> It's the moral imperative of every country to optimize for its citizens' economic prospects.
Surely there are constraints on this, because otherwise, it would be the moral imperative of every country to enslave non-citizens for the benefit of (some subset of) citizens.
Instead of casting stones from glass houses, perhaps the US should look inwardly to its own censorship. A number of states and the current federal regime have their fingers fully into that pie.
Criticism of Israel, lgbtq material, calls for soldiers and police to only obey lawful orders, material critical of the current regime, it's policies, and the personalities that drive it, criticism of college campus trolls like Charlie Kirk, even kneeling at a fucking protest, have all come under attack.
Once we turn the clock back on all that, and the people carrying all that out have been appropriately purged and punished, perhaps Americans should start talking about the EU.
Additionally, this is actually the point of the article: prior US admins directly funded the current censorship efforts. Despite the First Amendment, which should be providing clarity, we don’t have a consistent stance towards this.
Because the man crying wolf about the EU's fines against his business has his arms elbow-deep in this mess. Any such conversation involving him is like asking the House of Saud in to weigh in on freedom of the press and the health and well-being of investigative journalists.
> directly funded the current censorship efforts.
The current censorship efforts are radically different in both their degree and in their quality. Public dissent to radical MAGA ideology is being aggressively and violently attacked in a way that hasn't been happening since the Cold War. (Despite what people trying to play victim and drawing false equivalences may claim.)
Hmm, I have to disagree. There’s a very real threat right now that Western governments will effectively shrug off years of precedent and fully “lock down” the internet—finally killing anonymity and privacy for good, and closing the remaining escape hatches that are available. The UK wants to do it, Australia wants to do it, the EU wants to do it, and a large (though not currently dominant) segment of the US political establishment wants to do it. This is sort of an all hands on deck moment to prevent these people from succeeding. It has to be fought in every venue using any and all means necessary.
Yeah I know it's an unrealistic ideal but it's fun to think about.
That said my theory about power and privilege is that it's actually just a symptom of a deep fear of death. The reason gaining more money/power/status never lets up is because there's no amount of money/power/status that can satiate that fear, but somehow naively there's a belief that it can. I wouldn't be surprised if most people who have any amount of wealth has a terrible fear of losing it all, and to somebody whose identity is tied to that wealth, that's as good as death.
Going off your earlier comment, what if instead of a revolution, the oligarchs just get hooked up to a simulation where they can pretend to rule over the rest of humanity forever? Or what if this already happened and we're just the peasants in the simulation
This would make a good black mirror episode. The character lives in a total dystopian world making f'd up moral choice. Their choices make the world worse. It seems nightmarish to us the viewer. Then towards then end they pull back, they unplug and are living in a utopia. They grab a snack, are greeted by people that love and care about them, then they plug back in and go back to being their dystopian tech bro ideal self in their dream/ideal world.
I remember those stores as I came from a similar background. One vital difference is that they all have workers who have a straight face and don’t give it a fuck about customer service.
Then in the 90s they were all washed away by the new ones.
> They didn't reach out to the startup, or tell them about the vote happening at council
It's not the city's responsibility to do that. If your business depends on particular actions by a city's legislature, it's generally on you to be reading their agenda.
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