Comment by janalsncm

Most of it these days is less about being intelligent enough and more about whether you're positioned to encounter or hear about a "chilling effect" [1]. Historians will probably only ever be able to debate order-of-magnitude estimates of how many students gave up protesting because of the Kent State shootings, or how many writers "self-censored" because of PRISM/XKeyscore [2], or how many people decide not to exercise their Second Amendment rights because they don't want to risk being categorized as "armed" in a police encounter [3] [4].

One example that's a bit more concrete is the combination of pre-trial detention and plea bargains. These form, in effect, a punishment for exercising one's right to a fair trial, a punishment that exists because our court system is quite far from having the capacity to properly handle the sheer volume of prosecutions that occur [5].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilling_effect

[2] https://pen.org/report/chilling-effects/

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Philando_Castile

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver

[5] https://www.themarshallproject.org/2014/12/26/plea-bargainin...

If you're a heterosexual white male, you probably won't notice them. You'll also probably not care for that any non-heterosexual white male might feel differently. For everyone else, we have loads of examples of how not free they are at times. Heaven help you if you "fit the description".

It's at least thirty minutes old.

> If you chose not to buy a car then your life will be dramatically more expensive and difficult to live, because of the network effects of this requirement.

That depends where you live. In Chicago, for example, your life will be simpler and less expensive if you don't own a car.

Ironically, outside the US I managed to live until the age of 41, before I caved in and got a driver's license. Instead, I got around by train, tram, bus, bicycle, feet and taxi. I would argue, that in a society not designed to require a car, you are not really forced to.

> But nevertheless the laws are structured so that everyone realistically must buy a car, whether they want to or not.

Do you mean lack of government subsidies supporting better public transportation? Or something else?

It's extremely possible to live in Boston (or some surrounding areas like Cambridge or Brookline) without a car. I did for 6 years.

It's more like, you think you are free, because from birth society and CorpGov condition you to operate within an accepted status quo, and incentives are structured in order to support that.

But the moment you question the status quo, or try to go against it, you find yourself targeted by corporate and social violence. You might lose your job, the respect of your peers, your family, house, car or more.

Here is an easy example:

A portion of your tax money is funding genocide and anti-democratic military coups in Israel and other countries.

If you decide (as any rational citizen should) to no longer pay income tax knowing that you lack any discretion over how it is spent, and you decide to demand a more transparent and restricted tax system, then the government will threaten you with economic hardship and even prison. They will surveil and discredit you if you receive any modicum of notoriety, just as they do to sociopolitical activists and protestors.

You won't be able to operate a business while opposing income tax laws, and thus conscious political action is relegated to the elite, who don't need to work, and the poor, who already don't significantly benefit from the system. The rest of the working class is forced to play ball, or lose everything.

That's not freedom, even if it looks like Freedom™ to a certain class of bootlickers who are conditioned to maintain the status quo, even if it means turning on their neighbor.

laws are structured? or just the cumulative impact of societies decisions.

humans are social creatures, of course if everyone else has a car it is going to be inconvenient for you to not have one. this is not a solvable problem

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There is no such thing as "government death panels" under any proposed universal healthcare system.

I have heard proposals to allow the government to compete with private insurance on the free market (the public option/Medicare for all).

I have never heard a serious suggestion for the government to ban private insurance in the US.

Even in “communist” China where the government negotiates drug prices, people can buy private insurance.

There was never any proposal for any system that bans people from paying for their own care :|

You’ve been duped.

On the other hand, the number of public cameras has exploded in the past decade. Even moderately small towns are likely to have Flock cameras on every major road in and out of town and at major intersections, allowing police to track who is coming and going.

We had a bank robbery here recently and the getaway car was captured on the bank's outside cameras, and using Flock the police quickly localized where the car was to within a few square blocks. They found it within hours and arrested a suspect. In this case it was a good ending, but it's not hard to imagine how this could be misused, or mistakenly put an innocent bystander under suspicion.

Combine this with most private businesses and many homes now having cameras watching activity on or about the property, and I'm not sure most people realize the extent to which they are surveilled in 2024.

I disagree that Americans don't base their views on TV, fictional or otherwise. I wish I had your optimism.