Comment by mindslight
4 days ago
Is that the extent of your requirements (for now, at least) ?
As an American I keep trying to surmise what we're going to need to do to start repairing the damage from this massive self-own. It's kind of hard because we don't know where the bottom will be, but we at least need to start having these discussions on what constructive approaches might even look like - we can't have our milquetoast opposition party phoning it in yet again with entitlement as the less-bad option.
External context is key - one of the main goals of this hybrid warfare attack on the western world has been to disrupt our relationships with our allies, and also because other countries have developed Democracies that function way better than ours. So please know that at least some of us are listening.
Electoral college, rampant gerrymandering, and 2 senators/state all big structural problems.
Term and/or age maximums might also help.
> Is that the extent of your requirements (for now, at least) ?
Well, if you ask my other wishes, once Europe has gotten its act straight and decides to tax/tariff/regulate/whatever (american) big tech to hell and back, I kind of would expect that any decent person on that side of the pond would just humbly nod their head and note that, yes, we/they deserved it.
I think domestically we need some analog of the EU's GDPR, as table stakes for preventing the surveillance industry ("big tech") from amassing so much power over the People that they're inclined to try for another coup.
We also need some kind of antitrust enforcement against the forced bundling of products from the distinct categories of hardware devices, network services, and client software.
Those should leave us with a similar environment to the EU. Beyond that, sure tax away, whatever. If we've done our job right domestically, these services should be a lot easier to value in terms of subscription fees rather than nebulous values siphoned away from surveillance subjects.