's political thought as Non-Politics.
Libertarian/anarcho-capitalist thought and agorism is political in nature, making large (debatable) assumptions about how societal relations ought to be organized.
But you're still making a semantic argument, which is what I'm trying to avoid. I'm not arguing over what the "true meaning" of the word is. I have given my definition, and I would prefer that my statements be evaluated using those definitions.
You're claiming that having different politics (left-wing, right-wing, etc.) isn't a viable solution, only non-politics is a solution. And everyone else is saying that non-politics is still politics. But in order to be consistent with your claim that all politics are bad whereas anarchy is good, you have to claim that anarchy is not politics.
At any rate, with non-politics everyone still governs their own body, so it's not unreasonable to view absolute anarchy as 7 billion different totalitarian nations.
> You're claiming that having different politics (left-wing, right-wing, etc.) isn't a viable solution, only non-politics is a solution.
It depends what you mean by "left-wing" and "right-wing." There are certainly a lot of differing beliefs which can be held without approving of politics.
> But in order to be consistent with your claim that all politics are bad whereas anarchy is good, you have to claim that anarchy is not politics.
You're still phrasing this like a semantic argument. I am not trying to argue what the "true meanings" of words are, because that's useless (although it's clearly a very attractive style of argument to many people in this thread). I have told you what definitions I am using, and clearly, anarchism is not politics according to my definitions. I would prefer you address the actual ideas I have expressed, rather than argue over "true meanings" of words. Also, I am not saying that all discussion of political philosophy is bad, because that field inevitably concerns itself with beliefs which advocate refraining from political activity.
> so it's not unreasonable to view absolute anarchy as 7 billion different totalitarian nations.
It is unreasonable if you want to have intelligent discussions using concise terms. That's why, if the members of a discussion are unable or unwilling to agree upon a few basic definitions, the only arguments available are semantic arguments. Thus, discussions involving the concept of "nations" or "states" should be based on an agreement of terms, and the only conceivable useful definitions for those terms would exclude individual humans.
As far as I can tell, reading upwards, your ideas are simply that politics are bad and non-politics are good. Are there any other ideas?
The problem is precisely that you're defining terms to suit your arguments. All colors are bad, white is especially bad, therefore only the absence of color is good. But in many respects black functions just like the other colors. You can't say, well I'm defining terms like this, and it happens to suit me, so let's just discuss my ideas, namely that black is incredible, because it isn't a color. I don't agree with your axioms, so none of the claims in your system make logical sense.
You're doing the same thing when you deny that an individual under absolute anarchy is equivalent to a state - presumably a state requires two or more people for you. Defending "your" land by yourself in the wilderness with a gun is still government.
It's fine to discuss the form of government you like most - maybe anarchy is great - but it's intellectually dishonest to portray it as superior to all other governments because for some magical reason it is not a government and therefore does not contain any of the supposedly evil properties of governments, namely submission to the authority of another which inevitably gets abused. What you propose entails one of the most sinister consequences, namely that an individual's own authority, strength, and material wealth will be the final arbiter of power.
My ideal is the exact opposite of global anarchy: one government, one currency, one set of rights, and no borders.
But we can't have a reasonable discussion if my ideal is a priori terrible because it's political, and your ideal is wonderful because it's non-political / apolitical / whatever.
> The problem is precisely that you're defining terms to suit your arguments.
No, I'm not. The problem is that you are dead set on your perceived "true meaning" of the word, and you cannot get past anyone using a different definition regardless of how explicit they are about it. My argument is not that the string of letters "politics" is bad, which would then require me to set a precise definition of the word to make my argument fit my other beliefs. My argument is that government is bad, and that participation in government, even with good intentions, is bad. "Politics" is the perfect word to use when referring to "participation in government," so I used that term. When people brought up a potential different definition of "politics," I immediately gave the definition I was using in my first claim. That should be the end of the semantic argument, but people persist, many ignoring my actual claim.
> All colors are bad, white is especially bad, therefore only the absence of color is good.
Nothing I said is remotely of this form. I said politics are bad, then I defined politics as precisely as I could, period.
> You're doing the same thing when you deny that an individual under absolute anarchy is equivalent to a state - presumably a state requires two or more people for you.
Wrong again. If you desire to enter into a discussion about states using a definition of "state" that includes individuals, then so be it. We could have that discussion without having any semantic arguments. You still cannot get past the idea of "true meanings." The point is to speak and discuss things given an agreed upon set of definitions. In theory, all the words you use could be pure gibberish, provided that all participants were aware of their definitions in that discussion. Obviously, that's not the easiest way to have a discussion, but then again, neither is this thread.
> It's fine to discuss the form of government you like most - maybe anarchy is great - but it's intellectually dishonest to portray it as superior to all other governments because for some magical reason it is not a government and therefore does not contain any of the supposedly evil properties of governments, namely submission to the authority of another which inevitably gets abused.
This is another disagreement on the definition of terms, and we cannot continue this discussion until we agree on a definition. My definition of "government" does not include voluntary organizations. If you present your definition, then I could agree to use it (just for this discussion, of course), and then we could talk about whatever you actually want to talk about. Again, in this paragraph, you are appealing to your perceived "true meaning" of the word "government," and until you provide that definition, you haven't really presented any ideas that can be intelligently discussed.
> What you propose entails one of the most sinister consequences, namely that an individual's own authority, strength, and material wealth will be the final arbiter of power.
Here, you depart from making semantic arguments and instead make a simple straw man argument. I never claimed to advocate that, and I do not advocate that.
> My ideal is the exact opposite of global anarchy: one government, one currency, one set of rights, and no borders.
> But we can't have a reasonable discussion if my ideal is a priori terrible because it's political, and your ideal is wonderful because it's non-political / apolitical / whatever.
But as I have pointed out numerous times, I'm the one not making a priori arguments based on a string of characters like "political" or "government." I'm providing definitions and using those to construct actual ideas, rather than appealing to "true meanings." I have not and will not design an argument by placing a label on your proposal containing the string of characters "political," then pointing and saying "See! It's political therefore it's bad." Nor do I place a label on my proposals then argue that they are good because of what the label says. Those would be semantic arguments, and I seem to be one of few people in this thread not making semantic arguments.
I actually think you're caricaturing the problems people are having with your argument.
The issue is not being dead set on a "true meaning", it's that you have rejected the term "politics" in the meaning others here have attributed to it (i.e. the process of resolving power relations among individuals - not necessarily about governments or states), but have not replaced it with a suitable alternative that we can use to move the discussion forward.
In so doing, it comes across (at least earlier in the thread) that you're claiming that such a process is not required in an anarchy.
But I have presented the definition I was using in my first comment. At that point, disagreeing with my definition is pointless, and no longer addresses my first comment.
Besides, I have shown repeatedly that my usage is indeed standard. The Wikipedia articles on politics and political science both overwhelmingly show this. Only in casual language, like "office politics," is the term used to refer to non-government interactions.
You have not shown that your usage is entirely standard - myself and others have repeatedly pointed to aspects of Wikipedia articles that contradict your use of the term.
"Office politics" is not casual language, it actually is using the term "politics" as most refer to it in modern times: the process of determining power arrangements among beings.
But this is still semantics. I can accept your definition of politics as being the activities within the state. Lets call "the process of determining power arrangements among beings" as "power struggles".
I've claimed there are a number of thinkers that have varying views on "power struggles", some of which presume a state, others of which do not. One thing that seems to be clear is that there will always be power struggles in any community of beings: no system will eliminate them. So the question is, on what basis do we agree to contain power?
As far as I can tell, you haven't said anything besides politics and government, as you define them, are categorically bad. You haven't provided any reasons why.
My claim is that non-politics and non-government, as you define them, are not a solution. The reason is that they are exactly circumscribed by politics and government, as you define them. The definition of X provides the definition of !X. Thus, they do not ultimately differ. This is a really important point: loyalty and rebellion are very closely related in that they are two sides of the same coin, both dictating your behavior. You don't need permission to sail in international waters (non-politics), but there's lots of places you can't go (politics) if you're going to stay in them. To be clear, I do understand what you mean when you say non-politics and non-government.
My definitions are as follows: to govern is to marshal force in the establishment of rights. To marshal force in the establishment of rights is to govern. This includes your definition of government and your definition of non-government.
> My definition of "government" does not include voluntary organizations.
Even if you join a voluntary non-governmental organization that provides you rights by marshaling force, regardless of whether or not I join your organization, I am still governed by it, in so far as the protections you have been promised by that organization will apply to me. If you pay for damage to your property to be illegal, I am going to be in trouble if I damage it, so I must obey the law that you have created with your wealth, or face the consequences.
My questions about your ideal form of government (or shall we say "protection" for your sake) are as follows: how does such a system restrain the power of the most rich? How does such a system prevent the abuse of the most poor?
It seems to me to be some kind of nightmare world where material wealth and social connections end up being the final arbiters of justice.
We effectively have anarchy at the international level today since the UN has no real power. Why is this a good thing? The US, with its vast amounts of power, is able to bully many of the other countries into submission, and there is no oversight. I fail to see how anarchy at the individual level would be substantially different.
>No, I'm not. The problem is that you are dead set on your perceived "true meaning" of the word, and you cannot get past anyone using a different definition regardless of how explicit they are about it. My argument is not that the string of letters "politics" is bad, which would then require me to set a precise definition of the word to make my argument fit my other beliefs. My argument is that government is bad, and that participation in government, even with good intentions, is bad. "Politics" is the perfect word to use when referring to "participation in government," so I used that term. When people brought up a potential different definition of "politics," I immediately gave the definition I was using in my first claim. That should be the end of the semantic argument, but people persist, many ignoring my actual claim.
Well, if you have ANOTHER MEANING for the word, why do you feel the need to use the same word, and not another one, even a made-up one?
I'd say it's because, however you might want to define your own definitions, you cannot escape the overall reach of the terms.
You argue against semantics, but semantics is all you're doing: you're not putting forward a different description of politics (explaining how it will work, etc), you're just redifining the word to mean something else.
If we were allowed to do that, no discussion could ever take place. For one, now other persons in the discussion cannot use the same word in their argumentation, because you just redefined the term.
>My argument is that government is bad, and that participation in government, even with good intentions, is bad.
OK, that's something we can work with. How is that solved by prefering "anarchy" or "non politics"? Might as well say "I'm against gravity". You still are subject to government and it's laws. And the only way to change that is:
1) Go to some remote area and start a commune.
2) Convince people to abolish government (which necessitates entering into the political sphere).
>Again, in this paragraph, you are appealing to your perceived "true meaning" of the word "government," and until you provide that definition, you haven't really presented any ideas that can be intelligently discussed.
Notice how "his perceived true meaning" is actually the true dictionary meaning everybody agrees upon. You substituted your own definition, and now you act as he is using some weird meaning of his own.
It's vastly better to avoid redefining any term, and just DESCRIBE (with many words, instead of using a token redefined by you term) what you want to say.
That is 'I'm providing definitions and using those to construct actual ideas, rather than appealing to "true meanings"' is the worst thing you could possibly do in a coversation. Stop with the redefinitions, and work with descriptions and arguments.
>Those would be semantic arguments, and I seem to be one of few people in this thread not making semantic arguments.
On the contrary, you are the one person in this thread that fucked up semantics, by coming with your own definitions of words. That's semantics work per se.
Well, your definition above is that politics "refers to the organization of government". So you want to be non-political with respect to that, ie. don't care about Washington, etc.
Here is where the the problems arise:
1) Government is not just the one in Washington, but all kinds of government, ie. all kinds of collective decision making. You cannot avoid those. Any time you want to get to a decision some kind of government will emerge -- and as the decisions get more complicated or involve more people (and have to be enforced or else are nullified), it will have most of the regular government traits.
2) You cannot even avoid the regular government just because you prefer to be non political. If you want to do without "politics" (as defined in your definition) you still need to enter the political field (ie. you could face adverse action from Washington, you have to abide by their laws, etc). So even to be "non-political" you first have to abolish politics somehow, or you are still subject to them.
May be I am ignorant, but anarchism doesn't appear to be very different from tribal societies. No large concentrations of power, no permanent authority, minimal rules and localized politics. It is definitely a political choice about choosing a small but (all) powerful association than a large but weak association. and not analogous to atheism, unless you want to force that association.
Anarchism is a very broad term. While specific forms of anarchy may contain one or more of the attributes you listed, none of those attributes are inherent to the idea of anarchy.
> Anarchism isn't politics, and atheism isn't religion.
Form is emptiness;
Emptiness is form.
Form is nothing but emptiness;
Emptiness is nothing but form.
-- Heart Sutra
The opposite of something contains all the elements of the thing it is opposed to, much as a footprint in the sand can be cast with plaster. Neither dependence nor independence is interdependence. Your actions and beliefs cannot escape from the continua of political and religious actions and beliefs that describe them; you can only end up highly polarized at one end.
In this thread I am desperately trying to be very clear about my definitions so as to avoid semantic arguments, but it seems futile. Your comment is an interesting claim about the nature of meaning, but I'm trying to talk about very specific ideas as best I can.
I'm simply claiming that black and white are not so different from each other, despite appearances. You are just as bound by the strictures of philosophy X when you endorse !X as your philosophy. We might not disagree about this, it's difficult to tell. If I've made a distracting argument, my apologies.
> Anarchism isn't politics, and atheism isn't religion.
Anarchism is political even if anrachists generally do not favor organized government. Anarchism doesn't require that communities and people dissolve their relationships with each other.
I already said "proprietarian". Please use the proper terminology rather than Applause Light words like "libertarian", which imply that "liberty" and "This Specific Ideology" are equivalent.
pessimizer's point is that he believes the very institution of property requires something he calls a state. I would disagree, and point to the fact that territorialism in the animal kingdom is an institution of private property without anything most people would call a state.
There's no point in arguing semantics without being clear on the definitions I'm using. I use "politics" to refer to the practice of participating in an organization that governs. By "governs," I mean has the legal authority to exercise physical control over a region or group of people. In the context of modern Western nation-states, I use "politics" to refer only to participation which is condoned by the government. So I consider voting, running for office, helping with election campaigns, lobbying, etc. to be political acts. I don't consider other attempts to influence governments to be inherently political acts, like civil disobedience, participating in black markets, and other forms of counter-economics.
Obviously, in the broadest sense, anarchism is relevant to political philosophy because it is the suggestion that governments and therefore politics shouldn't exist. Analogously, atheism is relevant to religion because it is the suggestion that religion is incorrect. And yet, with the definitions I'm explicitly using, anarchism is not politics and atheism is not religion.
And to be clear, there are certainly anarchists (and, much more commonly, minarchists) who blatantly use political methods to achieve their desired results. A prominent example would be Ron Paul, who is arguably an anarchist, but seems to believe that using the condoned political methods to move the USA toward a smaller and more constitutional government is useful. I disagree with these people.
> I don't consider other attempts to influence governments to be inherently political acts, like civil disobedience, participating in black markets, and other forms of counter-economics.
Then your definition of politics satisfies you assumption of what politics means but that doesn't mean that those acts are not political as understood by many if not most others. By your understanding of politics, only governments and those participating to elect/support them are political entities. Even if we take that definition, whatever system theoretical (or in some parallel universe, practical) society you envision there are going to be small pockets of political governance that sets rules and enforces them. It could be as small as a family or a pack of 15 travelers, or as large as a village. There will be pack leaders who will enforce the minimal rules that you have set up, probably using physical force and there will be rules to avoid physical force unless necessary. There will be clashes between packs, which is just going to be a decentralized version of current international politics and there is going to be protection money taken from the physically weak likes of me, so that I don't get killed in such clashes.
I prefer better politics (your definition of politics) than no politics.
> Then your definition of politics satisfies you assumption of what politics means but that doesn't mean that those acts are not political as understood by many if not most others.
I believed that it was quite clear from context what I meant by "politics." It should be obvious that I was not talking about all forms of social organization, as in "office politics." I don't believe it's reasonable to believe I meant that all social interaction should be avoided, but when several people claimed to take this interpretation, I was very clear about the definitions I was using.
> By your understanding of politics, only governments and those participating to elect/support them are political entities.
Yes, that is correct. This is also, to my knowledge, the standard definition of the term outside of obvious casual adaptations of the term like "office politics."
Actually, I think I understand what the root issue of this semantic disparity may be. Some dictionary definitions of politics relegate it to government / state organization.
Others, particularly political scientists, view it as the universal process of resolving power interrelationships among individuals.
To an anarcho-capitalist, most (all?) individual interactions that involve transfer of power are voluntary market exchanges. That implies a social structure that is non-political in the sense that no state need be involved in society. But to a political scientist it is just one of many potential political systems to be debated and evaluated, with its own power structures, etc.
Communists didn't feel their preferred system was political either but rather a scientific inevitability. This is often why some half-joke that Libertarianism is the Marxism of the rich...
As I understand it, the field of political science deals almost exclusively with the state. The fact that political scientists can often provide useful insights to other organizations like companies is obvious, but I would call that an inevitable extension of the field rather than a primary concern.
> As I understand it, the field of political science deals almost exclusively with the state. The fact that political scientists can often provide useful insights to other organizations like companies is obvious, but I would call that an inevitable extension of the field rather than a primary concern.
Corporations are exercises of state power, as well as being structurally somewhat similar to "ministates", so I wouldn't exactly see insight from political science (if viewed as being "the study of the state") into corporations as outside of the primary concern.
There is a significant branch of study in political science (often overlapping with economics, history, and philosophy) called political theory or philosophy that is not specific to the study of the state. It is this area where academics inquire into political first principles that don't necessarily presume a state.
John Rawls and Robert Nozick's works, or Edmund Burke, and MIchael Oakeshott fall into this area of inquiry, along with some of the works of Peter Drucker, Murray Rothbard, Fredric Bastiat, etc.
Yes, I have mentioned this before in this thread. Of course the ideas of refraining from political action are relevant to the field that studies political workings, in the same way that atheism and other forms of religious skepticism are relevant to religious studies.
> the standard definition of the term outside of obvious casual adaptations of the term like "office politics."
From my limited reading about the topic, that is not the case. According to wikipedia, politics is the practice and theory of influencing other people on a civic or individual level[1]. I have taken just one, very 101 like course on Governance and the most prominent theories that were discussed used politics in the broader sense (but detailed from a narrower perspective due to the scope of the class). Group theory[2], for instance, calls nearly all interactions between interest groups as political. Elite Theory [3], also used similar connotations.
I previously skimmed the Wikipedia article on politics, and it does mention companies once and "individual level" once. And yet, everything else I can find in the article assumes that the state is the topic of discussion.
That's absolutely true. Although I find myself a agreeing with many normal people that government is riddled with problems in practice, they get hostile when I suggest that maybe there shouldn't be an organization with a monopoly on force that is funded by theft.
For argument's sake let's consider me normal. Also for the sake of argument let's assume I will _not_ get hostile ;-)
1) It appears that there is a reduction in violence when one entity (usually the state) achieves a monopoly on law and force. This is because a) individuals when wronged (victims) have an avenue of redress and no longer can take matters into their own hands and perpetuate cycles of violence and b) if an individual trangresses against another's person or property they can be assured of at least some response from a well-resourced state rather than a weak individual. That's the theory anyway but it appears borne out by the stats. I would direct you to read the very excellent Better Angels of Our Natures[1] by Stephen Pinker which changed my thinking on this issue. There's a ton of convincing researched data to back up my position contained within its pages.
2) With 'funded by theft' you of course mean taxation. This is probably where you encounter most hostility. Most people will obviously prefer less taxes (for them) as opposed to more because they'll have more money in their pocket, right? Never mind the fact that barring corruption their taxes go into a common pool to be used for public services and infrastructure and that a higher rate of taxation might improve their lot -- witness the oft touted Scandinavian model. Now to the logical conclusion of this train of thought is, "why not desire zero taxes!" (ie. less and less and less taxes until you reach zero.) You could argue for this. It's quite _another_ thing to argue that taxation is thus theft. That, frankly, makes you sound like an extremist and usually signifies that arguing with you will be a futile experience. Like it or not you live in a society that has public services and infrastructure, money is a consensual public tool -- you gain enormous benefit from this system, you wouldn't even have money to steal if there wasn't the agreement that we'll use this money thing is a exchange mechanism in the first place. I'll be honest, this position exasperates me -- I see it often on HN but rarely respond because what's the point, you won't change your mind. But I'm putting it out there this time, I _strongly_ disagree with your position and I would _not_ like to live in the society you envisage. Over to you :)
> It appears that there is a reduction in violence when one entity (usually the state) achieves a monopoly on law and force.
Does the data you're hinting at include wars? Does it attempt to control for other variables which may be somewhat orthogonal to the existence of a state, like technology, medicine, wealth, types of weaponry in existence, etc.?
It does include wars. Remarkably, even though WW2 was the most bloody conflict known to man when viewed from the perspective of the totality of deaths when viewed from the perspective of per capita deaths there have been far more bloody conflicts in history. Go to
and sort by Percentage of the world population. Five conflicts: Mongol conquests, Late Yuan warfare and transition to Ming Dynasty, An Lushan Rebellion, Qing dynasty conquest of the Ming Dynasty, Conquests of Timur-e-Lang all were more bloody as far as we can tell (per capita) than WW2.
It does not attempt to control for other variables. This is a deeply complex caveat. It is not like for like because societies move on in terms of, as you say, technology and so on. Our medicine is better now and our weapons are more lethal.
Violence is taken to include person on person violence, state violence towards persons and state on state violence (wars). Read the book! Hope that helps :)
It's true that wars have gotten less violent per capita over time, but all the earlier wars you listed were state endeavors as well. I was talking about comparing human violence before states to human violence after states.
Yes, I addressed that didn't I? Before states there is tit-for-tat killing, blood feuds, taking justice into your own hands, raids on ones property ... after states, plus property rights plus trade there is a reduction. It seems that property rights plus trade would lead to a decrease in violence also but there would be a power vacuum and you would still need some entity to enforce the rules (consistently, fairly and not punitively) and it is difficult to imagine a non-state structure filling that role. A volunteer police force and judiciary? Free market militia?
I mean, we all see what can happen when a police state goes bad so that prompts some to imagine a utopian world without the 'evil' cops but unfortunately we had that world in the past and it was, in fact, worse. This is not comparing like with like though. It would be difficult to definitively know without, I think, accurate computational modeling of societies and that's a toughie, I don't know if anyone has tried that. Stephen Pinker does provide data on societies that haven't integrated into the modern world (hint: more per capita violence than our own, including the US which is far more violent than any other developed country) and also there is archaeological and historical evidence from societies of the past (seems to indicate they were more violent as well: homicide, torture, theft, rape, ...)
I agree. Attacking politics directly (i.e. more politics) will do what it always did - that is, nothing.
Politics of all kind has two ultimate goals - to keep (and gain more) power and to keep (and gain more) riches. In western democracies this corresponds to being popular (thus maximizing the chance of reelection) and passing laws in favour of those with money, respectively. All the political discussion on top of it seems to be nothing more than something to keep people busy.
I think that's why many here think about technological solutions first - they have direct effects and are bullshit free. But as many noted, just technological is not enough. Technology is just a tool. What we need to do is to hit the popularity and the money angle, which means a) PR solutions and b) business solutions.
I have a feeling that people want to see only purely technological and political solutions because neither cost that people money personally. It's one thing to run away from Google services; it's another to say to client, "we won't work with you because of your privacy practices". It's hard to notice financial decisions we could make, because they'll hurt us personally in short term.
No political change will be introduced by few individuals; that's why we are all encouraged to take action. But I propose that if, instead or along with, we all take the business angle and refuse to give money to people destroying the Internet and our civilization, much more will be achieved.
ETA: there's a quote from pg's "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" [0] I particularly like:
As knowledge spread about the dangers of smoking, customs changed. In the last 20 years, smoking has been transformed from something that seemed totally normal into a rather seedy habit: from something movie stars did in publicity shots to something small huddles of addicts do outside the doors of office buildings. A lot of the change was due to legislation, of course, but the legislation couldn't have happened if customs hadn't already changed.
Politics does achieve positive change. We are witnessing the gradual collapse in support for legal discrimination against gay people. The civil rights revolution did happen. Women did get suffrage. Prohibition was repealed.
Many of these things take a lot longer than we seem to be patient for.
How is this defeatist? Politics is mostly shouting, elections, and even more shouting, and then, maybe, some highly inefficient process of introducing some changes. Instead it would be better if people went and actually did something.
I don't know much about prohibition, but the other things are, from what I can see, results of years (sometimes decades) long PR campaigns - in books, movies, on the streets, and now on the Internet. Especially women and gay rights are examples of this - constantly on the media; the topic is pretty much shoved down our throats, every time, all the time[0]. Legislation follows social change, not the other way around, and social change is made by media.
[0] - you can notice this even on HN recently. Just pretty much in every other thread somebody starts talking about gender, even if it's completely irrelevant and off-topic.
You've just described the political process that's existed in the West for centuries. Decades of PR campaigns (even before there was a mass media), steady protests and changing of minds, and then the politicians noticing and introducing legislation. Women's suffrage took almost 100 years in the UK and USA. Prohibition took about 50-60 years to enact and another 10-13 to repeal.
That IS doing something, even if it is frustratingly slow.
Social change is made by people, the media just is an amplifier that seeks controversial topics that garner attention (and thus revenue).
Though, the reason you hear about gender on places like HN is not the media.... it is because this forum has been a nexus of controversy on gender issues in tech, with thousands of posts on a variety of incidents. People are fed up with the status quo and arguing about it. It is no different from how pretty much every thread on HN brings up the NSA and Snowden these days even if it too is irrelevant or mostly off-topic. Online communities have meta-threads that last years, Slashdot had at least 4 or 5 in the 90's to early 2000's.
Not exactly. I use the term "politics" to refer to participation in government. I don't consider opposition to governance to be inherently "politics" even though it is obviously relevant to politics, in the same way that I don't consider atheism to be a religion even though atheism is obviously relevant to religion.
Sort of like how ordering a pizza is not "making dinner", though obviously it is operating in the same space on the same thing (hunger in the evening). The approaches are related through shared objective, but have substantially different methodologies.
You literally reposted one article that was posted here days ago and used that as a citation to make a sweeping generalization about the "technical community" at large. Alright, that's cool...
I would guess that most who pay attention realize that the problems of the world are political on the surface. Like always, most people flock elsewhere because they feel powerless to change a political issue with direct political action. Plus, questioning authority is scary.
However, it all ends up being more sociological than political. The ideal behind the US involved the citizenry being able and willing to regulate the government, by whatever means, when the time came. This was done with the knowledge that power can corrupt and turn people into abusers, coming from people who were living under an abusive power. This hasn't been realized on a large scale in any recent event.
Now we're staring down 10 years of really, really bad ideas that have stripped us of even more rights and have destroyed many literal and implicit ideals of the Constitution, and only now does a sizable portion of the population look back and say, "Well, shit!"
If you fixed the government with the snap of your fingers, the problems would reinvent themselves given enough time. Since the state is by definition the body which has a monopoly on "force", if you got rid of the government, you will never convince me in a million years that another one wouldn't rise up in its place. I believe whole-heartedly that the state is inevitable.
Thus, the majority of the developed world's problems are humans. We've had the same problems with a revolution bringing enlightened ideals that are slowly corrupted and taken away by a bloated, crumbling empire many times over. History is one giant, depressing cycle.
I think the most realistic hope is to keep finding ways to build a state that insure as much independence and individuality as possible, while protecting given rights from the wills of those in power or those others in the said state.
An enlightened society of individualists able to get along from day to day using only voluntary interactions, who don't care about stepping on others for power (and don't have any sanctioned way to do so) is a nice ideal, but one I don't see coming true without some drastic level of human evolution.
Absolutely, the problems are political. But there's a technological component as well.
A combined approach will, I think, have the best chance of success. We fight like hell to fix the political problem, while at the same time making sure that people have, and know how to use, the technological tools that can protect them.
It is naive to assume that just one aspect will do the job.
Admittedly, sometimes the two kinds of problem combine into just-plain-silliness.
For instance, I got my first paycheck from my internship yesterday. As in, I got a physical check, because in the middle of Silicon Valley, a high-tech start-up's third-party payroll contractor is so damn backwards that they simply can't issue a direct deposit for at least one pay period if not more.
Problem being, my bank accounts are on the American East Coast and in Haifa, Israel respectively. I now have a nice, healthy paycheck and have to call the other side of the country to figure out how to deposit it, because the damn payroll system is too backwards and stupid to do an electronic transfer like the entire rest of the developed world.
And no, my bank doesn't have a mobile app that lets me deposit checks through my phone. I checked.
Agreed. I also believe there is a sociological component. A situation such as we have is only possible when a critical mass of engineers/scientists/creatives/technicians consciously choose to work on anti-human technology. The political assholes could not develop this anti-human technology on their own.
I remember Penn Jillette describing government as a ratcheting mechanism: a situation where once a bolt is tightened, the tool only recoils to tighten it further.
This isn't an issue of expansive bureaucracy. In fact, it's the opposite. The lack of controls on the executive, and the national security apparatus in particular. There's nothing about this case that goes beyond 1 or 2 agencies that have existed for decades and do a lot of legitimately useful things. They just need to stop issuing blanket warrants. That's it.
Well, I don't trust these agencies. Worse, I have no way to verify that they are doing what they claim and that they are not doing things that they aren't claiming. We need to fix a lot more than just "issuing blanket warrants". We need to fix other things before we can even attempt to fix that.
We need to fix a lot more than just "issuing blanket warrants".
Thing is, "issuing blanket warrants" is flatly illegal. In particular, "no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." A warrant to the effect of "drift-net fishing expedition" is not acceptable.
Of course it is flatly illegal. The problem is that we are not in a position to verify a fix. We would have to take their word that the problem has been fixed, but obviously they cannot be trusted.
This is an excellent start, but a mere tip of the iceberg. The political malady is more malignant than most imagine [1].
1. http://www.salon.com/2013/08/17/chomsky_the_u_s_behaves_noth...