"Every system of government comes down to Dunbar's Number (the size of a group who can reasonably expect to know each other), and the unavoidable fact that people in charge of allocating resources will tend to allocate as much as they can to themselves. Attempts to disrupt this, such as sunshine laws and term limits, also have a tendency to disrupt effective governance as well, because people who can't negotiate a compromise in secret become hostage to various special interest groups who will reject any move towards compromise."
"This is not a new idea, the utopian thinking around technology, linking technology to progressive politics, or rather: replacing progressive politics with technology. The modern variant of this thinking in the 50s and 60s came out of the Cold War computer science apparatus that was born during WWII but really exploded in America after the war. A very utopian communal libertarian view of the world, where everyone was equally empowered to do things, there would be no discrepancies in power, no one could suppress us or exploit us or dominate us. And I think Tor appeals to people because it seems to be one of those things: a powerful tool, a people's tool, that could equalize power on the internet, give us the same power that the NSA has, meet their power and neutralize it. [..]
The ideas that surround Tor are the same ideas that float around NRA speeches: guns are liberty. If everyone has a gun, there will be no bad guys, there will be no crime, no government tyranny, because everyone will be equally powerful. It’s a libertarian utopia, it’s about equalizing power, but it ignores the deeper social, and economic, and political issues of power in society.
What really appeals to the cyber libertarians and the cypherpunks is that by using Tor you can create a government-free zone, a zone of pure liberty. Silk Road was kind of a utopia for these people. "
https://surveillancevalley.net/blog/int
"Free Trade (American Edition), 'a dogma of modern growth, industriously taught by British manufacturers and their commercial agents. For many years certain political economists have laboured to establish this theory upon a reliable basis, and have asserted that the doctrine represents an important truth; but no nation has attained substantial prosperity except by protection to native industry, whether avowed or disavowed. The doctrine had no foothold in the policy of any nation, and had no legislative birth until put forth by Sir R. Peel in 1846. While it was in the interest of Great Britain to protect her industry, she imposed sufficient duties; and when, by this means, her producers of wealth became strong, and able to compete with those of other countries, protection yielded to reciprocity; and even at the present time, the nations most clamorous for free trade rely upon it in theory only, reciprocity in fact, and protection in principle. Even the most strenuous advocates of the theory dare not put it to the test of experience in its fullness. The teachers, therefore, remain self-deceived. The cloistered sophists of their schools, and the propagandists of free-trade, are doubtless as learned as the sophists of any age, and practically as useless. Free-trade expressions need Americanising, as they are utterly hostile to our prosperity, and subversive of scientific truth. Whenever an advocate of this dogma, schooled in their errors, has found devolving upon himself the responsibility of dealing with practical questions, he finds their supposed cardinal truths as groundless as the mythical Arcadias and Utopias of romance. The sophistries of free trade are put forth to lull the suspicions of the deluded purveyors to the wealth of England, and are advocated most strenuously by agents of British manufacturing houses and foreign residents in our cities, whose chief aim is the accumulation of wealth by extensive sales of foreign products, regardless of the injury they may inflict on American interests.' With a great deal more on the same purpose --- an entire perversion of the original."
| ← Previous day | (Calendar) | Next day → |