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Finnish Politician Suggests Embedding Chips In Citizens To Protect the Welfare State
New submitter janit writes that social benefits to Finnish citizens living outside of Finland have in recent days been the cause of controversy, and links to an article which suggests just how much of a controversy: A politician from the True Finns Party, Pasi Mäenranta, is also worried about the abuse of the benefits. He published a post on Facebook, where he suggests that all Finnish citizens leaving the country be embedded with an identification chip. Sounds like a parallel system might be a popular idea with some U.S. presidential candidates, too.
So, It doesn't get to chip me. In other words over my dead body...
I guess we need a second installment of 1984 as the pace of ideas from authoritarian control freaks have exceeded Orwell's wildest nightmares.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"Mäenranta is not worried about this being a violation of privacy, since people are already willingly tracked with smartphones, Google or Facebook."
Slippery slope, indeed.
Still, I'd argue that Google does not (yet) have the monopoly on legal use of force on their side.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Revelations 13:16-17:
And he causes all, the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free men and the slaves, to be given a mark on their right hand or on their forehead, and he provides that no one will be able to buy or to sell, except the one who has the mark, either the name of the beast or the number of his name...
Just sayin', regardless of reality or fantasy, when your policy suggestion is basically the exact thing the devil does during the "end times," you might have a tough sell there.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
You're smarter than that, Finland.
>> (ID chipping) might be a popular idea with some U.S. presidential candidates, too
Do you have something to back that up? Did the Clintons go on the record back in the Hillarycare days on this or something?
There are much easier ways to make the welfare system well financed and sustainable than to get a chip into people.
This seems to be a non sequitur argument which is set to frame the political discussion in a way that it becomes a legitimate policy option.
Especially US presidential candidates....
--PM
Sounds like a parallel system might be a popular idea with some U.S. presidential candidates, too.
I'm genuinely curious. I know the knee-jerk reaction is going to be "Teh Republicanz!", but I haven't heard any suggestion from any Dem or Rep that they want to introduce this. National ID cards? Sure, there are some politicians spouting that, but chipping people like dogs is a step beyond that.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Wait...are you implying that chips are for cows?
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
He is using several arguments: we could track terrorists (== people going to Syria), we could find easily people in natural catastrophes. I think he missed one of the advantages. If everyone, including children, has a gps chip, and the data about location is stored for a reasonable amount of time (let's say 50 years, but more is possible) we will be able to find possible pedophiles if a children complains, even 50 years later!
While Marlin Perkins sits back in his Mutual of Omaha office, Jim Fowler is out in the helicopter shooting herds of Finns with tranquillizer darts and tagging them with chips after they collapse.
Way to treat people like animals. Why don't we just tattoo them, and make them wear armbands? Oh wait...
Left MS Windows for Linux Mint and never looked back!
Vote for Bernie in 2016!
The Finns Party (this is the current English name of the party!) politicians are notorious for posting stupid shit on Facebook. A few weeks ago one of their politician declared a "war on multiculturalism" on saturday wee hours and that caused a fucking massive controversy and spawned demonstrations.
The Finns party are known for their radical stances on various subjects, so this should be considered too when evaluating these posts.
And so it begins.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
My Citizen's Dividend plan has the following eligibility: all natural-born, resident, American citizens over the age of 18 receive the full Dividend.
If you weren't born here, you don't get it. This prevents an influx of gold-digging first-generation immigrants from coming to America for the free money.
If you aren't living in America, its territories, its military bases, its naval ships, or in active military deployment, you're not resident and you don't get shit. You left the country; we'll pay you to come back.
Kids don't get shit, either.
The primary risk control of the second-generation risks is a vestigial legacy welfare system: although unemployment, HUD vouchers, and food stamps mainly go away (and Social Security effectively expands), a tiny portion of those state-run welfare systems (probably consolidated into a single department, since even die hard bureaucrats aren't that ridiculous) remains running to provide welfare services to immigrants and families. This avoids paying everyone $4000 per year per child, which would have to be more money than 99% of families strictly need per child, meaning 99% of families have more spending money if they pop out welfare babies; the legacy systems hand out shit like EBT, so you can buy your kid food while we don't give you extra money for video games and drugs.
Why pay your citizens when they're not resident? If they're not resident, you shouldn't tax them; if you're not taxing their income--that is, if they both have income *and* aren't subjected to taxation--why are you providing them benefits? I write the social contract quite fragile, so you don't get benefit even if you're taxed *if* you just moved here from elsewhere, and so you don't get benefit if you leave the reach of taxes. That's harsh for some, but stabilizes the system for the vast majority; your country isn't 1/4 first-generation immigrants and half your citizens don't live outside the country (and you wouldn't have the tax basis to pay them all a welfare benefit if they did).
Leaving your country is a risk. You follow it when the opportunity risk is bigger than the threat risk.
Support my political activism on Patreon.
a passport in terms of the security it provides for "the state"? Do you think that people won't be stealing/selling the chips to others who want to be identified as Finnish citizens? Do you think that a minor surgical procedure that can be performed in any alley is going to be more secure than a printed document?
False assumption. If you don't use them and block everything related to them, it's really hard for them to track you.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
This is just a high-tech version of a universal ID system. That is what we need to oppose since you can easily extend the concept to allow for non-invasive natural ID technologies (aka biometrics) to become the "mark". That and universal surveillance.
How about we punish people who abuse the welfare system with blacklisting from it? In the US, our Office of the Inspector General for Social Security found that the Social Security Administration was committing black letter of the law violations on about 25% of the Social Security Disability payments it was awarding. That means the floor for how much corruption is 25% of all transfer payments. Send the employees involved to prison and blacklist the fraudulent recipients from receiving it, even if later they end up needing it after all. Cruel? You bet. That's a feature in dealing with welfare cheats. If they're going to cheat the current recipients who need it and the tax payers, then by God society isn't going to have a wad of cash ready for when they do need it.
I think that at least with smartphones he misses the point, when they were introduced the point wasn't to track the individual carrying the phone, it was to provide the individual with the ability to communicate and to use applications for productivity. Arguably some of the first smartphones from Qualcomm didn't even have data service, the productivity applications were entirely centered on the phone, and they were essentially Palm Pilots with a telephone function added to them.
Jump to the modern phone, and you find that if people use features that allow them to "check in" from a given location, they only use that feature when they choose to use that feature. They do not state their location everywhere they go, they use it selectively, to essentially boast, or because they earn a living through online connectedness and marketing and it is to their advantage to share far too much information with the rest of us.
As to the data communication between the handset and the carrier, that's an unfortunate necessity of the technology. The frequencies and density of users means that phones have to be tracked in order to remain in communication with them as they roam about a given area and change towers. The average cell user doesn't really understand how that technology works either, but would probably not be happy if their movements were being logged everywhere they went, an that theoretically should be privileged information between the carrier and the subscriber, as in the United States, one Federal Circuit has recently ruled.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
... Europe considers implementing a new chip-in-Finn system!
So... he's saying they're National Socialist? Hm. I want to say there's been another term for that in the past, maybe something of a contraction of the two... What could it possibly be?
It's not like it's unreported or tinfoil hat. It's straight up relevant counter points!
BTW, chipping isn't the right idea either.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
I'm all for embedding chips in politician to protect the state... oh, wait ...
I don't think our education system is a laughingstock - people fall all over themselves to attend school here. Our crappy urban and rural public schools are the laughingstock.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Then require the ex-pats to register with their local consulate or the nearest consulate or embassy that does business on behalf of Finland, and set up a regular appointment schedule that they have to keep in order to keep receiving benefits. Also consider the nature of the financial institutions that the government is willing to direct-deposit to, such that they have to be banks that don't work with groups like ISIS.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
So like Pat Buchanan? Got it.
Buchanan was parodied here with some kind of sketch suggesting installing nonremovable collars on illegal immigrants caught crossing the border. When they would attempt to cross again the collar would explode. It sounded like someone took the idea of the collars from the inmates at the beginning of The Running Man.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I don't believe an update is needed, because the tyrants don't have new ideas or plans. The implementation of the ideas is being closer to a reality does not make it a new idea.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Let's face it, the Bible is allegory and the Social Security number is the number you fear. You are marked with it at birth, and though it may not appear physically on your skin, it is embeded in your mind, and written by (in) your dominant (right) hand every time you complete a business transaction. It is essentially a permanent number which identifies you and is almost impossible to change. You are taxed through it, every business is tracked by it, every significant financial transaction requires it - to buy a house, get a car, apply for government help, collect disability or retirement benefits, even to sign up for tickets to the Masters golf tournament.
To not see that the beast has already taken over and given to embed a number in everyone is to be blind to what has already occurred. The chip isn't the problem, the chip is just a convenience. It's your participation in the entire last century of society that dooms you to hell.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Politicians need to be tagged and monitored. Bonus points if you can build remote shock capability into the tags.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Scandinavian welfare states evolved from the traditional communitarian cultures of these countries. Within this culture, the Lutheran moral code promotes helping each other out in time of need while stigmatizing freeloading.
But now Europe as a whole is facing an uncontrollable, Arizona-style flood of refugees who are not part of this culture and who do not feel restrained by the Lutheran moral code. Now Finland has its first Joe Arpaio.
"Control" makes it sound almost benign. "Those selfish bastards are trying to control us." That's something you can actually relate to as a human being, even if you oppose it. After all, it happens in the workplace every day.
Unfortunately, the reality is much less human. It's about ownership.
I can dig that. My views on this type of thing are more extreme than I admit in public, even on this board.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
Typical retail clerk, probably per store policy, in a power outage will be to say "Can't do it." Can't/won't take cash because "the computers are down". You can tote up the costs and add the tax and have exact change, but they still won't make the effort to accept it because "the computers are down".
He advocating a Citizen's Dividend of 17%. 17% of what I'm not sure, but the general idea of a citizen's dividend is that profits from government own commons, like oil drilling permits and royalities, mineral rights, timber rights, should be charged and paid out to citizens directly instead of going into government's general funds.
"Finland is beginning to sound like a shithole"
This guy belongs to a party called "True Finns". He's obviously a nazi douchebag. You have a point, though, since this party got 17.7% of the votes in the 2015 parlamentary elections, becoming the second largest one.
They want to detect Finns leaving the country at border crossings so as not to fund expatriates? Good luck with that. There are too many non monitored points one can cross the border and I doubt the RFID chips will be worth a damn once the people are out of range.
Controlling who has access to bank accounts and from where might be a better aproach. Auto deposit of benefit checks could be cut off if the account is accessed from overseas for an extended period of time.
Have gnu, will travel.
To all politicians that think chipping citizens is a good idea: Fuck you.
..and that response is: Fuck you, asshole. How about we 'embed' our collective boots in your ass, jerk? Fucking politicians, why do we even tolerate them!?
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
If dog can be micro-chipped without ethical problem, humans could be, too.
Ok, so don't have a problem then if you get stripped naked, put on a leash and chain and left outside with a bowl of water and dry dog food then?
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The first thing I thought of when I read this were the numbers that the Nazis tattooed prisoners in death camps with.
It amazes me how a politician would think its OK to even suggest this, and how he can even still keep his job.
No, I was not crapping on public schools. I send my own kids to public schools. Good, diverse, schools in a first-ring suburb.
Right across the border, the funding level is several thousand dollars less per year. Not that it matters, because funding there doubled over 10 years and outcomes did not change. It's a mix of funding, corruption, sheer incompetency, and a very difficult student population. Rural schools have similar challenges. I'm not sure how we stratified into "pro" and "con" public school camps. I don't fall into either. I think it is self-evident that we need public schools to have a workable democracy. I think that relying on property taxes has led to uneven funding that is bad on even a pragmatic level. But I'm also not going to drink the Koolaid and say that the people running the show necessarily know what they are doing. Even in "good" districts, I think that much of the reason for the good performance is an easy student population. There need to be major reforms: funding and in how the schools are run and staffed. We also need to attack the source of the difficult student populations.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
After he had one implanted, we can discuss it.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If no one scans it? OK, great, put an RFID chip in a person so they can receive State welfare while living outside the State. What difference does it make? The checks are direct deposited, who verifies the person's identity when they are /outside/ the country? Seems the simple solution is to not offer welfare to citizens who choose to not live in Finland.
Some people like to be lead around on all fours with a leash. To each his own!!
Small boys with a predilection for building protocol droids using home robot kits and pod racing will start developing a scanner to find the embedded chips in their mother's bodies to liberate them.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
McVeigh complained that the Army had implanted a microchip into his buttocks so that the government could keep track of him. [Ref 1]
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
You can have a welfare state
Or
You can have open immigration.
You cannot have both.
Personally, I'd be happier with open immigration and no welfare state. Just me. But everyone is addicted to the welfare so that means immigration has to be tightly controlled.
And here someone accuses me of not being politically correct. Politically correct is frequently idiotic. You cannot have open immigration and a welfare state. I'm not even going to explain why... its self evident. And that fact that pointing out the obvious there is politically incorrect should be a wake up call to believers in political correctness that the whole framework is useless.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Still, not impossible. How do you know if the site you are going to has Google analytics built in? Cookies and webhosts tracking their usage with Google can reveal a lot more than the "just don't use them" crowd gives them credit for.
Learn to love Alaska
Jump to the modern phone, and you find that if people use features that allow them to "check in" from a given location, they only use that feature when they choose to use that feature. They do not state their location everywhere they go, they use it selectively, to essentially boast, or because they earn a living through online connectedness and marketing and it is to their advantage to share far too much information with the rest of us.
I have Google Location History turned on, which records everywhere I go, but I do it for other reasons which include (among others):
So that my wife and a few other people I share my location with can find out where I am at any moment
So when I want to know where I was and what I did a few days ago I can look it up in my Maps timeline
So Google Now can track my location to alert me when I need to leave for appointments, etc.
Nothing to do with boasting or marketing; it's for convenience, mine and that of my family.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
That people willingly allow themselves to be tracked much of the time does not make it okay to unwillingly force them to be tracked all of the time.
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Godwin's Law! LOL. You lose, you get nothing, good day sir!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
If you look at the top 75% of students we do well. Very well with our top 25%.
But American morons are the dumbest in the world.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
It can be worked around. I haven't done this last part yet. :)
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
For every brain-dead suggestion by a politician over there, there are probably 10-50 "WTF" suggestions made by politicians here in the US. Some examples:
"Venezuela's gun laws have reduced crime by 1000 times. Lets do a ban here."
"All women who have miscarriages should be tried for murder or negligent homicide."
"Roads are socialist. If you want to drive to work, pay for the road, buy a vehicle that handles potholes, or do without."
The reason there's no links to these statements is because none of them are true.
...as prophesized
The welfare state is not a goal of itself, or should not be. This looks like the time to start breaking down the welfare state, if this is what is needed to keep it working.
Thank you, Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and so many others, for courageously defending humanity, my freedom and more!