

We are not Consumers, We are the People, as in We The People - bound008
http://katzr.com/2013/04/we-are-not-consumers-we-are-the-people-as-in-we-the-people/

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GHFigs
_I may buy a lot of stuff, but should I only be viewed as “a consumer” in the
eyes of the government and my democracy?_

Notice that the author is attributing words in a blog post on thehill.com to
"the government and my democracy".

~~~
eurleif
The word "consumer" does appear in CISPA, but only in one paragraph, referring
to "consumer terms of service or consumer licensing agreements". I don't see
what's so bad about using "consumers" to refer to people who consume a
particular service, though. It's not denying them personhood; it's just a way
to refer to the subset of people who use a service, whereas "people" would
refer to all people.

~~~
Qantourisc
It's like saying collateral damage that's why it's bad-ish.

~~~
eurleif
What phrasing would you use instead of "consumer", and what makes your
phrasing better?

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pfraze
IANAL; I think the term "consumer" is from the relationship with the
providers. The people being protected are specifically the ones that use the
service.

Congress is a black box to us. I've read the text of CISPA, and I don't think
it's unreasonable, but you have to trust the people using it, and we don't.
That pretty much ends the conversation.

My friend has been working as a PA in a law office that's involved in health-
care legislation. We recently had a fight about Internet regulation--
copyright. He took the position that we should write good legislation before
somebody else skews it in their favor. I agreed, but I thought it was
premature. You write the legislation now and you risk things like nation-wide
lock-in to IE6. Software takes time, and the Web's immature. Right now, it's
very noisy, it's not private, it's socially chaotic, and it's not quite secure
enough - online elections, anybody?

That said, the things that IT touches tend to become more open in the long
run, and eventually that'll include Congress. I don't know if CISPA is a good
bill, but I don't think it helps to make a cause against it either. If we care
this much, we need to participate in the writing of the laws. If we can't do
that, then the Web isn't ready yet, and Congress stays a black box.

EDIT: brevity

~~~
ataggart
>I don't think it's unreasonable.

Given that laws mean whatever those in power say they mean, the test is not
whether _you_ find the text reasonable, but rather whether _they_ can find the
text to mean something you would find _un_ reasonable.

~~~
pfraze
Yes, but we live with that all the time, don't we? At a certain point, we have
to just trust that it will be used as intended, and then trust that we can
improve the law later if it's abused.

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unimpressive
As I have said before, and will almost certainly say again, words are
important, the words we use to say our thoughts are the thoughts that other
people will have about them. Thoughts are the intent of the message, but the
words _are_ the message.

~~~
jakerocheleau
these kinds of comments are the reason I browse HN daily

~~~
Jach
You might also enjoy:
<http://lesswrong.com/lw/od/37_ways_that_words_can_be_wrong/>

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rayiner
The only use of the word 'consumer' in CISPA is in the context of the
following recurring clause:

"Such term does not include the purpose of protecting a system or network from
efforts to gain unauthorized access to such system or network that solely
involve violations of consumer terms of service or consumer licensing
agreements and do not otherwise constitute unauthorized access."

I get that people need a reason to grandstand, but can we grandstand about
something more worth grandstanding about? Right now there is some big evil oil
company trying to figure out how to get away with taking the cheapest measures
possible to protect water resources in the course of fracking activities.
There is some coal company pushing yet another iteration of the total bollocks
that is "clean coal technology." Can we make noise about something like that
instead? Because that's actually going to have repercussions and effect
people, unlike the wholly imagined nefarious terms of CISPA.

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scdoshi
A mixture of not understanding the article and wanting to rail on CISPA?

Where does it mention that the government views citizens as consumers? From
what I understand, it says that government would have access to data about
consumers, as in 'consumers/customers of private businesses'.

Anyone can misunderstand or misread something, I don't blame the author.
What's irritating is how many upvotes this has and how many people have piled
on.

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michaelochurch
1776 to 1847: Citizen America. 1848 to 1932: Producer America. 1933 to 2007:
Consumer America. 2008 to ???: Cosmopolitan America.

Citizen America was an experiment in rational government that succeeded with
flying colors in some ways (secularism, increasing confidence in popular
government) but struggled immensely with the division-of-labor question,
ultimately falling into bitter conflict (then war) over slavery.

Producer America started with the Industrial Revolution (which solved
division-of-labor issues) and ran through the Gilded Age, and ultimately fell
apart with the Great Depression, which taught us how bad things get for
_everyone_ if people _can't buy_ the things being produced by industry.

Consumer America started with the New Deal and Keynesian economics, reached
its cultural height in the 1950s-60s, and is now unraveling because it's
unsatisfying and culturally empty. Also, the foreign policy (need to justify
this hyperconsumptive lifestyle in which people eat 3x as much meat and do 2x
as much driving as makes sense) has been horrid, to the point that even most
Americans don't support it.

Cosmopolitan America is driven by a generation of people who see themselves as
_global_ citizens and want to improve the rest of the world through organic,
democratic, and compassionate means (no more "bomb 'em till they love us").
Also, it seeks to allow more people to have involvement in production. It
turns out to be a very unrewarding existence to be a corporate drone whose
only real contribution to life is to consume (especially as those pointless,
menial jobs get cut, thanks to technology).

What we're seeing now is the conflict between Consumer vs. Cosmopolitan
America.

~~~
rquantz
_What we're seeing now is the conflict between Consumer vs. Cosmopolitan
America_

Cosmopolitan America, if it exists as a mass paradigm, is at this point mostly
aspirational. Our entire culture and economy revolve around consumption. Most
jobs are in service, not production. It is difficult to be a citizen of the
world when the world is so disunified -- see attempts to do anything of use to
combat global warming.

Meanwhile, capital is doing its very best to coopt any nascent consciousness
of Americans as producers rather than consumers. You can see how quickly, for
instance, hipster culture, which started out as anti-consumer (thrift stores,
reclaimed industrial spaces, living in the cracks of society producing art
instead of having normal jobs) was commodified and turned into fashion, and
people who were drawn to hipsterdom were channeled into more appropriate
avenues for buying.

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rosser
One of my low-priority, when I find sufficient 'tuits projects for a while now
has been to find and download the transcripts of Presidential speeches over
the last several decades and compare the incidence of the words "citizen"
versus "consumer" over time.

I'm pretty sure I won't like what I find.

~~~
HoochTHX
Sounds similar to Aaron Swartz' project to analyze the research being done at
universities. Might be worth forking that project to jump start yours.

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danielfriedman
Excel is a challenging tool to learn. It's not necessarily Excel that's the
problem - it's called "human error". It happens everywhere.

~~~
anigbrowl
^ Case in point :-)

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msandford
Couldn't agree more. Businesses calling people "consumers" is sad but
understandable. But the government?

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benajnim
While I don't agree with CISPA, but what about the Consumer Protection Agency?

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alan_cx
Just a guess, but would it not be that the CPA protects you if you chose to be
a consumer. If you are not a consumer, it doesn't apply.

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snowwrestler
Like many laws, CISPA would have an effect on people who are not citizens of
the U.S. That is why many laws use terms like "consumer" in the context of
business, "patient" in the context of health care, or often just "person"
otherwise.

Words matter; "citizen" is a more restrictive class of people than "consumer."

------
itistoday2
"Anonymous Calls For Internet Blackout On April 22 To Protest CISPA"

[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/19/anonymous-
blackout-...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/19/anonymous-blackout-
cispa_n_3116509.html)

