nurtbo
17 hours ago
Privacy laws actually work! Let’s pass more of them.
> Information gathered about you after the effective date of our updated Privacy Statement, November 27, 2024, will be shared with participating stores where you shop, *unless you live in California, North Dakota, or Vermont.* For PayPal customers in California, North Dakota, or Vermont, we’ll only share your information with those merchants if you tell us to do so
tmpz22
16 hours ago
In 1999 the show writers of the West Wing accurately predicated this in an episode about the selection of a Supreme Court Judge:
"It's not just about abortion, it's about the next 20 years. In the '20s and '30s it was the role of government. '50s and '60s it was civil rights. The next two decades are going to be privacy. I'm talking about the Internet. I'm talking about cell phones. I'm talking about health records and who's gay and who's not. And moreover, in a country born on the will to be free, what could be more fundamental than this?"
- Sam Seaborn (Rob Lowe) West Wing (ep: The Short List) 1999
- We've seen massive breaches of EMR systems
- We've seen massive breeahes from dating apps (Grindr) outing Gay individuals
- None of these entities faced significant consequences for their actions and continue to operate with large amounts of profit.
- 2 years after this episode the Patriot Act was passed. We've failed on privacy so far.
m463
15 hours ago
The government has failed the constituents.
Regulatory capture is still the highest ROI investment, and we should work on that.
potato3732842
14 hours ago
It's a perverse feedback loop. The more power the .gov has to regulate the better the ROI of regulatory capture.'
I'm not sure how we get out of this situation without it getting way worse.
hobobaggins
12 hours ago
Reduce the power of the govt to regulate things at the federal level and instead move that power to the states. This will return power to the people, and people will naturally move to states that are delivering for them (whatever that is that they're looking for).
Across 50 states, this makes it 50 times harder (literally) to practice regulatory capture, and 50 times as likely that they'll be caught out by it, and because news travels at the speed of light today (unlike in the Constitutional era), 50 times as likely that the other state residents will find out about it.
Everything becomes fifty times better once we just return to the principles of federalism: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." (Tenth Amendment)
Decentralization still works. Push the power back downward to the people who care the most -- you and me. Even though it's one of the rare examples of a federal governing agency that is mostly apolitical and actually functions semi-effectively, the FTC, for example, is a largely pointless, neutered entity that pales in comparison to state powers. For example, the state Attorneys General were able to effectively destroy Big Tobacco. The federal government didn't even come close.
paulryanrogers
11 hours ago
People cannot move so easily. Some states have more influence than others. It also makes the decision of 'where' to move more complex.
Do I choose a state where my daughters have few rights or one where corporations control everything or where the pollution is so bad my kid's IQ will suffer?
fragmede
10 hours ago
Also, the one without school shootings please.
paulryanrogers
43 minutes ago
States have open borders, so I'm afraid that can't be solved by local measure alone
Hikikomori
6 hours ago
Sounds like a free market approach, we know how that usually goes, and we already see how bad it is for women and abortions.
b3ing
12 hours ago
Yeah and only 1 or 2 states will get around to doing anything about that 5-10 years down the road.
r-w
12 hours ago
Huh? Why can't you just regulate the flow of private funds to public servants and leave it at that? Not sure why you seem to be arguing that passing one bill expands the power of government as a whole.
bee_rider
12 hours ago
Someone should come up with a form of government where we just, like, ask the people what they want the government to do and then it does that.
paulryanrogers
11 hours ago
Supreme Court said money is speech and corporations are persons. We'll need to unwind some of the crazy first.
Loughla
11 hours ago
I was at breakfast this morning and overheard a conversation at the table next to me.
This conversation was about how a recent thunderstorm had small hail accompanying the rain. And then that this small hail was the leftover seeds from "the jet planes spraying that stuff to control the weather."
Direct voting on issues terrifies me.
Yeul
9 hours ago
Yes the American system is based on the admirable but false idea of the intelligent citizen. It probably worked a lot better when all the voters were wealthy land owners.
bitnasty
an hour ago
Worked better for who?
jh00ker
10 hours ago
I was at a coffee shop a couple weeks ago and I heard two guys going on about how the moon landing never could have happened because it seems impossible. They didn't have any supporting data. They just kept saying things like "all the footage looked so totally fake." My favorite was "and how did they even get back to Earth? I don't remember ever seeing video of then launching a rocket off the moon, do you?"
SMH
orbisvicis
10 hours ago
The astronauts drew straws, and Sandy Koufax had the bad fortune to draw the short straw. He would stay behind to roll tape while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were to return home. The two astronauts would remain suited for the ascent. Buzz Aldrin would monitor the instrument consoles while Neil Armstrong was to remain tethered to the open hatchway in what was later termed "a daring attempt" to recover the film canister thrown by Sandy Koufax. Unfortunately Neil Armstrong was unable to recover the canister. He described it whizzing past his gloved fingers merely inches away during the docking maneuvers with the command module. No one knows what became of the footage. To this day it is likely tumbling around the cold dark expanse of space, perhaps as a new lunar satellite.
... and that's why we don't have footage of the lunar ascent.
orbisvicis
6 hours ago
As for his heroic efforts, Sandy Koufax was posthumously inducted into the baseball Hall of Fame, and to this day continues to be known for the "shot that went around the moon".
bee_rider
10 hours ago
Eh, I guess, although I’ve also heard some pretty wild things by elected officials. What can we do?
bloomingeek
9 hours ago
I'm a boomer, the best thing is for my generation to die out. We are the most selfish and ignorant generation ever in modern times. And yet we had access to the most information! My kids don't like me to talk like this, my reply is always, "prove me wrong". (I'm referring to the mess we have caused the world, not necessarily the mankind helping accomplishments.)
bee_rider
3 hours ago
Ah, well don’t be too rough on yourself. My parents are boomers, they are allright, I’m sure you are too.
I won’t say your generation didn’t make some mistakes politically. But in any group it is the kind and introspective that feel guilt about the group’s negative actions, while the selfish just go on happily being selfish. You don’t have to make up for the selfish folks who happen to have been born around the same time as you, but if you want to, live a long happy kind life.
awkwardpotato
12 hours ago
There are so many beautiful quote I love from the West Wing... but this one stands out for me because of how (a decade off but) shockingly accurate it is.
SturgeonsLaw
16 hours ago
Imagine if the real government was as competent and good faith as the West Wing government
switch007
6 hours ago
Right! The West Wing was political porn, and I loved it (and still re-watch it occasionally)
darknavi
16 hours ago
This is so open faced and gross. It reminds of someone talking about getting paid minimum wage. If you get paid minimum wage, what your employer is saying is, "I would pay you less if I was legally allowed to do so."
It also reminds me of State Farm's (auto/home insurance in the US) website with this link at the bottom:
> Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information (CA residents only)
heavensteeth
10 hours ago
> If you get paid minimum wage, what your employer is saying is, "I would pay you less if I was legally allowed to do so."
Doesn't this apply to all pay rates? It's not like high-paying jobs are high-paying for the love in the employer's heart.
When does a wage stop being gross? 1c over minimum wage? $1 over?
toomuchtodo
16 hours ago
Don’t get mad, get active. Keep cranking on the policy ratchet, progress and success is clearly possible.
mrkramer
16 hours ago
That's what Disqus has at the bottom of every of their comments section[0]. I find it ridiculous.
[0] https://electricdusk.com/img/disqus-gdpr-violation-marketing...
blackeyeblitzar
15 hours ago
I would like a tax relating to privacy violations to be retroactive in all these other states. It’s actually legal to apply a retroactive tax, so why not?
seneca
14 hours ago
> If you get paid minimum wage, what your employer is saying is, "I would pay you less if I was legally allowed to do so."
The minimum wage is the government saying "if you produce less value than this arbitrary cut off, you aren't allowed to work".
kelnos
13 hours ago
Ah, lovely, you're one of those people.
If you produce less value than the cutoff (whatever that means; wages are set based on how little a company can get away with paying, not on some arbitrary "value" you've assigned to the work), companies that employ you still have to pay you a living wage. Or not even, since minimum wage usually lags a living wage.
The funny thing is, I bet you're also the kind of person who is against welfare programs. So if the minimum wage didn't exist, people in these sorts of jobs would get paid so little that they'd end up on welfare. Not sure how that would be an improvement.
majormajor
12 hours ago
Wages are more a factor of supply and demand and negotiation resulting from that than of value produced.
Otherwise we can have a long argument about if NFL players today truly produce 2-3x more "value" than 20-30 years ago for playing the same game.
(You might say "value" itself is coming from supply demand and that yes if more people have demand for NFL tickets or advertising spots during NFL games now then yes, the players are producing more value... but at that point when we acknowledge how interconnected and shape-able it all is, we could say that minimum wage is the government redirecting labor and businesses away from roles and behaviors that aren't even enough to cover the cost of living towards ones that are more valuable. Which would be... good?)
krapp
14 hours ago
No it isn't, because wages aren't set based on some objective measurement of the quality of value produced. If that were the case, increases in productivity would have resulted in a commensurate increase in wages, but the only increase is the gap between wages and productivity.
LegitShady
14 hours ago
you know what works better? delete your paypal account and dont use them as a service. I did this years ago and in fact have never missed not having one of these accounts. and since I'm not using paypal they're not sharing info on my to stores when i shop, whether my local laws allow it or not.
OJFord
3 hours ago
They refuse to delete the account I never intentionally created (their scammy credit card checkout tactics when I had no other option) unless I provide them a bunch of data I've never previously given them in order to 'verify' my identity.
guywithahat
14 hours ago
They also raise the bar of entry for companies, reducing competition. I don't use PayPal and won't use Venmo in stores because of this, however I certainly wouldn't be putting trust in more legislation solving this.
davidlumley
14 hours ago
Can you explain what bar has been raised unless you were planning to sell PII as part of your business model?