Chat Control: Incompatible with Fundamental Rights (2022)

It's a really nasty feeling to live in a society influenced by politicians in power with ideas so far away from my own, while also having little influence over their decisions, unless I give up what I like doing and go into lobbying (or politics, which seems to me like the poor man's lobbying)

I've sent an e-mail to the permanent representative in the country I live in, but I feel particularly blindsided knowing about such a decision on the same day it is voted. And angry for all the people, especially journalist friends, that are out there and unaware of what's going on.

I'm not sure this is what democracy is supposed to feel like, but if it is, it feels like shit.

Organize. There are lots of digital right groups in many forms and shapes.

It is easy to tune in to their frequency: just be an increadibly lazy pretentious figure with no talent to do real job that produces value that people are willing to pay for.

From that perspective writing a short legal paper quickly that facks up the life of everyone is much more logical than catching criminals. The latter one needs some work, also some brain to do.

It’s one of the reasons I’m against the continued growth of centralized power structures. Local governments aren’t perfect and tend to be more easily dominated by a little tyrant, but in general, the more decentralized the power structures are, the easier it is for people to change their situation. Your vote has a bigger impact, it’s easier to hold local officials accountable, and of course, you can move to a different town / county / province more easily than moving to a different country / continent.

Warren Buffett said something to the effect of: “I prefer to invest in a business that could be run by a monkey, because eventually it will be.”

A similar principle holds for governments. You will eventually (possibly consistently) have a government that is led by incompetent (or corrupt) politicians. How can you structure your system in such a way that their negative effects are minimal?

But that’s the thing. The EU commission is by far vastly shielded from politics. They are not elected, they are nominated by the member states government, but due to the complexity of the EU they are always chosen from this limited and fairly homogeneous pool of professional bureaucrats. It is not that they are even people or conspiring to create a Orwellian nightmare. But is the nature of power in the hands of the professional managerial class without real democratic input.

And we don’t know how to fix that. Politics is a spectacle ensuring that we vote for people who are poorly equipped to make the real decisions in a vastly complex system. The people itself are becoming dumber and less cultured.

I am starting to really think that being governed by an AI maybe is not a bad idea as long as no human can control this AI.

You are missing historical perspective - listen to recordings of western political leaders from the 70’s - whether good or evil, left or right, it is obvious they are clever, talented people in their prime years.

To have someone like Trump, Biden or Boris Johnson I charge would be unthinkable. We are governed by low calibre people that should already be in retirement.

Core of the problem is that talented people no longer go into governance in the West, it’s now low-status career. (You age to consider all career paths, not just becoming president).

In China it’s a high status career, and the results speak for themselves.

Until we have high-calibre, ambitious and talented people go into politics again, we will continue this muddling decline.

I don't think that the problem lies with the commission. If we had a Senate like the US or if Parliament decided to introduce new laws then nothing would really be different. They would still make these boneheaded decisions that are unattached to reality.

And they never will because they insist on paying peanuts. The government is stuck on a lots of stupid people model when they need to be on a few smart people model. That's why they can't execute on complex projects and need to always contract it out to the private sector.

> I feel particularly blindsided knowing about such a decision on the same day it is voted.

That. I get the local newspaper, and I am not sure if I have seen any report of Chat Control at all in the last few weeks.. If it does get mentioned at all, it is usually a 5-10 line paragraph :|

Don’t fret.

Those who wield power today have absolutely and completely forgotten just how brittle power is. They feel absolutely untouchable, and their self-serving remits are absolutely normalised to them.

Which is to say, this trajectory typically ends in violent revolt. You can only continue with edicts if you have complete control over all of the apparatuses of state power, and have a police state. If you rely on the illusion of power (policeman in your head, etc.), as most western democracies do, then a rude awakening awaits.

Demagoguery seems like a wise tactic until you’re upside down on a fence with your balls in your mouth.

So don’t fret. The pendulum will swing a few more times, but the bob will pop off the end of its tether and bounce under the awkward sofa of revolutionary change soon enough.

Being delusional, I would say that the only reason for the EU existence is to pass legislation that would apply to the whole EU, that would not be possible to pass even in a single country.

That's why the EU is structured in such a way that unelected and irresponsible people are given such enormous power over sovereign countries.

Previously, I thought it's about peace in Europe, more freedom for the people, but after such legislation is enacted, the EU is no more than a way to enslave the whole continent and bring it to the state not a single European voted for.

And it's really unbelievable how political parties in the EU (and US) who won't shut up about the threat from the extremist right gaining power also seem to have no fear of giving their enemy these tools.

And then you wind up with the mirror-image problem of ambitious and avaricious people using politics as a path for their own advancement at the expense of others.

Why not both, if both were on the table? I.e. incentivizing competent people to seek office, while decentralizing power and properly constraining the reach of any single office.

This is why anarchism is an important philosophy and practice. It asks, how can we build societies which operate without coercion and hierarchies?

The politicians don’t actually represent you. The world is a democracy for the donor class.

>It's a really nasty feeling to live in a society influenced by politicians in power with ideas so far away from my own

This has made me realize that there is little difference in living in a "free" society compared to "unfree". It didn't get to be that way because of morals or sound reasoning. It ended up that way because of dumb luck in the past that and enough propaganda cemented it. That's it.

Either way, what matters is what you're allowed to do now and in the close future. Bets are off for everything else. Our societies aren't governed by what the right thing to do is.

Please don't bring that old American libertarian fantasy about moving if you don't like a local law to Europe.

The amount of people who would consider selling their house, moving their family and job because they don't like some local policy or its implementation is essentially zero.

And if you can't find a group to your liking, create one.-

At any rate, move. Act.-

>> We are governed by low calibre people that should already be in retirement.

>> Core of the problem is that talented people no longer go into governance in the West, it’s now low-status career.

>> Until we have high-calibre, ambitious and talented people go into politics again, we will continue this muddling decline.

I very much resonate with this. Also, with concerns that the opposite might just be as bad: I could name en European, western country of several dozen million people governed by (downright) a career, borderline pyscho narcisist career politician. How do we keep -that- from happening?

Just following up, but I know many, many people who have moved to my state for exactly that reason: what they saw as government run amok in their home state. This trend spiked during COVID, but it continues due to various policy blunders that they are trying to leave behind.

So, yes. People do relocate when the local government becomes oppressive.

My family is in the US because my great grandparents immigrated here to get out from under the thumb of the UK government. In fact, unless you’re a Native American, you probably have a similar story in your family history.