Comment by imiric
2 months ago
It's not the role of citizens to come up with regulation that protects them. It's not their role to protest or even acknowledge that they are being abused. It's the role of governments and law makers to ensure the safety of their citizens. This is literally what we elect and pay them to do.
If you can't see how the current system is harming not just individuals, but the stability of governments and our democratic processes, and the role of the advertising industry in all of this, then nothing I nor anyone else says can convince you otherwise.
You seem more interested in scrutinizing hastily put together arguments by laypeople on an internet forum, than acknowledging the issues put forth, and the fact that fixing this deeply rooted problem will require multi-faceted solutions over a very long period of time.
And for that reason, I'm out.
I agree that the current system is harmful in exactly the ways you describe, but I don't see you contributing anything towards solving those problems or even understanding what a solution would consist of. Instead you are criticizing policymakers for failing to satisfy your preferences even though you can't articulate them coherently yourself.
This:
> It's not the role of citizens to come up with regulation that protects them. It's not their role to protest or even acknowledge that they are being abused. It's the role of governments and law makers to ensure the safety of their citizens.
is not a description of the relationship between citizens and a democracy. It's a description of the relationship between subjects and a monarch or dictator—a relationship which invariably results in serious abuses of those subjects.
If you don't have a coherent idea of what you want, nobody can give it to you.