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[PTTG??]

The answer is because their power had grown to point where they decided it was time to run a test of public opinion. Their test seemed to have succeeded, which is a green light for them to push further. As we grow more and more complacent to their dominance, they'll begin to use cruder and cruder methods on more and more important figures, until we end up in a dystopian society without even realizing it.

What are you recommending? Or are you just focus-grouping a new Young Adult novel?

Speaking of focus-grouping...

Constitutional Amendment: The US may only exercise force of any kind if granted a specific 4-year mission to do so by popular vote. The proposal is given thusly: "Shall the US be allowed to deploy troops and weapons to Trinidad and Tobago, Monaco, and Liechtenstein from 2021 to 2025; and shall the US increase taxes by 0.04%?" No further context may be provided in the voting booth, although the government may make a public case leading up to the election. The US may ask to extend the mission (refreshing the 4-year duration) once per year in November, but the initial vote to establish the mission can be an emergency vote. The measure is tied to mandatory "war tax." Non-votes are considered "no" votes. The non-voting population also automatically votes "no."

The USA always has permission to operate defensively within National waters and its own territories, including within 3 miles of a US border (horizon distance), but may not change its territorial claims without declaring a mission (no deciding that Mexico is basically US territory). All animals, personnel, and devices that are equipped with weaponry, as well as all projectiles and any energy effects, are included. A national guard platoon carrying fruit baskets doesn't count; a dog with a gun in its mouth counts. A bullet, laser, or catapult projectile can strike anywhere within the specified areas, but not outside the area, by this provision. All other rules of war apply.

The war tax is an additional tax assessed after all other taxes. For every 1000 square miles of active mission area, Americans must pay 0.02% higher taxes. For example, we're current at war in around 500,000 square miles. Americans would pay 10% more in taxes. I am not a tax lawyer, so those numbers might change, but this feature exists for the specific reason of preventing the workaround of asking Americans to vote for war against "everywhere" every couple of years. (This may be modified to be based on the projected population in the combat area, so that declaring war on Antarctica is cheaper than on Hawaii, but that is for later negotiations)

Failure to comply with this amendment constitutes treason on the part of the commanding officer(s) responsible.

This way, we will never again be in a situation where we wake up involved in a new war, police action, "advisory role," etc. I think this should do it, though guys. I saved America!

[Criptfeind]

Why not just a constitutional amendment to forbid war if that's your goal?

[bloop_bleep]

Or, you know, they're just a bog-standard oligopoly of the sort that naturally arise in capitalist systems, albeit one we notice more because we interact with it directly every day. You don't need an evil plot to take over the world to see that, our medical records systems being as shambolic as they are, there is demonstrable demand for a more universal system for managing them that doesn't rely exclusively on individual providers and patients.

There's nothing bog-standard about this. Never, in the history of the world, has there been this opportunity to conduct such vast amounts of surveillance. That little device that people carry around in their pockets everywhere? At any moment it could be hearing what they're saying, know where they're going, see what they're doing, and even get a glance into their minds with Google searches and whatnot. This is a device that people carrying around willingly! No one, not even a totalitarian government, was ever able to collect this much data. Would you let a totalitarian government take power, even if you assume (against mountains of evidence) that its intentions are as pure as the driven snow? What tells you they aren't just lying, or that their intentions won't change later? No one should be able to wield this much power.

The answer is because their power had grown to point where they decided it was time to run a test of public opinion. Their test seemed to have succeeded, which is a green light for them to push further. As we grow more and more complacent to their dominance, they'll begin to use cruder and cruder methods on more and more important figures, until we end up in a dystopian society without even realizing it.

What are you recommending? Or are you just focus-grouping a new Young Adult novel?

What do you think I'm recommending? That we stop being complacent, and make tech companies into utilities or break up their oligopoly.

[Trekkin]

No one should be able to wield this much power.

This, right here, is what's so comfortingly normal about all this. Every advance in information science has had detractors fashioning the period equivalent of tinfoil hats and claiming that now They Will Know Too Much, just as every other technological advance has had people screaming about how it's the end of the world as we know it. Then, as now, there's no clearly articulated path from the incremental increase in data storage or processing capacity or analytical ability to omnipotent control over everything, simply because we're already so predictable that we're well into diminishing returns, at least sociologically, from having richer data sets. If nothing else, if Google really were capable of effectively reading our minds we'd expect more of an increase in click-through rates.

Yes, there's that old chestnut that knowledge is power, but having worked with informaticists for over a decade now, I can tell you that BD2K-style initiatives exist for good reason: just having more information doesn't mean you can synthesize more from it, and even if you can it's not necessarily actionable. Power does not correlate linearly with knowledge. Nor does data.

The scale of the problem is unprecedented, yes, but that's true of most problems that deal with people. It's the new biggest thing ever, but we've dealt with the biggest things ever before and can do so again without panic and paranoia -- and it's to our advantage to do so, because thinking of these companies as nefarious and bent on world domination fundamentally misconstrues their actual motivations and therefore suggests that we bring the wrong sort of pressures to bear to fix the problem. Calmness is not complacency, and paranoia is not perspicacity.

[Egan_BW]

5 million seconds is almost 2 months, 5 billion seconds is around 156 years.

That can't possibly be right. ;P

[Max™]

Or, you know, they're just a bog-standard oligopoly of the sort that naturally arise in capitalist systems, albeit one we notice more because we interact with it directly every day. You don't need an evil plot to take over the world to see that, our medical records systems being as shambolic as they are, there is demonstrable demand for a more universal system for managing them that doesn't rely exclusively on individual providers and patients.

There's nothing bog-standard about this. Never, in the history of the world, has there been this opportunity to conduct such vast amounts of surveillance. That little device that people carry around in their pockets everywhere? At any moment it could be hearing what they're saying, know where they're going, see what they're doing, and even get a glance into their minds with Google searches and whatnot. This is a device that people carrying around willingly! No one, not even a totalitarian government, was ever able to collect this much data. Would you let a totalitarian government take power, even if you assume (against mountains of evidence) that its intentions are as pure as the driven snow? What tells you they aren't just lying, or that their intentions won't change later? No one should be able to wield this much power.

As I said earlier: who are you suggesting we trust with this power? Surely not the government, I mean, I'm a gray ghost for a reason, but despite warning people about this sort of thing for years it's hard to get people to care about vague things like "control over your information will one day effectively be control over your self" when they're literally a decade or more in the future. I didn't exactly see smartphones being ubiquitous in their current form but I knew we'd have some sort of pocketable/wearable computers we could use all the time, though the camera thing never came to mind, it was always something I pictured as an attachment which could be removed and thus utterly disabled for a reason. Similarly with microphones, I knew star trek was stupid because the ship would be so much smarter than everyone that by the time they asked it a question it would be answering them, but I also knew I'd never want an always on microphone sitting around me because the only thing I ever learned about people with power over you is never trust them with it, and never stop fighting it.

It's a little late now to suddenly notice "oh shit, google has arbitrary power over most of our lives, doesn't it?" because it's been like this for years now, and there's no point in acting like there is a way to go back, if you remove this power from google then you open up a vacuum which someone will fill, so again: who do suggest that someone be?

The devil you know and all that.

The answer is because their power had grown to point where they decided it was time to run a test of public opinion. Their test seemed to have succeeded, which is a green light for them to push further. As we grow more and more complacent to their dominance, they'll begin to use cruder and cruder methods on more and more important figures, until we end up in a dystopian society without even realizing it.

What are you recommending? Or are you just focus-grouping a new Young Adult novel?

What do you think I'm recommending? That we stop being complacent, and make tech companies into utilities or break up their oligopoly.

Once again I must note, jumping from "we're not obligated to enable nazi conspiracy shitbrains" all the way to "now we're coming for you ordinary non-shitbrain citizens" is wild.

[scriver]

Yes, because the left wing has never been suppressed by private interests in the past. Such a huge leap of logic to account for that they could be again.

[Trekkin]

the only thing I ever learned about people with power over you is never trust them with it, and never stop fighting it.

More's the pity. Had you been a more thorough student of history, you might have learned how to do so effectively. 

Rage doesn't check power. Nor do infantile fantasies about armed resistance, strident demands for new and more spitefully punitive laws, or incessant condemnations of the people with the power, despite what Internet activists on both extremes of our present ideological spectrum would have you believe.

Power, and power alone, checks power. Ambition, and only ambition, can balance ambition. We can't keep venal sociopaths out of high office; apart from everything else, nobody else wants the job and we're better off having a place to put them. We can only keep them pointed at each other, as we have for centuries. Just because the mechanisms for doing so have become unbalanced does not mean we require a paradigm shift to restore normality.

[SalmonGod]

the only thing I ever learned about people with power over you is never trust them with it, and never stop fighting it.

More's the pity. Had you been a more thorough student of history, you might have learned how to do so effectively. 

Rage doesn't check power. Nor do infantile fantasies about armed resistance, strident demands for new and more spitefully punitive laws, or incessant condemnations of the people with the power, despite what Internet activists on both extremes of our present ideological spectrum would have you believe.

Power, and power alone, checks power. Ambition, and only ambition, can balance ambition. We can't keep venal sociopaths out of high office; apart from everything else, nobody else wants the job and we're better off having a place to put them. We can only keep them pointed at each other, as we have for centuries. Just because the mechanisms for doing so have become unbalanced does not mean we require a paradigm shift to restore normality.

This is one of the more cynical posts that's ever been in this thread.  What normality do you want to restore?  I can't think of any past version of normal that fits very well with where the future is headed.  I'd rather do better, anyway.

[PTTG??]

despite what Internet activists on both extremes of our present ideological spectrum would have you believe.

Hey, real quick, what are those two extremes? Like, the specific policy goals?

[Powder Miner]

How are you defining far right and far left for that question, PTTG?
I think the obvious answer being looked for is "the far right wants to genocide all minorities and the far left just wants to create a classless utopia" or something along those lines, but that's not really realistic. While there certainly are outright Nazis in the country, the amount of, well, anything that they actually represent is continually played up for the purposes of being an excuse; it definitely makes it easier to make whatever point someone wants to make when they go "WELL YOU GUYS ARE/HAVE NAZIS" no matter how insignificant a portion these people really are. By far the majority of the alt-right isn't Nazi -- it is often at least somewhat racist, and can be anti-semitic, but you're going to find very, very few people with any sort of policy goals to actually commit genocide.

It's great optics to act like neo-Nazis dominate the far right (both for the Nazis AND for the left) and so of course people act to magnify that impression wherever possible, but it doesn't really fit reality.

Of course, the response that would immediately come to mind if I were to be arguing from much of the left's position is that neo-Nazis have committed some atrocious acts of violence (which is true) and that therefore the Nazis are a significant force in politics -- but a connection I rarely see being made is that this is the same kind of logic that the right has brought to bear against Islam for many years. Somebody on the farthest, smallest fringes of something committed violence, therefore the general sector of ideology or religion they come from must be full of genocidal maniacs who want everyone who isn't them dead, the logic goes, and it's not any more true for the American far right than it is for Islam -- but just as many on the right found it politically convenient to make it seem like Islam is dominated by radical terrorists, much of the left now finds a golden opportunity to pretend like the far right is literal Nazis and is overwhelmingly genocidal.

This isn't even to make it easier to dismiss people on the far right, I suspect, but rather used as a golden opportunity to hit anyone more center-right with because it's good for shocking people and shutting them up -- it's pretty hard to respond to being called a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer simply because it's much more of a grave and shocking accusation to receive than it is to give. Instead I'll present a more in-depth and cogent exploration of the far left and far right than I suspect you were expecting anybody to actually give, though it's not going to be as long as this whole bit because now that I've written all of this I'm starting to run out of steam.

Alt-right is a very nebulous label and the nature of the American far right in general reflects this -- you've got a kind of common sector forming but what people on the alt or far right actually believe varies quite a bit. Some people want to make the United States extremely insular and oppose immigration, some people want to counter social trends (iiiincluding civil rights) and some people want to establish a white identity for the United States. I don't think that all of these people are racist, I can buy there being other motivators for some of the people out for insularity, but I think that a very, very large portion of the far right is racist and/or homophobic and/or sexist. Exactly what that portion is depends on where you actually define the far right to be.

As for the far left... I don't really think that America has a meaningful far left because what you really see are splinters that sometimes intersect but which do not form a united whole.

One splinter is the, and I hate using this term, archetypal "social justice warrior". Maybe it's just better defined as the far left on social issues. You have people who are racist, sexist, and otherwise bigoted but simply pointing the other way, but also people who simply take an aspect of the left's social issues, take it to a relative extreme, and hold it as the highest priority -- I'm never sure how big this splinter of the far left actually is, and I suppose that it really also comes down to how I define who's actually "far left" in this group.

Another splinter is that of communists or revolutionary socialists, who desire the overthrow of society or at least its radical reform into one based on the Marxist ideal (and sometimes the Marxist dialectic, if they're full communist). This, let's be blunt, is a very very small portion of the left and though it's enough to at least get someone like Kshama Sawant into office, I don't think it's very significant in the United States.

Another splinter is that of people who... just want to hit people. I think that there's a third splinter of the far left that really has no policy plans at all and instead simply wants to go out and beat people up. This splinter is smaller than people on the right like to portray it to be, but considering that I see this group of people often outright defended in a way that noone ever actually defends the Nazis, I'm not sure how small it actually is.

[Trekkin]

This is one of the more cynical posts that's ever been in this thread.  What normality do you want to restore?  I can't think of any past version of normal that fits very well with where the future is headed.  I'd rather do better, anyway.

A less imperial Presidency would be a good start, as well as a reduction in gerrymandering until more representatives' seats are competitive. (The difference between 90% and 95% incumbency rates feels small, but I don't think it is.) Expanding the Supreme Court is a weird way to handle the increased tenure of its judges, but by far the most workable option presently available. In short, the system's not undergoing turnover at a rate that allows for suitably rapid change, and we've responded by focusing power in the most statutorily plastic branch of government, which has in turn skewed our political perceptions and enabled this sort of perennial dissatisfaction with the people we nevertheless keep reelecting and so the causal chain goes until we get Trump.

"I'd rather do better" is kind of tautological; of course you would. So would anyone. That's what "better" means, albeit in a uselessly subjective way -- which is the whole reason for democracy in the first place, so that we can find a consensus that everyone thinks is about equally unfair. Equally, of course there's no past version of normal that fits the future. That's supposed to be the case, and is an indicator of a government dealing with the issues of its time. So no, I'm not saying we're going to find a recommendation of how to deal with Facebook somewhere in the Federalist Papers. I am, however, suggesting that there was a time when our politicians were motivated by fear and a smattering of common neuroses as much as by greed, and we need to restore that balance to re-enable the kind of stupid, infuriating horse trading that government frankly needs to run in a way that gives everyone some of what they want. We've lost that, and the ideologues we've put in place in its absence are too willing to break everything they weren't elected to care about rather than bartering it, which has led in turn to our present predicament in which we're slowly giving up on consensus. Thus things like the rapid rise of cloture and the constant references to various procedural nuclear options, as well as the more frequent shutdowns, all of which are self-perpetuating.

There's a whole slate of little incremental systemic changes that need to be made, and it's way too late (and this wall of text too long) for me to detail all of them, but hopefully you can see the broad strokes of my point: we can realign government back into mediocre responsiveness without tearing everything apart in some massive paradigm shift with the concomitant risk that it shifts in a way we don't like and we keep coming back to this point, torches and pitchforks and new feelings of empowerment in hand, until we undergo a systemic collapse and a whole lot of people die before we can get the lights back on.

despite what Internet activists on both extremes of our present ideological spectrum would have you believe.

Hey, real quick, what are those two extremes? Like, the specific policy goals?

I see what you're doing, but fine, I'll play along.

They don't have policy goals, specific or otherwise; outrage culture doesn't mix well with actual proposals anyway. They just have whole classes of people they vaguely despise and specific people they hate incandescently, albeit temporarily. One extreme hates minorities of all types, anyone who sounds smarter or happier than they are, and above all themselves; the other just hates everything about rich old cis hetero white men but mostly each other for not hating the right things about rich old cis hetero white men with sufficient vehemence in the correct priority order.

Now, you can take a few steps back from either and find more populous camps with actual agendas, but that's not what drives the discourse I was talking about.

[SalmonGod]

@Powder Miner

I think there's hardly anyone whose goals are consciously, intentionally genocidal.  But there are many whose goals entail widespread death and misery for minorities, whether that's what they specifically want or not.  And they either refuse to admit those consequences to themselves or don't care.j

@Trekkin

I'm of the opinion that capitalism and hierarchical organization are both incompatible with the future.  There is no taming of capitalism that will prevent it from destroying the environment.  There's no organization of power that will lower the continually heightened stakes of its abuse.

[Powder Miner]

I'm not so sure about widespread death, but, yeah, if the far right did dominate politics I think there definitely would be at least widespread misery for minorities. I'm no fan of the far right because despite how a lot of people want to deny it, that's true. I just get annoyed with the general slinging around of "Nazi" (not that PTTG actually did so, but I felt the implication was there) both because as I outlined I don't think it's entirely honest but perhaps even more because I think it's a way to avoid having to really think about one's values and how to address those who don't match up with them. Most of the time, at least for me, it's a really fruitful endeavor to actually talk to people in-depth and learn what they think and this is something I feel ought to be the norm, but when there's the shock option to hit just in order to put people on the back foot I think it prevents this and allows for ignorance.

[Trekkin]

@Trekkin

I'm of the opinion that capitalism and hierarchical organization are both incompatible with the future.  There is no taming of capitalism that will prevent it from destroying the environment.  There's no organization of power that will lower the continually heightened stakes of its abuse.

I'd agree with you on the first one, with the caveat that chaos also destroys the environment and rushing to destabilize capitalism can easily lead to, well, collapse, so our optimal path forward is probably mitigating the damage capitalist systems are doing through regulation while we build the infrastructure, both physical and political, to handle switching to a different economic system. Both are onerously expensive but tenable.

As for non-hierarchical power, if you can find a form of anarchy that also allows for rapid decision-making then it might work, but there are some things for which polling everyone takes too long. Then, too, there is an issue with the requisite workload of actually drafting, interpreting, and implementing laws, especially now that we're dealing with more complex global issues. It's hard to make those a full-time job without granting them some measure of power. I'd be more optimistic about a mechanism for increased accountability than a wholesale abolishment of responsibility.