/townhall/ - Townhall

>>10924
It's rather likely that mass use of advanced electronic technology in justice is such a new thing in terms of human nature that it can't be scientifically studied yet, even if we have ideas right now? We need more time? Maybe? I agree with you. I wonder how it all shakes out. All very interesting.

>>10926
I guess I just think it's interesting because I've been trying to think of ways to use smartphones and other small devices to do science.  And you think about all that data that's out there, or could be out there.

The counter-arguments that come to my mind are: encryption and bottle-necks.

If the Nazi's had encrypted everything they recorded, they would have only needed to destroy the crypto keys.

And then, although there are countless cameras to record war-crimes, assuming you plan to take control of the region and take possession of all digital storage what matters is the data getting out before then.  And that data is mostly going to go through cell towers or broadband internet.  If your fist move severs those connections, you may be able to render the region just as information-dark as if you were marauding a village in medieval times.

>>10928
It's certainly possible that all that could happen, agreed. Not sure what future post-2000s/post-2010s military conflicts will look like.

This thread blatantly violates rule #2 (ad hominem and straw man arguments), locking.

>Under what circumstances do you feel that suicide is a moral good and/or ethical?
When the individual who is suiciding so chooses.
If you cannot determine when your life is to end, you've no autonomy.
That is solely the purview of the individual involved.

I feel like both ethically and legally individuals should have the right to end their own lives.

At the same time, though, suicide being one of the leading causes of death for young Americans is a sign right now of a fundamentally diseased culture, and it probably can't be denied if everybody started acting like Mister Rogers from Mister Rogers' Neighborhood that said suicide rate would plummet.

Ultimately, basic human niceness should be more common.

>>10851
Don't you usually seek asylum by going to an embassy? Assuming you 1st cross over to the nearest neighborhood neighboring country as is required by International law as I understand it.

I don't think I quite understand the question.
Shouldn't asylum come before entry?

>>10877
A lot in the U.S. will argue that asylum seekers tend to be inherently flawed people (such as being uneducated, being susceptible to health problems, being impoverished, being unable intellectually to learn sufficient English, and so on) such that shouldn't be able to even start the process in the first place.

I don't agree personally, but I see such a belief as being kind of popular.

>>10877
>>10879
I should be clear that I've seen this only from social media and not from actual elected people, so I genuinely don't know how widespread this anti-refugee viewpoint is.

I would think that given circumstances right now most Republicans and Democrats in actual office are kind of generally alright with refugees? They're (the refugees) getting a lot of positive news coverage now? I guess?

I know a better form of government, but I can assure you many would be inclined to disagree heheh.

"Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time..." - Winston S. Churchill, 11 November 1947 ( https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/the-worst-form-of-government/ )

I can't agree more.

>>10856
No, but it's better than most alternatives.

Either way, a raw democracy, one vote for every issue, would be terrible, which is why we have the system we do.
Especially in regards to the separation of powers. Local matters ought be controlled by the people it affects.

The biggest thing of all, and one I think is mostly overlooked these days; Democracy is not inherently right, nor does something being voted in by the people make it good.
Whether it's a dictator, a king, a president, or just a law passed by the mob, your rights are absolute. A violation of them is a violation of them. It's wrong, regardless of what created that break.

Isn't that more like the government unruling that they had to pay for testing?

i have, a big stack of free tests c: you can get some, in the mail!

https://faq.usps.com/s/article/At-Home-COVID-19-Test-Kits

Coronavirus testing should've been more easily available due to large-scale government action months and months ago, but I still appreciate whatever public actions are still being attempted now.

Are we

discussing the coding language?

>>10814
Most of my projects start in Python.

When I get the data structures and algorithms sorted out, they might migrate to fit in to an existing environment or run faster.  I guess I have mixed feelings about Python as a production language.

>>10802
I suppose what it all boils down to for me is that organizations such as the Koch Industries empire want to be able to takeover state and federal governments in a hostile manner the same way that they take over enemy companies, and this cannot be allowed in terms of basic ethics.

This is beyond mere capitalism, I think, but is about being able to live under the objective rule of law under a responsible government rather than being in an absolute dictatorship with a corporate façade.

>>10793
>May I ask which book?
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/533763/democracy-in-chains-by-nancy-maclean/
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/215462/dark-money-by-jane-mayer/
So far.  I tend to do sets of books to get my head around a concept.  I suppose I should read a modern Koch production, but books I mostly don't agree with are more effortful, and these are things I listen to as I walk about exploring the neighborhood and relaxing (pic: radioantenna array from my last walk).

>>10803
>the Koch Industries empire want to be able to takeover state and federal governments in a hostile manner

Large swaths of the government would become private.  I suppose it's very possible that the Koch brothers would make a bid when those parts went up for sale.

>This is beyond mere capitalism,

I take it you don't trust the Koch people to stick to any objective set of rules, even rules they might write.

>an absolute dictatorship with a corporate façade.
It might not be dictatorship, but the Koch state is not a democracy.  I think it's a republic that is constitutionally restricted from collectivist action, meaning anything that restricts the power of corporations and property owners.

I'm not sure if your mistrust is more for the system or for the people.  Maybe it's all the same, I guess, you need both.

>>10779
An America with no social or political rights seems disturbingly possible to me in the future, especially given how the U.S. federal administration in a lot of fields has grown ever more totalitarian over the past two decades over different Presidents in an unbroken pro-government fashion. Imagine telling somebody in 1999, say, that it would considered truly normal among political circles for 24/7 spying of every single American citizen's e-mails, phone calls, and personal letters. They'd have called you a paranoid loon. And yet, boom, Patriot Act and more.

>>10786

There's plenty of aspects of the US government, like the Patriot Act, that are very pro-government, yes.  That's generally to be expected.  But it is a big leap from what we have now to having no social or political rights.  The OP mentions stuff about free speech and handing out anti-government fliers as things that might hypothetically be outlawed, but as it is almost no one would support that.  Nearly the entire country exercises its right to say the government sucks every single day.  I won't say there aren't any government thugs hospitalizing people, but it hasn't happened to anyone that actually holds any kind of influence, and for them to attempt that would only martyr their target and incite the group further.  It wasn't more than a year or so ago that there was a whole insurrection staged and they can barely even contain those guys, god forbid there was an actual cause for armed conflict.

To go back to the Patriot Act, people were pretty quick to allow it for two reasons.  The first is that the government's been spying on its own citizens since spying was feasible.  The second was sometimes there's legitimate threats within the country that are trying to make it worse, perhaps by turning it into a libertarian dictatorship or something.  The second is mostly trumped up nothingness that spooks people just long enough to pass stupid laws like the Patriot Act.  But the first is something we've gotten very used to for the sole reason that it's largely unnoticeable because the legal right to spy on your citizens doesn't make it easy to do.  I can barely read all of my emails, I can't even imagine the kind of manpower it would take to actually read every single email sent in or out of this country.  What I can imagine is what a colossal waste of time that would be.  God, even 90% of our phone calls these days are automated spam centers, and the other 10% sure isn't terrorist organization.  The only thing the Patriot Act actually did was let the state bring the spying it was already doing into court as evidence, where you're still subject to a jury of peers, at least hypothetically.

We are just so so far away from anything as fantPost too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>10787
I see what you're saying, but I'm thinking more about directions and patterns longer term than tyranny happening overnight.

What concerns me is that U.S. government power has been on a trajectory of ever greater expansion to the detriment of the real economy: with more debt, more deficits, and more regulations coming about. The U.S. is like an airplane flying in a straight line that will eventually hit a gigantic mountain. Yet seemingly nobody seems to care about these socio-economic trends who's actually in office.

To me, in contrast, personal liberty has been on a trajectory of ever greater decline: with everything from book banning due to the violation of "Christian family values" to campaigns to fire individuals from their jobs both inside of government positions and out due to said "Christian family values" being at risk with certain types of people having too many rights. Every single day brings additional news about the screws being tightened on individuals who happen to be Jewish, gay, disabled, transgender, Muslim, or otherwise "offensive" in some way by their very nature to the hardline Christian principles that the mainstream U.S. populace demands everybody obey. It's suffocating.

The pandemic has been especially scary because wholesale, state-heavy measures such as outright banning large public gatherings happened relatively quickly and without much in the way of factual support. Governments just saw the chance to stamp on freedoms and took it without question. Now, of course, I'm no denialist about the coronavirus. Certain state measures made perfect sense and still do, such as massive public investment in treatments that boost the immune systems of those coming down with the disease. Pro-vaccine efforts can be reasonable; I'm fully vaccinated myself. I'm more just scared about the paradigm shift, you know? A few experts say basically "Let's put social life into the freezer for a while", and without really thinking things through that had to happen? Maybe I'm overly paranoid? Not sure. I wish more evidence could be provided in terms of a lot of the heavy-handed measures, at least.

Hopefully, though, I do see a possible turnaround in the future. Yet I worry about the recent past. And present.

oh I have a good one for you. selling drugs.

Probably. I dunno. Depends on the level of desperation, likely.

I mean, if the country I'm living in has a "you either work or you starve, get no health coverage, or become homeless" but also doesn't provide an easy means to have an ethical and sufficient job, then I dunno.

Ethics fall to the wayside during desperation.

>>10768
I'm unlikely to do anything regardless of money that goes against my personal code.
Though there's plenty of stuff I suppose that might be outside the 'norm' of ethical conduct. Hard to say.

I haven't done much research, but on the surface this doesn't seem to fit what I would consider a mass murder.  Technically it is since multiple people died, but the modern connotation suggests something different, like the lone gunman whose primary goal is a high kill count.  This seems to have more in common with a nightclub fight that ends in someone pulling a gun than it does a mass murder.  The people who were killed seem to be bystanders rather than targets.

I don't see why this even made it past the local news.

>>10782
Another line of thinking would be that crime's sole agent is the criminal.  So by deduction the only thing that can be done to reduce mass shootings is that you choose to abstain.

My own thought is that Americans are simply more violent and hateful in general compared to citizens of other first world nations, hence why everything from child molestation to mass shooter incidents to anti-Semitic hate crimes and the like is far common here than elsewhere, and thus no clear-cut answer exists on the matter.

In the long run, America needs to become a fundamentally nicer country with a fundamentally nicer people such that we have both less criminals and less crime.

In terms of gun control, I personally feel like strict measures need to be enforced in order to keep those with criminal records from obtaining firearms, but that's rather a can of worms, unfortunately, since so many stolen weapons as well as straw purchased weapons are floating around in the U.S. black market. Hard thing to fight in terms of law enforcement. Alas.

Would new laws solve the problem? We already have laws against stealing by itself, but the theft of firearms happens constantly. And then said guns get used for more bad things. Unsure exactly what to think.

>>10710
Granted, while it happens everywhere, it tends to be worse in America. America elected Donald Trump President, after all, and actively allowed Trump to enrich himself and his family personally at the direct expense of both business rivals and the average taxpayer. Other democracies have tended to not be so incredibly corrupt and immoral. Alas.

Hopefully, future laws can prevent future Trump style fleecing.

>>10714
>Other democracies have tended to not be so incredibly corrupt and immoral
We are placed in the top 15% in this index [https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi/2021].  Somewhat, though, this depends on your definition of democracy.  Nearly every country today makes a claim to being democratic.  But I'm guessing you're comparing America to the 27 nations judged superior.  Denmark, France, Germany, etc.

>it tends to be worse in America
I suppose I should ask, what do those nations have that America lacks that allows America to be more 'business friendly,' or that made Trump attractive?

>>10766
>what do those nations have that America lacks

That's a great question. It likely relates to lower social trust in the U.S. between strangers compared to other nations, which dovetails with our "culture of hatred" and "culture of violence" thereby general crimes (from carjacking to sexual assault to white collar cons and more) are more common here than other Western nations. Beyond just trust, the average person in the U.S. has less in common with a stranger and more reasons to fear a stranger in general, perhaps? I'm sure that a full analysis would be involve a full book's length in terms of intellectual study.

>>10737
>Just about everybody accepts
is an appeal to the majority, a logical fallacy (if we even accept it as true), and doesn't change the core concepts being discussed or their relationships in the real world.  Something doesn't become a "right" the moment 51% of people say it is, otherwise me and my buddies want our free Tesla roadsters, because 51% of us demand it.

>That's how human rights work. That's how it's worked for centuries. That's how it is."
You saying "that's just how it is bruh" doesn't make it so.  And you're conflating vastly different issues to make blanket statements don't help your case.  And here you make yet another logical fallacy, an appeal to (what is purportedly) tradition, even though it is just that - a claim.  Your arguments are built on sand here.

"Freedom of speech exists and is a right, therefore everything I claim is a right becomes an equally valid right for the same reasons."  No, that's not how it works.

>>10757
I don't think Python even knows what a true "far right" argument would look like.  It might be something like "healthcare is a right for me and people who look like me, but not people who look like you."  Or if we're talking strictly economics, then "Healthcare is 100% for those who can pay for it."  (But let's be honest, this person thinks we're racists by default somehow so that rules out this version.)

My position on this issue is about as centrist as you can possibly be.  But by not drinking the Kool-Aid, instantly that makes one far right.

>>10760
Pretty much. By 'far right' standards, I'm a communist for thinking state-provided heatlhcare is a good idea we can afford, that'll help significantly.
I don't think it's a 'right', sure, but that doesn't stop a whole lot of nice things.
But of course, they didn't even bother seeking that stance. Just figured on assuming it.

>>10682
>But not in the sense of treating unfairly, which is how I was using the word.
Yes, that's right.
Thus my usage earlier, of saying "If you feel you're being exploited unfairly". I feel unfairly is something to add to exploitation, not something inherent.

>Ford had massive political sway due to the wealth of his company.
To an extent. But much of that wealth is tied to the company itself, and its shareholders, rather than Ford's pocket itself.

The bulk of lobbyists are financed not by individual pockets, but rather, large organizations. Especially in the case of business. Ford himself would have less resources than that.

> I only want to address that at some level there exists an inequality that people in positions of power, like Ford, would have a direct interest in upholding.
Understandable. Though I would make the case, wealth is less a determining factor as class and culture are.
Politicians, at least in the US, seem to be quite an insular group. More or less the only ones they seem to listen to are the media types, who're more in that metropolitan class than your average businessman. The connections are ones of education and lifestyle, rather than raw wealth.
I think this rather shows its form when you look at what politicians tend to focus on. At least when it comes to the public face of things.

Post too long. Click here to view the full text.

>>10648
Corporations, as far as I'm concerned, do not have the right to political opinions, for one very good reason. People have the right to political opinions. If a person is made to express a political opinion they don't personally hold on behalf of a corporation that's telling them to do that or they're fired, then that's infringing on that employee's first amendment rights. I'd rather people keep their rights than to give the right to a political opinion to some evil, greedy, self-serving hydra of a corporation.

Can be said that most of us agree that "corporate personhood" shouldn't exist?

A company shouldn't be legally considered the same as a private individual and thus be allowed to as a whole enforce certain speech, certain religious practices, and so on?

In retrospect, the assumption behind the original comment appears to be weirdly identical to that in the head of Putin. That the gamble would be worth it. Declaring war.

Events in the recent past have made it clear, yeah, that gamble really wasn't worth it.

I continue to be immensely surprised at the comparative weakness of the Russian forces, day by day.

>>10649
People are already fearing that the use of chemical / biological weapons may follow soon and one might wonder if we're gonna see another nuke go off in our lifetime.

I seriously wonder what would happen if Russia says F#CK it and drops a nuke on Ukraine.                

>>10650
Use of chemical and biological weapons has happened in world conflict since WWII, and the response has been minimal. There doesn't appear to be any particular logical reason to avoid using such weapons given the lack of punishment. I believe.

Nuclear weapons... though... there's a huge taboo for a reason... we'll see...