Yep. It’s atrocious and deeply worrying behavior by a state that seems to have forgotten that their rights are a blessing from their citizens and not the other way around.
The principles of the enlightenment underneath western civilization are…
Higher power / natural law
v
Irrevocable natural rights of individuals
v
Revocable rights given to the state for the common good
…
We can revoke the government’s mandate to rule us at any time. I understand people may have forgotten, or don’t know or have the background to understand, or maybe even don’t care. But that doesn’t change anything about the natural order or founding principles.
The system we are currently headed towards:
State
v
Subjects
This is monarchy / totalitarianism, and while it may be done for all the right reasons, it’s stepping backwards in terms of what’s good for the world, the progress of civilization, and is a failure to learn the profound lessons of the enlightenment that unleashed the greatest period of technology innovation and unrivaled economic expansion in history.
A considerable catch is when revocation happens, what takes its place?
Authoritarianism is looming in the US and elsewhere; I worry about the efforts to "burn down the corruption" being replanted with a new authoritarian replacement.
This is always the concern. Anyone who seriously studies social science shares this perspective with you.
But these changes don’t usually happen until we have atrociously difficult or insanely outrageous behavior from the government, or conditions that are incredibly poor. People don’t make these kinds of changes easily and will argue for the status quo until the very, very last opportunity generally. At that point it is an inevitability…
Citizens are all slaves of one corporation or another so speaking their minds is not within their power.
IMO, this is the most infuriating aspect about the censorship push of the past few years. They've already been suppressing freedom of speech using people's livelihoods as a covert form of blackmail... But that wasn't enough and so they had to break the pretense and engage is overt censorship.
Literally everyone who works for a corporation engages in regular self-censorship. This implies that they believe that they may be reprimanded for speaking their thoughts. As someone who has actually spoken their thoughts, I can tell you that it's more than just a belief! The consequences are real.
The executives responsible stepped over the line and should be tried and jailed.
> Citizens are all slaves of one corporation or another so speaking their minds is not within their power.
Speak for yourself! I work in the private sector and I can’t think of any way my speech is circumscribed by that - unless of course I tried to discuss politics in the workplace, which is simply frowned upon because it’s cringe.
Well of course you have complete free speech so long as it falls within approved narratives which support the status quo. Just wait until you start paying attention and begin to develop contrarian opinions, share them online anonymously (keep all these ideas online, never IRL), watch your real life career prospects mysteriously dwindle... Then we can talk about free speech.
