@Koder Well you have to understand it’s rather strange when an account is newly with a single comment to it. But I digress because nothing can be proven and pursuing that further is just asking for a pissing match. As for the rest of it…
First of all, the two-party system is a symptom of the first-past-the-post voting system. I tend to get annoyed by people who feel superior to both sides by just denouncing them and choosing not to participate. We’ll have to change our entire voting system to fix this issue, but until then the two-party system will stand.
While I’d love to fix it, it’s just there right now, and I get a bit annoyed with people when they seem to feel superior for not voting for either of them. That’s part of the reason Trump won IMHO - I was a Bernie supporter all the way, but once he lost the Bernie people should’ve lined-up behind Hillary just to ensure Trump’s defeat at least, but many refused. I know that’s quite a controversial opinion, but I’d have preferred a Democratically-run government over this Republican-run bullcrap overall. Hilllary wasn’t my favorite, but I thought she was at least leagues better than Trump and I personally didn’t really give much of a crap about Benghazi and “BUT HER E-MAILS!”
Again, that last paragraph is probably my most controversial of opinions, but I stand by it. I didn’t like Hillary, but I knew that faced with Trump, it was no time for in-fighting. But it happened anyway.
I think what you’re saying is that technological advances are more important than political ones, but I dare to disagree with you there. While technological advancements are just as important, if we continue to lose battle after battle in the political playing field, that will eventually catch up to the technical advancements and could even lead to companies like Purism being infiltrated or even shut-down. Thus political victories are just as important as technological advancements.
I am concerned for the future of the country. “Voting with money” is a big problem more than a solution - corporations are not people and money shouldn’t be speech. If that’s the way the country works then the only opinions that matter anymore will be the opinions of the rich and large corporations. Because they have all the money, and having all the money means having all the speech in that case.
In a system like that, you end-up with a government that literally doesn’t give a crap what it’s people think.
Statistically proven that our government give a damn anymore. They just laugh at us as they lie to the population and then go do whatever they want - doublespeak left and right. Nobody knows what’s true anymore, everyone just points at each other screaming “FAKE NEWS”, so now people are just believing whatever they’re biased or inclined to believe in - basically, believing in whatever they want to believe, not what’s supported by evidence, because now evidence can be faked and nobody is an authority on anything anymore apparently.
But yeah, if money is speech then we’re screwed, because the top class of people can easily overcome the entire rest of the population of the country using what is just chump-change to them.
To be honest, this is my ultimate fear in regards to the internet-related stuff.
I get what you’re trying to say, and I agree - the two party system sucks as well as many of the things you listed there. It would be better to get rid of those things in one sweeping blow of course. But I feel that that is unrealistic. Yes in an ideal world Net Neutrality wouldn’t be needed, but it is not an ideal world. In an ideal world we wouldn’t need laws against theft and murder either… but such an ideal world will likely never exist. We need laws to protect the people and probably always will.
Ultimately, I just don’t see why you’d be applauding for the removal of a law that was doing good for us. All it did was regulate ISPs and ensure they couldn’t just do whatever they wanted without oversight. The better thing to do would’ve been to declare them a utility really, but only the most “extreme left” (extreme left for the US, maybe) people like Bernie would even talk about doing such a thing.
Without NN, ISPs are unregulated and without oversight. They’ll be doing whatever they want now. Selling your history, throttling your connections, blocking your access to websites - all of that is legal and there are no laws against it. They may even start blocking VPNs at some point. It’s a scary thought.
Of course “supporting ethical companies and boycotting unethical ones” is still something good to do and important, but that alone isn’t enough to stop what’s happening. Plus with how big some companies are getting, it’s becoming impossible to boycott some of them anymore without seriously putting yourself at major disadvantages. You need the government to break-up monopolies and the likes of course, for this very reason. I think companies in the US are realizing that they can do just about whatever they want to people and people will continue buying their crap anyway. So few people pay attention, so few people care. So few people in my age group even bother to vote and they’re part of the problem, it’s frustrating truly. Apathy will be the end of us, eventually it’ll reach critical mass and be too late to do anything to stop it anymore.
I agree with some points but disagree with others. I definitely don’t agree with getting rid of Net Neutrality, and the reasoning you proposed just feel like Libertarian talking points to me. While I agree with them to an extent, I don’t think they’re enough on their own.
Anyway, that’s about all I got to say. From here I just agree to disagree because while I do like some healthy debate, carrying on an argument beyond a certain point starts to get awkward and redundant and you just start to repeat yourselves at each other. All in all I share your opinions, but think that fighting politically is just as important as supporting ethical companies.
@MrFriday Generally agree with what you’ve said. When everything’s run by money, everyone becomes a number and all ethics go out the window. I certainly don’t believe in full-on socialism, but our healthcare system is disgusting and the stock market just corrupts companies and turns them from nice private corporations with standards and ethics into machines that puts money before everything. I feel like our problem is that we’re a money-worpshipping culture, in a way. When money comes before all else, you eventually end up in a dystopia run by oligarchs.
I think Net Neutrality could’ve had a better name, really. Think that alone made some people dislike it. It’s honestly pathetic how just a name can affect people’s perception of something - many Americans were asked if they supported “Obamacare” and were vehemently against it, and then the same people were asked if they support the “Affordable Care Act” and they were all for it then (if you don’t know, Obamacare is just a slang name for the ACA). Just goes to show that the majority of people have no idea what they’re talking about and are just picking sides. I think that in truth they’re just siding with whatever side their peers and family sides with, and pretending to be passionate and informed about politics when they’re truly not.
And yeah, lots of people basically just hate the government being involved in anything. Some people want there to be no EPA and reject that manmade climate-change exists even though. I’m pretty much convinced that despite the mountains of evidence that proves global warming, nothing will ever happen on a global scale to reverse it until it starts to affect people’s daily lives. I still hear people say stupid things like “OMG it’s so cold today, so much for global warming amirite??”
There’s plenty of people who simply won’t believe anything until their biased media company of choice say so (this is true of both Conservatives and Liberals, but Fox News is certainly the first thing that comes to mind), and even then some of them would continue to reject it. And they’ll always just attack you ad-hominem too - such as how many times I’ve had to refute the “Well Al Gore uses loads of electricity for his fancy shmancy house!” argument, which is irrelevant but even if it was, it’s real fake news. (Yes his house uses more than the average American’s home, but so does pretty much anyone with a sizeable house and I don’t like the logical fallacy that anyone that cares about the environment has to “prove themselves by living like Tarzan or they’re hypocrites!”)
We live in a world where there’s still crazy people that downplay the Holocaust. I just can’t believe we’ve still made so little progress by 2017.
I don’t think the government should have it’s nose in everything, no. But I don’t think there’s really no good reason to think that NN is bad, or that laws prohibiting ISPs from collecting and selling your history are bad, or that laws that prevented dumping coal mining waste into rivers and streams was bad, or that laws that required airlines to disclose baggage fees were bad, or that laws prevented poisoning the ecosystem with lead were bad.
Yeah I just get tired of arguing at some point. Speaking of which, think I’ve typed-up enough, just had a burst of energy and figured I’d vent a little.
Peace.
