Freedomain Radio

I also wrote a post on SOPA:

When I find a stain on my shirt, I throw it in the laundry.  I don’t curse the stain or yell at my shirt for allowing itself to be stained.  It would be a special kind of immaturity—perhaps even evidence of brain damage—if I started to treat the stain as if it had some kind of volition.

When you beg and plead with the government to grant you favors, you shouldn’t be surprised or outraged when the government decides to grant favors to somebody opposed to your interests.

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"As for SOPA, if they do not vote on it in its current form because of its unpopularity, do not celebrate it as a victory.  They will enact it in some other way."

If you are suggesting that unpopularity can postpone certain freedoms from being taken away, then isn't that reason enough to complain?

brick by brick:

"As for SOPA, if they do not vote on it in its current form because of its unpopularity, do not celebrate it as a victory.  They will enact it in some other way."

If you are suggesting that unpopularity can postpone certain freedoms from being taken away, then isn't that reason enough to complain?

I am saying that you can't directly stop the government from rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies.  If they do not pass the bill, it's not any kind of real victory because they'll just do it anyway.

All of the effort that's being spent trying to petition the juggernaut could much better be spent in their own personal lives helping themselves and others to withdraw their support of the state as a violent, greedy, and murderous institution.

The only way to stop these injustices is to hack away at the support of the state in society, not to attack the state itself.

Just to illustrate this, taxes are wildly unpopular, but the government needs those numbers, so they come up with alternative schemes, such as inflating the currency and borrowing against future generations.  All that the complaints against taxation have done (if there is any causality to this at all) is stopped one particular form of theft from increasing... and inflation and debt are even more insidious forms of theft.

In short, the postponing of the removal of freedom is not freedom.

JamesP:

I am saying that you can't directly stop the government from rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies.  If they do not pass the bill, it's not any kind of real victory because they'll just do it anyway.

I agree.

All of the effort that's being spent trying to petition the juggernaut could much better be spent in their own personal lives helping themselves and others to withdraw their support of the state as a violent, greedy, and murderous institution.

Agreed. However, if each person spent 5 minutes sending an email, I don't think that would be time wasted. I spend much more time than that doing things that have very little effect on anything (looking at funny cat pictures for example!).

The only way to stop these injustices is to hack away at the support of the state in society, not to attack the state itself.

Again, I completely agree. What you said was that people can have some affect on what happens (as in, low popularity has some influence). I was just saying that if we can have some effect, then why not do as much as we can in all areas of our lives?

Just to illustrate this, taxes are wildly unpopular, but the government needs those numbers, so they come up with alternative schemes, such as inflating the currency and borrowing against future generations.  All that the complaints against taxation have done (if there is any causality to this at all) is stopped one particular form of theft from increasing... and inflation and debt are even more insidious forms of theft.

Are you saying that postponing SOPA by complaining about it might create something even worse? How can we know that?

brick by brick:

JamesP:

I am saying that you can't directly stop the government from rewarding its friends and punishing its enemies.  If they do not pass the bill, it's not any kind of real victory because they'll just do it anyway.

I agree.

All of the effort that's being spent trying to petition the juggernaut could much better be spent in their own personal lives helping themselves and others to withdraw their support of the state as a violent, greedy, and murderous institution.

Agreed. However, if each person spent 5 minutes sending an email, I don't think that would be time wasted. I spend much more time than that doing things that have very little effect on anything (looking at funny cat pictures for example!).

People spend far more time, effort, energy, and money than 5 minutes on an email.  If all it took to have a better life was to take 5 minutes to send an email to some government person, how embarrassing would that be?

Granted, I spent more than 5 minutes writing that post, as well as the time spent responding to you here, but that's because I believe that the effects of spending your energy wisely have much greater long-term benefits than whether the Internet gets censored openly or behind closed doors.

The only way to stop these injustices is to hack away at the support of the state in society, not to attack the state itself.

Again, I completely agree. What you said was that people can have some affect on what happens (as in, low popularity has some influence). I was just saying that if we can have some effect, then why not do as much as we can in all areas of our lives?

Because the long-term effect of the effort is null at best, and life is short.

Just to illustrate this, taxes are wildly unpopular, but the government needs those numbers, so they come up with alternative schemes, such as inflating the currency and borrowing against future generations.  All that the complaints against taxation have done (if there is any causality to this at all) is stopped one particular form of theft from increasing... and inflation and debt are even more insidious forms of theft.

Are you saying that postponing SOPA by complaining about it might create something even worse? How can we know that?

It's a little odd that, in response to my quote about probably the best example of this occurring, you ask how we can know that it could create something worse.  Is it not correct that inflation and debt are far worse than direct taxation?

And, I admit that perhaps popular dislike of a particular policy has no effect, in which case you're completely wasting your time and energy when it could be spent elsewhere.

You think you're doing something for freedom, but you're not.  You're either postponing it, at which point it'll be worse, or you have absolutely no effect at all.

It's a little odd that, in response to my quote about probably the best example of this occurring, you ask how we can know that it could create something worse.  Is it not correct that inflation and debt are far worse than direct taxation?

You said that we can know (or at least have implied that we can know) that SOPA will get worse by postponing it based on the idea that things got worse by people protesting taxation. That's a strawman. I was asking how can we know for sure?

Also, is there any point debating this anyway if we're not even sure that we have any effect at all?

And another thing, isn't to say that we do have an effect to imply that we have some responsibility? Is a man with a gun to his head responsible for getting even less food for complaining about his rations getting cut?

I never said that the reason we got worse theft than direct taxation was because people disliked it, I only suggested that it could have had some effect.  So either the effect of some policy's unpopularity is that it goes underground and ends up being worse in the long run, or there's really no effect at all.

My point is to use your energy wisely, and that petitioning the government is at best pointless and at worst, gets you exactly the opposite of what you want.

This is very interesting. It is even more interesting when you look at this as the manifestation of an abusive parent-child relationship.

Sadistic, narcissistic people make a point of being unpredictable in order to mess with you. In that way, it is an impossible situation. There is a method to the madness.

I think neither preference is wrong, because we can't know for sure. What you do with that is up to you. As victims of a violent system (especially we few who oppose it) we are not responsible for what is done to us because we are basically powerless. I wouldn't fault a man for complaining about his rations being taken.

brick by brick:

"As for SOPA, if they do not vote on it in its current form because of its unpopularity, do not celebrate it as a victory.  They will enact it in some other way."

If you are suggesting that unpopularity can postpone certain freedoms from being taken away, then isn't that reason enough to complain?

After some thought, I will clarify this in my original post.  I don't know for sure that they'll just enact SOPA under some other name, but the thing is, stuff like this is about money, not about "freedom."  The body scanners at the airports are ultimately the result of a political kickback.  I'm sure that the increase in power also has something to do with it, but it's also really about money.

I'm pretty sure that if you dug into SOPA, you would discover that there's a huge pile of cash on the table for some group of people, and they stand to make a killing because they made a shrewd political investment.

So if, for some reason, SOPA is voted down because politicians lose their nerve at the polls, they'll just find another way to make their benefactor happy.

The post is much stronger now

JamesP:

The post is much stronger now

I agree :-)

Although, I do have a bit of an issue with your closing paragraph.

"Yeah, I know it’s a good gig right now, but consider what happens when you make a deal with the devil.

You end up losing your soul."

When you say "making a deal" here, what exactly do you mean? Do you equate voting with "making a deal"?

Unless you're actually bribing some politician, I think what most people do when they protest government action is not equal to "making a deal". I would say this is begging.

Are you suggesting that we lose our souls when we beg?

If so, please could you elaborate on this?

I think SOPA is a step towards locking down the internet the same way TV and radio are.  Postponing that will allow alternative messages to spread further.  To quote Seth Godin: “ideas that spread win”.  Each year a new group of youth start using the web and the older non-technical generation die off.  Postponing a locked down internet even a few years will do a lot to gain mind share in the public.

So, older people wouldn’t notice the difference, but younger people should and hopefully would be pissed off.  The public will grow accustomed to internet freedom and it gets harder each day to sell the lie that censorship = safety. 

I believe traditional media companies are behind SOPA, because they can’t compete in a free market. 

Also, most of traditional big media will be out of business in a few years if the current trends continue.  For example NY Times had an operating loss of $114.1 million in the second quarter of 2011.  http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=105317&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1587623 They can’t keep that up forever.  If you consider the role the NY Times played in selling the Iraq war it would be very good for humanity if they went out of business.  So a few more years will have a big impact.

JamesP:

I also wrote a post on SOPA:

When I find a stain on my shirt, I throw it in the laundry.  I don’t curse the stain or yell at my shirt for allowing itself to be stained.  It would be a special kind of immaturity—perhaps even evidence of brain damage—if I started to treat the stain as if it had some kind of volition.

When you beg and plead with the government to grant you favors, you shouldn’t be surprised or outraged when the government decides to grant favors to somebody opposed to your interests.

[Continue reading...]

NumberSix:

I think SOPA is a step towards locking down the internet the same way TV and radio are.  Postponing that will allow alternative messages to spread further.  To quote Seth Godin: “ideas that spread win”.  Each year a new group of youth start using the web and the older non-technical generation die off.  Postponing a locked down internet even a few years will do a lot to gain mind share in the public.

 

So, older people wouldn’t notice the difference, but younger people should and hopefully would be pissed off.  The public will grow accustomed to internet freedom and it gets harder each day to sell the lie that censorship = safety. 

 

I believe traditional media companies are behind SOPA, because they can’t compete in a free market. 

 

Also, most of traditional big media will be out of business in a few years if the current trends continue.  For example NY Times had an operating loss of $114.1 million in the second quarter of 2011.  http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=105317&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1587623 They can’t keep that up forever.  If you consider the role the NY Times played in selling the Iraq war it would be very good for humanity if they went out of business.  So a few more years will have a big impact.

I realize you're new here and just jumping into this thread, but what I originally wrote isn't about the specific case of trying to postpone SOPA.

I agree that it probably would be a good thing in the short term if it was delayed, but that if you are genuinely interested in freedom (which is what people are saying), begging for favors from the state is not going to work in the long term.

If that did work, we would all be free, because nobody fundamentally wants to be livestock for parasites.

That's my point