UK government about to start monitoring personal data on social network sites

[UnderseaLcpl]

[quote=Skybird;1073704]@ Lance, 2 of 2

Tell that the big corporations, or any business that is not on very small family-level, or medium level (let's say less than 100 employees). I see them dancing around the laws, and eroding the laws by content. You can'T vote them out, and you can't tell them what to do. They tell you what you should buy and how you should live. Again I see you describing the idyll of small village communities - on that level, you would be right, like Newton is great for playing pool. On astrophysical and quantumphysical levels, you need other rules than that of Newtonian physics.

Addressed in the previous post. These corporations do circumvent regulations and bend the state to their will. Best not to give the state power for them to manipulate.
Yes, you can vote them out. Perhaps not in one fell swoop, but in your own choice of products and those of others. It has been done, it is still being done, but the state has taken it upon itslef to interfere.

I would argue that it is you who is using Newton's laws upon a pool table. The complexities of the market are too vast and too incomprehensible for anyone or any state to govern entirely. Billions of people making many more billions of transactions every day for their own benefit. How do you regulate that beyond punishing fraud and breaking harmful monopolies? It is impossible, and even where you succeed, a black market will emerge, requiring additional resources. Argue the logical points all you like, history has already shown us what will happen.

And I replied that capitalism has no interest in competition, but in establishing monopoles that make the business actor invulnerable, and denying others the option to compete. You have far too much trust in the self-regulation of the market, although it just has failed on monumental scale, and has worked for many years towards that logical outcome. This outcome - is no surprise at all. It was the only outcome possible.

You have too much trust in the benevolence of the state, and history has shown such conclusions to be fallacious time and time again. If you insist upon using the current crisis as an example, and also reject my claims that the state was mostly responsible, just wait until you see the results of the state's actions. Private industry did not authorize the stimulus package, the state did. I'll bet you that the bailed-out companies continue to exsist, at taxpayer expense, whilst remaining unprofitable, for at least twenty years.

Even if we assume that the current crisis is not the fault of the state, despite the millions of pages of state financial regulations and the billions of dollars wasted upon using and interpreting them and the fact that the Federal institutions were the first to fail, there can be no more certain proof than what happens now that the state has taken "benevolent" measures which include the nationalization of banks.

You claim that private banks have failed on a monumental scale. Even if you don't believe that the excessive influences upon private banking were caused by regulation by the government and the central bank, just wait a few months and you'll see what true failure is.
Even in America's "ultra-liberal" economy, the harms of socialism will make themselves apparent almost immediately. Even in our supposedly freedom-driven state with all its' prmosies of self-determination and individual liberties, the state's benevolent (and not limited enough) power will make everything worse. Wait and see.

I have answered that repeatedly now, as far as it could be answered. I said that although I am aware of the deformation of the democratic ideal, I see no alternative to the state forming the legislative and being in control of the executive, ........ I assume that a massive cleaning up and deletion of already existing laws would be a necessary part of it.

I wholeheartedly agree. But I posit that the only way this can happen is if we limit the power of the state. There are too many vested interests in the preservation of this system, both form private and state interests, for a simple reformation of the system to be effective. Private and political interests will simply find a way to exploit the new system by using their time-honored traditions of creating panic or lying to exploit the system.
We must remove the incentive (power) for them to do so. Such an objective can only be achieved by limiting the power of the state.

for example, the german tax system is so complicated that experts say more than half of the world's literature about national tax laws is just about the German system. that you can hide perfectly in such a monster, that you can form your foxholes and hideouts, your evasion exits and cheating ways to fromally legally evade taxation, is clear, I think. And we know for sure that this is what is happening, on great scale.

Who's fault is that but the state? An entire wing of the Library of Congress is devoted to tax law. No small coincidence that most politicians are lawyers. They're just looking out for their own interests, and they have usually justified their actions to themselves. The answer is to curtail their legislative power.

So: we not only need new laws. We also need fewer laws, and a massive cleanup regarding already existing laws. Our states may be too compromised already to be seen as the most perfect authority to do so, but leaving it to private business is an even worse choice, since communal interests and private interests of the economy are natural antagonists. So the state is the lesser evil, still.

I wouldn't advocate having private business make laws. I only advocate a people's movement to preserve individual freedoms and limit the power of the state. In short, I'd like to see a re-imagination of the U.S. constitution, only with more restrictions on the state.

Neither do I. I believe that eventually a sustainable, enduring, balanced system of economy is possible - but not at that totally excessive level of living standards that we got used to take as granted, and only by leadership of a kind that we currently cannot even imagine to have, that acts not on the basis of craving for power and profit and ever-growing economy, but on the basis of reason and logic.

Given that virtually all of humanity is motivated by personal gain, I fail to see how reason and logic enter into this. The rule of history has been that the 90% labor for the benefit of the 10%. Unless we discover some remarkable source of cheap energy and mass, I daresay that this will continue to be the case.
My preference would be for the West to benefit at the expense of everyone else. Is it selfish? Yes. Who cares? The West has done more for global civilization than anyone else, ever. That is logic. That is efficiency.

We live beyond our means, and very, very massively so. We must learn to live by less. Survival demands us to not take more from the pkanet than the plkanet can compensdate natureally, and ethics demand any part of mankind to not take more than any other part of mankind must live by. No matter whether you think we are toom many people on the globe, or material wealth is distributed too unfair - we in the West consume seveeral times too much. If all mankind would live by our living styles, then plnaet would die. and actually, it seem to head into a desaster big enough that it puts mankind'S survival into question. The planet will live on, in this form or any other. But man cannot say the same about himself. And this Science Fiction vision of getting ores and minerals from foriegn worlds - that is science fiction. One would be a fool to consider this vision a reasonable alternative to our current problems, evehn more so since even in this SF vision format, companies already try to monopolise theirt share in it - just in case "pessimists" like me are wrong and it all turns into reality nevertheless. But I personally give it a probablity of almost 0%. but I see a high probability that in a centuryor so, maybe even earlier - maybe we will not even be able to maintain a "space" program anymore. We fool ourselves if thinking we could ensure mankinds' survival in space in the forseeable future. But the forseeable future and it's vital threats are what we must deal with - and deal with NOW.
A good ammount of vulcan virtues, paired with some Roman and Prussian virtues, would come handy. Such a balanced economy I mentioned above can be reached then, but not by the forces of the market, nor by democratic populistic elections. Both procedures are flawed and prone to deformation. All ideas we have tried in our history, seem to be inadequate to adress the situation we are in today. We need something new.

Naive? Only if I would seriously believe that would come true. I just outline what in theory should happen. If I really think it will happen, is something different.
I think the chances for us falling, and disappearing, are much, much greater. the evolutionary concept of individualism seems to get it'S own problems if the technical intelligence of the individual grows beyond a certain quality level. seen that way we maybe are a blueprint that evolution already has thrown into the waste bin, like so many before. the sad thing is that in individual people you sometime see the qualities I called for. But they must become a racial characteristic of most of our species, not just a potential mark in some few individuals.

I find you to be too optimistic, and too pessimistic at the same time. Too optimistic because you believe that we could live better by learning to live with less. How, exactly, are you going to bring that system about? It cannot be done. People would rebel. The pervasive power of the state required to enforce such a system would ruin the economy and collapse itself, even if private interests did not subvert it first. We have already seen this in the Soviet Union, to name one.
I find you to be too pessimistic in your belief that the best of humanity cannot be harnessed in a system that promotes personal gain. Capitalism strives and innovates, it creates jobs and wealth. It cannot be argued otherwise. The harm comes when the state intervenes.

For my taste you ignore too willingly the many shadow sides of what you described, but that is a discussion in itself, and this one already has become long. I leave it to saying that it is not as simple as you describe it in that paragraph.

And I will say that your assertions are not as simple as they seem. History is on my side, in this case. The state has always absorbed power to the detriment of the populace, no matter how well-intentioned it might be.
The shadow sides of capitalism have always been but shadows, whereas the harms of state have readily manifested themselves in wars, political slavery, and oppression.

So has private economy. With it'S ever existing trend for monopolism, and it's profit interests often colliding head on with communal interests, you can't trust the market as well.

Does the state not have profit interests? The state is made of people, all of whom have private interests. Why give them power to trade with?

And to mention that at least once: Africa for example is full of examples - murderous, mass-killing examples - where it leads to when Western market elements are left to themselves to regulate the market. It's hell. We all live because we suck blood of people far away, and will war and mass dying on epic scales. Each of us in the West - is a killer, from the cradle on.

Yes, let's look at Africa. How many governments in Africa are centralist? Before the arrival of western culture the whole damn continent was in the stone age. When the west removed itself, there was a spate of genocides and wars perpetrated by centralist governments.
Am I responsible for Africa's suffering? No. Buying goods from a state that exploits its' own people does not make that consumer responsible. The real responsibility lies with that state, and its' choice to oppress its' people. Will I relieve their troubles by not buying goods from them? History says no. In fact, it often causes greater despair. Cuba is a good example.


Your turn, Sky