GardenGeek
@GardenGeek@europe.pub
- Comment on Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Ellison, and Jensen Huang appointed to President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology 14 hours ago:
Putting the fox in charge of the henhouse…
- Comment on An AI Agent Was Banned From Creating Wikipedia Articles, Then Wrote Angry Blogs About Being Banned 3 days ago:
*was prompted to write angry blogs
- Comment on How would an anarchist society work? 3 days ago:
I understand exactly what you mean.
But at the same time, I also believe that the inherent problem with our representative democracies is this: Voters are asked about EVERY issue all at once every four years and then vote for ONE representative party. So, in the end, everyone ends up voting on a whole bunch of issues that neither interest nor affect them. Worse still: when checks and balances are undermined, as is currently the case, the elected representatives can do whatever they want for four years.
In the best-case scenario, the majority of today’s voters inform themselves about the current campaign promises and forecasts a few weeks before the election and then lose interest again for four years. Or, to put it another way, the system actually provokes the “I don’t do politics” attitude among a majority of voters.
However, if the effects of their own decisions were transparent and immediate, I believe there would be a greater willingness to actually inform themselves.
And on the topic of demagoguery and populism: If people had the opportunity to vote against immigration (even if you don’t agree with that position) without undermining democracy through a corrupt bunch of politicians, we as a society would still be better off than in the current situation, where emotionally charged issues are used to make dictators and shitty politics palatable to people.
- Comment on How would an anarchist society work? 3 days ago:
That’s a framework for a technocracy. The question here was for a blueprint for an anarchist society.
And if we take your line of thinking further: At what point do you stop denying people the right to vote?
Should only those in a particular industry have a say when it comes to regulating that industry? In that case, issues like environmental and consumer protection would become unenforceable… because why would a CEO or worker care about the impact their own actions have on the rest of society if regulation can be framed as a threat to their own job?
- Comment on How would an anarchist society work? 3 days ago:
I would argue that neither you nor most other people like making bad decisions, right?
If, after the vote, there’s no representative—aka “those up there”—to blame for your own bad decision, that probably sets off a learning process where you either do better research next time or, if you’re too unsure or not interested in the topic, stay out of it and leave the choice to people who think they know more about it.
Without fixed terms, you can vote again in six months if you realize that your decision isn’t solving the problem and enough other people feel the same way… whereas now you have to rely on a representative to make decisions in your best interest (and not in the interest of their own wallet), and, if the decision turns out to be bad for you, hope that another government will revisit the law in 20 years.
You may as well just form government by having your largest 500 companies nominate a representative from their board.
That’s basically the case right now, so it wouldn’t even constitute a deterioration?
In the system I’ve proposed, however, this would only work until enough resistance to corporate practices builds up because the business model harms the majority. Since there are no legislative terms, such practices could be stopped more quickly than in today’s system, where industry simply buys off the newly elected representatives and can then carry on as before for another four years…
- Comment on How would an anarchist society work? 3 days ago:
Thank you!
That’s my point.
- Comment on How would an anarchist society work? 3 days ago:
I basically agree with you.
However, the slowness of paper-based administration is the reason why we’ve ended up with the (increasingly) poor solution of representative systems and the corruption that goes hand in hand with them.
In an age where fake news and propaganda spread in real time, I believe our democracies must also find a way to react more quickly… The internet allows anyone to communicate with anyone else in real time; in my opinion, it’s time to use this FOR rather than AGAINST our societies.
- Comment on How would an anarchist society work? 3 days ago:
f that is the premise, then any form of anarchist society is obsolete.
I was responding here to a question about a blueprint for an anarchist social order. That presupposes a reasonably positive view of human nature… which, in my opinion, is actually the more realistic one.
Otherwise, we’ll always need an authoritarian system that patronizes “the stupid people” and looks after them… a narrative that is used to justify domination over others and is deeply rooted in our societies today.
- Comment on How would an anarchist society work? 4 days ago:
Open source, direct internet democracy.
Let anyone vote on anything basically.
My hope is voters tend to vote on matters relevant to them providing initative to get/beeing informed on the matter they vote on.
I see representative systems as root of corruption so my solution calls for a system with direct decisions without political representatives.
- Comment on How Trump and His Advisers Miscalculated Iran’s Response to War 3 weeks ago:
You think they did waste a thought let alone calculate the outcome of their actions?
- Comment on Instagram chief says he does not believe people can get clinically addicted to social media 1 month ago:
,Tobacco isn’t addictive and doesn’t cause cancer! hides own studies behind his back
…wondering where I heard that one before.
- Comment on Record number of people in UK live in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows 1 month ago:
Sorry to revisit this so lately!
Yes, competition is better for innovation than cooperation… hence why mono/oligopols like google, meta etc. are harmful for innovation even though those companies are undeniably very innovative. Outside of economic I still prefer lame, boring cooperation as it costs societies, and in the last resort people, less money and lives in the long run which tend to be otherwise wasted in for example competitive wars.
This devolving of power to smaller forms of organization is, in general, a good idea. However it may rapidly become a disadvantage as political and economical power are dwarfed by bigger organizational forms like national states (let alone billion people collectives like China and India). Those powers can, in the competitive scenario which is still the norm, strong arm small nations (like Wessex or Mercia) into unfavorable conditions for them.
Final note to your last paragraph: My ideal would be a direct democracy, leaving out any potentially corrupt representative. I honestly believe this is within reach due to the communicative advances you mentioned.
- Comment on Record number of people in UK live in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows 2 months ago:
I’m just in favour of decentralisation, every time power has been centralised in Europe it has ended badly.
I want to express my thoughts on this point. I believe that two things are true at the same time:
- Cooperation beats competition since competition wastes resources by hindering each other when those could have been better invested in reaching the shared goal.
- Representative systems get less efficient and more prone to corruption the bigger they get.
Concerning European this imho boils down to two contrary tendencies: The bigger the EU and its bureaucracy gets the less efficient it works while at the same time the efficiency of the EU economy is increasing through ever deeper cooperation and standardization.
Following this line of thought, the question of whether the EU benefits or harms its citizens is largely decided by the ratio of additional costs due to bureaucracy to benefits due to cooperation. Since the advantages of cooperation, especially within the single market, are immense (and are becoming increasingly important in a world where the European states are increasingly hostile to major powers), I tend to view the EU positively, even if centralized administration can create new problems. After all, what would be the alternative? European nation states have worked against each other and waged war for centuries. Now that the European colonial empires have collapsed and lost a great deal of influence, I find it highly questionable that this model would be promising in today’s world.
- Comment on Record number of people in UK live in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows 2 months ago:
Makes sense. If nothing else is available, we have to work with what we have.
And thank you for the clarification. To clarify my point: I am not saying that Brexit was an absolute economic disaster… but that some wealthy Brexit supporters benefited disproportionately compared to the average citizen and therefore pus
- Comment on Record number of people in UK live in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows 2 months ago:
Yes it’s normal and usually makes sense. In this particular case, however, it distorts the data basis, as the UK GDP is valued higher than the two eurozone countries due to the very high reference exchange rate.
And I said ‘you’ because you could have chosen other normalizations as well… yielding a different picture.
For example you could normalize by annual % growth of GDP.
data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?en…
(Side note: Thanks for the source, this database is amazing!)
- Comment on Record number of people in UK live in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows 2 months ago:
GDP per capita doesn’t contradict the statements of the sources I posted above since it’s a mean of economic activity and therefore, it does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about winners and losers among social groups after Brexit. Also interesting you chose ‘fixed 2015 US $’ when this was an all-time-high exchange rate (US $ - £) compared to the one in your selected time frame.
cer.eu/…/brexit-four-years-answers-two-trade-para…
federalreserve.gov/…/lessons-from-brexit-on-the-e…
- Comment on Record number of people in UK live in ‘very deep poverty’, analysis shows 2 months ago:
- Comment on We all took foreign languages in school and none of us can actually speak those languages 2 months ago:
But did you use AI for this post? … otherwise your English is pretty sound (to me as a non-native speaker) :D