"but laws and norms of good behavior are always a balance between rights freedoms and safety / efficiency."
You must be not from the US. In the US, our freedoms come first and our founders constrained the governments` ability to interfere with those rights, even in the name of safety.
A popular Benjamin Franklin quote:
They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Your freedom to drive on any side of the road is constrained for the general safety of all citizens.
Just as your freedom of speech is constrained to call out "fire" in a crowded space when there is none.
I wonder why Benjamin Franklin used the words "essential liberty".
I'm sure you and I would disagree on whether not wearing a mask in a crowded room is an essential liberty, or one that should be temporarily given up for the greater good. I would argue Benjamin Franklin would have a lot of faith in science and would be happy for citizens to give up that non-essential freedom for a while.
I have the freedom to continue burning carbon and eating steak .. but I wonder if those freedoms might now begin to encroach upon your freedoms to have a livable planet that isnt too warm to support our current population.
> In the US, our freedoms come first and our founders constrained the governments` ability to interfere with those rights, even in the name of safety.
No. Contrary to popular libertarian belief, the founding fathers were actually trying to found a state, not a minarchist collective. While they did believe in a limited government, they also believed in the necessity of effective government, and they did not believe that personal liberty always took precedence.
Indeed, that quote you're pulling out is almost always misconstrued. Benjamin Franklin was arguing for more taxes to fund a defense against French and Native American attacks on the frontier[0,1]. In other words, for the power of government in the name of the collective and against individual liberty where that liberty threatens society.
The same Ben Franklin also became a devout advocate of vaccinations after losing a son to smallpox[1]. He certainly would not have been on the side of anti-vaxxers defying government quarantine or mask orders because "liberty."
Ben Franklin didn't even believe in absolute free speech, or that the owners of a "platform" had no right to determine what could or could not be published on that plaform:
"In the conduct of my newspaper, I carefully excluded all libelling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind, and the writers pleaded, as they generally did, the liberty of the press, and that a newspaper was like a stage-coach, in which any one who would pay had a right to a place... "
...an opinion most of Hacker News would consider Orwellian and fascist.
The media has ignored calls for political violence on Twitter all year long. And so, we now have this problem, an obvious double standard.
The left has failed to constrain, condem, or even recognize its extremists. That has emboldened the extremists on the right to act, since they watched the left get away with burning and looting with impunity.
Is it any wonder we ended up here. It's time to punish all who commit political violence.
Instead, we're just getting more partisan BS. That'll work.
I think this is overplayed at this point. You must concede one of only two possibilities.
1) The capitol building has all along been an easy soft target that could have been infiltrated by a small contingent of terrorist.
2) The police purposefully stood down and allowed this to happen while doing the minimum to make it seem like they tried.
Neither option is a good look for our country.
Now compound that with using this event as a popular excuse to restrict free speech, when the correct reaction should be to improve security at the capitol for any enemy.
If you think this goes away becuse big tech takes even moderate voices down, you don't understand what's going on.
I worked on Capitol Hill for years. The Capitol is not a soft target. Its security measures are taken very seriously. Multiple agencies are responsible for its protection. Multiple strategies are in play from intelligence ops to deadly force. These agencies handle crowd control for dozens of very large protests every year. They are world experts in preventing violence, terrorism, and rioting. The Capitol is the very center of our government and the most powerful symbol of democracy in the world.
Some things went very wrong. It should not have been possible for a loosely organized mob to breach the perimeter, let alone get inside. There must have been some complicity or even permission. On the other hand, some things went exactly as they should have. Lawmakers were rapidly taken to safety. No VIPs were injured. Bloodshed was kept to a minimum through careful deescalation.
Overall I think we came to within inches of a major tragedy. It was avoided through a mix of competence and incompetence. We were lucky and we should consider ourselves warned.
I dont see reason for people to downvote you: I find it exceptionally hard to believe that the capital building does not have a proper response to a small group of people trying to storm the building.
Here is my theory: the "coup" was such an utter non-threat that those in charge did not want to give an ounce of evidence regarding how they could respond in order to prevent legitimately threatening bad actors from understanding the possibilities.
The side effect of being able to move towards more restricted speech is just icing on the cake.
After seeing thousands of soldiers with machine guns in full military gear with armored vehicles protecting the Capital from Black Lives Matter, your statement sounds ridiculous.
Perhaps a history of burning and looting might have had some influence in that difference.
Sometimes I wonder, and serious question here, when the reporter on TV stands in front of a burning building and exclaims the protest is mostly peaceful, do you see the building in background on fire?
I mean, I see the capitol building being broken into and think "that needs to stop, bring in the military if necessary".
Right wing millitias and groups have history of violence last years in USA. They also talked about their plans openly. It is not like the bombs they brought to capitol were shock this January. It was not first bomb plan.
Also, in videos you see organized trained equipped men in uniforms. That is absolutely something agencies are expected to follow.
> Here is my theory: the "coup" was such an utter non-threat that those in charge did not want to give an ounce of evidence regarding how they could respond in order to prevent legitimately threatening bad actors from understanding the possibilities.
Six people died! How is that an "utter non-threat"? The mental revisionism is out of control. How is it that people are so unwilling to condemn the most obvious kind of political violence imaginable?
You can condemn it, be fearful of it, and be specific with regards to the threat it presents. It presents threats. I assume the specific threat the poster was refuting (which I won’t throw my 2c on here) is that it posed a threat to materializing a new government in the United States, which is typically the top of mind threat when talking about coups. So citing the number of deaths is neither here nor there in assessing the validity that it was a legitimate threat to creating a new government and ending the previous one.
The white supremacists and other violent right wing groups (Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, etc.,) had been planning for a while. In plain view of anyone paying attention. There was plenty of warning. So, the fact that no preparation beyond the waist high barriers was done is surprising, no?
https://www.propublica.org/article/capitol-rioters-planned-f...
That's simply wrong. Representatives of all of those groups were seen breaking into the capitol. The Oath Keepers in particular seem to have had a large and heavily militarized detachment. There is a video of a line of them in full body armor marching up the steps past the throng to enter the building.
Likewise known Proud Boys and 3%'ers were present, etc... This was the Place to Be for all militant right wingers, and those who couldn't be in DC were staging protests elsewhere. IIRC there were violent actions on the same day at both the Oregon and Kansas state houses.
Everyone Knew they were going to be there. Everyone Knew they had the potential to be violent. And Everyone Knew that Trump's rhetoric was inciteful. None of this was a surprise. And it finally boiled over into real violence. There's no excusing or downplaying that. We could absolutely have seen this coming, and lots of people did.
You keep dodging. First it was "these groups aren't there" now they're just LARPers in camo and don't matter. People keep shooting down your arguments and you keep moving the goalposts.
Accusing people of doing exactly what you're doing is a well worn and bazar tactic that I'll never understand. Does it work?
You even provided a "quote" of something I never said. Good on you.
You made a statement "Oath Keepers in particular seem to have had a large and heavily militarized detachment". I asked for source video, which you now can't find and instead offer a video that doesn't corroborate your statement. So, who is moving goal posts?
What I am saying is the people causing the violence (including in the video you provided) are crazy larpers and MAGA fanatics, not oath keepers. Oath keepers are typically former military, open carry weapons, and don't look like they just broke out of mom's basement.
I am also saying I haven't seen a video of anyone who looks militarized in either organization, coordinated assault tactics, or armament. Can you cite a source video that demonstrates your statement is even close to true?
Can you cite some "moderate voices" that have been taken down by big tech? They're all still up as far as I can see. Trump incited an attack on congress. He got banned. Parler deliberately cultivated an extreme community of violent rhetoric (they really did, have you looked at that site?). They got banned. Who else? Seems like only people reasonably identifiable as extremists are affected.
I remain horrified at the right wing community's ability to rationalize violence. The President directed an attack on Congress last Wednesday to prevent his opponent's certification. And... what people really want to talk about is Parler losing their hosting?
(Edit to note that you refused to answer the question and jumped off on a WHATABOUTBLM?! tangent instead. In fact, contra your hyperbole, no moderate right wing voices have been censored or silenced.)
Evidence of Trump telling people to storm the capitol?
"I remain horrified at the right wing community's ability to rationalize violence"
We'll, I'm right of center and I condemn it. Just like I'm sure there is a history of you condemning this entire year of BML and Antifa burning and looting cities across the US.
I remember what Como said on CNN. "who said protests need to be peaceful". Of course CNN is the bastion of right wing extremists... Oh wait....
Don't get me wrong, there's definitely a double standard at work. I recall every news outlet spending bottles of ink explaining how massive BLM protests somehow weren't spreading covid but now the capitol protests are. However I think there's a fundamental difference between breaking into a Target and looting it and attacking the capitol of the United States. Of particular concern are all of the side details. The detail that a threat assessment was not done for this protest despite knowing about it weeks in advance. The fact the police responded less strongly to this attack than they did to a protest by disabled veterans in wheelchairs and later took selfies with the attackers. The fact that insurgents carrying blue lives matter flags beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher. The detail that the person speaking to this crowd just a few hours earlier was the president of the United States.
> I recall every news outlet spending bottles of ink explaining how massive BLM protests somehow weren't spreading covid but now the capitol protests are
It's actually been reported that a covid-positive individual was clustered with members of congress during the evacuation. I don't know why you think that isn't correct to report.
I think we'll see more actions like this in the next few days. It's like when Obama set a date to allow transgenders serve in the military after he left office.
Two years ago I left IT and started my own wealth management company...and now I'm back. I can tell you, the regulations on the retail side of finance are nonsense and help no one.
Like gun control, bad actors don't care about your laws. The only people who are regulated are the honest ones, and the amount of regulation can put them out of business, or even dissuade them from being has honest as they'd like.
If RH lied about how they're compensated, then they are certainly guilty, but the harm to consumers is just the tip of the iceberg. Consider how much RH has harmed all the honest financial advisors who had to compete with a "free" service that hides their cost to consumers.
If I had lied to one client about how I was compensated, bye bye license.
That's usually how regulation works. Regulation is a moat. You want it to be really really harsh and then be one of the first few on the inside.
Because by adding a flat startup cost to an industry you make it impenetrable to upstarts. Then you can use a venture-funded company to get inside the moat. But once there are a few inside, the next person investigating will realize that if they also enter the moat everyone will be commodified. They will lose their money too.
They'll have to compete and like Thiel says in Zero to One, you don't want competition.
Regulation is good for protecting your business and for helping big companies survive upstart disruptors.
Discussing the paradox between code elegance and complexity is interesting, but then to segue into don't code for certain companies is strange.