Let’s take a basic example: Wikipedia, which hosts pornography, easily could be a target of such legislation. Now there is infrastructure in place to know when you read about “Criticisms of policy X” and maybe it’s handled safely or maybe it’s handed directly to the government.

What about news? It’s a hop skip and leap from “age verify pornography with ID” to “age verify content about sexual abuse or violence.” Now the infrastructure is in place to see the alt-news criticisms you read.

Twitch or YouTube wouldn’t even wait to comply, ID verification is something that these corporations are already perfectly fine with. Now, you watching a history of your government’s crimes is a potentially tracked red flag that you’re a dissident to be watched.

Do you think if this sort of legislation is enacted, it will stop at large websites? It will be an excuse used by the government and supported by big tech firms to shut down any small websites which don’t comply. After all, Google, MS, et al, they would rather that your entire concept of the internet start and end in a service they control.

Others may say “what about Uighurs?” or “what about Hong Kong?” but I think that the rest of the world is not doing all that much better on terms of civil repression.

In the UK, you can be arrested for voicing disagreement with the rationale for another person’s arrest (not generally, but on a specific hot button issue they’d rather not anyone talk about). French politicians are attempting to make illegal criticism of Israel, carte blanche. Don’t even get me started on Germany, which is so self-shamed from the last century they have overcorrected into legitimating an external state above all else. Across the pond, you hardly even have to convince anyone that it’s on the downtrend, unless they’re 30% of the population who believe the Don is christ alive (but don’t like if he says it).

The world is very unstable at this point and China is a country that strongly values and incentivizes stability, at the expense of individual rights. This is contra a lot of the west which is both unstable and actively undermining individual rights.

They would all use another term to distinguish between themselves and those living in Iran.

Collective punishment is a war crime.

Kidding aside, the US has had libertarian pipe dreams for the better part of its history. The aberration was the New Deal period up until the mid 60s.

In the recent Epstein releases, Epstein told Thiel that the best deals come from a system on the way to collapse. I think at this point it’s reasonable to consider that this is what Trump and his allies are trying to do. Crash the US economy so severely that they might use their ill-gotten wealth to buy an outsized portion of it.

It really comes down to whether you consider an individual’s right to privacy more important than your state’s security. Neither is really a perfect options in this case, but having the Flock camera means some part of your property is under the panopticon of local law enforcement that could arrest you (loss of privacy).

Going with chinese tech, you are probably more private in regards to your own government, but you’re probably having some negative effect on state security based on the marginal benefit of CCP surveillance/ potential malware in your network.

The dichotomy is false. People could have cameras which report to no one, but that’s less useful for all governments involved.

What is the market pressure here? Suddenly a ton of new capacity in solar, gas, etc, will come online and drive that price down because there will be much more capacity before you reach the point of $1000/kwh purchases.

The alternative is that people get paid at cost of production, which if you think about it is less fair. Why should a gas turbine get paid $67/kwh and a solar cell or battery get paid less? It also means that the market incentivizes more cheaper energy as a rule, because they take profit.

Would you go to the gas station charging $2 above market price just because their costs are higher to produce the gas?

Land of the free, home of the brave, digital cage proudly made in the USA!

A pseudonymous writer NS Lyons has been writing about how China and the US are converging in how they treat their citizens. A few years ago it would have raised eyebrows, but now it’s a suggested read.

https://open.substack.com/pub/theupheaval/p/the-china-conver...