If you became head of state tomorrow

[SCope13]

Ehbes, having the government control the internet sounds like an incredibly terrible idea.

[ehbes]

what I'm saying is get rid of fios or comcast or whatever you use to get onto the internet and replace that with a government agency, I'm not saying give them control over the internet...

[knell]

that sounds exactly like what you're saying tho

[ehbes]

im not saying i want them to control what sites i can go on and that shit, i just what them to provide internet access to country.

[knell]

so you're saying they should just provide the infrastructure, and let the open market be competitive to be the actual ISPs, right? because if you make the government the sole ISP, they would have complete control by definition...

i mean this is entirely hypothetical so a government monopoly of the internet would be fine as long as it didn't get abused

[test_recordings]

The USA government completely controls the internet anyway, don`t you remember the kick-off about copyright infringement being used as a valid reason to shut down a whole internet site anywhere in the world? Because of that, lots of people thought the internet would become fragmented behind country barriers

[ehbes]

so you're saying they should just provide the infrastructure, and let the open market be competitive to be the actual ISPs, right? because if you make the government the sole ISP, they would have complete control by definition...

i mean this is entirely hypothetical so a government monopoly of the internet would be fine as long as it didn't get abused

Well I think what your forgetting is that in this situation I would be the government... And I am kind.




Yeah essentially I just want stupidly fast government wifi that Verizon won't give me

[knell]

The USA government completely controls the internet anyway, don`t you remember the kick-off about copyright infringement being used as a valid reason to shut down a whole internet site anywhere in the world? Because of that, lots of people thought the internet would become fragmented behind country barriers

https://projectmeshnet.org/

[test_recordings]

The USA government completely controls the internet anyway, don`t you remember the kick-off about copyright infringement being used as a valid reason to shut down a whole internet site anywhere in the world? Because of that, lots of people thought the internet would become fragmented behind country barriers

https://projectmeshnet.org/

Natch Won`t stuff like this just be made illegal for potentially hosting illegal content, much like the Onion Land?

[nowaysj]

so you're saying they should just provide the infrastructure, and let the open market be competitive to be the actual ISPs, right? because if you make the government the sole ISP, they would have complete control by definition...

i mean this is entirely hypothetical so a government monopoly of the internet would be fine as long as it didn't get abused

Well I think what your forgetting is that in this situation I would be the government... And I am kind.




Yeah essentially I just want stupidly fast government wifi that Verizon won't give me

Honestly, you say things like you've considered them, but that is very infrequently the case. I have high hopes for your pending education. (No sarcasm in that, we direly need actually educated young people)

[nowaysj]

The USA government completely controls the internet anyway, don`t you remember the kick-off about copyright infringement being used as a valid reason to shut down a whole internet site anywhere in the world? Because of that, lots of people thought the internet would become fragmented behind country barriers

https://projectmeshnet.org/

Natch Won`t stuff like this just be made illegal for potentially hosting illegal content, much like the Onion Land?

I could certainly see that, having only just learned of this. Knell, do you have any practical experience with this?

[knell]

The USA government completely controls the internet anyway, don`t you remember the kick-off about copyright infringement being used as a valid reason to shut down a whole internet site anywhere in the world? Because of that, lots of people thought the internet would become fragmented behind country barriers

https://projectmeshnet.org/

Natch Won`t stuff like this just be made illegal for potentially hosting illegal content, much like the Onion Land?

There are plenty of things that are already illegal de jure on the TOR network right now (and the FBI or any law enforcement can access them as easily as anyone else), but the way the systems are orchestrated it makes them impossible to trace back to the originating source. Meshnet seeks to bypass the need to operate on traditional IPs altogether.

I mean, they could always just shut off all electricity (or even just clip a few cables, really), but...

[ehbes]

Scratch that Internet would be second, first would be to lower drinking age and raise driving age. As well as stricter DUI consequences

[chekov]

that book sounds interesting hugh, gona have to get on that

[LACE]

retooling the education system

along the lines of that..
a restructuring of the entire educational system to cater towards what our future (especially in the US) will inevitably be. STEM fields..

getting kids stoked about math would be one of my goals as well.

that too i suppose. there's that underlying importance in teaching children to understand math and not fear it from a young age..

[dubduck]

scrap austerity measures, abandon zero deficit targetting, sustained public exp. to maintain employment figures and restart growth.

idiot.

dont tell me youve bought into the tory propoganda regarding deficits. Zero structural budget deficits are a myth, an impossibility without a maintaining a balance of payments (exports) surplus. Why do you think they keep revising the target year? You shrink expenditure, which shrinks the economy, thereby enlarging debt as a % of GDP, i.e. a self-defeatist policy.

Only deregulated financial markets and free market capitalists caused the crisis, despite Cameron's insistence on blaming labour

my view is that if your household is in debt, it makes no sense to borrow more to pay off the first debt, a bit of an oversimplification but much more sensible than any other thinking. I do agree that they need to look at investing to boost growth, but public expenditure isn't the place for it. far too much waste and inefficieny in the public sector as it is, its just throwing good money after bad. it was labour that allowed a lot of the deregulation to happen on a certain mr blair's watch.

''Richard Feynman was once asked what he would pass on if the whole edifice of modern scientific knowledge had been lost, and all he could give to posterity was a single sentence. What axiom would convey the maximum amount of scientific information in the fewest possible words? His candidate was ‘all things are made of atoms.’ In a similar spirit, if the whole ramshackle structure of contemporary macroeconomics vanished into thin air and the field had to be reconstructed from scratch, the sentence which packs as much of the discipline into the fewest possible words might be ‘governments are not households.'''

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n01/john-lanch ... it-failure

good article this

[kay]

Disagree based on how easy it would be to replace someone if they left, just saying, there's no incentive to take on added work or stress when you can just fill a low level position for the same wage.

In the states though, we're in a curious position, there are scads of MBA's and JD's, and joint MBA's and JD's working for 9 dollars an hour (which doesn't even begin to cover interest on their student loans) because there is such a glut of highly skilled/educated workers with no work for them to do. It is an upside down world. Most of them could run a complex multinational finance firm.

I'm not convinced that most of them would be capable of running multinational finance firms. Qualifications =/= ability. Having said that, they probably wouldn't do any worse than the idiots who got the world into the current economic mess either.

[kay]

And to answer the OP's question, I would kick off a long term social engineering effort. Society has broken down over the past couple decades. Many no longer feel invested in society sufficiently to improve on it. If humanity is to move forward, we're going have to learn to live with each other better. Break down class, social, economic, gender, racial, sexual, religious, national, historical, political divides.

[Lucifa]

my view is that if your household is in debt, it makes no sense to borrow more to pay off the first debt, a bit of an oversimplification but much more sensible than any other thinking. I do agree that they need to look at investing to boost growth, but public expenditure isn't the place for it. far too much waste and inefficieny in the public sector as it is, its just throwing good money after bad. it was labour that allowed a lot of the deregulation to happen on a certain mr blair's watch.

well.....

"governments are not households.'''

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v35/n01/john-lanch ... it-failure

good article this

And that's it basically. (cheers dubduck)

Macroeconomics /=/ Microeconomics. A Government in the long run does not have to balance it's budget. All the media hysteria about debt timebombs and crippling future generations is absolute nonsense. No country that has it's own currency has ever involuntarily defaulted on it's debt repayments. There's also the argument that borrowing is essentially transfering wealth to future generations (in the form of bonds).

It's amazing how the situation has been twisted from 'irresponsible bankers' to 'LABOUR SPENT ALL OUR MONEY!!', and the public lap it up as well. How they've managed to convince people that cuts are actually both necessary and beneficial is mind boggling. Keynes proved 80 years ago that public exp. is essential if you want to operate anywhere near full employment. There's literally no incentive for the private sector to invest in its absence, and that sort of backwards economic thinking will be found out by the time the next election rolls round.

Don't get me wrong, I don't support Labour and don't think they have a clue. But the Tories brand of 80s neo-classical 'the market knows best' economics is so completely illogical its not even funny.

[hugh]

Well the idea is that as the companies profits go up, everyone within that company would see increased wages. So there would be incentive. There's really no incentive the way it is now because you're likely still gonna be making the same shitty wage regardless of how hard you work/how well the company does.

Want to understand your point of view, but I'm really struggling There is an incentive how it is now, I got a huge pay rise with my last promotion, which will trigger a big role change for me. Unless you're saying shitty wage compared to the directors of the company, but again, I understand why they earn more than me. Their decisions can make or cost hundreds of millions. There's a lot more responsibility and work on their shoulders.

Indeed, with greater power comes greater responsibility. There must surely be reward for the greater amounts of responsibility, stress and other prerequisites (education, experience?)
Has anybody read this book?




The main character (A scientist, primarily) in this book comes from an anarchical world. This is a true anarchy state, and to summarise everyone does every kind of job at every level and the benefits are distributed evenly. At the same time, this also has the negative effect of inefficiency. However, the people are not really found wanting as they only know of what they have. This is completely juxtaposed to the planet that our main character must travel to in order to continue his experiments in his field, where a true capitalist republic state exists. The journey of him having to adjust to this new lifestyle and the problems it brings with it results in a fascinating read.
Anyway, sorry for thread derailment, Scope's posts were really reminding me of this novel.

Got it for my birthday actually! Haven't read it yet, so I avoided reading that last paragraph.

ha nice on matey, Ursula Le Guin is a top dog anyway. If you enjoy this book you should deffo check out some of her other Scifi stuff, including possibly my favourite book of all time;