Railey2 wrote:
not over everything. Free speech is a core value for the left as well.
I want to make some arguments for governmental control then.
This is why governmental control is needed. The notion that a free market regulates itself is simply wrong. This has been demonstrated multiple times, often with horrible consequences. When you give people too much freedom, they will find a way to exploit that to fuck others over for their own benefit. People are too scummy to be allowed to be completely free, all the time. An instance like the government is needed to keep things under control, within reasonable boundaries.
This doesn't mean the government controls everything. Personal choices that don't affect others, aka most choices about your personal life, aren't affected. Saying that the government wants to control everything is insane. Governmental control realistically won't interfere with most parts of your life.
You only hear of it if you are in a position of power, such as an employer. That's when the government checks up on you, to see that you don't fuck people over.
Similarly, the government also doesn't want you to fuck yourself over. You can't just go "oooh I just won't get sick, so I don't need healthcare, haha! My children also won't need healthcare cause they won't be sick!" And then you break your leg and can't pay your bills because you don't have insurance.
People need to be protected from their own choices too, sometimes. It's the compassionate thing to do. It's like a benevolent parent that tells you to not be an idiot.
What irks me is that people pretend freedom is a good thing. It's not. Freedom can be a horrible thing, because it gives people the opportunity to hurt others or themselves. There needs to be a balance between freedom and control, if you want anything to work.
Again, this doesn't mean that everything is controlled.
Having a state controlled curriculum that is up to date goes without saying, otherwise you run danger of having creationist bullshit being taught in public schools.
I think it's a real problem that people spout bullshit over the value of freedom without second thought. Freedom isn't good by itself, it never was. And it surely can't fix super complex, multi-layered problems.
To conclude this post: I think that holistic arguments like this one are pretty useless in general. It's a lot more useful to look at single regulations/laws, and see what they want to control, for what purpose they want to control it, if they can be expected to fulfill this purpose, and lastly if the purpose is good.
Everything else seems like a waste of time. When you break down an argument like I just described, I don't think that the left and the right would disagree as often as they might think. There is a lot of potential for common ground.
Free speech is not a core value of the left. The people who I always hear who want to get rid of free speech are leftists. They claim that some speech is classified as 'hate speech', and since they can apply their arbitrary definition of 'hate speech' on anything they don't like, it destroys the concept of free speech. This will tie into my further points about government control.
No, the actions of one company to not necessitate government control. I've heard multiple times already of the same pills being developed for a small fraction of the cost. That is the free market in action, you just fail to comprehend the way in which the free market can solves problems and thus your instinctive reaction is 'the government has to regulate it'. No, it has not 'been demonstrated multiple times' that a market can't exist without regulation, a genuine free market has never existed.
And yes, government control has a MASSIVE effect over everything in our lives. Your income, the economy, what media you consume, your ability to travel, what items you can acquire, how safe your environment is, your right to defend yourself... everything. If you don't believe me, people in America have been forced to shut down lemonade stands because they did not have a 'permit' and a business license. Your claim is utterly false.
Now there is another claim I really hate: people are too stupid to have responsibility over themselves and their family. They must be coddled by a nanny state. Ridiculous. People should not be forced to buy healthcare or insurance. People should not be forced to give away cash not only to the government to pay for other people's mistakes, but to a mandatory retirement fund. This is the government overstepping its bounds and interfering with people's freedom to make their own decisions. People should be allowed to make mistakes, and also they should suffer the consequences of their actions. It should be up to a person to look after their own self preservation and further their own interests, the state's job is to protect people from outside harm. If you suddenly decide it is the state's job to protect them from themselves, the suddenly nothing is off limits. In your position, the state should ban tobacco because it does no good and only causes harm. In fact, something doesn't need to be dangerous, it only needs to
appear to be dangerous to be banned. In Australia, many things are banned because of this. Throwing stars are banned, likely because of their appearances in ninja movies, despite being on of the least dangerous 'weapons' out there. A type of kelp that is essential to Japanese cooking is banned, because it is high in iodine and one pregnant women ate high amounts of it every day and got sick and miscarried.
And before you tell me 'bla bla every policy should be considered for its own merits', that's not how democracy works. Logical arguments are worthless in the face of mass hysteria and emotional arguments. Once you concede your rights to the state, you are at the mercy of the tyranny of the majority, you are at mercy of the whims of politicians, without effective means to fight back. This is the case for everything. Once you give the government direct control over the education of an entire nation, you open up the means for the government to push ideological propaganda and subversive teachings that further the state's interests.
You say 'people are inherently irresponsible and need to be controlled'. How does that makes the the ones governing us any better? how does that make the majority from which our democracy is supposedly controlled any better? The fact that people can be bad is the sole reason that centralised power is BAD not GOOD. Because people can abuse their power and affect millions. Unlike your dubious claims of tyranny under a free market, we have many examples throughout history of the state being tyrannical, and killing millions of its own citizens. An yet you argue that the state should be given more power over us.
This is the reason one must have unalienable rights and I can make absolute statements about the jurisdiction of the government. If you give an inch they will take a mile. Giving away your rights is a slippery slope to tyranny, and don't say 'that could never happen to my government'.
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." -Benjamin Franklin
The left and right have a similar purpose, the betterment of society. The difference is the method they try to achieve that purpose. The left has a simplistic and often emotional view of things; "to make people less poor, give them money"; "the only way to stop this behaviour is to use the force of the state"; "some people got hurt by something, therefore it must be banned/regulated". The right understands that things are more complicated than that.
Rasberriel wrote:
If you can't see how accusing an entire demographic (that has already been accused of mounds of other shit for centuries) of being "pedophile apologists" is bad, then there's really no point in continuing this. And I haven't even touched on the fact that even the assumptions she used to make that claim are flawed. But yeah, whatever, keep defending YouTube comments.
Who's fault is it that the Jews have been accused of shit thought out the centuries and have been kicked out of pretty much every country they have inhabited at some point or another?
Railey2 wrote:
another example for my claim that freedom isn't always good: Journalism that is solely after money instead of promoting honest argument to confront serious topics, quickly turns into something akin to buzzfeed, fox news, or this. There are easier ways to make money on the free market, after all. If there is nobody to hold journalists to a standard, the quality of overall media will plummet sooner or later.
Who could hold journalists to a standard? The government. For example by implementing laws that state that you aren't allowed to misrepresent political arguments on purpose to influence your readership in a certain way, etc.
Another example of how you can't understand simple concepts of the free market. If people are sick of the MSM lying to them, they will watch alternative outlets. And this has happened a lot recently. If people want to watch news that parrots their own views on matters, then they will. Regulating the media is a horrible idea and violates freedom of press. This is happening recently as right wing sites have been attacked for 'fake news'. Censorship under any other name would small as sweet.
Also, your bias is showing when you insult Fox News despite the left wing media outlets being a lot worse.
the point is, it should not up to the people. It should be up to a third party organization that hopefully consists of unbiased, qualified people, who can tell the difference between fair coverage and blatant dishonesty.
There are many instances where news stations straight out lied about the facts. Take for example climate change, or creationism. As soon as you call yourself a news agency, or seek to fulfill the same function under a different name, you should under no circumstance be allowed to lie about clear facts.
Now this sounds pretty radical, so let's put it a different way:
There are two extremes.
1) People just say whatever they want. We have creationism being taught in public schools, news stations just report whatever they like, some of them still try being honest but most just pander to their audience and feed them with the information they want to hear. Nobody is being held to a standard, facts don't matter, it's just everyone living in his own echo chamber.
2) A government that has all the tools to censor opinions on national TV and elsewhere, if they deem them unfitting. Even though the tools were meant to enforce something that may look like this, it is easy to see how such power could be abused pretty quickly.
I believe that the the US is approaching the former in a frightening speed. People already talk about our days being a supposed "post-fact-era", and I believe there is a lot of truth in that, simply because nobody is holding the media to a standard.
Standards are important in journalism, they are immensely important, but currently there are no ramifications if you simply break every golden rule known to journalism. There needs to be an authority that can take the role of a governing instance, otherwise every country will slowly but surely approach the post-fact-era, just like the US is doing now.
And I bet you that this authority will not be the public. The public cares more about its own biases and indoctrinated beliefs than about facts and honest journalism, unless you make them care.
However, we can't have the second extreme either. Free speech is important, but so is the truth. There needs to be some sort of balance. I wouldn't know how exactly that balance can be achieved, I just know that it is very important to not arrive at either extreme.
as i said, balance is key. The left is definitely in favour of more governmental control, but nobody wants a dystopian future where everything is censored and controlled.
And no, my views on creationism and climate change denial aren't opinions. It's a fact that climate change is real and that the world is older than 6k years. Those are facts. It's important to get this distinction right. Teachers that teach their students wrong things about the world shouldn't be teachers. News anchors that blatantly lie shouldn't report on the news.
That's one of the worst statements I've heard this year. You think you can get a team of unbiased, qualified people to dictate the media? Ridiculous. You can never prevent corruption and personal bias when you give people tool like this.
And I've already said, evolution and climate change are not facts. They might seem very likely given the evidence, but that does not make them a fact. A fact is something like 'the sky is blue'. I'm not interested in debating the probability that these things are true. What is important is that there is a possibility that they are not. And that's why free speech is so important, sometimes the minority of voices telling the majority that they are wrong are actually right. Instead of being extremely dogmatic and censoring people who want to promote their point of view through a public broadcast, just engage in civil discourse. People will believe what they want to believe. Censoring or regulating the media will never result in more truth.
Funny that I hear you using the word 'post-truth', I read a newspaper article about it a couple of days ago. Basically it comes down to people, and by people I mean left-wingers, who use this term to imply that the people who disagree with them are ignoring the 'facts'. I think left wing people are ignoring the facts and truth, but I'm not trying to shutdown left wing sites because I don't think they are correct.
You keep saying you don't want a 'dystopian future of government control', except that's exactly the result of what you're arguing for. You're the one who naively thinks the people in power, i.e. the government can regulate itself when given authority over everyone.
Railey2 wrote:
well d'uh free speech is already restricted in many places and nobody would even think of suggesting something else. He's acting as if only the liberal party has an interest in respecting free speech, but actually.. every single party known to me does.
If you have cancer and you go to the hospital, the leading surgeon can't just go: "Hey man guess what you don't have cancer after all now go home to your kids and don't worry about it anymore!"
That's illegal. He is not allowed to lie to you because that would have horrible consequences. It's a restriction of free speech.
Freedom of speech isn't always something positive, but people get indoctrinated to a point where they just go against everyone who claims otherwise, without second thought. I bet B1rd internalized the equation freedom = good so much, he will just discard my comment without reading it a second time.
(on a side note, a "theory" is often an immensely well supported fact, in scientific lingo. Like the theory of gravity, or the theory of evolution)
More like you have internalised the the word freedom to mean chaos and violence without understanding why it is a good thing. And you don't understand the concept of freedom of speech either. It's not the same as medical misconduct, like what is in your example. It relates to the idea that people should be able to espouse ideas and concepts without retaliation from the government. And every government that is taken part in indoctrination has censored speech. When you try to stop 'indoctrination' (i.e. people with different ideas) it quickly can turn into you becoming the ones indoctrinating people.
You don't have a 100% guarantee for anything in life. If your standards for what constitutes a fact are so high that you think it is valid to ignore decades of well-founded research, then facts might as well not exist in your world.
That's what people mean by "post-fact-era". When you say "hey, only because scientists talk about it doesn't mean it's true", as if that's a valid excuse for believing something that is completely unsupported instead of acting as if the vastly more likely option is true, then every rational discussion becomes completely useless.
News anchors have an obligation to the public, just like doctors or teachers do. It is their duty to inform the public. News HAVE to be factual, otherwise they aren't news.
If someone is casting a talkshow, that's a different issue, but news channels? Just look at fox news, or even CNN recently. The public forgot what makes facts facts, and more importantly, they forgot to care about facts. I accredit this partially to the criminal neglect of the media outlets. This is what we get when we don't have an authority putting its foot down to hold people to a set standard. You'll get a country with lots of dishonest, biased and simply stupid people. I can't stress this enough: Holding the media to a standard is immensely important. Restricting free speech is important.
Holding to media to standards is good. Censorship is not. Expose them and call them out on it if they lie about facts. Facts are something like "the black guy did not have a gun' when it is shown clearly on film that he did. Like I have already said, 'decades of well founded research' does not constitute a fact and is not valid grounds for censorship regardless of how likely you think the theories are. I don't care if there is a 0.0000001% chance that something is incorrect. The possibility that it might be wrong is enough justification for people to be able to espouse skeptical views.
And even if something was a 100% fact, telling people that they can't talk about or teach creationism in private schools is a violation of religious freedom.
RoseusJaeger wrote:
That doesn't mean anything unless you have cold, hard evidence for the claims. That's why conspiracy theories often stay are just that, a theory. It may be possible and may some convincing arguments but that doesn't make it fact.
Regardless of how plausible some theories (or 'hypothesises' for our autistic friends here) are, a lot of people write them off simply because they sound too extreme to be real. Some Conspiracy theories are speculations of mentally unstable people, which they have a stereotype for being, but this clouds the fact that some have some solid evidence for.
EneT wrote:
You clearly didn't read or understood the entire discussion
Forgive me but it seemed like a whole lot of uninteresting arguments on semantics.