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100 sats \ 6 replies \ @Scoresby 13h \ parent \ on: Anti-Free-Speech War Escalates As EU Unleashes DSA On Musk's X Politics_And_Law
While I fundamentally agree with the statement that we are born free, I'm not as hopeful about a trend towards less obstruction to freedom.
It seems like the structures we have made to protect freedom (legal, cultural, technical) are mostly abstract in nature. For instance, we have the Fourth Amendment in the US. It's 54 words long and pretty unequivocally says people in the US should be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures...yet there are things like the third party doctrine and civil asset forfeiture.
Living in the US, I do not feel that my papers are secure from unreasonable search. My tax dollars pay for cameras at intersections all over town that track my movements, they pay the salaries for people who work at OFAC and at the US Treasury who might decide that they don't like my financial activities. The pay
It feels like we have guarantees of freedom in the abstract which are regularly violated in the particular and the vast majority of the people are more or less fine with it as long as it doesn't pose too much of an inconvenience. As long as the violations of our freedom seem to only occur around the fringes, we can still believe that we have much more freedom than we actually do.
And then the freedom that gets talked about, that we hear about, becomes small and withered and the mean to which we revert is farther away from our natural state than we hoped.
I look at things like religion and monarchies and it seems to me that we are very easily convinced to embrace our own subjugation. If our natural state is freedom, how did we come to this? I put up with these systems I know to be depriving me of freedom for some reason, don't I?I feel like I probably need to read The Dispossessed again.
You still fail to understand that a citizen do not have rights and freedom, but only privileges and liberties.
Liberty is not freedom, is just a privilege.
Citizen is not a sovereign individual, is just a slave by consent.
When you put yourself under the "US constitution" that doesn't give you any "protection" or right. You simply give away your freedom and rights and became a shitizen.
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that depends how far a sovereign goes to declare himself sovereign and the relations he want to have with regular shitizens.
I am my own state, with my own rules: #736757
The most important step is to realize that you live in a cage, what is that cage and how to get out from it. After that is just a matter of having commercial contracts with other fellow individuals, and all these contracts follow the UCC.
The whole world function based on contracts but people still don't want to see it.
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I think that from that declaration linked there, the most important part that negates my question fully, in combination with your assertion of applicability, is:
ARTICLE 3. The political existence of the state is independent of recognition by the other states. Even before recognition the state has the right to defend its integrity and independence, to provide for its conservation and prosperity ...
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the recognition is just a nice way to say hello to another fellow individual, you are recognizing his sovereign status. Is nothing more than saying "I like your jacket".
But that doesn't stop you to have any commercial relations based on a contract.
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If our natural state is freedom, how did we come to this? I put up with these systems I know to be depriving me of freedom for some reason, don't I?
It's good that you challenge this because it forced me to go back over my steps how I got to this, and I neglected to specify the tradeoff I mentioned originally. The main tradeoff to freedom is security. Unfortunately we need deterrence, also against organized aggression, from within and without and this comes at a cost to freedom. However, us ceding freedom always puts us in a system where we get abused and this won't hold; I can't think of a single example where the abuser ultimately wins - worst case they just die and we move on without their reign of terror. I feel that the overall historic trendline moves towards increasing freedom, not away from it; it's a very subjective observation though and at a very high level: I'm talking centuries, maybe now decennia because things move faster now.
The reason why I think it tips in favor of freedom this time around is because solutions are now truly globally shareable 1 and self-sufficiency potential is through the roof. We can collaborate without incorporation, and without governance on a global scale now 2; basically what 40 years ago you could maybe achieve with only your neighbors/friends/relatives, today you can achieve with anyone anywhere, if both parties want to or have a need.
This is the role of the internet that we imo must maintain, in some form - even if we drop the existing one in favor of another networking protocol - at all cost.
For instance, we have the Fourth Amendment in the US. It's 54 words long and pretty unequivocally says people in the US should be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures...yet there are things like the third party doctrine and civil asset forfeiture.
The third party doctrine is a blessing in disguise for a Bitcoiner, tho? It underlines not your keys, not your coin. It codifies what bullies can do if relied on third parties and incentivizes solving self-custody and developing other self-sovereign tech. Decentralization is a necessity because of this and "become ungovernable" is more than just a catchy slogan.
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and given a bit (or a lot) of resistance to the current consolidation phase most governments are finding themselves in, solutions will stay globally accessible. ↩
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we're doing the collaboration without governance right this moment; Thinking of it, the biggest enabler of free speech in my life is SN, not X.
SN > Xwhen it comes to freedom, in its current form and usage. Could have similar results on nostr if there would be acceptable UI without centralization. ↩
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