> Is there any other way to read into the government's authority at large? The entire premise of government is that is assumes power over others. Monopoly on violence.
Ya, monopoly on violence by... who exactly? Who is wielding the power in the government? Afghanistan was horrible, right? But US just kinda let that go on for 20 years or whatever. News didn't really talk about it. That's kind of like... a lot of suffering while just pretending nothing is happening. I guess if it was you wielding the power in any real way, or i mean if the people who represented you cared about what you thought, they might have checked in to update you and see what you thought. But they didn't, so... wonder what happened there. And since we are talking about violence, i guess we all agree constructing dragnet surveillance with no regard for human and civil rights is violent, right?
Also, monopoly on violence, you mean over other states right? So then the other states... don't have a monopoly, or? Isn't that just imperialism? I've never heard that phrase used this way, i usually hear it used as monopoly on violence over the people (which the US absolutely is but will never admit because then they wouldn't be able to call every non-US gov in the world 'authoritiarian'). I guess you might be saying monopoly over so-called 'enemy states', but like i said it US is touted as such a world-renowned and representative democracy, and most people don't even understand anything about 'enemy states'. Really, they are mostly just blindly nationalistic or bask in the high standard of living afforded them with a warm and convenient lack of awareness about what is going on in the world (retirement funds did well due to that war, that's nice). Or maybe they went into some detail but it was inside a carefully crafted investigation bubble, usually under threat of losing their job or burned as a witch for having the wrong thoughts about an evil enemy if they could influence someone. Anyway, in such a situation, i hope we can agree that the state should not just blindly exercise violence for a 'monopoly'. Who said so? How was the decision acted upon? To what end? How much violence? Which kinds are ok, which are off-limits? What effect is it gonna have on the people?
Ok, so wait we get to comment on this particular export situation. Great. Despite the fact that i've heard people say even well-reasoned and popular adversarial comments in these little situations do next to nothing, we are not addressing the overall problem. People need to know the big picture of how this will be used. Did we ever even agree to surveillance in the first place, do we agree with who we've been told our enemies are? Do we agree with violating peoples' rights? Whose? Why? You know... very basic questions that will never be asked. Request for comment, ya, ok. Thanks. Also, if there's a request for comment on something, all people need to be made aware of the request through some very well-publicized channel. Is there one? I don't think so. No one bothers building such a channel because building one would make their entire political and military racket less profitable not to mention eat away at the neighbordhood of makebelieve.
> If said power becomes distributed to other parties, it becomes moot. How that power is wielded, and with what intent are separate discussions, but the power itself is core to the idea of government.
You have like some premise that all power constructed by the US is legitimate? I don't understand. We never agreed to wire up the whole world like this and it is pretty clear at this point that no one else did either. Ok. Now it's constructed, what to do? The proper answer is, i guess, to destroy the technology and not move forward, right? Since it's construction and deployment was done in secret? If they didn't want to waste resources they should maybe not build illegal things that take lots of resources using stolen public funds?
> I feel like the idea that "The US government wants to have certain powers, and wants no one else to have them" is just baked into the fact that it is the US government, and should neither surprise nor alarm anyone who isn't an Anarchist.
I guess it just smells like fascism to me when you submit to this without like... actually thinking about the specifics of each power? Or letting them just spread illegal shit around the world? Maybe i misunderstand. This all seems weird.
I was specifically avoiding commenting on the legitimacy and use of said powers and instead addressing only what I saw was the core premise of OP: That the US's desire for abilities (maybe that's a better word to use so that we don't conflate legal power with practical power, that is what is possible vs what is allowed) that others do not have is somehow wrong or strange. A core function of all governments, and one that government doesn't exist without, is power. You can't claim jurisdiction without the ability to enforce it.
You kind of went off in the weeds and talked about a lot of things I wasn't saying anything about. The one point of yours I will respond to is this:
> I guess it just smells like fascism to me when you submit to this without like... actually thinking about the specifics of each power? Or letting them just spread illegal shit around the world? Maybe i misunderstand. This all seems weird.
Two things: First and foremost, I don't see how you drew a line from the U.S. preventing export of technologies that enable fascism to the U.S. 'spreading illegal shit'. Kind of a hard turn there, and not really what I, OP, or the article were commenting on.
Second, power is not equal to fascism. Personal freedoms rely on the power to defend them. You are not free to live if someone else is free to take your life. Even a loving and benevolent government requires the power to protect and care for it's constituents. (Now, don't misread that, and think I'm saying the US government is loving and benevolent, I'm making a broader point), and that power needs to be highly asymmetrical or it simply doesn't serve its purpose.
> I was specifically avoiding commenting on the legitimacy and use of said powers and instead addressing only what I saw was the core premise of OP: That the US's desire for abilities (maybe that's a better word to use so that we don't conflate legal power with practical power, that is what is possible vs what is allowed) that others do not have is somehow wrong or strange. A core function of all governments, and one that government doesn't exist without, is power. You can't claim jurisdiction without the ability to enforce it. You kind of went off in the weeds and talked about a lot of things I wasn't saying anything about.
Ya, i wrote too much without getting enough clarification, sorry.
> The one point of yours I will respond to is this:
>> I guess it just smells like fascism to me when you submit to this without like... actually thinking about the specifics of each power? Or letting them just spread illegal shit around the world? Maybe i misunderstand. This all seems weird.
> Two things: First and foremost, I don't see how you drew a line from the U.S. preventing export of technologies that enable fascism to the U.S. 'spreading illegal shit'. Kind of a hard turn there, and not really what I, OP, or the article were commenting on.
So i didn't mean to draw the line you describe there, i should be clearer in what i write. If i understand what you are going for by adding your comment to this issue, you were kind of dismissing anyone being "surprised or alarmed", and you were maybe a little annoyed anyone was even talking about it. I am not personally really surprised, but i was suggesting alarm and discussion might be good when government decides to exercise power (and my weeds about this gov in particular and the historical events leading up to the issue at hand), because people should understand they should be a part of what power is exercised. I still don't know if i am misunderstanding, but it seemed you were kinda dismissing people being alarmed because this is kinda just what governments do -- "they do power, what's the alarm?". What i meant about fascism was not the line you suggested but the idea that someone might just glance over the entire issue by saying 'governments do power, the government is posturing to enhance this power, who cares?'. I was suggesting that a bunch of people submitting to the the state building power without involvement or question of the specifics of the powers being built is kind of fascistic.
> Second, power is not equal to fascism. Personal freedoms rely on the power to defend them. You are not free to live if someone else is free to take your life. Even a loving and benevolent government requires the power to protect and care for it's constituents. (Now, don't misread that, and think I'm saying the US government is loving and benevolent, I'm making a broader point), and that power needs to be highly asymmetrical or it simply doesn't serve its purpose.
If one state gets to build asymmetric power, that means other states don't have it, right? So.. those states under your definition here can no longer be loving and benevolent because they can't have enough highly asymmetric power in the reverse direction if something bad happens? Am i simplifying too much or missing your point? How does this work out?
Is prematurely building asymmetry with technology really necessary as you say? What if there is symmetry in all countries, then someone does something bad, we all meet and see this person is behaving incorrectly, and then unite. No individual state has asymmetric power but asymmetric power was constructed and used as needed for this situation.
Am i still way off? What are you trying to get across with your comments here? Are you dismissing people being concerned or am i misunderstanding?
no, I agree with mrobot and I'm only commenting because you're framing my argument oddly and suggesting that I wouldn't agree with mrobot.
I think your commentary is tautological reasoning that says the US Government's use of force is legitimate because the point of the US Government is to use force. I agree with mrobot's framing that your line of reasoning is authoritarian and proto-fascist. The "illegal shit" thing feels like a sidebar and not really important to mrobot's argument (and also a bit left-field), so I'm ignoring it entirely.
Governments don't exist for the purposes of exercising force, they exist for things like paving the roads, building hospitals, etc; for the benefit of the commons. Greater specialization leads to greater productivity, and administering things like "how do we pave the roads" is a specialization that all of society benefits from that no one person or entity should bear the responsibility of paying for. Establishing the taxation and monetary structure by which those things are funded is a core function of the government, and a legitimate one in my opinion, as I would rather live in a society where I simply pay my taxes than a society in which I have to sit around and decide which roads projects to "invest" in. I would like to "hire" someone to do that, and I do so by voting for a Superintendent of Highways (or whatever it's called in your jurisdiction), who receives a pay from the government, which is funded in part by the taxes I pay. All of that seems totally legitimate and has nothing to do with the usage of force or the legitimization of state violence.
The use of force by governments is indefensible far more often than it is defensible, and a core function of the citizenry is to question and investigate its governments use of force, and to use their voting rights to eject those in the government that would perpetrate indefensible uses of force against innocents, both domestic and foreign. We should always be questioning the government's usage of force. We should never, ever stop questioning the government's usage of force.
There are some legitimate uses of force. For example, the Nazi government used force, that was bad. We can all probably agree on that. Other governments used force to oppose them. That was good. Again, probably not controversial. Clearly, not all governments' usage of force is equivalently legitimate. It appears that your position is that the US Government's usage of force is more legitimate than other governments' usage of force, because they're the US Government. The idea that the usage of force is more legitimate if it's the US Government than if it's a different government, which is how I interpret your position, is a position so obviously jingoistic that I am embarrassed to have to clarify that I think it's preposterous.
Now let's say the US government formed a red team to attack the electrical grid of, I dunno, Iran. And let's say the Iranian government thought "we sure would like to have a blue team, let's buy some blue team tools", and all the blue team tools were made by ... American companies. Would those American companies be barred from selling blue team tools to the Iranian government, which the Iranian government would use to defend themselves against American aggression? That, in effect, is my question.
If these tools are legitimate tools, then other governments should have the ability to use them. If these tools are not legitimate tools, then no government should use them; not the US Government alone. That later position is what I'm interpreting these rules to mean: that these tools are dangerous, and so China shouldn't have them, but we're good guys, so don't worry, we can handle them safely. The rules aren't "you can't make tools that can be used to violate people's rights", the rules are "you can make and sell and profit off of making tools that can be used to violate people's rights so long as the customers are the US government and its friends, but not if the customers are governments we don't like". If those tools are illegitimate and prone to abuse, then I don't want my own government having them either! The ruling I want is "Don't make PRISM", not "You can sell PRISM to us but not to China".
> The entire premise of government is that is assumes power over others.
No I don't think that's at all the entire premise of government. I think that statement is terrifying and authoritarian, and it is so terrifying that I originally didn't want to engage you. Since you've chosen to attempt to speak for me, I felt it only fitting to clarify my position for anyone that may make the mistake of taking my silence for agreement.
Ya, monopoly on violence by... who exactly? Who is wielding the power in the government? Afghanistan was horrible, right? But US just kinda let that go on for 20 years or whatever. News didn't really talk about it. That's kind of like... a lot of suffering while just pretending nothing is happening. I guess if it was you wielding the power in any real way, or i mean if the people who represented you cared about what you thought, they might have checked in to update you and see what you thought. But they didn't, so... wonder what happened there. And since we are talking about violence, i guess we all agree constructing dragnet surveillance with no regard for human and civil rights is violent, right?
Also, monopoly on violence, you mean over other states right? So then the other states... don't have a monopoly, or? Isn't that just imperialism? I've never heard that phrase used this way, i usually hear it used as monopoly on violence over the people (which the US absolutely is but will never admit because then they wouldn't be able to call every non-US gov in the world 'authoritiarian'). I guess you might be saying monopoly over so-called 'enemy states', but like i said it US is touted as such a world-renowned and representative democracy, and most people don't even understand anything about 'enemy states'. Really, they are mostly just blindly nationalistic or bask in the high standard of living afforded them with a warm and convenient lack of awareness about what is going on in the world (retirement funds did well due to that war, that's nice). Or maybe they went into some detail but it was inside a carefully crafted investigation bubble, usually under threat of losing their job or burned as a witch for having the wrong thoughts about an evil enemy if they could influence someone. Anyway, in such a situation, i hope we can agree that the state should not just blindly exercise violence for a 'monopoly'. Who said so? How was the decision acted upon? To what end? How much violence? Which kinds are ok, which are off-limits? What effect is it gonna have on the people?
Ok, so wait we get to comment on this particular export situation. Great. Despite the fact that i've heard people say even well-reasoned and popular adversarial comments in these little situations do next to nothing, we are not addressing the overall problem. People need to know the big picture of how this will be used. Did we ever even agree to surveillance in the first place, do we agree with who we've been told our enemies are? Do we agree with violating peoples' rights? Whose? Why? You know... very basic questions that will never be asked. Request for comment, ya, ok. Thanks. Also, if there's a request for comment on something, all people need to be made aware of the request through some very well-publicized channel. Is there one? I don't think so. No one bothers building such a channel because building one would make their entire political and military racket less profitable not to mention eat away at the neighbordhood of makebelieve.
> If said power becomes distributed to other parties, it becomes moot. How that power is wielded, and with what intent are separate discussions, but the power itself is core to the idea of government.
You have like some premise that all power constructed by the US is legitimate? I don't understand. We never agreed to wire up the whole world like this and it is pretty clear at this point that no one else did either. Ok. Now it's constructed, what to do? The proper answer is, i guess, to destroy the technology and not move forward, right? Since it's construction and deployment was done in secret? If they didn't want to waste resources they should maybe not build illegal things that take lots of resources using stolen public funds?
> I feel like the idea that "The US government wants to have certain powers, and wants no one else to have them" is just baked into the fact that it is the US government, and should neither surprise nor alarm anyone who isn't an Anarchist.
I guess it just smells like fascism to me when you submit to this without like... actually thinking about the specifics of each power? Or letting them just spread illegal shit around the world? Maybe i misunderstand. This all seems weird.