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J. P. Barlow — Internet Has Broken the Political System
MexiCali59 recommends an account up at Hillicon Valley on a speech by John Perry Barlow to the Personal Democracy Forum in New York. "The deluge of information available on the Web has made the country ungovernable, according to EFF co-founder John Perry Barlow. 'The political system is broken partly because of Internet,' Barlow said. 'It's made it impossible to govern anything the size of the nation-state. We're going back to the city-state. The nation-state is ungovernably information-rich.' ... Barlow said there is too much going on at every level in Washington, DC, for the government to effectively handle everything on its plate. Instead, he advocated citizens organizing around the issues most important to them. 'There is a circle of fat around the Beltway that is incredibly thick. We can no longer try to run this country from the center. We've got to run it, just like the Internet, from the edges.' Barlow also said that President Barack Obama's election, driven largely by small donations, has fundamentally changed American politics. He said a similar bottom-up structure is needed for governing as well. 'It's not the second coming, everything won't get better overnight, but that made it possible to see a future where it wasn't simply a matter of money to define who won these things. The government could finally start belonging to people eventually.'"
But they can also find the opposite. Just because it's on the internet doesn't make it factual.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
The growth of government is directly tied to the growth of corporations. If you consider governments and corporations in the same category, here are the top 20 by revenue:
US (Federal)
Japan
Germany
France
China
Italy
UK
Brazil
Canada
Royal Dutch Shell
Exxon Mobil
Spain
Netherlands
Wal-Mart
Russia
Australia
Saudi Arabia
BP
Norway
Sweden
Now, tell me, if BP had been at the top of this listen, what would have the outcome of this current situation have been? Or a better question: what would Nigeria be able to get BP to do about a disaster like this, given the entire budget of their government is half of BP's annual profit.
While corporations exist in their current form, governments must always exist that are larger. Otherwise we're _really_ screwed.
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So you'd be okay if the south brought back slavery?
Having lived in "the South" my entire life, every time I see someone ask this question it makes me want to scream.
What the fuck do you think is keeping people "down here" from keeping slaves? Laws? Bullshit. How about it's morally extremely disfuckingtasteful and something that is a stain on the history of our country?
How about that people and their morals change?
How about common decency and respect exist down here in the "backwards as shit" south that a lot of people seem to think is one step away from becoming a bunch of drooling breeding idiots? Christ, people, WE'RE THE SAME AS EVERYONE ELSE. WTF?
Sent from your iPad.
Jim Crow segregation was institutionalized in Plessy v. Ferguson. Plessy is a case where the State of Louisiana passed a racist law, and after the case was argued, the State upheld the racism - it's not a private property matter. As a result of the 7-1 decision, the racists had the power of the federal government at their hands, telling the people that separate but equal was not just an option, but a mandated federal policy.
This is where people argue against "libertarian policies" when the reality is that government institutionalizes racism. Plessy is not the only case; the "war on drugs" is an equally vile racist policy that the US uses to discriminate against minorities and impose uneven punishments towards certain races. It's hard to argue that the government protects the people from racism when there are documented cases of the government making that racism law and upholding it through the use of force.