[rektide]

To me it's up to nations to determine whether they want to be connected to the rest of the planet. If you want to make a bunch of rules for yourself, you get what we have here, I hope: your country having to shut off that part of the internet.

You phrase it as doing business. But to me, these people in these other places are coming to us. They are connected to us. The onus is not on the rest of the world to adapt ourselves to these pilgrims. That's not what interconnection implies. We cannot flatten ourselves to be a lowest common denominator to all.

The East India Company feels entirely inapplicable here & is a gross & toxic countersuggestion. That was a case of a nation expanding outward. This is the opposite. This is visitors from afar, visiting us across the internet, a system begat of a free & democratic people.

That all said I am interested in some kind of cooperation. But I have a hard time imagining what a usable basic framework would be. It has to start with realizing sovereignty across boundaries is weak, enormously weak, a supplicant. And working from that start.

[voltaireodactyl]

In your scenario, you’re calling this the opposite of an expansion. But aren’t the companies literally “expanding” into these countries? Otherwise, what’s the issue? Unless you’re saying they should have sway regardless of whether they’re doing business there or not?

And to be clear it is “doing business”. Nobody is forcing companies to ship anywhere they don’t want to. Nobody is forcing them to allow IP connections from countries they do not operate in. The internet connects us all, sure, but to accept payment for any service, that company must have a financial relationship in place within that country — or with another country that’s already doing business with the first.

And I must disagree about the EIC being inapplicable. There is not so great a difference between weaponizing dopamine and transporting opium.

I’m truly not trying to be inflammatory here, fwiw, and I appreciate your perspective and the way you’ve gone about conveying it. I just disagree with your premises on a fundamental level.

[rektide]

If I don't have any servers in your nation, I don't see how you could possibly even begin to regard me as having expanded into your nation. Your people are leaving your nation to come to me. That seems quite factually rooted.

[voltaireodactyl]

> If I don't have any servers in your nation, I don't see how you could possibly even begin to regard me as having expanded into your nation.

Simple — by making sales and/or servicing customers for profit in my region, your business has “expanded” into my region. Server location is irrelevant — as you’ve pointed out, the internet is everywhere.

[rektide]

You need to disconnect yourself if you are going to have authoritarian stances over every place your people can connect to. Your fake dominion over others will never happen nor should it. What a trash fire impossible facetiously crap un hackable perspective you offer. Complete egocentristic imposition, that those who connect can dictate terms. A joke. Absolutely the hell not.

Do you have even a single token offering to make? Is there any limit whatsoever in any way that anyone connecting from afar should have? Or should theirocal laws immediately apply in full force wherever they connect? That seems to be the stance here.

[voltaireodactyl]

Gotta say, I think we’re speaking past each other here. I don’t understand what is authoritarian about believing a business entity wishing to sell their goods and services to a region should do such business by the laws of said region. After all, you’re using the region’s public infrastructure to do business.

I’m also a bit disappointed this is where your line of argument has ended up. I have many, many flaws, but a desire for absolute power is not among them.

Indeed, advocating for respecting a diverse range of locales, with a diverse range of laws, would seem to me to provide far more freedom than a system of centralized control under a single, for-profit structure. Isn’t that what free market advocates are always harping about? Competition of the marketplace?

I agree my fake dominion over others will never happen, nor should it! But I remain puzzled as to why you’re so stridently coming after me in defense of a system that prioritizes the right of the ruling class to make money over all other concerns. Historically, such systems tend heavily and inevitably toward the authoritarianism you so eloquently rage against.