[ElDiablo666]

I'm totally fine with your exciting-as-fuck politics but it will be difficult to get people to that point any time soon, me thinks. I think the problem is that when you say things like "these things don't work" you're glossing over the key to why they don't work: people aren't organized. That's it. It may not be glamorous or fun like tossing over the pigmobile but it's proven to work every single time throughout history.

Let's look at boycotts. The problem with boycotts isn't that they're not effective; they can be. My family participated in a successful one against Iceland's whaling policies in the 80s and even though I was young, I never forgot why we did it and that it was right. So what's the problem? They ignore institutional structures that persist despite our actions. If one particular corporation strays too far, boycott pressure is effective. Don't forget how it played into bringing down South African apartheid.

My point here is that we don't need to go looking for new solutions. Good old fashioned organizing works. It does combat LG's bought politicians--remember my friend, we still have democratic institutions and we can vote anyone we want into office. People don't like to be reminded of what really works, I think. We need socialism. We need to vote them into office and make good privacy laws. That's that. No need to reinvent the wheel. Then we can talk about an informal technocracy democratically dissolving the state into libertarian socialist anarcho-communism.

[pdkl95]

> Good old fashioned organizing works.

It does. The "freedom of assembly" is very powerful, even if it doesn't get as much attention as the freedom of speech or the press. Seeing that there are others that share your outrage is an amazing motivator, as it shows, in a very personal way, that you don't have to accomplish everything yourself. Even better, it becomes easier to get others to join in and help as the group grows. Many are reluctant to be a first-mover, but will join a group once they see they will have the support of allies.

Unfortunately, FVEY agencies are not stupid. Mapping relationships to find the focal points that start or enable this kind of social organizing so they can be disrupted is a very good strategy. Even just the phone call-record and COTRAVELER[1] are likely enough to be able to find the leaders/organizers among any particular group. If you add in a few of the other tools we've seen recently, it must have been trivial to create a modern variant of COINTELPRO. Compared to the FBI's efforts under Hoover, GCHQ's "JTRIG"[2] is probably a lot easier and far more effective.

So yes, I totally agree - good old-fashioned organizing is something we need, and we need it fast. More importantly, we need it as a sustained effort to focus on a couple key topics, and we might actually see some progress.

I am not sure this is possible as long as "most" people still have food and a roof over their head. Groups start to form and ideas start to spread, but these efforts inevitably get distracted[3] or sidetracked with off-topic political minutia or divide-and-conquer wedge issues. Unfortunately, I suspect that technology will make organizing people effectively impossible until this mess impacts them personally in big, obvious, painful and/or expensive ways.

Of course, I would absolutely love to be proven wrong sbout this entire topic...

[1] http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/how-the-nsa-is-t...

[2] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-o...

[3] For an example relevant to this crowd, see PHK's "PSYOPS For Nerds" regarding yet another useless and distracting "BSD vs GPL" argument.

[tedks]

White people love to talk about South Africa. But white people had fuck-all to do with South Africa. The thing that stopped Apartheid wasn't a boycott, it was sustained armed and unarmed struggle on behalf of the black majority in South Africa. It was Nelson Mandela's property destruction, sabotage, and open contemplation of guerrilla warfare.

>It does combat LG's bought politicians--remember my friend, we still have democratic institutions and we can vote anyone we want into office. People don't like to be reminded of what really works, I think. We need socialism. We need to vote them into office and make good privacy laws. That's that. No need to reinvent the wheel. Then we can talk about an informal technocracy democratically dissolving the state into libertarian socialist anarcho-communism.

I have to think this is sarcasm. But it's well-done though. Anarchist communism via liberal reform? Classic. The 'good old-fashioned organizing works' is such a great layer on top of that.

10/10 trolling, comrade.

[authatheist]

He already pointed out that voting or writing to "your" representatives doesn't work, but ypu're still calling for some sort of democratic solution. Please stop.

[sounds]

Actually it's interesting to watch you take the contrary position on an internet forum, but without a concrete call to action. That was his point: what are you going to _do_?

I work on a solution to this particular problem every day. I don't just write on the internet about it.

Put up or shut up.

[authatheist]

My "solution" is to wake people up to the fact that we should not have rulers at all. That's the only way to achieve a non-nightmarish future in the long term.

People see tyranny creeping up all over the West, for example, but it doesn't occur to them that instead of asking our rulers to please not oppress us, we should stop believing in their authority altogether.

You have your activism, and I have mine.

[SixSigma]

Having no "leaders" wouldn't stop the phenomena of corporate surveillance.

A world with unfettered unregulated markets sounds more nightmarish to me than what we have now.

[authatheist]

Rulers monitor us to cement their power over us, but in a free society without political power, with free-flowing information available to all, companies would have to be careful about what they do, lest they lose their customers, ie. their income.

[loup-vaillant]

And, how would we make that happen? How, once you remove the rulers, do you prevent new ones from rising up? How do you prevent companies from flooding customer under a wealth of irrelevant information? How do you prevent things like cartels, now that there is no regulator?

It's all well and good to postulate a free society, but do you have any idea what a free society actually looks like? (Neither do I, by the way.)

[rhizome]

What are some historical examples of "waking" people up to a "fact?"

I'm not so sure lack of belief is enough to dissipate authority. As the old saying goes, you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. Within my lifetime, the surest way to invite a tiny war into your life is act as if political and/or legal authority doesn't exist. Hell, just implying that authority should change was enough to get projectiles and tear gas loosed in Ferguson MO.

[authatheist]

If a large enough percentage of people decide to disregard govts and forcefully defend themselves against their enforcers if necessary, then govts just cease to function and exist. I'm not saying we're there now, or even near a point where that's feasible, but it is one way out.

[loup-vaillant]

Good luck trying to convince people to merely get rid of their government. We need an alternative, and the mere lack of government is not it. It will be perceived as chaos, and few people actually want chaos.

In other words, even if we don't want rulers we still need rules. We need a system. Actually, we will have a system, anyway. even "no system" is a system. It's just not clear how it would actually work at the moment (possibilities ranges from "Libertarian Utopia" to "mob rule", including "gang rule" and "local warlords").

[im2w1l]

We are there now. "A no-go area or no-go zone is a region where the ruling authorities have lost control and are unable to enforce their sovereignty."

[rhizome]

but it is one way out

Is it really? When has it happened before?

[SixSigma]

Somalia