What Maddox doesn't seem to understand is that "raising awareness" is the only way you win these battles long term in a democracy. For example, gay marriage is slowly becoming a reality because over the last 20 years gays have opened people's eyes to their plight. Once a cause becomes a moral issue for most Americans it wins. But most people have no idea what us tech geeks are bitching about so we have to educate them about our causes. And that is exactly what yesterday was about.
One of the problems in the American political culture is that wealthy interests set the terms of the debate, and the mass media goes along with that frame of reference, which means that certain political perspectives are dismissed as not worth considering before they even make their case.
The Occupy Wall Street protests and the “Internet strike” were both successful because they changed the terms of the debate. In the former case, the mass media, which had spent months obsessing over deficit deficit deficit, suddenly took notice of income inequality, and Romney’s Republican primary opponents started attacking him over his vulture-capitalist history. In the latter case, the fact that there was opposition to SOPA/PIPA, and that these opponents are not just “pirates”, finally became mainstream front-page news.
These are not legislative victories in and of themselves, but they are significant. The proper reaction is not “in the big scheme of things this is a small victory, so don’t feel smug about it” but “in the big scheme of things this is a small victory, so let’s build on it to go on to bigger victories”. Rome wasn’t sacked in a day.
If we set the terms of the debate, we didn't do a great job. We protested an "anti-piracy bill" according to the paper of record. Surely those are the sponsors' terms...
I understand that my age puts me in the minority here at Hacker News, but anyone who has ever followed anything I've said here knows that I really believe that's just a detail, not a real issue...I don't care as much about who you are as what you do and how you treat others.
I grew up in the U.S. in the 1960's and it was a very different time for all kinds of reasons. The biggest difference of all had little to do with money, technology, or superficial lifestyle; it had to do with state of mind. Like all young generations, we were confused and didn't understand why things were the way they were. So, with lots of energy and spare time, we took action...
We protested, we marched, we did whatever we thought it took to affect change. We took the side of the oppressed: blacks, women, gays, the poor and homeless, the environment, and most of all, we protested an illegal and immoral war. We ended the war and we changed the world.
It's great to see that some things haven't changed: young people still find a way to channel their resources to try to make things better, but here's the problem: All I see with this worldwide Occupy movement is people complaining, "Where's mine?" It seems like it's all about "me", not "us".
That's why these SOPA protests are so refreshing to me. It's the first thing I've noticed in years that reminds me of my youth, not so much in action, but in spirit. People have taken a few minutes to stop worrying about themselves to do something about the greater good for all of us.
But the spirit of modern times prevents us from doing enough. We will take action so long as it doesn't cost us too much. Where is the sacrifice? Where is the "put your money where your mouth is"? I love the way OP points this out.
I'm proud of Wikipedia. Craigslist came close, forcing its users to work to get to their local pages. But too many, like Google, just wimped out. All their black banner said was, "We care, but not that much."
Listen to OP! For just a few minutes, fuck the "stake holders", the "money managers", the "players", the "metrics", the "ROI", and the "bottom line". Can't we just once pretend that it's 1968, and stop giving a shit about ourselves long enough to realize that a couple of extra bucks today will soon be worthless in a world going to shit if we don't do something about it? Only when we demonstrate the passion that comes from true sacrifice will the "normals" really take notice.
In Britain, liberalism was architected primarily by people who were part of our very old establishment. The decriminalisation of homosexuality was achieved largely by the work of Lord Wolfenden, Lord Pakenham and Arthur Gore (8th Earl of Arran). The same goes for most of the political changes we associate with modernity and progress - with the notable exception of Bevan and his peers, the people turning the wheels were mainly minor aristocrats in dusty tweed. A great many of the most significant changes were made contrary to public opinion, the most obvious being the abolition of the death penalty - a policy which most Britons still oppose.
The boomers credit themselves with having changed the world when they were young, broke and essentially powerless, but deny any credit to the generation that constituted the establishment at the time. Conversely, now that they control the majority of capital, make up the biggest electoral demographic and holds most of the elected offices, they deny responsibility.
The most destructive act of the baby boomers was creating a culture in which the individual is seen as having supremacy over the institution. The consequences are obvious and stark - a political system with single-digit approval ratings, where nobody feels represented and nobody feels responsible. A political culture defined not by fundamental ideological allegiance and difference, but by special pleading. There's no such thing as a socialist anymore, no such thing as a conservative or a trade unionist, just people with opinions. America always pretended to be classless but Britain has gone the same way, preferring the egoistic fantasy of an egalitarian society over the reality of one where power and wealth and privilege are still very much in force.
We're trapped in a solipsistic nightmare, where conspiracy theories have replaced an understanding of social power. Until the people who are in charge actually admit that they are in charge, we're fucked.
Occupy movement at its heart is a fight to wrest control of the world from baby-boomers, who are now old and selfishly willing to burn everyone else to protect their benefits.
The Occupy movement is about exactly the opposite of "me." It is primarily about the growing disparity in wealth and power, and how that disparity hurts everyone (including the 1%). A little disparity is fine. It gives us something to aspire to. Occupy's message is that the balance of wealth and power has shifted too far away from the reach of aspirations.
This societal passiveness isn't accidental: it has been deliberately engineered in North America. The documentary "The Century of the Self" breaks this down better than anything else I've seen/read. There is also, within activist circles, the belief in a mythical version of history in which pacifism, isolated from militance, is what catalyzed change in the past.
Regarding the self-interest of the young, it's a rational thing. If young people today weren't saying "where's mine" then they'd be stupid. During the baby boom there were decent jobs because globalization hadn't happened yet and corporations still had to rely on domestic labor. Reliance on domestic labor also means the elite values having decent public institutions, which strengthen the labor force. Now not only do we have globalization but also systematic looting. Young people get to look forward to having it significantly worse economic prospects than their parents.
I was in downtown Toronto on February 15, 2003, freezing my ass off in a protest march of nearly 100,000 people who were, in turn, part of a global march of between 10 and 20 million people protesting the invasion of Iraq. It was the single biggest protest in history, and it was against a war that hadn't even started yet.
Popular protest against the Vietnam War didn't take off until the war had been grinding for several years.
Can anyone back up his comment about recycling with any indisputable or at least convincing evidence/statistics?
"Even if you, your neighbors, and everyone you've ever met recycled everything and reduced your waste output to zero, it wouldn't even make an observable impact on overall waste production in the world. Household waste and garden residue account for less than 3% of all waste produced in the US. That's less than the average statistical margin of error, and most people don't even come close to producing zero waste."
I've always suspected that this is correct, but I'd like to be able to back that up with some evidence.
The fraction of the total waste stream that you can affect is irrelevant when deciding whether to recycle. Any single industrial waste creator could make the same argument-- my company only creates 0.001% of the waste stream, so it doesn't matter what I do. This has to be wrong, because we know that the total outcome is nothing other than the aggregated behaviors of all of us, and the total outcome matters.
The important question is whether the impact of recycling the waste you create is a net gain or loss, after you take into account all the work needed to do the recycling. From an energy perspective, most recycling is a massive saver of energy [1], but that doesn't mean it's economical. England, for example, imports a lot of glass, but does very little glass manufacturing. Recycling glass there is probably not a valuable service, but that says nothing about its value where you live (unless you happen to live in England).
Waste stream sorting technology is still developing; I wouldn't be surprised if that reduces costs in the future such that sorting waste in your house isn't worth it-- you'll just dump everything in the bin and let robots pick out the valuable stuff later.
[1]: http://www.economist.com/node/9249262 (Money quote: "Recycling aluminium, for example, can reduce energy consumption by as much as 95%. Savings for other materials are lower but still substantial: about 70% for plastics, 60% for steel, 40% for paper and 30% for glass.")
I've seen some estimates saying that the total percentage of waste coming from households can be as lows as 2%, depending on how you count. For example, this cites an EPA study: http://www.zerowasteamerica.org/Statistics.htm
The same page mentions a higher bound of 20%, but in any case it seems reasonably well established that the vast majority of the waste produced (at least in the US) comes from the manufacturing/industrial process itself, not from households.
A book that goes into quite a bit of detail about this is "Gone tomorrow" by Heather Rogers.
97% of waste is industrial? That's pretty shocking to me. I wonder what part of this waste is from production of our cherished technological gadgets and computer equipment, replacing the gadgets of yester-year. Which are generally still working fine, but are replaced by something incrementally better...
I highly doute it. Im from Switzerland and we do alot of recycling. In our 3 person household we probebly reduce garbage produced by more then 50%. Switzerland is small but if everybody did this spezially ameria it would make much more then a statisticall margin error.
Of all the daily garbage we seperate out:
paper
carton
organic stuff (compost)
batteries
cans
Plastic bottle
glas
There are a lot of interesting responses to this comment but I think the whole percentage of waste thing is a red herring. As household waste is recycled it extends the life of landfills around populated ares significantly which means that the current landfills have a longer life and thus a higher current value from local government perspectives. This has a very significant impact on how much is invested in keeping them from polluting groundwater as well as preventing new landfills from occupying otherwise usable space.
This argument alone is enough to justify residential recycling programs, they do help the local environment (the environment most would regard as most important to themselves) and waste reduction comes close to paying for itself in saved municipal costs (which would be reflected in local taxes). In places where energy costs are high and land very valuable recycling makes economic sense without any concern for the environment.
Related point: I think it's unfair to entirely separate manufacturing waste from household waste. I think it's more about the combined waste generated in the production and consumption of household goods.
What I hate about recycling is that it's so much less effective than the other r's: reducing and reusing. I wish the focus was much more on those two; think of the impact possible if consumers just demanded less packaging, for example.
Maddox is a polemicist. He actively enjoys and cultivates such a persona and to what end? It seems to me his goal is to play devil's advocate as a kind of link bait. What I've seen of his work is pointedly provocative in an intentionally non-PC way. However I don't feel that simply being clever, and holding points of view that are seemingly diametrically opposed to the mainstream, is actually an effective way to effect change.
For instance, in this particular article, Maddox claims that we need a "spark to light the lazy tinder". There is here an implicated false dichotomy where either some draconian legislation passes, e.g. SOPA, and everyone "wakes up" or no other efforts will prove progressive. I don't buy it. In fact, I don't buy any argument that makes the claim that due to the current state of political economy we are unable to see the kinds of changes we want without total and complete revolution. I feel it's absurd to dismiss efforts such as yesterday's which net results that include some 13 new senators opposing the bills.
"The same could be said about DMCA, when it was passing. It just made everyone used to even more abuse."
Bingo.
Stopping legislation before it gets passed is the way to go. It's extremely difficult to get laws rescinded or overridden.
And what would make anyone think a few websites getting taken down by the Feds would cause some sort of massive street protest? Our government has done some awful things in the last ten years involving war, torture and civil liberties and most people couldn't care less. Even when there were massive protests over Iraq, they were ignored.
Nice sentiment, but I think boycotts are way less effective than many of the alternatives he discards. In this system, you change a congressman's mind and there's only two ways to do that: pour on the outrage, or contribute more money.
Tongue in cheek, I think there is another alternative: the tech industry could simply buy the movie companies. Some of them are certainly sitting on enough cash.
> There are a number of publishers on this list, including my own publisher. If the consensus I get from readers is that we should boycott publishers, I'll support the boycott even though it hurts me.
As much of an asshole as he is, I've always respected the guy for his shocking lack of hypocrisy.
If movie producers had the decency to make this kind of public stand, things might be different.
It's unfortunate that the companies he outlines to boycott (the ones marked in yellow) are the ones with the most legitimate complaints about counterfeiting.
The word "piracy" is unfortunate, mixing up Hollywood's complaints about bit-for-bit originals being available, and, for example, Chanel's complaint about fake Chanel being manufactured and sold "mail-order" online through offshore commerce sites.
Chanel and the like do need (but already have) protection by the law against counterfeit sales. They don't have a right to be protected for legacy distribution models. For example, Chanel shouldn't have a right to a law that says since existing Chanel stores only ship UPS Ground, any store shipping FedEx Overnight should be taken offline.
A bill for "Stop Counterfeiting" would be better focused on the actual problem, instead of stigmatizing the medium or channel ("online").
He isn't necessarily saying that the yellow ones are the ones to target, just that they're easiest to boycott. I am boycotting all of them right now, for instance, purely coincidentally, since I don't buy makeup or watch sports on TV.
You really should read all of it before commenting on it. His point is that stopping SOPA is meaningless because it will simply be tried again. "It has to get worse before it gets better".
The problem with boycotts is that they perpetuate the same logic which led to SOPA - that people are consumers before they are citizens and that the persons who matter politically are corporate, not flesh and blood.
Most of the societies of today are broken, and western countries lead the way. Deep individualism and consumerism (I spend therefore I am) is the cause of the current state of the affairs however these are also result of weak communities and bond between people. The societies of old times that is belittled by modern man had much stronger bonds among themselves.
Although today's current communication means help spread the word to some extent but unfortunately most are filtering the real issues. Although internet gave a bit of hope that these filters could be subverted but legislations like SOPA, which I believe many look a likes will follow, unfortunately will smother free speech (take the most broader possible definition) eventually. Countries under dictatorships easily squash it but in "free" world it is censored by ignoring it. Why and how? Concentration of wealth to a few. I don't blame them because it is nature of things, they seek perpetuating their rule.
You can argue on some fact stated in the article, however it is irrelevant. The gist of this article is that the lack of inaction, conformism, and individualism cost societies a lot. 5K+ US soldiers, 1M+ iraqi citizens died for a bomb that did not exist (that is how they sold the war to you and then they mocked about it). How could this have happened in a "free" and "democratic" society. Anyone care to explain? How could a moron like George Bush could be elected in the first place in a country like US anyway?
I am sorry but he is right, as long as we are who we are SOPA, PIPA and other legislations with alphabet soup names will follow and tire you.
Form a group, pick a person in a 'safe' seat, preferably a senator as those are pretty much the safest seats out there, and get them unelected over this issue. Ensure the issue gets media coverage as to your group.
Anything else will do pretty much nothing. In two years get someone else unelected.
Diane Feinstein would be a perfect target, she represents the valley, has been in the Senate forever, and won the last election by a HUGE margin. If you could get her unelected you would put everyone else on notice.
The reality of the situation is that this won't happen. There is no permanent solution because everything is triangulated and marketed so well that it's virtually impossible to change it. People pass this legislation because no one cares and whatever negative ads get run during the 30 days before the election matter far more than anything else and quite frankly most people will be more upset about THEIR pet issue than YOUR pet issue.
If you could get Google or Wikipedia, etc to focus solely on getting ONE person unelected then it would show clout. But they won't because it would cause such a shitstorm of unimaginable proportions because 1/3 of their user base votes for her party no matter what they do, and 1/3 dislikes both parties and something about keeping politics free from corporate influence, which is something both parties agree on unless that influence comes in the form of campaign contributions, PACs, lobbyists, etc.
You've got a political system in which no one cares about habeas corpus. If they don't care about that then they aren't going to give a shit about dismantling the internet. Bread and circuses my friend.
Exactly what Maddox suggests, don't buy their products. This is about counterfeit goods, and access to cheap competition.
Its nothing but building protectionist markets, the same ones most western nations have been fighting for the last hundred years because they entrap people, prevent competition, cause monopolies, and abuse customers. Its against the free markets, which (problems of market abuse aside) is getting money into developing economies and helping people. Its a great step backwards world economics and trade.
So hit them where it hurts, they are obviously scared of the new markets enough to try and outlaw them. Take 30 minutes out of your day to write a letter to a company and explain to them you are disgusted, they have lost a customer, and you will from now on buy counterfeit goods instead of theirs.
I will be doing my part by downloading all the mp3s I want, I'll go see the shows in person to make sure the artists get there dues, and I'll wait to see these middle men slowly fade... but I'm sure we are only about to see fireworks start, theres going to be some big noise as some of these guys go down.
However, the article suggests that if some terrible legislation passed it would ignite people into real action. That clearly failed to happen when the Patriot Act was passed. I'm sure there are many more examples. If the discourse surrounding legislation convinces enough people not to care (or fails to make it into wider public awareness), then there doesn't seem to be much standing in its way.
Vote with your wallet. Stop buying or consuming content from the IP mafia and convince others to do so. Don't buy records, especially don't listen to Spotify (all the money goes directly to the record labels, etc, almost none to the artists), don't go to the movie theater or buy movies, stop watching TV. The money you give (directly or indirectly through ads) to the MAFIAA racket will be spent on lobbying counterproductive laws. And then stop pirating that stuff, so you won't be a part of the statistics that are given to the politicians to convince that piracy is harmful.
Sounds difficult? Maybe. I did this, I stopped watching TV in 1999, going to the movies in 2001 and listening to music in 2006. The content I would have wanted wasn't (and still isn't) available at a price and terms that I could accept, so I don't want it. Not that I paid for the media I consumed, I pirated most of the stuff. But I don't want to be a part of the piracy statistics to give excuses for killing the internet.
I still enjoy music, though. Maybe even more now that I'm not constantly listening to it so the rare occasion when I do hear music, it sounds better. I do allow myself exceptions every now and then but most of the time I don't consume MAFIAA products or feel like I'm missing anything.
At minimum, a patch to the legislative system that requires actual voters' opinions (and not just lobbyist voters, but rather a statistically-random sampling) somewhere along the track to getting bills passed, even if it's just as a veto.
Preferably, though, a more complete restructuring of the legislative system that more tightly constricts what an individual bill can do (so nothing can be "tacked on" to anything else), requires that bills expire and must be re-evaluated after some period, and perhaps enables something equivalent to the "double-jeapordy" condition of the judicial system, where once a bill has been rejected for containing particular offensive clauses, no bill may then be introduced from then on if it contains those clauses or anything which would be equivalent in effect to them.
Create mini congresses for subcommittees. For stuff that's absolutely massive, Congress does a relatively good job of threshing out the issues. They have real debates in the public eye. For smaller issues, it's farmed out to subcommittees, who put the legislation together in back-rooms, usually after "discussing the issue with relavant stakeholders".
It would be to slow to do everything in Congress (that's why they have the subcommittees), but they could prepare the legislation in a much more transparent member. The members wouldn't like it, but that's their problem.
You could also require that bills are only valid if they are well described by their titles. So, you couldn't call stuff "Stop Online Piracy Act" unless you were willing to have in knocked down in the Supreme Court for having a silly name.
There will be no permanent solution that works for "the people".
Think about it, throughout history when a sufficiently powerful or profitable medium of information exchange has arisen (think radio, television, phones, mail), the govt. at the behest of rich corporations has legislated it. Every single time!
Laws are first passed to "curb criminal elements", which is what we are seeing now, then a few years down the road laws will be passed to allow the activity with prescribed limits...imagine Internet permits. Then, finally, tax money will subsidize the actual sell of the medium to large corporations to dole out in prescribed amounts to the public...for a fee.
The reality is that you need both. Getting 4.5 million people to sing the anti-SOPA/PIPA petition and blacking out Wikipedia to so that lots of users notice is part of getting them to wake up. It's not everything, by all means. You also need to have smart people who are playing the inside game, which means donating money to organizations who can play the Washington D.C influence game. Yes, it's dirty; yes, you will have to compromise from time to time, including donating $17,000 to Lamar Smith over six years (although to be fair the last donation was a year before Smith started working on SOPA, and it's nothing compared to the $94 million dollars the pro-Internet-Censorship forces poured into trying to buy this legislation). No question, the sausage making factory is ugly; but like the patent system, sometimes you have to play the game with the current set of rules, even as you work to try to change the rules. (Which is why companies like Red Hat and Google are filing software patents.)
So the big question is: what have you done on both fronts? Yes, anti-SOPA blackouts for the day are not effective, at least not as a standalone thing. But have you donated to the EFF? If you work for a computer/internet company, have you urged them to set up a PAC to try to influence legislation in Washington in the correct direction? And then have you donated to that PAC? I've personally donated to both the EFF and Google NetPAC. If you haven't done these things yet, today, the day after the anti-SOPA protests, is a great day to start.
By the way, if you think fighting SOPA is hard, just do a bit of research how much money big pharma could pour into defending the patent system as it exists today. If we all aren't pushing to make sure there are lobbyists working just as hard to influence legislators in the other direction, patent reform doesn't have a prayer.
Boycotts alone don't work. You need an alternative. Look, I NEED tissues. I don't mind buying a different brand, but I'm not going to boycott my tissue company without an alternative.
Boycott lists, like averages without variance figures, are borderline useless. You need the other part (alternative) to make the boycott list actionable.
Most of the calls to boycott companies seem pretty poorly organized (even this article is just a list on some guy's website, albeit one with moderate internet popularity).
What about an app entirely dedicated to organizing boycotts? Users would suggest and vote on issues and companies to boycott. The end result would be detailed guides on which products/service to avoid along with alternatives. The site would only highlight one issue at a time to maximize the effect.
I've been toying with the idea for a while (there are plenty of sites/apps built around single issues, but I've only found one site that does what I've described... though poorly implemented: http://www.boycottowl.com/ ).
I'm calling contrarianism. The fundamental premise behind this article is flawed. Things get worse without getting better all the time. We still have the Patriot act, the DMCA, the Copyright Term Extension Act, ACTA, etc. Make no mistake about it, if SOPA passes, it will be with us for a long, long time.
I hate to break it to Maddox, but the current situation is nothing new. I think our founding fathers would smile to see what is happening around SOPA, because it's exactly what they designed our system of government for. We have to remain ever vigilant to protect our freedoms from whoever wants to take them. Because if we don't, our freedoms will be taken away.
I don't think protesting these companies is a good long term solution. We need a protect DNS act or anti-censorship bill. Big tech has more money and power than hollywood. They should lobby more aggressively.
So much efforts to stop law proposal X. Which is great.
What about the idea of a Open-USA or other Open-Iran where a true Meta-Democracy or whatever open society model is implemented where all efforts would be PRO something instead of hateful stuff like protesting.
This laws are proposed by lobbies that go against the interest of 99% of the persons. How is that even conceivable ?
All this big companies opposing could create a github project for open government and then elect a person that implements that.
This is the best post on SOPA I've read yet, and it really highlights the only way anything will get done for real: A targeted and wide-spread boycott of SOPA supporting companies.
[+] [-] guelo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sethg|14 years ago|reply
The Occupy Wall Street protests and the “Internet strike” were both successful because they changed the terms of the debate. In the former case, the mass media, which had spent months obsessing over deficit deficit deficit, suddenly took notice of income inequality, and Romney’s Republican primary opponents started attacking him over his vulture-capitalist history. In the latter case, the fact that there was opposition to SOPA/PIPA, and that these opponents are not just “pirates”, finally became mainstream front-page news.
These are not legislative victories in and of themselves, but they are significant. The proper reaction is not “in the big scheme of things this is a small victory, so don’t feel smug about it” but “in the big scheme of things this is a small victory, so let’s build on it to go on to bigger victories”. Rome wasn’t sacked in a day.
[+] [-] carbocation|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edw519|14 years ago|reply
I love this post and I'll tell you why...
I understand that my age puts me in the minority here at Hacker News, but anyone who has ever followed anything I've said here knows that I really believe that's just a detail, not a real issue...I don't care as much about who you are as what you do and how you treat others.
I grew up in the U.S. in the 1960's and it was a very different time for all kinds of reasons. The biggest difference of all had little to do with money, technology, or superficial lifestyle; it had to do with state of mind. Like all young generations, we were confused and didn't understand why things were the way they were. So, with lots of energy and spare time, we took action...
We protested, we marched, we did whatever we thought it took to affect change. We took the side of the oppressed: blacks, women, gays, the poor and homeless, the environment, and most of all, we protested an illegal and immoral war. We ended the war and we changed the world.
It's great to see that some things haven't changed: young people still find a way to channel their resources to try to make things better, but here's the problem: All I see with this worldwide Occupy movement is people complaining, "Where's mine?" It seems like it's all about "me", not "us".
That's why these SOPA protests are so refreshing to me. It's the first thing I've noticed in years that reminds me of my youth, not so much in action, but in spirit. People have taken a few minutes to stop worrying about themselves to do something about the greater good for all of us.
But the spirit of modern times prevents us from doing enough. We will take action so long as it doesn't cost us too much. Where is the sacrifice? Where is the "put your money where your mouth is"? I love the way OP points this out.
I'm proud of Wikipedia. Craigslist came close, forcing its users to work to get to their local pages. But too many, like Google, just wimped out. All their black banner said was, "We care, but not that much."
Listen to OP! For just a few minutes, fuck the "stake holders", the "money managers", the "players", the "metrics", the "ROI", and the "bottom line". Can't we just once pretend that it's 1968, and stop giving a shit about ourselves long enough to realize that a couple of extra bucks today will soon be worthless in a world going to shit if we don't do something about it? Only when we demonstrate the passion that comes from true sacrifice will the "normals" really take notice.
</BabyBoomerRant, TimeForMaalox>
[+] [-] jdietrich|14 years ago|reply
In Britain, liberalism was architected primarily by people who were part of our very old establishment. The decriminalisation of homosexuality was achieved largely by the work of Lord Wolfenden, Lord Pakenham and Arthur Gore (8th Earl of Arran). The same goes for most of the political changes we associate with modernity and progress - with the notable exception of Bevan and his peers, the people turning the wheels were mainly minor aristocrats in dusty tweed. A great many of the most significant changes were made contrary to public opinion, the most obvious being the abolition of the death penalty - a policy which most Britons still oppose.
The boomers credit themselves with having changed the world when they were young, broke and essentially powerless, but deny any credit to the generation that constituted the establishment at the time. Conversely, now that they control the majority of capital, make up the biggest electoral demographic and holds most of the elected offices, they deny responsibility.
The most destructive act of the baby boomers was creating a culture in which the individual is seen as having supremacy over the institution. The consequences are obvious and stark - a political system with single-digit approval ratings, where nobody feels represented and nobody feels responsible. A political culture defined not by fundamental ideological allegiance and difference, but by special pleading. There's no such thing as a socialist anymore, no such thing as a conservative or a trade unionist, just people with opinions. America always pretended to be classless but Britain has gone the same way, preferring the egoistic fantasy of an egalitarian society over the reality of one where power and wealth and privilege are still very much in force.
We're trapped in a solipsistic nightmare, where conspiracy theories have replaced an understanding of social power. Until the people who are in charge actually admit that they are in charge, we're fucked.
[+] [-] barrkel|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mkr-hn|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mcantelon|14 years ago|reply
Regarding the self-interest of the young, it's a rational thing. If young people today weren't saying "where's mine" then they'd be stupid. During the baby boom there were decent jobs because globalization hadn't happened yet and corporations still had to rely on domestic labor. Reliance on domestic labor also means the elite values having decent public institutions, which strengthen the labor force. Now not only do we have globalization but also systematic looting. Young people get to look forward to having it significantly worse economic prospects than their parents.
[+] [-] RyanMcGreal|14 years ago|reply
Popular protest against the Vietnam War didn't take off until the war had been grinding for several years.
[+] [-] mike-cardwell|14 years ago|reply
"Even if you, your neighbors, and everyone you've ever met recycled everything and reduced your waste output to zero, it wouldn't even make an observable impact on overall waste production in the world. Household waste and garden residue account for less than 3% of all waste produced in the US. That's less than the average statistical margin of error, and most people don't even come close to producing zero waste."
I've always suspected that this is correct, but I'd like to be able to back that up with some evidence.
[+] [-] pingswept|14 years ago|reply
The important question is whether the impact of recycling the waste you create is a net gain or loss, after you take into account all the work needed to do the recycling. From an energy perspective, most recycling is a massive saver of energy [1], but that doesn't mean it's economical. England, for example, imports a lot of glass, but does very little glass manufacturing. Recycling glass there is probably not a valuable service, but that says nothing about its value where you live (unless you happen to live in England).
Waste stream sorting technology is still developing; I wouldn't be surprised if that reduces costs in the future such that sorting waste in your house isn't worth it-- you'll just dump everything in the bin and let robots pick out the valuable stuff later.
[1]: http://www.economist.com/node/9249262 (Money quote: "Recycling aluminium, for example, can reduce energy consumption by as much as 95%. Savings for other materials are lower but still substantial: about 70% for plastics, 60% for steel, 40% for paper and 30% for glass.")
[+] [-] xlpz|14 years ago|reply
The same page mentions a higher bound of 20%, but in any case it seems reasonably well established that the vast majority of the waste produced (at least in the US) comes from the manufacturing/industrial process itself, not from households.
A book that goes into quite a bit of detail about this is "Gone tomorrow" by Heather Rogers.
[+] [-] wladimir|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickik|14 years ago|reply
Of all the daily garbage we seperate out: paper carton organic stuff (compost) batteries cans Plastic bottle glas
Edit: Most buissnesses do this too.
[+] [-] JamisonM|14 years ago|reply
This argument alone is enough to justify residential recycling programs, they do help the local environment (the environment most would regard as most important to themselves) and waste reduction comes close to paying for itself in saved municipal costs (which would be reflected in local taxes). In places where energy costs are high and land very valuable recycling makes economic sense without any concern for the environment.
[+] [-] mambodog|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toddmorey|14 years ago|reply
What I hate about recycling is that it's so much less effective than the other r's: reducing and reusing. I wish the focus was much more on those two; think of the impact possible if consumers just demanded less packaging, for example.
[+] [-] llambda|14 years ago|reply
For instance, in this particular article, Maddox claims that we need a "spark to light the lazy tinder". There is here an implicated false dichotomy where either some draconian legislation passes, e.g. SOPA, and everyone "wakes up" or no other efforts will prove progressive. I don't buy it. In fact, I don't buy any argument that makes the claim that due to the current state of political economy we are unable to see the kinds of changes we want without total and complete revolution. I feel it's absurd to dismiss efforts such as yesterday's which net results that include some 13 new senators opposing the bills.
[+] [-] deno|14 years ago|reply
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2pv/intellectual_hipsters_and_metaco...
BTW. The same could be said about DMCA, when it was passing. It just made everyone used to even more abuse.
[+] [-] ChrisLTD|14 years ago|reply
Bingo.
Stopping legislation before it gets passed is the way to go. It's extremely difficult to get laws rescinded or overridden.
And what would make anyone think a few websites getting taken down by the Feds would cause some sort of massive street protest? Our government has done some awful things in the last ten years involving war, torture and civil liberties and most people couldn't care less. Even when there were massive protests over Iraq, they were ignored.
[+] [-] michaelfeathers|14 years ago|reply
Tongue in cheek, I think there is another alternative: the tech industry could simply buy the movie companies. Some of them are certainly sitting on enough cash.
[+] [-] wonderercat|14 years ago|reply
As much of an asshole as he is, I've always respected the guy for his shocking lack of hypocrisy.
If movie producers had the decency to make this kind of public stand, things might be different.
[+] [-] Terretta|14 years ago|reply
The word "piracy" is unfortunate, mixing up Hollywood's complaints about bit-for-bit originals being available, and, for example, Chanel's complaint about fake Chanel being manufactured and sold "mail-order" online through offshore commerce sites.
Chanel and the like do need (but already have) protection by the law against counterfeit sales. They don't have a right to be protected for legacy distribution models. For example, Chanel shouldn't have a right to a law that says since existing Chanel stores only ship UPS Ground, any store shipping FedEx Overnight should be taken offline.
A bill for "Stop Counterfeiting" would be better focused on the actual problem, instead of stigmatizing the medium or channel ("online").
[+] [-] a1k0n|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Roboprog|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jorisw|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tintin|14 years ago|reply
I totally agree with him. It's like the bugs get fixed, shitty lasts forever. Most of the time fixing a bug means getting tot the root of the problem.
[+] [-] tommorris|14 years ago|reply
But, yes, Americans, you desperately need to fix your money-in-politics problem. That's the underlying issue for all this shit.
[+] [-] michaelfeathers|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brudgers|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nooneelse|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shn|14 years ago|reply
Although today's current communication means help spread the word to some extent but unfortunately most are filtering the real issues. Although internet gave a bit of hope that these filters could be subverted but legislations like SOPA, which I believe many look a likes will follow, unfortunately will smother free speech (take the most broader possible definition) eventually. Countries under dictatorships easily squash it but in "free" world it is censored by ignoring it. Why and how? Concentration of wealth to a few. I don't blame them because it is nature of things, they seek perpetuating their rule.
You can argue on some fact stated in the article, however it is irrelevant. The gist of this article is that the lack of inaction, conformism, and individualism cost societies a lot. 5K+ US soldiers, 1M+ iraqi citizens died for a bomb that did not exist (that is how they sold the war to you and then they mocked about it). How could this have happened in a "free" and "democratic" society. Anyone care to explain? How could a moron like George Bush could be elected in the first place in a country like US anyway?
I am sorry but he is right, as long as we are who we are SOPA, PIPA and other legislations with alphabet soup names will follow and tire you.
[+] [-] vezycash|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fleitz|14 years ago|reply
Anything else will do pretty much nothing. In two years get someone else unelected.
Diane Feinstein would be a perfect target, she represents the valley, has been in the Senate forever, and won the last election by a HUGE margin. If you could get her unelected you would put everyone else on notice.
The reality of the situation is that this won't happen. There is no permanent solution because everything is triangulated and marketed so well that it's virtually impossible to change it. People pass this legislation because no one cares and whatever negative ads get run during the 30 days before the election matter far more than anything else and quite frankly most people will be more upset about THEIR pet issue than YOUR pet issue.
If you could get Google or Wikipedia, etc to focus solely on getting ONE person unelected then it would show clout. But they won't because it would cause such a shitstorm of unimaginable proportions because 1/3 of their user base votes for her party no matter what they do, and 1/3 dislikes both parties and something about keeping politics free from corporate influence, which is something both parties agree on unless that influence comes in the form of campaign contributions, PACs, lobbyists, etc.
You've got a political system in which no one cares about habeas corpus. If they don't care about that then they aren't going to give a shit about dismantling the internet. Bread and circuses my friend.
[+] [-] rjd|14 years ago|reply
Its nothing but building protectionist markets, the same ones most western nations have been fighting for the last hundred years because they entrap people, prevent competition, cause monopolies, and abuse customers. Its against the free markets, which (problems of market abuse aside) is getting money into developing economies and helping people. Its a great step backwards world economics and trade.
So hit them where it hurts, they are obviously scared of the new markets enough to try and outlaw them. Take 30 minutes out of your day to write a letter to a company and explain to them you are disgusted, they have lost a customer, and you will from now on buy counterfeit goods instead of theirs.
I will be doing my part by downloading all the mp3s I want, I'll go see the shows in person to make sure the artists get there dues, and I'll wait to see these middle men slowly fade... but I'm sure we are only about to see fireworks start, theres going to be some big noise as some of these guys go down.
[+] [-] necolas|14 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik1AK56FtVc
However, the article suggests that if some terrible legislation passed it would ignite people into real action. That clearly failed to happen when the Patriot Act was passed. I'm sure there are many more examples. If the discourse surrounding legislation convinces enough people not to care (or fails to make it into wider public awareness), then there doesn't seem to be much standing in its way.
[+] [-] exDM69|14 years ago|reply
Sounds difficult? Maybe. I did this, I stopped watching TV in 1999, going to the movies in 2001 and listening to music in 2006. The content I would have wanted wasn't (and still isn't) available at a price and terms that I could accept, so I don't want it. Not that I paid for the media I consumed, I pirated most of the stuff. But I don't want to be a part of the piracy statistics to give excuses for killing the internet.
I still enjoy music, though. Maybe even more now that I'm not constantly listening to it so the rare occasion when I do hear music, it sounds better. I do allow myself exceptions every now and then but most of the time I don't consume MAFIAA products or feel like I'm missing anything.
[+] [-] jedbrown|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] derefr|14 years ago|reply
Preferably, though, a more complete restructuring of the legislative system that more tightly constricts what an individual bill can do (so nothing can be "tacked on" to anything else), requires that bills expire and must be re-evaluated after some period, and perhaps enables something equivalent to the "double-jeapordy" condition of the judicial system, where once a bill has been rejected for containing particular offensive clauses, no bill may then be introduced from then on if it contains those clauses or anything which would be equivalent in effect to them.
[+] [-] wisty|14 years ago|reply
It would be to slow to do everything in Congress (that's why they have the subcommittees), but they could prepare the legislation in a much more transparent member. The members wouldn't like it, but that's their problem.
You could also require that bills are only valid if they are well described by their titles. So, you couldn't call stuff "Stop Online Piracy Act" unless you were willing to have in knocked down in the Supreme Court for having a silly name.
[+] [-] mikehuffman|14 years ago|reply
Think about it, throughout history when a sufficiently powerful or profitable medium of information exchange has arisen (think radio, television, phones, mail), the govt. at the behest of rich corporations has legislated it. Every single time!
Laws are first passed to "curb criminal elements", which is what we are seeing now, then a few years down the road laws will be passed to allow the activity with prescribed limits...imagine Internet permits. Then, finally, tax money will subsidize the actual sell of the medium to large corporations to dole out in prescribed amounts to the public...for a fee.
This is how it is and how it will be.
[+] [-] nazgulnarsil|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tytso|14 years ago|reply
So the big question is: what have you done on both fronts? Yes, anti-SOPA blackouts for the day are not effective, at least not as a standalone thing. But have you donated to the EFF? If you work for a computer/internet company, have you urged them to set up a PAC to try to influence legislation in Washington in the correct direction? And then have you donated to that PAC? I've personally donated to both the EFF and Google NetPAC. If you haven't done these things yet, today, the day after the anti-SOPA protests, is a great day to start.
By the way, if you think fighting SOPA is hard, just do a bit of research how much money big pharma could pour into defending the patent system as it exists today. If we all aren't pushing to make sure there are lobbyists working just as hard to influence legislators in the other direction, patent reform doesn't have a prayer.
[+] [-] brador|14 years ago|reply
Boycott lists, like averages without variance figures, are borderline useless. You need the other part (alternative) to make the boycott list actionable.
[+] [-] infocaptor|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nluqo|14 years ago|reply
What about an app entirely dedicated to organizing boycotts? Users would suggest and vote on issues and companies to boycott. The end result would be detailed guides on which products/service to avoid along with alternatives. The site would only highlight one issue at a time to maximize the effect.
I've been toying with the idea for a while (there are plenty of sites/apps built around single issues, but I've only found one site that does what I've described... though poorly implemented: http://www.boycottowl.com/ ).
[+] [-] j_baker|14 years ago|reply
I hate to break it to Maddox, but the current situation is nothing new. I think our founding fathers would smile to see what is happening around SOPA, because it's exactly what they designed our system of government for. We have to remain ever vigilant to protect our freedoms from whoever wants to take them. Because if we don't, our freedoms will be taken away.
[+] [-] davcro|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] onedewd|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mrcharles|14 years ago|reply