True Blue Door
True Blue Door's Journal3 Crazy Ideas for a Better Society
1. Guarantee every person 1 year in ten or twenty where food, utilities, rent, parking, and transportation are reimbursed by the government, and are exempted from all taxes for this period. But the bills you submit to taxpayers to cover will be published next to your name and photo, so everyone will know about it if you're a douchebag on their dime.
2. Give juries near-absolute power over criminal trials: They can ask questions whenever they feel like it, request new information at any point in the process, find the judge or either side's attorney(s) in contempt, and can award financial damages to an acquitted defendant whom they feel should never have been brought to trial.
3. Universal, free, unlimited public transportation within the United States. The whole country belongs to each and every one of us, so let each and every one of us have full, perpetual, and equal access to all of it.
Would a federal version of the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend increase destructive business?
Alaska has a shockingly progressive system in its Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend - a direct annual payment of hundreds or even a few thousands of dollars to Alaska residents out of revenues from oil drilling in their state. Nearly every other place in the country (and in the world) with such natural resources to offer, the local residents have no share at all in the profits that come from exploiting their lands, so it's pretty amazing that Alaska of all places has such a system.
However, it's also true that spreading the wealth around so liberally from a patently illiberal economic model - environmentally destructive, rape-and-pillage industries - tends to make the citizenry a lot more tolerant of outrageously criminal behavior on the part of those industries. This is why the State of Alaska more less is a subsidiary of Exxon-Mobil when it comes to politics: Because every single Alaskan is essentially an investor.
On the other hand, not having the dividend wouldn't necessarily change that. So is it better for the people to share in the profits of their collective property being pillaged and become eager accomplices to it, or to not share in it and have the possibility (not remotely a guarantee) of evolving into a more responsible state while lots of money is still being made at their expense?
Suppose we implemented a federal dividend, encompassing not just resource exploitation but general profitable usage of public properties and services: Would it further corrupt the public into becoming accomplices in horror shows like private prisons, military no-bid contracts, fracking, and coastal oil drilling, or would the net benefit in the form of economic stimulus and a stronger safety net outweigh any such negative effects?
Online media should treat Kremlin troll army comments like what they are: Spamming
When a foreign dictatorship organizes an army of paid trolls to hammer every single English-language news and political website on the web with 24/7 scripted propaganda, that's not people expressing an outrageous opinion - that's spam. Unfortunately, most website comment moderators don't appear to have caught on, and it's really gotten out of hand: Sites as diverse as Bloomberg.com, the Guardian, and liberal blogs are being inundated with unhinged Kremlin talking points, and they're being allowed to stink up the joint with little or no intervention.
It's surreal, like if late 1930s Nazi Germany were just suddenly right here in the 21st century, suddenly in control of the world's largest spam operation, and suddenly flooding the entire internet with deranged screeds promoting fascism and demonizing Western civilization and democracy. But it's been going on for months and these websites do nothing whatsoever about it. A dozen different usernames may post "Death to the enemies of Novorossiya!" or some similarly psychotic slogan in the span of five minutes, and still be left up in the comments of a "mainstream" news organization site.
And it's not like it's hard to notice this trolling - it's painfully conspicuous, utterly brazen, and unfolds 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Moreover, we know it's not people within Russia merely expressing their spontaneous opinions, because the Russian internet has been cut off behind a China-style national censor net, and the opinions expressed by these trolls are 100% pro-Putin and anti-Western. This is, frankly, an attack by the Russian state on the global free internet they deny their own citizens.
The people who bear responsibility for their sites' commenting systems need to actually exercise that responsibility, and stop tolerating 24/7 spam attacks by a hostile foreign government that shouts down actual people trying to communicate with each other. It's totally out of control, to the point where fascist troll-spam can outnumber real comments 10-to-1 or even 100-to-1. What are these websites thinking, allowing that? Are they being threatened with hacking if they try to stop it? What's going on?
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Name: BrianGender: Male
Hometown: Southern California
Member since: Mon Oct 28, 2013, 05:48 PM
Number of posts: 2,969
