Re: The future of free speech
 

Huh, even you two are already almost agreeing with each other :) . The market WILL decide what free speech is, but it also implies that we may not like the result. There's really no reason to believe the average person will remain vigilant enough about every transaction they make.

It is a gaping flaw in the US constitution that corporations can restrict free speech through their actions, but on the other hand regulation would probably be too difficult and oppressive in itself. Can we read managers' minds and figure out why they didn't hire someone, and do we want trolls to start appealing their bans in the courts?

Ultimately, we just need a population that understands and supports free speech. By the time you need technological countermeasures, you'd better be using them to plan a revolution.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Well in our managed economy (Since the SEC exists we don't really have a true "free market") will still have a very close to truly free market. Sure the government likes to come in with socialistic ideas to try and put a band-aid on the massive lay-offs that inevitably occur in a free market when a shitty company refuses to conform and ultimately dies (Car companies anyone? :D)

But essentially the "phoenix effect" still occurs. If a big company does a crappy job, it fails and a new, better company rises from the ashes.
Same thing with any company that tries to control free speech in the context of this argument. Big bad brother company enforces censorship, and it dies from lack up support and a new company arises.

They can never FORCE you to use their product. They can try and build a monopoly so the only viable option you have is their product, but then again theres still nothing stopping others from creating a superior one.

A persons unalienable rights are simply as they are, pure and untainted. People can spin whatever they want to try and take it away from you, but the bottom line is, they can't without brute force. And then they're breaking the law. The only organization that can truly run unchecked are governments as they ARE the standards. So it takes a revolution. And now we're getting into a whole other ball of wax. :D Thus a government that would truly be ran by the people, for the people is one that ebs and flows with the societal norms of the day. If 90% of people become brainless idiots who drool at their computer because they don't care they're being censored, then unfortunately that's the way the world is going to become. But guess what, if 90% of people don't care, then society has deemed that is the proper way for people to live. (Sociology anyone? :D)

Re: The future of free speech
 

Nice thread I cant discuss without mentioning politics, certain religions and caricatures :/

So I will read and not discuss :p

Re: The future of free speech
 

Absolutely. If you suddenly were unable to send your mother an email because your ISP deemed it unworthy, and I came to you and all your friends and said "Give me a few bucks and we'll start our own ISP and grow it over time.." you would either agree or continue dealing with the censorship.

Re: The future of free speech
 

I prefer math. They've just found a very inefficient local maximum :D


Sure, but you'd need so many people agreeing with you that things would never have gotten so bad in the first place. Infrastructure is expensive, and I'm assuming there wouldn't be any line sharing in this future.

Re: The future of free speech
 

As with anything, it would start small. I never said it would be easy or straight forward, but the bottom line is, it would exist. Hell, pirate networks and separate internets already exist on the globe. It's nothing for a group of people to start running wire and getting people on board to join the new "Free Net" or whatever if such censorship occurred. Hell, they've already got phone plans where anyone on the plan can call someone else for free, or things like magic jack which kind of sort of puts you on a different network than normal phone users.

Again, tihs is all just fun speculation, but at the end of the day, if I connect two machines to each other via a wire and talk, no one can censor it. :D It's just a matter of starting it over and telling the big companies to go f themselves.

Plus, I GUARANTEE the day ISP's start trying to charge or cut you off because you are doing something they don't agree with, people will drop and go to other means.

Luckily ISP's are almost literally a dime a dozen. Comcast tried to do the whole "We're monitoring you!" b.s. and people drop from the and go to Insight, Windstream and others quite regularly. :D Free market in effect.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Heck, even better. The medium already exists. The wires are ran. All you gotta do is encrypt or change the actual protocol in which your network communicates and send it on its way. You could do this on such a complex level that aside from cutting the wire, theres not much they could do. And then theyre just spiting themselves. :D

Let freedom ring baby!

Re: The future of free speech
 

I don't know, man. The only monopolies I deal with on a day-to-day basis are specifically imposed on me by the government. My water, power, and garbage collection are all imposed by the city government. The USPS is protected by the US gov't.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Hence my emphasis on Education at the end of my post. Americans today are a bunch of idiots. If we don't put lots of emphasis on educating not only our youth but our adults as well then our capitalism will fail us (as it already does from time to time). Not only that, but our federalist democracy will fail us.

Education is the most important component in everything anyone does ever.

If we have a society of well educated people, I think you would find the free market truly would regulate itself, monopolies or not.

Having done extensive research on starting up an ISP in my old rural hometown, I can tell you its incredibly easy. Depending on the scale of what you're trying to accomplish, Venture capital may or may not be needed.

Hooking up ~1000 customers in a 150 sq mile area: no venture capital required. Bootstrap all of it.

Hooking up ~50,000 customers in a municipal environment: Venture capital probably required.

Re: The future of free speech
 

Those *should* be benevolent monopolies, especially in a representative form of government-- but I admit they don't always work out that way.

And a general FYI to readers/posters here: you're all doing a great job in the discussion. I think you all realize politics is not the same as civics. ;)