[drzaiusapelord]

Or when you look at felony charges for cannabis use. Every time I hear about the wonders of surveillance I think about how many lives the drug war has destroyed, even for drug use that is non-addictive, peaceful, and done in the dignity of one's own home by productive adults.

Also, as someone who lives in Chicago, I can tell you that a lot of crime is caught on tape, but only crime that is politically convenient for the police to go after. There's no shortage of stories of homeowners or landlords with videos of vandals and robbers only to be told to piss off. The police don't want to mess with the gangs unless they have to or it looks bad if there are too many minority arrests that month.

It seems the surveillance state is more often used against us than for us for a variety of reasons, mostly due to corruption, which we still don't have a fix for. In some weird way it has empowered the criminals, because it's a long way with lots of roadblocks from a face on tape to an actual arrest. We put up cameras instead of tall gates and guard dogs or gun ownership and think we're safe. We're not.

Not to mention, the criminals aren't stupid. They pull a hoodie down over their face as much as they can, and in the dark, can't be identified on tape. All the success stories I've heard seem to focused on crazies and idiots who more or less would have been caught with old fashioned police work. Holding up footage as the be and end all of police work really just empowers the worst kinds of people in law enforcement and fools the electorate into handing over powers that law enforcement has historically been shown to be irresponsible with. I just read that the PATRIOT ACT is now used on drug offenders. The slippery slope in unfortunately real in this case.

[honeybooboo123]

> It seems the surveillance state is more often used against us than for us for a variety of reasons, mostly due to corruption, which we still don't have a fix for

There is no fix for "corruption".

Imagine there's a ruler with only one subject. Would someone inevitably ask him for a favour? "Could you have your peon mow my lawn? -I'll buy you a beer some time!"

Would the ruler want more subjects? -Of course! It just means more benefits for him, more opportunities for making money at his subjects' expense! The possibilities are limitless!

Now take a bunch of rulers with 320 million subjects. Would Comcast ask them to make it difficult to compete with them? Competition is bothersome you know. It forces you to provide better quality at lower prices, even though you'd much rather just fleece a captive audience!

"Corruption" is a bit of a misnomer. It sounds like something is wrong, but actually it's just an element of a system with rulers and subjects working as intended.

> There's no shortage of stories of homeowners or landlords with videos of vandals and robbers only to be told to piss off. The police don't want to mess with the gangs unless they have to or it looks bad if there are too many minority arrests that month.

You're seeing another aspect of the system working as intended.

If you're a ruler, do you really care about your subjects' well-being? -Of course not. You'll pretend you do because you need them to refrain from overthrowing you, but your subjects are just tools to you.

Your "Royal Guard" (=the police) are meant to protect your power and to enforce your edicts, not to help your subjects. They behave accordingly.

[dropit_sphere]

This is half a truth, in that incentives do influence people's behavior:

> There is no fix for "corruption".

But not the whole truth, as the West is far less corrupt than, say, Bangladesh. We're under the impression that it's all because of our political systems and so are eager to teach the rest of the world Political Science 101 at gunpoint, convinced that if they only understood then they'd all be liberal democracies. But it's not their understanding of game theory that's flawed, it's ours.

As we've found out, it's not just a systems problem. Western Civilization? We didn't build that. There is, at least, a lot of residual faith in institutions built up over the last 800 years ago. And also some unabashed patriotism---the quiet kind that has you pay your taxes fully when you could perhaps pay a bit less and get away with it.

[honeybooboo123]

> But not the whole truth, as the West is far less corrupt than, say, Bangladesh.

The current degree and overtness of corruption in a particular area is completely irrelevant. The point is the very nature of political power: Its only use case is to gain at other people's expense.

That's it. Political power implies intervention in what people would otherwise do in their mutually beneficial, voluntary exchanges and arrangements.

Want to charge a fee for driving people from A to B? -You have to get a $X-hundred-thousand license to do that. If you don't, you will be punished, by force if "necessary". Who benefits? -The state-supported taxi cartel of course: now their drivers are debt slaves and profit margins remain higher than otherwise.

Note all those foreign governments protecting their taxi-cartel buddies from Uber.

Rulers want subjects because they benefit from them. Subjects are resources, like human livestock to be milked. And oh boy, milk us they do.

Sorry but I'm not sure how to address the rest of your post. Feel free to ask something or make some specific claims.

[dropit_sphere]

>Rulers want subjects because they benefit from them. Subjects are resources, like human livestock to be milked. And oh boy, milk us they do.

If only they understood that! That would not be the worst case( http://unqualifiedreservations.wordpress.com/2007/05/20/the-...)

>That's it. Political power implies intervention in what people would otherwise do in their mutually beneficial, voluntary exchanges and arrangements.

Remember, though, that not all voluntary exchanges and agreements are mutually beneficial (paycheck advances); or if they are, there may be an unknowing third party suffering some nasty externalities (I will sell you an extra-polluting car for only $1000!). Is this not a non-exploitive use case?

[honeybooboo123]

> If only they understood that! That would not be the worst case( http://unqualifiedreservations.wordpress.com/2007/05/20/the-...)

Please make a specific claim. I don't know how to address the nonsense you linked to.

> Remember, though, that not all voluntary exchanges and agreements are mutually beneficial

They are, to both parties involved in them. Otherwise they wouldn't go through with the exchanges, assuming no coercion of course.

> there may be an unknowing third party suffering some nasty externalities (I will sell you an extra-polluting car for only $1000!). Is this not a non-exploitive use case?

If you sell me an extra-polluting car, you're not exploiting anyone. I value the car higher than the money I'm parting with, because otherwise I wouldn't buy it.

[dropit_sphere]

>Please make a specific claim.

Well, in Nofunspeak: People take care of the things they own. Cows have done pretty damn well considering their spot in the food chain. Much better than, say, tyrannosaurs or Bengal tigers. Were I reincarnated and given the choice between a cow and a tiger, would I pick the cow? Of course not. But realistically (I use the term loosely given that we are talking about reincarnation), the tigers would all have been taken by nobler and more deserving souls than I, and I would have the dilemma of, say, a cow and a flea. Ah, I forgot: this is nofunspeak. So: tigers are independent, fear-no-man humans innately sovereign, cows are their slaves, employees, mistresses, and children, and fleas are property of the horror-state that would be erected if the real estate were not currently occupied (this is likely to be our point of supreme contention, which I must confess boggles my mind. It seems perfectly obvious that states of some kind are a naturally occuring phenomenon. I mean, they're all over the place. It also seems obvious that they are easier to get wrong than right. If only the criminals are allowed to set up states, all the states will be run by criminals.) Or, in today's boredom-state: tigers are whoever you think of as bogeymen, cows are the virtuous economic producers industrially farming their villes, and fleas are their unkempt IT guys, anarchist commune residents, and (shudder) idealist college students (Reader's note: I have been all three of these at some point in my life, so I have some flea cred).

Shall we aphorize? Who is more free, my dog that's dumb as a rock and I don't allow off my property, or the dead one euthanized as a puppy because I didn't adopt it? I mean, the second one can sit on whatever dog heaven couches it wants, but this seems small consolation.

Now at this point it must be addressed: yes, my dog, by rights, ought to be allowed to fulfil her noble duty of guarding Tibetan shrines. It's good for Lhasa Apso health, according to that article in Nature. But didn't we go over this? In our bleak world, there are not many shrine-guarding, tiger, or free-from-political-power spots left.

Clearly I am treading in moral gray area, because I am contradicting the central dogma of the (world-wide! Tip your local Peace Corps Rep!) American religion, which is freedom ueber allen. Choice, man! But I have just demonstrated a scenario that is beneficial enough that both parties would voluntarily agree to it (cow doesn't get eaten by wolves, human gets milk), but limits the freedom of one party. Behold! Political power, ex nihilo! And so we see that choice is very easy to lose: give everyone the same amount today, and tomorrow most of it will be in the hands of a few. This makes voluntary beneficial exchanges rather tricky. Of course you could periodically reset the amount of choice people had, perhaps by cancelling contracts (Jubilee!), but that reeks of rules, and political power.

And as for the car: you and I may be happy, but Joe down the street has to breathe the same air. Was our exchange beneficial for him?

[hackuser]

> There is no fix for "corruption".

There is no fix for anything by that reasoning; we'll always have illness, accidents, crime, and browser crashes. We can improve those things significantly though, and we have and we can improve corruption.

[honeybooboo123]

> There is no fix for anything by that reasoning; we'll always have illness, accidents, crime

Well, the fix for corruption is for no one to have political power. Would you say the fix for illness is to be dead?