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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: October 30th, 2023

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  • We need to reverse this. We need to make sure we only need to win once, to permenantly secure this. This is why constitutions exist. We need these types of things in there. I read that for instance Germany has article 10 of their Grundgesetz, which, (in this translation), states:

    (1) The privacy of correspondence, posts and telecommunications shall be inviolable.

    But sadly it’s being followed by:

    (2) Restrictions may be ordered only pursuant to a law. If the restriction serves to protect the free democratic basic order or the existence or security of the Federation or of a Land, the law may provide that the person affected shall not be informed of the restriction and that recourse to the courts shall be replaced by a review of the case by agencies and auxiliary agencies appointed by the legislature.

    I imagine more countries might have these half-ass measures. Laws that read '(1) X is a fundemental right and nobody can ever take it away from you. (2) except ofcourse goverment, who can do as they please’. I suppose ultimately it requires legislators to give up power, and obviously that only happens under external pressure.Currently people don’t seem to care enough to put pressure on these types of issues. I mean, if people cared, they’d move to private services, and then this would be less of an issue. It’s an issue precisely because people don’t seem to care.

    So what we need people to care temporarily, and then use the momentum to get our constitutions changed. And for that we probably need a scandal, one that’s completely outrageous, while still being quite easy to understand. I don’t know if or how this would come to pass, but I wouldn’t say it’s completely unthinkable. Perhaps we also need some books, like a modern 1984, some AI-dystopia. that atleast gets cultural elites to worry about their freedom, but preferably larger parts of society.

    Stay vigilant indeed.




  • Race to the bottom vs. race to the top. Both are happening. Some are probably competing for most delicious lemonade, but only these two capitalists can afford it and the rest of us drink their piss. The idea of competition in order to race to the top is not a bad idea, and can be usefull in some contexts. It’s just that the race to the bottom is usually omitted, or presented as a positive rather than a negative. The idea being something like:

    capitalism leads to good things, capitalism leads to people drinking piss, ergo people drinking piss is a good thing.











  • That’s why a universal basic income is a good idea. I’ve also always been very interested in anarchism. I think what it does well is that it gets people to do exactly what they think is right, it creates a society where people are motivated by their inner workings not by external power structures, and it makes sense to think there’s some untapped potential there. But I also tend to think Anarchism might be a bit naive, or far from where we are as a society right now. But UBI seems more realistic and might get us a bit further down this path than we are now. People could still work for a loan, full time or part time or whatever they want, but it becomes more realistic for people to choose to do voluntary work.





  • Ye but like I said, here in the Netherlands, and I think across Europe people will automatically think of jews being sent to extermination camps like Auschwitz. Look at the dutch wikipedia page on deportation, the second paragraph explains that the term could technically be used to for instance describe migrants who are sent back to their country of origin, but it isn’t used to describe that, because the term is so very much associated with the Holocaust, and so a different term (uitzetten) is used to avoid this intensely negative association. So you’ll understand my confusion when the term directly linked to the worst crime against humanity is here suggested to have a positive connotation. And I don’t think the Jews had much of a chance to argue against their deportations.