Eh, I don't know if you've ever had ten cops show up at your door merely because you told a social worker you were having suicidal thoughts, and the law arguably obliged her to inform on me. Trust me, it's worse than being kicked off a comment section.
As for actually being murdered by private citizens, there are still laws against that…
Eh, I don't know if you've ever had ten cops show up at your door merely because you told a social worker you were having suicidal thoughts, and the law arguably obliged her to inform on me. Trust me, it's worse than being kicked off a comment section.
As for actually being murdered by private citizens, there are still laws against that sort of thing. Once the cops start doing it with impunity, laws are out the window and there's no turning back.
It's nice that there are laws against it... and you are still dead... and looking at some of the trials recently, they may well be able to do it with impunity.
Cops already kill people with impunity for no real reason other than either carelessness or fear or animus against the other.
I am not necessarily disagreeing with you here. What I am trying to do is point out the arbitrary nature of some of the distinctions that are being made and the reasoning (or lack thereof) behind them.
If the SA (or a contemporary equivalent) kills you or trashes your place of business or merely puts enough fear into you that you censor yourself (and they have the tacit support of people powerful enough so that they can avoid punishment) is it REALLY that different from the government doing it?
On an abstract level, certainly--but that is an artifact of our particular society/culture/abstract rules. The results are certainly the same.
This also begs the question: While A might be better than B for YOU, is A better than B for society? We are largely trained to not even ask that question or, if we do ask it, devalue the answer if it doesn't come out in favor of the individual.
I can't comment on the Social worker thing. I also work in a profession where I am a required reporter. It sometimes comes down to a judgment call. Sometimes the call is wrong. The general thought is that it is better to possibly save a life than it is to do nothing.
Doesn't sound like it was necessarily a problem with the reporting so much as the nature of the response. part of that is the general social perception of an animus towards certain behaviors or psychologies. Part of it is a lack of proper resources and training.
We hold (because we have been taught that way) that private censorship is okay but government censorship is not. The arguments put forward generally rely upon the extreme applications (imprisonment/death scenarios) which serve to hide the central incongruity/ambiguity about censorship.
I would argue (in this case), ultimately, that censorship is censorship, regardless of the source--and so you are either okay with it or not okay with it. If you are okay with it, who does it is really kind of beside the point. I would then argue, from a societal standpoint, that it is better for the government to do it than vigilantes.
Gov't control of speech does not necessarily preempt private control of speech. So you don't get to choose between the gov't and "vigilantes," legal or otherwise. In our system, private control of speech does essentially preempt gov't control.
That of course doesn't prove that private control is good. Eg the Hollywood production code and later blacklist, which arose out of the industry's fear of gov't oversight, were debatable to say the least. But it's doubtful gov't oversight would have averted either. (Cf. Vichy France's doing the Gestapo one better.)
As I've indicated, when it comes to speech I'd rather take my chances with the private sector than with the gov't, let alone both, unless you can show that the private sector literally controls the gov't across the board and isn't just interested in protecting itself from hostile antitrust suits and the like. (Industry leaders often actually welcome gov't regulation as it tends to freeze the status quo and stifle incipient competition.) Last I looked, corporations as indiscriminately ravenous octopusses has been a popular populist talking point (on both left and right) for well over a century, but I still don't buy it. (Even though don't think they're "people" either.)
My ultimate point is that censorship through coercion is bad, period--regardless of whether public or private. While public (government) control has its obvious issues, particularly in extremis, private censorship is often more pernicious and you have less recourse against it in a system such as ours.
I don't think that corps are indiscriminately ravenous, they tend to be discriminate. Their saving grace, so far, is they are generally not concerned with speech, preferring instead to ape the speech of whatever market segment they are most desirous of reaching at the moment.
Government regulation (from a corporate standpoint) is often a good thing because it sets the boundaries of expected opportunities and threats and--as you note--tends to freeze the status quo.
Much of what "evil" they do is incidental evil--something that just kind of occurs while they are trying to do something else. To my mind that actually kind of makes it worse... the banality of evil (though, of course, evil is perhaps too strong a word especially without the intentionality).
Eh, I don't know if you've ever had ten cops show up at your door merely because you told a social worker you were having suicidal thoughts, and the law arguably obliged her to inform on me. Trust me, it's worse than being kicked off a comment section.
As for actually being murdered by private citizens, there are still laws against that sort of thing. Once the cops start doing it with impunity, laws are out the window and there's no turning back.
It's nice that there are laws against it... and you are still dead... and looking at some of the trials recently, they may well be able to do it with impunity.
Cops already kill people with impunity for no real reason other than either carelessness or fear or animus against the other.
I am not necessarily disagreeing with you here. What I am trying to do is point out the arbitrary nature of some of the distinctions that are being made and the reasoning (or lack thereof) behind them.
If the SA (or a contemporary equivalent) kills you or trashes your place of business or merely puts enough fear into you that you censor yourself (and they have the tacit support of people powerful enough so that they can avoid punishment) is it REALLY that different from the government doing it?
On an abstract level, certainly--but that is an artifact of our particular society/culture/abstract rules. The results are certainly the same.
This also begs the question: While A might be better than B for YOU, is A better than B for society? We are largely trained to not even ask that question or, if we do ask it, devalue the answer if it doesn't come out in favor of the individual.
I can't comment on the Social worker thing. I also work in a profession where I am a required reporter. It sometimes comes down to a judgment call. Sometimes the call is wrong. The general thought is that it is better to possibly save a life than it is to do nothing.
Doesn't sound like it was necessarily a problem with the reporting so much as the nature of the response. part of that is the general social perception of an animus towards certain behaviors or psychologies. Part of it is a lack of proper resources and training.
We hold (because we have been taught that way) that private censorship is okay but government censorship is not. The arguments put forward generally rely upon the extreme applications (imprisonment/death scenarios) which serve to hide the central incongruity/ambiguity about censorship.
I would argue (in this case), ultimately, that censorship is censorship, regardless of the source--and so you are either okay with it or not okay with it. If you are okay with it, who does it is really kind of beside the point. I would then argue, from a societal standpoint, that it is better for the government to do it than vigilantes.
That is one argument. There are contrary ones.
Gov't control of speech does not necessarily preempt private control of speech. So you don't get to choose between the gov't and "vigilantes," legal or otherwise. In our system, private control of speech does essentially preempt gov't control.
That of course doesn't prove that private control is good. Eg the Hollywood production code and later blacklist, which arose out of the industry's fear of gov't oversight, were debatable to say the least. But it's doubtful gov't oversight would have averted either. (Cf. Vichy France's doing the Gestapo one better.)
As I've indicated, when it comes to speech I'd rather take my chances with the private sector than with the gov't, let alone both, unless you can show that the private sector literally controls the gov't across the board and isn't just interested in protecting itself from hostile antitrust suits and the like. (Industry leaders often actually welcome gov't regulation as it tends to freeze the status quo and stifle incipient competition.) Last I looked, corporations as indiscriminately ravenous octopusses has been a popular populist talking point (on both left and right) for well over a century, but I still don't buy it. (Even though don't think they're "people" either.)
My ultimate point is that censorship through coercion is bad, period--regardless of whether public or private. While public (government) control has its obvious issues, particularly in extremis, private censorship is often more pernicious and you have less recourse against it in a system such as ours.
I don't think that corps are indiscriminately ravenous, they tend to be discriminate. Their saving grace, so far, is they are generally not concerned with speech, preferring instead to ape the speech of whatever market segment they are most desirous of reaching at the moment.
Government regulation (from a corporate standpoint) is often a good thing because it sets the boundaries of expected opportunities and threats and--as you note--tends to freeze the status quo.
Much of what "evil" they do is incidental evil--something that just kind of occurs while they are trying to do something else. To my mind that actually kind of makes it worse... the banality of evil (though, of course, evil is perhaps too strong a word especially without the intentionality).