Technology has made it not only possible, but easy, to control a lot more people. Freedom generally, and democracy specifically, are the exception. Might-makes-right authoritarianism is the default human condition and I think we're seeing a regression to the mean. I don't even mean in the last few years or whatever, I'm not making a comment on any country's government today. But look at the last 30-40 years, and imagine what the next 30-40 might look like, and I think we're going to look back on today fondly as when we had more freedom.

HTTPS on a blog does nothing. It doesn't protect you from anything. I guarantee you're not getting "all kinds of MITM injections" on this block of text. The only reasonable desire I can think of for "HTTPS everywhere" is hiding the content from your ISP but a) they still see the URL so they can get the content if they want it, and b) if you're so worried about that, use a VPN which coincidentally is even better because it will also hide the URL, and most importantly c) it puts the onus on you, the person who wants the thing, instead of hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of text-only website owners who rightly couldn't care less about HTTPS.

No, I think for 95% of the people who work at Flock it's just a job and they could care less about the "safety" of their cameras, and I'm willing to bet the rest are so well compensated they don't really care. Or they're complete psychopaths incapable of feeling emotion at all, like the CEO who called deflock a "terrorist organization."

The difference is so staggering I have trouble believing anyone who has spent more than about 90 seconds thinking about the issue could believe in good faith that they're in any way comparable. Happy to be proven wrong, though.

I'd bet any amount of money it will be approximately 0.

Marijuana was made schedule 1 close to 60 years ago, and it's very possible the people who made that decision had racist motivations. It's also possible they didn't and they just wanted to punish anyone who was using marijuana more than other drugs.

"People working at the DEA 60 years after this decision was made are very obviously racist and hate blacks and poor people" is much more of a stretch than "nobody really cares enough about this to change it and it wouldn't change very much anyway," isn't it? Unless, of course, you're not interested in actually understanding why things are the way they are and are more interested in perpetuating some victimhood fantasy.

> “Crimes of wealth” do plenty of violence

Not for actual definitions of violence, no. I'm not saying they're not crimes, or they're not serious, but there's a reason "violent crime" is a category of its own. It's an important distinction. Words mean things, and trying to say murder or aggravated battery is just one kind of violence and embezzlement or stock fraud is a different kind is, at best, incredibly dishonest.

> actually hiring competent civil servants at competitive wages

I think most people would be open to increasing cash government salaries if the rest of the job also matched the broader economy - at-will employment, no public sector unions, etc. You trade some of your cash compensation in the government for the cushy benefits, sub-40 hour work week and lots of time off, and the near impossibility of being fired especially once you've been there for a few decades.

The golden age of the West happened due to a war-time manufacturing boom that would put the industrial revolution to shame. If you're making a ton of money and your marginal tax rate is 90%, what incentive do you have to work another ten hours a week or open another factor or release a new product if you're only keeping 10% of what you earn?

This seems like a much more invasive, much more expensive version of that. "We have [potentially spurious] evidence that this application is used in way we deem a Bad Thing. We need to violate the privacy of this company and thousands of individuals to gather evidence that we should be required to get before bringing this suit in the first place, but we're the government so we don't have to do that."

You do a bad job filling the hole. Some hits it and their car breaks. They sue you and the city. The city attorneys successfully push the blame onto you since you're a contractor. You have no liability insurance because you're not a professional because that's the whole point of this thing, right? You're on the hook for the car, a few grand for a medical check-up, and a spurious mental anguish claim. You declare bankruptcy and on the way back from your last visit with your attorney, you hit another pothole and your car breaks. Full circle.