No. Censorship (in this context) would be Reddit somehow preventing you from establishing your own venue for communication, just like they went to the trouble and expense to do. Just because they've already done it doesn't mean that people who avail themselves of that free platform are suddenly entitled to dictating how it should operate. If you don't like, set up your own. Reddit has absolutely no ability to stop you from doing so. They cannot silence you - all they can do is try to compete (along with many, many other platforms) to be more useful to enough people so they can pay their bills and make all of their effort worth the trouble. Just like you'd do, if you wanted to bother building something useful.
Do you really not understand the concept of "free speech" exists outside of the First Amendment? The free exchange of ideas is kind of a cornerstone of western culture.
Right. And one of the most important aspects of that freedom is the freedom to communicate what YOU want to communicate, not what other people force you to communicate. You are 100% free to run your own web site so that you can communicate whatever the heck you want to. And you can't be forced to let me monopolize your private web site, at your expense, for my own agenda. Not being a slave to people with whom you disagree is the sort of cornerstone you should be thinking about.
No, "free speech" doesn't exist outside the context of the first amendment. Why? Because the first amendment's ONLY PURPOSE is to remind everyone what the government is NOT allowed to do. It doesn't define what you can do, or should do, or shouldn't do. It just limits the government's power to interfere with what you have to say, or with whom you can assemble, etc.
The first amendment is totally silent, as it should be, on whether you can choose the content, atmosphere, voices, and communication that is represented in your own publications, groups, etc. Yes, you have freedom of speech and assembly, and that doesn't mean you get to whine about someone else's editorial policies, it means your get to set your OWN editorial policies, when you go to the same trouble as someone else to set up a publication or other similar platform.
Hey, if choosing what to air isn't censorship, then choosing who to hire (and how much to pay them) isn't discrimination! It's my company! You're not entitled to a job or equal pay!
You make that sound like a bad thing. If you actually got around to running your own business, would you want to choose your own employees, or have to hire someone that's been chosen by someone else? Or someone who insists on being paid twice what your budget can afford, and you've got no choice but to pay that? What are you saying... that it's a bad thing to be able to make choices and set budgets? That if you choose one prospective employee over another, you're "censoring" the person who doesn't get the job? Of COURSE you're discriminating when you hire someone - you're making a choice between multiple people based on your criteria for who you think is going to be the best place to spend your money. Companies that don't see any difference between possible hires are generally out of business and providing NO jobs in very short order.
As for Reddit having "unlimited" room... is that really how you make your personal, ethical decisions? By the standards of billions of people around the world, you have practically unlimited personal resources. Should their preferences for how you spend your money thus trump your own? Are you being an Evil Discriminator when you take your sandwich business to one restaurant instead of another? Shouldn't you buy sandwiches from ALL restaurants just so there's sufficient Restaurant Justice? No?
Regardless, Reddit does NOT have unlimited resources. Their ability to stay online making a free service available to untold millions of people is in fact dependent on their not sliding into a morass of BS content so foul and so pronounced that rational users simply get up and go away in the face of being seen using a platform that embraces just plain evil shit. They DO have their limits, as too much of that will drive them out of the mainstream so far that they can no longer sell the ads that allow them to provide the free service everyone demands.
allow to demonstrate
You haven't demonstrated anything except sliding scale moral relativism.
"Editorial decisions" are about what someone chooses they themselves will or will not say.
So when you submit an op-ed piece to the New York Times, and they decide it's not in keeping with their plans for that day's op-ed page, you've just been censored? How about letters to the editor? Have you just been censored when they put you in with the 99% of the rest that they elect not to publish? How about when you call an NPR talk show that's on the subject of international relations, and the call screener doesn't put you on the air, because you've explained that you want to talk about the alien moon base's mind control system... have you just been censored? Is that really how you see it? Be specific.
However, a private website disallowing certain types of speech is still impinging on 'free speech'
How? Are they running that web site on the same server as YOUR web site, and using really badly written code to kill performance on that server, thus silencing the communication you're engaged in on your OWN web site? No? So how IS that private web site legally preventing you from engaging in any sort of speech you want to go out into the world and produce? Specifically.
Oh, I get it. You mean that it's wrong for them to not provide you, at their expense, a platform for anything YOU want to say to the world.
Are you actually listening to what you're saying? Them choosing what is said (or not) on their own web site IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF FREE SPEECH. Because they're getting to decide what's said with the web site they run. Just like you can decide what's said on a web site you run. See? You're both completely free to speak. Not sure how this isn't clear to you.
But that definition has no place when the context of the conversation is "free speech" - which immediately limits the scope to the first amendment's protections from government infringement, and has no bearing on private publications. And the whiners on this thread are conflating "free speech" with "nobody should be able to delete my personal rant space on Reddit" - which is complete nonsense.
Which is why it's usually called "editing," so that idiots who think a publisher is being Teh Eevil Fashists for not giving them a platform can wrap their heads around the fact that junking their troll posts is not a Free Speech issue. And that's where all of the whiners on this thread are confused. It's coming up in the context of free speech, and that isn't even on the table with private publications.
Your still a chucklehead. Deleting subredits =/= censorship in your deranged universe.
So when you write a flaming letter to the editors of the New York Times, explaining how they're complicit in hiding the fact that there is an alien base on the far side of the moon, and they choose to delete your message because they don't feel any obligation to give, at their expense, you a platform for your nonsense... you consider that censorship? Be specific.
Excellent. So there's really nothing to complain about, here. The first amendment as originally constructed and intended remains healthy in this regard, and the market economy takes care of you having places to talk about what you want to talk about. So nothing to complain about, especially when it comes a business providing you, at no charge, something you decide you no longer like.
I'm quite fine with not seeing the genitals of a man who was streaking through a stadium. But that's still censorship, and we need to acknowledge that, and consider it as such.
No, that's not censorship. That's an editorial decision being made by a private company as they choose what to include in what they publish - something that you are freely choosing to consume, or not. Their decisions have absolutely NO ability to prevent you from putting up your own web site, where all you show, 24x7, is anatomically correct sports event streakers. Censorship is when the government steps in and says you can't do that.
it always makes me laugh when some chucklehead tries to defend censorship and says censorship isn't taking place since the government is not the actor
I see. So, who is preventing you from voicing your opinions about, for example, rape and race-baiting? Is Reddit somehow preventing you from setting up a web site and hosting all the conversations you could possibly want on the subjects? No, they're not. They can't. They are unable to censor you. Censorship of your views is not taking place, and you're confused about the difference between being forced to be silent vs. having some third party not being in the mood to spend money to provide you a free platform from which to amplify your views. Amazed that you can't understand the difference, but you're in good company with a lot of other muddle-headed people. Again, please do not vote.
Defending freedom of speech means defending speech that you don't agree with.
No, defending freedom of speech means defending speech from interference by the government. It's not about controlling the editorial policies of publishers running private businesses.
Free speech has no meaning until you defend someone else's right to say something you disagree with.
Except, that's not what's going on here. We're talking about a privately run web site, not government interference with speech. If you're all about defending things you don't like, you should be defending Reddit's right to exercise whatever editorial policy they choose to put in place on their own system. Doesn't mean you won't walk away from them as a place to visit on the web, but you should be 100% behind their rights to conduct their business's editorial policy as they see fit. Because the alternative is the lefty PC police wet dream of the government forcing publishers to say what they want them to say. What you should be defending is your right to set up your OWN web site specifically to celebrate all of the stuff that Reddit is looking to have less of. Because you can. And that's what the first amendment is all about.
What YOU don't apparently get is that when we talk about "free speech," we're talking about your speech being free from government infringement. That has nothing to do with private businesses and gathering places. They have the freedom to assemble and conduct themselves as they see fit, without you telling them that they must support, for example, rape/race/kiddie forums, just because you think they should. That's the whole point. If YOU think that's the sign of freedom, YOU can run your own web site where those are the things that are celebrated.
The government isn't stepping in to say that Reddit must shut down race-baiting or fat-shaming forums. That's a personal editorial decision made by the people who actually own and operate the site. That you can't make the distinction between government limits on speech and editorial decisions made by private businesses suggests that you should really stop saying anything on the subject, because you're just poisoning the well. Also, please do not vote - you're too uneducated to do it safely.
No, inflation is a spiral in wages and prices without a change in what it is you're able to actually buy with changing dollar or hour of work. As in, today you work the same number of hours, and you buy the same exact goods and services, but the dollar amounts of both your pay and your purchases creep up.
That's not the same as the changes in productivity and innovation that allow you to work the same number of hours in the day, but now purchase a 60" LCD TV that would have cost (in terms of your time and effort to pay for it) wildly more in the past.
No county government first responder crew is going to put their people up in a used $500k helicopter. They operate these things in fleets so that there are large numbers of pilots and flight crew who are trained on the same equipment, and so that they can still operate while at least a couple of them are down on the ground being completely torn down to every wire harness for regular service.
That's why counties like the one in question don't have and don't want to get into the helicopter fleet business. That's almost always handled at the state level, where the economy of scale makes more sense.
No, a ten year old, well used, low-power police helo isn't going to ever get put to work as a county government medevac. There's a reason that contemporary medevacs are much beefier than the machine you linked to - they need a pilot, co-pilot, and crew of two, with the ability to lift two more bodies and a large pile of equipment that police copters never need to carry. Those are $10M+ machines, period.
No, no fallacy. Just a mysterious urge to stick one in plural words. It's a curious thing that some people just do, for no reason. And a good example of the sort of randomness that humans bring to working.
Buy some real helicopters, then you can get humans there to do something about the problem. You could probably get about 5 well equipped medevac equipped helicopters on the used market for $5.7 million.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, do you? No, you don't. Once decent intermediate twin medevac copter costs about $12M. Each. To say nothing of the enormous maintenance and crew costs.
Granted some part of me does wonder if maybe with computer based voting if it'd be possible to actually do a pure democracy and everybody vote on every law.
Disaster.
Democratic republics were originally simply because it was unfeasible to have a paper election so frequently
We are structured the way we are specifically to avoid the tyranny of the democratic majority.
And yet, never before, in the history of all history, has information been more readily available to voters
Which has nothing to do with the manner in which public school teachers generally think and act, or the degree to which parents are disengaged from the process. Lacking any cultural embrace of critical thinking, young people are, exposed to all of that information you're talking about, making no distinction between the useful information and the BS. Which is why people exposed to all of that information never the less keep doing things like spending money on homeopathic snake oil.
It's not the laws per se (though some, like the ACA, are atrocious at many levels). It's the low-information voters. There are plenty of cases where motivated voters who actually pay attention will vote contrary to what the money spent on the campaign would (if Lessig were right) say that they'd vote. The problem is that most of the time, voters are two dumb to actually understand the issues at stake or the consequences of their actions. Fix the dumbness, and you fix all sorts of other cultural mal-consequences (not just clumsy politics and gimme-dat laws).
Not saying that producing informed, critical-thinking-capable young people is easy, just that the payoff for doing so is huge, and not just in the area being discussed.
If there are less wear on roads (say because there were fewer cars driving on them?) then that money could be redirected to public transit.
As has been demonstrated many times, passenger cars are responsible for only a tiny fraction of the wear and tear on roadways, bridges, and related infrastructure. Freight-carrying trucks, heavier vehicles, public transit vehicles like buses and similarly sized vehicles are responsible for the overwhelming majority of road maintenance expenses. Nothing in the "make it free to ride the bus" proposal will make fewer UPS trucks on the road. In fact, if fewer people can drive, there will be even less traffic to local retailers, and ever more deliveries from places like Amazon...driving UP the road use by the heavy vehicles that actually do the damage.
Anyway, one way or another, judging from US budget it's far more probable that your tax dollars end up financing the military
Which makes it obvious you're NOT actually judging the the US budget. Because if you were, you'd see that entitlement spending dwarfs military spending. Hugely now, and monstrously over the next couple of decades.
Slashdot Mirror
No. Censorship (in this context) would be Reddit somehow preventing you from establishing your own venue for communication, just like they went to the trouble and expense to do. Just because they've already done it doesn't mean that people who avail themselves of that free platform are suddenly entitled to dictating how it should operate. If you don't like, set up your own. Reddit has absolutely no ability to stop you from doing so. They cannot silence you - all they can do is try to compete (along with many, many other platforms) to be more useful to enough people so they can pay their bills and make all of their effort worth the trouble. Just like you'd do, if you wanted to bother building something useful.
Do you really not understand the concept of "free speech" exists outside of the First Amendment? The free exchange of ideas is kind of a cornerstone of western culture.
Right. And one of the most important aspects of that freedom is the freedom to communicate what YOU want to communicate, not what other people force you to communicate. You are 100% free to run your own web site so that you can communicate whatever the heck you want to. And you can't be forced to let me monopolize your private web site, at your expense, for my own agenda. Not being a slave to people with whom you disagree is the sort of cornerstone you should be thinking about.
No, "free speech" doesn't exist outside the context of the first amendment. Why? Because the first amendment's ONLY PURPOSE is to remind everyone what the government is NOT allowed to do. It doesn't define what you can do, or should do, or shouldn't do. It just limits the government's power to interfere with what you have to say, or with whom you can assemble, etc.
The first amendment is totally silent, as it should be, on whether you can choose the content, atmosphere, voices, and communication that is represented in your own publications, groups, etc. Yes, you have freedom of speech and assembly, and that doesn't mean you get to whine about someone else's editorial policies, it means your get to set your OWN editorial policies, when you go to the same trouble as someone else to set up a publication or other similar platform.
Hey, if choosing what to air isn't censorship, then choosing who to hire (and how much to pay them) isn't discrimination! It's my company! You're not entitled to a job or equal pay!
You make that sound like a bad thing. If you actually got around to running your own business, would you want to choose your own employees, or have to hire someone that's been chosen by someone else? Or someone who insists on being paid twice what your budget can afford, and you've got no choice but to pay that? What are you saying ... that it's a bad thing to be able to make choices and set budgets? That if you choose one prospective employee over another, you're "censoring" the person who doesn't get the job? Of COURSE you're discriminating when you hire someone - you're making a choice between multiple people based on your criteria for who you think is going to be the best place to spend your money. Companies that don't see any difference between possible hires are generally out of business and providing NO jobs in very short order.
... is that really how you make your personal, ethical decisions? By the standards of billions of people around the world, you have practically unlimited personal resources. Should their preferences for how you spend your money thus trump your own? Are you being an Evil Discriminator when you take your sandwich business to one restaurant instead of another? Shouldn't you buy sandwiches from ALL restaurants just so there's sufficient Restaurant Justice? No?
As for Reddit having "unlimited" room
Regardless, Reddit does NOT have unlimited resources. Their ability to stay online making a free service available to untold millions of people is in fact dependent on their not sliding into a morass of BS content so foul and so pronounced that rational users simply get up and go away in the face of being seen using a platform that embraces just plain evil shit. They DO have their limits, as too much of that will drive them out of the mainstream so far that they can no longer sell the ads that allow them to provide the free service everyone demands.
allow to demonstrate
You haven't demonstrated anything except sliding scale moral relativism.
"Editorial decisions" are about what someone chooses they themselves will or will not say.
So when you submit an op-ed piece to the New York Times, and they decide it's not in keeping with their plans for that day's op-ed page, you've just been censored? How about letters to the editor? Have you just been censored when they put you in with the 99% of the rest that they elect not to publish? How about when you call an NPR talk show that's on the subject of international relations, and the call screener doesn't put you on the air, because you've explained that you want to talk about the alien moon base's mind control system ... have you just been censored? Is that really how you see it? Be specific.
However, a private website disallowing certain types of speech is still impinging on 'free speech'
How? Are they running that web site on the same server as YOUR web site, and using really badly written code to kill performance on that server, thus silencing the communication you're engaged in on your OWN web site? No? So how IS that private web site legally preventing you from engaging in any sort of speech you want to go out into the world and produce? Specifically.
Oh, I get it. You mean that it's wrong for them to not provide you, at their expense, a platform for anything YOU want to say to the world.
Are you actually listening to what you're saying? Them choosing what is said (or not) on their own web site IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF FREE SPEECH. Because they're getting to decide what's said with the web site they run. Just like you can decide what's said on a web site you run. See? You're both completely free to speak. Not sure how this isn't clear to you.
But that definition has no place when the context of the conversation is "free speech" - which immediately limits the scope to the first amendment's protections from government infringement, and has no bearing on private publications. And the whiners on this thread are conflating "free speech" with "nobody should be able to delete my personal rant space on Reddit" - which is complete nonsense.
Which is why it's usually called "editing," so that idiots who think a publisher is being Teh Eevil Fashists for not giving them a platform can wrap their heads around the fact that junking their troll posts is not a Free Speech issue. And that's where all of the whiners on this thread are confused. It's coming up in the context of free speech, and that isn't even on the table with private publications.
Your still a chucklehead. Deleting subredits =/= censorship in your deranged universe.
So when you write a flaming letter to the editors of the New York Times, explaining how they're complicit in hiding the fact that there is an alien base on the far side of the moon, and they choose to delete your message because they don't feel any obligation to give, at their expense, you a platform for your nonsense ... you consider that censorship? Be specific.
Excellent. So there's really nothing to complain about, here. The first amendment as originally constructed and intended remains healthy in this regard, and the market economy takes care of you having places to talk about what you want to talk about. So nothing to complain about, especially when it comes a business providing you, at no charge, something you decide you no longer like.
I'm quite fine with not seeing the genitals of a man who was streaking through a stadium. But that's still censorship, and we need to acknowledge that, and consider it as such.
No, that's not censorship. That's an editorial decision being made by a private company as they choose what to include in what they publish - something that you are freely choosing to consume, or not. Their decisions have absolutely NO ability to prevent you from putting up your own web site, where all you show, 24x7, is anatomically correct sports event streakers. Censorship is when the government steps in and says you can't do that.
it always makes me laugh when some chucklehead tries to defend censorship and says censorship isn't taking place since the government is not the actor
I see. So, who is preventing you from voicing your opinions about, for example, rape and race-baiting? Is Reddit somehow preventing you from setting up a web site and hosting all the conversations you could possibly want on the subjects? No, they're not. They can't. They are unable to censor you. Censorship of your views is not taking place, and you're confused about the difference between being forced to be silent vs. having some third party not being in the mood to spend money to provide you a free platform from which to amplify your views. Amazed that you can't understand the difference, but you're in good company with a lot of other muddle-headed people. Again, please do not vote.
Defending freedom of speech means defending speech that you don't agree with.
No, defending freedom of speech means defending speech from interference by the government. It's not about controlling the editorial policies of publishers running private businesses.
Free speech has no meaning until you defend someone else's right to say something you disagree with.
Except, that's not what's going on here. We're talking about a privately run web site, not government interference with speech. If you're all about defending things you don't like, you should be defending Reddit's right to exercise whatever editorial policy they choose to put in place on their own system. Doesn't mean you won't walk away from them as a place to visit on the web, but you should be 100% behind their rights to conduct their business's editorial policy as they see fit. Because the alternative is the lefty PC police wet dream of the government forcing publishers to say what they want them to say. What you should be defending is your right to set up your OWN web site specifically to celebrate all of the stuff that Reddit is looking to have less of. Because you can. And that's what the first amendment is all about.
What don't you get about free speech?
What YOU don't apparently get is that when we talk about "free speech," we're talking about your speech being free from government infringement. That has nothing to do with private businesses and gathering places. They have the freedom to assemble and conduct themselves as they see fit, without you telling them that they must support, for example, rape/race/kiddie forums, just because you think they should. That's the whole point. If YOU think that's the sign of freedom, YOU can run your own web site where those are the things that are celebrated.
The government isn't stepping in to say that Reddit must shut down race-baiting or fat-shaming forums. That's a personal editorial decision made by the people who actually own and operate the site. That you can't make the distinction between government limits on speech and editorial decisions made by private businesses suggests that you should really stop saying anything on the subject, because you're just poisoning the well. Also, please do not vote - you're too uneducated to do it safely.
That's called inflation.
No, inflation is a spiral in wages and prices without a change in what it is you're able to actually buy with changing dollar or hour of work. As in, today you work the same number of hours, and you buy the same exact goods and services, but the dollar amounts of both your pay and your purchases creep up.
That's not the same as the changes in productivity and innovation that allow you to work the same number of hours in the day, but now purchase a 60" LCD TV that would have cost (in terms of your time and effort to pay for it) wildly more in the past.
No county government first responder crew is going to put their people up in a used $500k helicopter. They operate these things in fleets so that there are large numbers of pilots and flight crew who are trained on the same equipment, and so that they can still operate while at least a couple of them are down on the ground being completely torn down to every wire harness for regular service.
That's why counties like the one in question don't have and don't want to get into the helicopter fleet business. That's almost always handled at the state level, where the economy of scale makes more sense.
No, a ten year old, well used, low-power police helo isn't going to ever get put to work as a county government medevac. There's a reason that contemporary medevacs are much beefier than the machine you linked to - they need a pilot, co-pilot, and crew of two, with the ability to lift two more bodies and a large pile of equipment that police copters never need to carry. Those are $10M+ machines, period.
Ah, the old "Broken Apostrophe" fallacy.
No, no fallacy. Just a mysterious urge to stick one in plural words. It's a curious thing that some people just do, for no reason. And a good example of the sort of randomness that humans bring to working.
If robot's are making such strides in productivity, what are the flesh-n-blood drones doing to deserve the pay ?
Producing and installing extra apostrophes. No robot would put one where you did - it takes a human operator to make that special leap.
And where's the pay raise for increased productivity?
Everybody in the entire economy gets that raise.
Buy some real helicopters, then you can get humans there to do something about the problem. You could probably get about 5 well equipped medevac equipped helicopters on the used market for $5.7 million.
You have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, do you? No, you don't. Once decent intermediate twin medevac copter costs about $12M. Each. To say nothing of the enormous maintenance and crew costs.
Granted some part of me does wonder if maybe with computer based voting if it'd be possible to actually do a pure democracy and everybody vote on every law.
Disaster.
Democratic republics were originally simply because it was unfeasible to have a paper election so frequently
We are structured the way we are specifically to avoid the tyranny of the democratic majority.
And yet, never before, in the history of all history, has information been more readily available to voters
Which has nothing to do with the manner in which public school teachers generally think and act, or the degree to which parents are disengaged from the process. Lacking any cultural embrace of critical thinking, young people are, exposed to all of that information you're talking about, making no distinction between the useful information and the BS. Which is why people exposed to all of that information never the less keep doing things like spending money on homeopathic snake oil.
It's not the laws per se (though some, like the ACA, are atrocious at many levels). It's the low-information voters. There are plenty of cases where motivated voters who actually pay attention will vote contrary to what the money spent on the campaign would (if Lessig were right) say that they'd vote. The problem is that most of the time, voters are two dumb to actually understand the issues at stake or the consequences of their actions. Fix the dumbness, and you fix all sorts of other cultural mal-consequences (not just clumsy politics and gimme-dat laws).
Not saying that producing informed, critical-thinking-capable young people is easy, just that the payoff for doing so is huge, and not just in the area being discussed.
You assume taxes have to be raised to pay for it.
Yes. Based on reality.
If there are less wear on roads (say because there were fewer cars driving on them?) then that money could be redirected to public transit.
As has been demonstrated many times, passenger cars are responsible for only a tiny fraction of the wear and tear on roadways, bridges, and related infrastructure. Freight-carrying trucks, heavier vehicles, public transit vehicles like buses and similarly sized vehicles are responsible for the overwhelming majority of road maintenance expenses. Nothing in the "make it free to ride the bus" proposal will make fewer UPS trucks on the road. In fact, if fewer people can drive, there will be even less traffic to local retailers, and ever more deliveries from places like Amazon ...driving UP the road use by the heavy vehicles that actually do the damage.
Anyway, one way or another, judging from US budget it's far more probable that your tax dollars end up financing the military
Which makes it obvious you're NOT actually judging the the US budget. Because if you were, you'd see that entitlement spending dwarfs military spending. Hugely now, and monstrously over the next couple of decades.