Comment by AnthonyMouse
3 hours ago
> You could cut the legs out of this effort by capturing the part of the population that does have an honest desire to protect children by offering an alternative that actually protects children.
There are many, many things we can do that actually protect children -- and we generally already do them. That's the nature of the problem. After you do all of the things that are reasonable and cost effective, it solves 90% of the problem, 95% of the problem, 99% of the problem, but never 100% of the problem.
So you can't give them something that does that. The thing they're proposing doesn't even do that. Nothing does. And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again.
What you need instead is to identify and strip power and resources from the people who keep proposing it.
>There are many, many things we can do that actually protect children -- and we generally already do them. That's the nature of the problem. After you do all of the things that are reasonable and cost effective, it solves 90% of the problem, 95% of the problem, 99% of the problem, but never 100% of the problem.
Genuinely, how do you expect someone concerned about child sex trafficking to receive this? "Oh, good point, I guess we can't do anything more to protect children because it isn't 'cost-effective'." Do you think that will be a common response?
>And then disingenuous opportunists keep proposing the thing that should never be done because they know it lets them paint you as the bad guy for having to tell them no again and again.
I'm not even disagreeing with this point, I'm simply saying your response can't just be "no, they are the bad guy". That is not a winning political message. That's why the democratic socialist faction of the Democratic Party in the US is growing in popularity. You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions.
> Genuinely, how do you expect someone concerned about child sex trafficking to receive this? "Oh, good point, I guess we can't do anything more to protect children because it isn't 'cost-effective'." Do you think that will be a common response?
I'm taking it as a given that we shouldn't do things that aren't cost effective, because that's what "cost effective" means. There are things we could do that would cost six trillion dollars in order to save one life, and we're not going to do those things, because it would be patently unreasonable and cost dramatically more lives than that as a result of what those resources would have to be allocated from.
It's possible that there are cost effective things we could do that we're not currently doing, but those things tend to be uncontroversial, so when someone uncovers one it generally does actually get enacted and becomes the status quo. That's the issue: Name any given thing you suppose we should do instead of Chat Control. Enact it, as many of them already have been. Tomorrow they propose Chat Control again, so what now? Offering and even enacting an alternative hasn't satisfied them, they keep trying to pass it anyway.
> You can't just call your opponent bad especially when your opponent is promising to address people's concerns, you need to actually engage with people about their concerns and offer solutions.
What are you supposed to do when you've not only offered solutions but enacted and implemented them already and your opponent is a fear monger who will never be satisfied because they have an ulterior motive for their dangerous and ineffective proposal?