Pesticides. If they had been used to control the environment of small areas it would have been largely fine.
Using pesticides to control the environment of large swathes of land was bound to cause all sorts of problems, and it did, well beyond the areas they are used on.
Wikipedia: "Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, commonly known as DDT, is a colorless, tasteless, and almost odorless crystalline chemical compound, an organochlorine. Originally developed as an insecticide, it became infamous for its environmental impacts"
I actually remember in 1963, we had an invasion of ants. Just regular brown ants common in north European countries. They were everywhere. In beds, in food stores, inside the insulation. And they were also of the biting kind. Traditional solution was to abandon the house for in midwinter and let it freeze up. Just a few buffs from a tiny cardboard box of DDT and they were all gone. Excellent, fuck the environment.
Cars. When everyone has one then traffic and sprawl cancel the speed advantages. Without all the highways and parking lots and overbuilt roads you could walk in the same time.
There are so many. Some might even wish there was some of kind of IQ-test and permanent branding in social media. In the old-time Usenet everybody was associated with an academic institution, which already implies some mental capabilities perse.
Or just a lack of advertising of explicit social need. Like, Aunt Betty who's 56 and lives with her cats doesn't need to be on the same network as half the planet and posting daily.
Facebook did try to do a "True Names" policy, but it was too little too late.
I think a gov't issued id for a permanent login would have (will?) be great. Ya want to be anonymous? Sure. Here's a pseudononimous id that only courts can track back to your real id. Want another one? Sure, that'll be 100$ a year (taxes that go directly to server costs). Want another one? Sure, every additional id costs 10x as much as the last.
I think anytime you're getting the government involved to that degree you run the risk of it getting messed up even further, especially if the politicians realize they now have the keys to give themselves political advantage through information censorship, fraudulent accounts, etc.
Haven't there been complaints about immigration enforcement pertaining to drivers licenses? Not to mention that driving infractions are basically a racket - it costs more to defend your innocence than to just pay the fine. In some states the magistrates hearing the cases aren't even members of the bar and lack basic understanding of legal principles.
They've used library records to see if people have checked out books containing specific information when doing investigations, I think without a warrant. I think I've heard of people accumulating massive late fees multiple times the cost of a replacement book without adequate notification.
In both examples, you are paying for a privilege. Should people need to pay to exercise their rights, like freedom of speech? We do tax some rights already, so I guess we could tax people to express their ideas online too. I also think the control of people's speech is more politically valuable than controlling access to libraries or drivers licenses.
... yes, any system can be corrupted. We have to look at good faith use of a system to properly evaluate it in a cost benefit analysis. Then, harden it against attack.
Also, it's "freedom of speech", not "freedom of anonymous speech". The essential part of the "My freedom to swing my fist ends at your nose." is that the fist and the nose are connected to actual people. Feel free to punch away at twitter bot farms. They're not people.
This is the danger of anonymity that we're seeing blossom online. Sure there's no immediate property damage on the line, but it's a small cumulative effect, giving people anonymous voices. What's the balance? I don't know, but laisez faire isn't cutting it.
Using pesticides to control the environment of large swathes of land was bound to cause all sorts of problems, and it did, well beyond the areas they are used on.