[qsort]

Also Italian. I think everybody sucks here?

Most Italian authorities like this one are chock full of incompetents, and I'm almost sure they're just caving in to some soccer broadcaster or some crap like that. He might very well be fully correct on the fact of the matter.

Still, the rhetoric of the post is frankly disgusting. No, I'm not taking lessons in democracy from JD Vance, thank you very much. No, I don't think that might makes right and it's unsurprising that those who believe otherwise are so eager to transparently suck up to this administration.

Making public threats in this way is just vice signaling, nice bait.

[NamlchakKhandro]

But might does make rights.

Because all it takes is men with guns to change what rights you think you have.

If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.

[burkaman]

This is the Stephen Miller caveman view of the world, but it obviously doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five seconds. It's a very straightforward consequence of refusing to ever admit you are wrong. "If I did it, then I must have had the right to do it."

It's just a refusal to accept the philosophical concept of rights. The right to vote doesn't exist because you didn't have to defeat the entire army to vote against their leader, it's just that the leader benevolently decided to let you vote against them. You don't have the right to life, it's just that everyone on the planet with a weapon has coincidentally decided not to murder you, for now. Laws don't actually exist. Any right that appeared to be established against the wishes of the men with guns (i.e. all of them) was actually fake or an inexplicable accident. You can imagine a world that works like this, but it certainly isn't our world. No historical period or even any fictional story I can think of operates like this.

[pixl97]

> The right to vote doesn't exist because you didn't have to defeat the entire army to vote against their leader,

I would say you're wrong. The right to vote does exist because men rose up together and fought leaders that wouldn't let them vote. And, when leaders rise up that take our right to vote and we don't stop them they will prevail.

> it's just that everyone on the planet with a weapon has coincidentally decided not to murder you, for now.

Correct. Start up a big disaster where food goes away for some reason and it comes back.

We have a stable world where we don't kill each other at the moment because in general we all have food, water, shelter, and I would say enough entertainment that fighting each other isn't worth the risk. There is no rule that says this will last forever. Quite often in history there have been stable times, that then fell apart because of greed and malice of leaders.

[burkaman]

I am not saying it's impossible for rights to be taken away, I am arguing against this statement:

> If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.

I do not own a gun and I have no fighting skills, so I cannot defend myself against men with guns. Would you agree that I therefore have no rights?

I think that you and the original poster are seeing the situation "you are vulnerable to potentially losing rights in the future", which is true, but conflating that with "you have no rights". It's like telling a rich person "you actually don't have any money" because it's possible they might be robbed someday.

[pixl97]

>Would you agree that I therefore have no rights?

You have the right to vote, if you lose that right, and you don't have a gun after that you have whatever 'rights' that are provided to you by a dictator.

One of the things you're missing here is the idea of herd immunity. While you won't fight for your rights, theoretically someone else will making taking your rights dangerous. Once enough people won't fight for their rights, or enough of the population gathers together to take your rights, you lose your rights.

[pmontra]

I believe that in this conversation one party is saying that people have intrinsic rights (see the Universal Declaration of Human Rights) and the other party might agree on that but they say that those rights can be enforced only if they can be defended. Example: both parties probably agree that people have a right to free speech but nevertheless people end up in jail if they attempt free speech on the wrong subject in the wrong country.

[duskdozer]

Philosophically, no. Practically, no, as long as someone desires and is able to defend them, otherwise yes.

[sumedh]

> but it obviously doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five seconds.

Maduro would disagree.

[michaelt]

> it obviously doesn't make sense if you think about it for more than five seconds. [...] It's just a refusal to accept the philosophical concept of rights.

Or it's an attempt to reconcile the philosophical concept of rights with global politics and observed reality.

Does an Afghan girl have a right to education? A Uyghur Muslim a right to freedom of religion? A Palestinian a right to food? A Hong Kong resident a right to freedom of expression?

It would appear that in these cases, the politicians commanding the loyalty of the men with guns do what they can, while the weak suffer what they must.

Of course, that's not the only reasonable line of thinking. Just because people in distant lands don't have certain rights in practice, I have those rights because I live in a great country with strong institutions and the rule of law.

[DangitBobby]

Refusing to accept the philosophical concept of rights is just correct. You are born with fuck all unless people have decided you are entitled to something by existing. Plenty of people were born without anything remotely resembling rights. If rights were inherent and not simple enforced by people, that wouldn't be the case, would it? Life isn't a fairy tail.

[svara]

Civilization is literally built on what you're saying being wrong.

It's not wrong because of physics or biology, but because civilization made it so.

Like so many cultural achievements, it's true when you can count on the person next to you expecting it to be true. (1)

Which in turn means you can make that culture collapse if you impress enough people with your edgelord attitude.

Cooperative culture is fragile and must be preserved by preserving shared values such as these. On the other hand, in the long run, the cultures that do this successfully prevail because cooperation is stronger than the law of the jungle.

Unfortunately that 'long run' may take a while.

(1) That's basically the definition of a cultural value. They're emergent phenomena based on Keynesian beauty contests.

[burkaman]

Yes, and people have decided I'm entitled to something by existing. That's what human society and civilization is built on. It's been true for the entire history of our species.

[throw0101d]

> Because all it takes is men with guns to change what rights you think you have.

Plenty folks of didn't / don't change their minds about what rights they thought they had/have, even in the face of guns. Just look at what's currently going in Iran.

If you're in the US, and believe in your own Constitution, then people have "unalienable Rights" that are "endowed by their Creator", regardless of whether they are recognized by the government or not:

* https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I...

[OkayPhysicist]

You're conflating rights with freedoms, which is the same category error as confusing legality with morality.

Your rights are, by their nature inalienable. They are recognized (or not) by individual power structures, granting you freedoms.

Under an authoritarian regime, your freedoms maybe be limited, for example, your right to free speech may be curtailed by men with guns. Killing those men is illegal, but not unethical, exactly because they are infringing your rights.

This all may seem academic to the person with a boot on their throat, but it dictates how outsiders view one's actions.

[Volundr]

> If you can't defend yourself against that then you have no rights.

My sister is wheelchair bound with MS. Half the time she can barely see. You can give her all the guns you want and she isn't going be to able to defend herself. I reject your nonsense assertion that because of this she has no rights.

[chrneu]

race to the bottom logic

this kind of logic will always lead to everyone losing in the long run. always. there will always be a more powerful bully that steps up to take over. history is very clear on this one.

[immibis]

You might be conflating description with prescription.

Descriptively, powerful people have all the rights and weak people have none. This is what we observe in the world. No amount of philosophical thought outweighs actual observations. For example, Donald Trump has (retroactively!) the right to r**e ch*ldren. We know this because he is not suffering consequences for doing that. But Renee Good did not have a right to free speech. We know this because she was executed because of her speech.

You can prescribe whatever fancy academia language you want, but the facts in the real world don't seem to currently support any of it beyond "might makes rights".

[throw310822]

Ok. So a man with a gun has the right to shoot you and kill you. Then a policeman comes with a bigger gun and he has the right to kidnap the murderer. Then comes a judge with an even bigger gun (the law) and has the right to lock him up in a prison. But then the murderer gets hold of a weapon and he has the right to escape from prison. Etc.

You see that this view doesn't go very far.

[dragonwriter]

Might can defend, or violate, rights, but it does not make them.

[DangitBobby]

What does make them? Children apparently don't have them, and many races in many countries didn't have them for a long time either. How do you account for that? Are we now distinguishing between "having" rights and uh... being allow to use them?

[lostlogin]

How are all those guns helping in the US right now, as it turns authoritarian?

[mlrtime]

Pretty good, thanks for asking!

[lostlogin]

I’m confused. I thought the guns were for stopping an authoritarian regime?

[mlrtime]

I'll cut the cheekiness, I disagree with a "authoritarian regime". I don't support everything, but to some up an entire government as "authoritarian regime" is wrong IMO.

So why would I use my guns again?

[lostlogin]

> to some up an entire government as "authoritarian regime" is wrong IMO

It doesn’t work like that though. The most authoritarian regime in the world has bits that seem benign, we don’t judge them on that.

We judge them based on the extremes. Things like masked men grabbing civilians off the street and shooting them in the face, with the full support of the regime.

[svara]

You can go back to the ancient Greeks to explain what is wrong about that.

Literally two thousand years of civilization were spent on combating the pockets in which people live by that principle.

[selfmodruntime]

> No, I'm not taking lessons in democracy from JD Vance, thank you very much

You are falling into a trap where you can not recognize a true point because it is made by someone you disagree with. I don't condone Vance or the Trump admin. He is right about European governemnt's attacks on free speech.

[jacquesm]

And you are falling into the trap of thinking that if a person is busy deconstructing what used to be one of the larger democracies in the world that their other words are going to be taken at face value, which obviously is not going to happen.

We're not discussing Pol Pot's views on cooking either, even though he might have had some valuable insight. Bringing up Vance and Musk in polite conversation to bolster your argument is - especially in the context of Europe, which both men seem to have declared to be enemy #1 before Russia and China - a little tone deaf.

[nkmnz]

To be fair, he's not bringing them up as intellectual support for his argumentative base – he's bringing them up as support for acts of retaliation. This is mostly about power and we've lost 30% in power vs. the US in just ~12 years because we've fucked up our economy.

[jacquesm]

Maybe 'the economy' is not the only valid yardstick to compare countries by?

[nkmnz]

I absolutely and 100% agree! But it's the stick that others will use to force their world view down your throat. So if you want to be not only righteous, but also hold others accountable according to your standards, you need the economic power to do so.

[lostlogin]

> we've lost 30% in power vs. the US in just ~12 years because we've fucked up our economy.

I wonder how many Americans would prefer to live in the US that existed 12 years ago versus the US today.

[mlrtime]

People will say anything online, but when it comes to action very little. I'd rather live in the US now or 12 years ago vs Italy unless someone gave me a tuscan villa with a pool

Virtue signaling at its finest.

[lostlogin]

I laughed. Im at a the tail end of 3 weeks in Italy, sitting on a train.

Compared to 20 years ago it’s so much cleaner, quicker, more efficient, friendlier.

You must be in a great place as it’s fantastic here.

[DangitBobby]

Most of our power loss is from electing a belligerent dumb fuck twice and allowing him to sabotage our international relationships and destroying our remaining credibility.

[nkmnz]

I was speaking about Europe as a whole. Economically, we suck. Losing UK didn't help, either, but except for Poland, we've become relatively poorer by an insane amount, compared to the US. Another 10 years on that path and we're half the US.

[mlrtime]

What power loss? OP is talking about Italian power loss?

[selfmodruntime]

> And you are falling into the trap of thinking that if a person is busy deconstructing what used to be one of the larger democracies in the world that their other words are going to be taken at face value, which obviously is not going to happen.

No. I'm identifying this one statement as factual, regardless of the person saying it. Surely then, you would not deny the color of the sun to be yellow just because Pot might have observed it to be that way?

[jacquesm]

That's besides the point: JD Vance and Musk are precisely the wrong entities to have opinions on stuff like this because they are on the wrong side of that line most of the time. Especially Musk, but Vance has his own ulterior motives to berate the EU on anything so regardless of the outcome it will be tainted.

[selfmodruntime]

> JD Vance and Musk are precisely the wrong entities to have opinions on stuff like this because they are on the wrong side of that line most of the time. Especially Musk, but Vance has his own ulterior motives to berate the EU on anything so regardless of the outcome it will be tainted.

People focus on Vance in this issue because they hate him and hate is easy to come by. They ignore that popular Democrats and progressives said the same thing. Hell, even the Atlantic posted a piece about the issue.

[jacquesm]

People focus on Vance because he's the one referenced in the tweet.

[mlrtime]

>they are on the wrong side of that line most of the time.

To you, yes. Which shows your biases.

[gpm]

It has been very clear that the Trump adminstrations definition of freedom of speech, including JD Vance's, is that you should be free to say whatever the Trump administration wants and nothing else.

They have consistently prosecuted, threatened, deported, withheld money from, and so on people who say things they do not like.

[xdennis]

And the answer to that is to point out the hypocrisy (what you're doing), not to take the opposite view, that censorship is important (what so many others are doing when Trump takes a position on anything).

[selfmodruntime]

Yes! That is it!

[nxm]

Similar to what Democrats have done to Trump: https://nypost.com/2024/05/12/us-news/fareed-zakaria-doubts-...

[lostlogin]

Do you really see it as the same scale?

The judiciary and both houses are allowing some incredible things, far beyond anything from the last administration.

This year has been off to a wild start and it’s well into uncharted territory.

[chrneu]

you are falling into the trap of ignoring the pandering. cloudflare bro is clearly pandering here and showing that, in the moment, he will say/do whatever to whomever to get what he wants. cloudflare kind of has a history of doing this.

there was zero reason to name drop vance and elon besides appealing to their rabid fans to bolster support.

it's just more hypocrisy.

[iamnothere]

What other option do they have? It’s either comply with unjust rulings that undermine the free internet (and their business) or make a deal with the devil. Either one is bad but only complying has an immediate negative impact.

If there was any sense that this ruling was just a temporary mistake that will be corrected by pending regulation/legislation, then a third option would be on the table: temporarily comply and wait it out. But all indications are that the EU is hell-bent on making things worse, not better, for the open internet.

[jacquesm]

Cloudflare, the company that regularly blocks me from legitimately visiting websites because their bot detection software absolutely sucks probably is the biggest effective censor on the planet.

[xinayder]

The AI generated art is also disgusting. Makes the CEO look like an angry kid because his multi-billion dolar industry got a 1% income fine, which is nothing for them, for a service they provide that keeps having outages because they have bad coders who thought moving their shit code to Rust was a good idea.