Common response on HN for the past two months has been nothing short of hyperbolic. "The world will end if NN is repealed".
Speaking as a conservative: When Obama was president, I got told the same thing about the ACA. The world will end, the sky is falling, America is finished. But eight years later, here I am, nothing's that much worse.
I have no reason to believe this is "the beginning of the end" of anything. Life will carry on as normal.
Disproportionate reactions (like HN is doing right now) is not good for anyone. Take a step back from politics. Take a deep breath. Take a walk outside. This isn't the end of the world.
The ACA was actually a conservative plan that is actually good for people. In some sense, you could argue that everybody agreed with it until it became a partisan issue.
NN is also good for people and also has bipartisan support (from constituents) but just got repealed. Yes, the sky won't fall but it is now a little darker.
Depends on how you spin it. Yes it was a conservative plan originally. The reasoning went something like:
"Too many poor people are showing up to hospitals without health insurance and getting treated for free, driving up the cost for everyone else. We need to FORCE them to buy health insurance or else there is a penalty!"
Doesn't sound that great in those terms, but that's exactly what you got. Change the way you talk about it, sprinkle in a couple keywords like "affordable", mix in some coverage for pre-existing conditions, and suddenly its more palatable to liberals.
> Doesn't sound that great in those terms, but that's exactly what you got.
Imho, many solutions don't benefit from a partisan branding. Some things are just good ideas. If research shows it's simply cheaper to hire a bunch of people to offer the homeless free apartments and a simple job no-questions-asked than to keep cleaning up after them, keep designing the city to be anti-homeless and keep paying for the all the police time to deal with them.. Well, you'd have to be pretty damn stupid not to put that idea into law. But if you put a partisan stamp on it (‘We have to help people’ or ‘We need to keep poor people from bothering us’) all of the sudden you have the other camp against you.
I didn't mean that statement as my own opinion, I'm simply pointing out how the same legislation can be demonized or embraced based on how its spun. But you can't tell a Republican that it was actually another Republican that came up with the idea of ACA, they simply can't get passed the fact that its coming from terrible horrible Obama so it must be bad! Just as Democrats don't want to hear that it was a Republican idea.
Principled doesn't mean stupid. You can research and calculate all you want to show someone that it's cheaper to euthanize their retarded child instead of raising them. Some people will still never do it.
As unpalatable as you think that sounds, it's also exactly what we do with car insurance, and has worked mostly fine there for decades, excluding enforcement problems and illegals.
It works for car insurance because it’s actually, you know, _insurance_. Health insurance is more of a weird discount club for an industry where there’s zero price transparency and competition.
And also because costs are relatively predictable with Auto Insurance, unlike Medical, where costs skyrocket very quickly. Also, Car Insurance requirements also stipulate clear minimums that the insurance must carry.
IMO Auto Insurance is a lot closer to Dental than Medical.
Not saying its unpalatable to me, I actually agree it was necessary to force everyone to buy health insurance. I'm simply pointing out how the SAME legislation can be demonized or embraced, depending on how its spun. I bet if this were some alternative universe where Republicans were pushing ACA, it would get demonized as an attack on the poor by the other side.
I totally agree with you. I believe group polarization [0] causes forums on the internet such as this one to exaggerate how bad something is going to be and this is one of those times. My biggest concern is if something actually world-ending were to be about to happen it would be sort of hard to tell by reading Reddit and Hackernews. Because the users of those collectively dial the alarm severity up to "catastrophic" several times per year, and it is a case of crying wolf almost every time.
That's not an argument, that's bulverism. How about you explain why repealing Net Neutrality is necessary in the first place? Who actually benefits from it?
There's not any point in debating it in the comments right here and right now. Time will tell if my enjoyment of the internet is severely degraded to the degree predicted by the most upvoted comments on Reddit/HN. I was simply expressing my prediction that it won't be.
That's precisely why I'm NOT in a frenzy over this decision. Immediately, it means nothing to anyone, and even though I don't like seeing protections removed, it's possible that consumers may just win at the end of the day. IMO the big tragedy here is that we even needed NN in the first place, violators of the original Internet openness philosophy should be campaigned at the corporate level to bring them in line.
Just to make sure I understand, conservatives said that it would be a disaster if the ACA signed into law?
Assuming that is what you meant: just because that was not true doesn't mean that NN is not important. Granted, there is some fear mongering and worst-case thinking going on, but in the end I think that there is valid reasoning behind NN fears, just like the claims about the ACA were provably exaggerated at the time.
This kind of reminds me how the Iraq war is being used to sow distrust of the intelligence services now. Because there were mistakes made during a republican administration that was hell-bent to go to war in Iraq, we shouldn't trust them now when there is immense agreement about the Russian hacking and propaganda campaign.
The pro-NN crowd have turned this complex debate over an imperfect policy to a good-versus-evil battle over flipping a single legal switch and Ajit Pai is completely fueling that.
The hyperbole around NN on here and reddit has been annoying. My network carrier already does some anti net neutral things that I like.
I do think the market for ISPs has failed. Regulatory patching won't always be able to stay up to date. The government should make it easier to start an ISP.
> My network carrier already does some anti net neutral things that I like.
Like what? You do realize that we're all paying $1 more a month for Netflix because Comcast decided to go "rent seeking" and throttled their traffic until they paid up? Our Netflix bills were increased shortly after. You're being fucked by anti-NN, whether you realize it or not.
You can just add it to all the other hyper insane responses going around in the US right now, including:
- Trump is going to get everyone killed in global nuclear war related to North Korea. You can't argue with that kind of hysteria. North Korea has been threatening to genocide the US and South Korea for 20 years in one form or another. Now they can actually do it, maybe someone should take the threat seriously finally.
- Tax cuts are going to destroy the country and impoverish the middle class. In fact, the middle class will see their already staggeringly low taxes go even lower. The lower US corporate income tax rate will finally make the US more competitive with dozens of other major economies, including Britain, Ireland, China, Canada, Sweden, Finland, etc.
- Hillary lost because of Russian collusion with Trump. Over a year later, zero evidence of any of that. The only election tampering that looks to have gone on, is high ranking FBI agents & officials that were looking to throw the election in favor of Hillary. The fact is, Hillary lost because she took voters in the blue wall states for granted and refused to aggressively court them as advisers close to her recommended. It was educated white women that threw the election in Trump's favor.
- Trump wants to be a fascist dictator. No, there's zero evidence of that sort of behavior. He's a jerk, he may be a mediocre President, there's absolutely no indication he can or is in the position to seize more power. He is wildly unpopular both among the majority of polled voters and his own party (which he only joined to run for President). The odds are pretty good he's a one term President, and that one term will deliver the Senate to Democrats and rebalance things in DC.
- Trump's environmental policies are going to get us all killed and make global climate change dramatically worse. No, the few policies he has rolled back from the Obama era, will not in fact do anything meaningful as it relates to global climate change or harming the environment in the US. The dramatic shift from coal to natural gas, will continue to reduce CO2 emissions in the US, and the gradualy move to solar, wind and electric vehicles will continue with or without Trump.
- "Zero evidence of any of that" is a completely ridiculous thing to say. Get out of your bubble. Try to see the world from the other POV, there are many pieces of evidence that point in this direction. If you step back from moment-to-moment politics and try to look at what's already publicly known, from a historical perspective, it's already an unbelievable scandal.
- I don't think he consciously wants to be a fascist dictator, but it's again completely ridiculous for you to say there's "zero evidence of that sort of behavior". He does many things that point in that direction, if only you look. And, concretely, he's destroying norms that keep us not-fascist, barriers are being torn down right now. That degrades our system and populace and will make it easier for future people to transgress further.
- I don't know enough about what regulations he's rolled back. But dropping out of the Paris agreement and simply not taking action for the next four years have a significant impact.
It's not failing. North America is fine; people still want to move from other places to our place. Let's not be drastic. Let's sit down and listen and be calm.
The comment you replied to mentioned the USA. North America is a continent that includes 23 countries, only one of them is the USA. Living in one of the other 22 countries and looking at the USA, I would tend to agree with the comment that you were replying to, as the USA is becoming more and more an oligarchy, and less like a democracy.
Fair enough, I should not be saying North America when it includes so many other countries, I should be saying USA and Canada which is what I mean.
Look, it's not an oligarchy, it is a democracy. It seems to me that everyone thinks that just because Trump won the election that it is somehow not a democracy. I fear that the heavy anti-republican, anti-business sentiment will morph into a call for communism which will absolutely destroy the future of the human race.
> I fear that the heavy anti-republican, anti-business sentiment will morph into a call for communism which will absolutely destroy the future of the human race.
This statement is insanely detached from reality. People are "heavy anti-republican" because modern Republican policies tend to be more about throwing humanity (or just poor people) under the bus for a quick money grab under the obviously misleading and fake pretense of family values and fiscal responsibility.
I think my statement is not insanely detached. Let's consider that the progressive culture of the bay area more or less throws men and western culture under the bus, what with our constant pursuit of sexual misdeeds perpetrated by the same men who bring us prosperity. Or that we take random ethnic groups, or women as a whole, and make them into victims of the "patriarchy", which translates into victims of western society, thus perpetuating the idea that western values are inherently evil.
How about the fact that your company can get ripped apart for not having enough employees of certain races, or that conservatives either shut up or get ousted at big co's? There are invincible, roving SJW gangs with Google Sheets filled with names and details of tech workers that have been blacklisted for not being liberals. They enforce the ideology.
Now, on to the republicans. You're saying that they're throwing poor people under the bus, and I think you're right, a lot of their policies are downright dangerous. But I cannot listen to anti-trump, anti-republican statements anymore because the real arguments are lost in the hysteria. I believe that traditional, western values are very important. They are what brought us to the promised land we are currently in - It was our colonialism and christian morals that allowed our society to blossom. I'm not going to budge on that. Now, I do want to receive good criticism from you and to improve my viewpoint, but the problem is that criticism often devolves on the part of the liberals to claims of being a racist, homophobe, transphobe, or xenophobe; that I'm some redneck who's uneducated and does not hold a valid opinion. That's why I'm worried.
Communism worked by throwing anyone "against the state" into gulags, and against the state was a very low bar to pass. You basically had to have an uncommon or "off limits" opinion, which is what most all republicans have from the perspective of a progressive. Taken to the limit, perhaps this means that no republicans are allowed to get jobs at tech companies, they are unanimously attacked in the media, and slowly a mono-narrative emerges: Welcome immigrants, don't be straight, never express your innate male energy and aggression, and of course, if you're a woman, never have children and focus solely on your career. My imagination tells me that will happen, because the flame of that ideology has been lit and it is hard to snuff it out when the people confronted with it all hold tech jobs that they will lose if they speak out.
Now I wish that you and I could have a real discussion about this because I know I haven't adequately addressed your central points, and I know my viewpoint is terribly flawed. But I think that shit gets fucked up a lot faster and a lot harder than any of us think, especially the rich ones of us in the bay.
It is a democracy quickly turning into an oligarchy. In a democracy, people's voices get heard. In an oligarchy, $$ gets exchanged. This is exactly what is happening. Rich donors and lobbyists are buying Republican votes so they can avoid paying taxes and screw the middle class. The middle class has been shrinking for decades now. The rich gets richer and poor gets poorer is the best sign that oligarchy government is happening.
Also, as other poster mentioned, socialism != communism. Grab a book, read about it.
Milwaukee WI in the early 1900s had a Socialist Major and administration. Voted in to help stop corruption. Turns out his legacy is alive and well today. Summerfest is one of the worlds largest musical festivals. Original grounds for Summerfest was factories along the lake. Him and his administration turned it into a park. Everyone benefits from a park while factories come and go.
Good politicians make a difference not the party. And by no means is the President of China a good politician.
It is an oligarchy though. just because Trump has an official position now doesn't mean he didn't have much more political power than other citizens before that. just listen to how he speaks about senators and congressfolk, who will "do anything for campaign contributions"
> I fear that the heavy anti-republican, anti-business sentiment will morph into a call for communism
I wish. I wish every conservatives fear about socialists / communists actually came true. Unfortunately, I fear the West will quickly slide into fascism waaaay before we actually start taking alternative economic systems seriously.
Listen to what? Work more, receive less pay and benefits, and give up safety nets. Sounds exactly like something people would vote for in a functional democracy.
You SHOULD be work more, and you should be glad to work more. Your work supports the best, most free, most prosperous country that has ever existed. You want to be mad and thrash around, like a bull in a China shop. I understand, but your reaction to negative outcomes is itself much more negative. You must be positive, listening, constantly productive and at your best behaviour. You must do this yourself because you need other people to do it, and we must all lead by example.
I know you're mad, and that things aren't going the way you want to, but the truth is that things in USA and Canada are excellent and we should be very careful to get mad and start breaking things because we want to keep our promised land pristine.
You're like a man with a blindfold and a baseball bat, and our democracy is the pinata. You can only do damage by swinging your bat around. You cannot help democracy that way.
1: Let us know when you start working 18 hour days and consent to getting nickel and dimed by grubby companies who continually raise rates because they know you don't have a better option.
2: USA/Canada are great, but that doesn't mean they can't be improved.
3: You whole argument is doing nothing = everything will be fine. That's ridiculous.
What I'm saying is that you don't know enough to improve the system. You think you can just swing your blaming stick around like you know who's wrong and who is right. But you don't know that, and I don't know that, and the system we live in that is constantly producing prosperity is much too complex for anyone to understand.
But you and I both know this one thing. We both know how to improve ourselves. We know things that we are both doing wrong. I know my problems, and I'm going to fix those before I start tearing down the beautiful, harmonic system that I've inherited.
Yes I agree! The majority of citizens are stupid and should not have a say in how a society operates!.
My pride will be all I need when my livelihood is stripped away by those more powerful than me. I will fight against them all by myself until I become the most powerful! That's how everyone else has done it! Going solo.
You should work more to support a country is an line that would come straight from a Communist country.
We as humans are not born to work. That's a false idea being propagated by people who want to use you for their own gains. We are born to find ourselves, to realize our best potentials, to follow our dreams.
> Speaking as a conservative: When Obama was president, I got told the same thing about the ACA. The world will end, the sky is falling, America is finished. But eight years later, here I am, nothing's that much worse.
(You need to find better people to listen to.)
And when things get bad, what do you expect that will look like? Mad Max-style desert hellscapes?
No: It'll look pretty much like now. Except things will be a little worse. You'll have less money. Less freedom. You'll find yourself making a few more trade-offs and concessions than you were before. Harder work. Less money. And you'll wonder why there's a small ruling class that seems to get all of the gains of society. You'll wonder why things never ever seem to break in your direction anymore. Always towards them.
Oh, and fun fact:
Much of the country is already in this position. Especially in minority communities. You just happen to not be feeling it. But make no mistake that that is the future the Republican Party has envisioned for this country and is currently enacting piece by piece. Breaking net neutrality -- something that will affect the poor and downcast of society much more than it will affect you or I -- is just a piece of the puzzle.
Repealing NN benefits the Telecom companies and the large content companies (ie. Disney).
We know the telecom companies were dumping money into the republican party to repeal NN, but I think if the Democrats were in power then Content companies would be dumping money into them. The dems just have the option of playing as sheep because they don't have enough voting power anyway.
I'm cynical that either party cares that much about the public and think that pointing fingers just allows the elites to continue their games.
Then, shortly after Netflix agreed to pay Comcast's extortion money, they had to raise rates by $1 a month. So, we're all paying extortion money to Comcast. Learn some recent history before you form an opinion.
Good, all of the damn Netflix traffic is affecting my online gaming. /s
People can bluster all they want about price increases, but this is something that's been a long time coming. Netflix has increased the scope and variety of their offerings over their lifetime, especially the addition of Netflix originals (the real ones, not the per-market-originals). I would expect an increase in price.
ACA was a mechanism for private insurers to grow their market share with the side effect of increasing coverage and saving lives.
NN is a mechanism for internet providers to completely take over delivery of the internet whereby they can effectively censor information, kill or allow companies to kill their competitors, and charge artificially higher premiums for information they do not produce.
Not completely applies and oranges, but if you don't think this is very very bad, you're not thinking.
> NN is a mechanism for internet providers to completely take over delivery of the internet whereby they can effectively censor information, kill or allow companies to kill their competitors, and charge artificially higher premiums for information they do not produce.
Speaking as a conservative: When Obama was president, I got told the same thing about the ACA. The world will end, the sky is falling, America is finished. But eight years later, here I am, nothing's that much worse.
I have no reason to believe this is "the beginning of the end" of anything. Life will carry on as normal.
Disproportionate reactions (like HN is doing right now) is not good for anyone. Take a step back from politics. Take a deep breath. Take a walk outside. This isn't the end of the world.