3 days ago
The very people blocking access were the ones selling it back.
"Create a problem, create the solution and profit from it" is not unique to Turkmenistan nor a new concept. I wouldn't be surprised if this is also true of the "anti-AI crawling" and "identity verification" stuff that's now showing up.
3 days ago
I wonder what underpins the arising of this kind of pattern of authoritarian government, which we also see arising in supposedly liberal Western democracies.
Some people voice concern about the emergence of “prison planet” (a phrase with varied meanings), but with the rise of mass surveillance, drone tech, AI and authoritarianism I can well imagine the worst patterns of governance finding a stable equilibrium for a considerable period of time.
2 days ago
I think these guys have a lot to do with the rise of authoritarianism in the West…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Economic_Forum
Read up on what they advocate for and who they’re influencing and you’ll start to understand what’s going in the world a little better. Chilling stuff for sure.
2 days ago
Do you have any links investigating how they've been backing Trump? It feels like he's right in line with the overall corporate-authoritarian agenda, but with a kayfabe of a different flavor for the sake of distraction.
2 days ago
The WEF supports leftist authoritarianism, not the Trump/MAGA flavored variety.
I think they are indirectly responsible for his rise, because he is a direct result of the growing backlash against globalist policies.
2 days ago
The flavors of authoritarianism are just different marketing for the plebs. When people grow weary of one, they flop to the other for a new promise of different easy answers.
Why do you think they're somehow disjoint? Even if there is some friendly competition between different factions of elites jockeying for power based on how they market themselves, from an individual/liberty perspective why wouldn't you still consider them more alike than different?
2 days ago
[flagged]
2 days ago
Sorry - I had thought we were criticizing authoritarianism in general, not cheerleading for one of the flavors.
2 days ago
I'm not cheerleading, just explaining the differences as you asked. MAGA gets plenty of coverage here, while the WEF really doesn't, so I did lean a little more into explaining the authoritarian nature of leftist globalism.
2 days ago
Those are the exact same talking points I hear from people supporting Trump as some kind of supposed alternative. Our main political dynamic is that each professional team plays up how bad the other professional team is to drive support to themselves - so sensational criticism of one single professional team boils down to support for the other professional team.
And as I said I thought we were criticizing authoritarianism in general. I wasn't asking you the difference between the two flavors in terms of their marketing, but asking why you would choose to focus on their differences rather than their commonalities, especially in the context of caring about individual liberty.
2 days ago
Advocating that we should eat bugs and not own anything is a pretty serious infringement of personal liberty.
2 days ago
I don't see how advocating those things is itself an infringement of personal liberty. Are you coming from the all-too-common place of equating speech with violence?
You've also missed my main point three times now while actually leaning into the exact dynamic I've described, and so I'm having a hard time interpreting your comments as earnestly condemning authoritarianism.
2 days ago
Sorry, I worded that poorly. Advocating is not the infringement, implementation of what they advocate for would be a major infringement.
I think we’re just continuing to talk past each other though. I’ve explained how WEF’s flavor of authoritarianism differs from MAGA’s to the best of my ability, but I understand if my explanations are insufficient.
a day ago
I never asked how the flavors are different. The flavors are obviously different. And on this, you haven't made any points that I wasn't already aware of.
What I have been asking you is why you are choosing to emphasize the differences between the flavors, rather than focusing on their overall commonalities.
You came into this thread, ostensibly about the right-flavored authoritarianism currently on the rise in the West, with a whatabout left-flavored authoritarianism. Your subsequent comments have been narrow critiques of left-flavored authoritarianism, indistinguishable from support/marketing of right-flavored authoritarianism. In terms of actually criticizing authoritarianism in general, you can see how that pattern might come off as a bit disingenuous, right?
3 days ago
The blog cites an interesting tool called COST: The NetBlocks Cost of Shutdown Tool https://netblocks.org/projects/cost
NetBlocks Cost of Shutdown Tool™ (COST) is a data-driven online service that enables anyone – including journalists, researchers, advocates, policy makers, businesses, and others – to quickly and easily produce rough estimates of the economic cost of Internet disruptions.
https://progres.online/reports/internet-freedom/what-does-in...
"It indicates that a total internet shutdown in Turkmenistan for one day could result in a loss of 17.4 million USD, which translates to 6.4 billion USD per year, equivalent to around 7.8% of the country’s GDP in 2023."
3 days ago
> It was reported by Progres Foundation that this Internet shutdown has potentially costed 8% of Turkmenistan's annual GDP.
That’s a lot.
2 days ago
don't go that far, look at Cuba: 90 miles from the US's shores. Systemic corruption and narco dictatorship.