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    Re: Milton Friedman on net censorship Archived Message

    Posted by brooks on March 28, 2021, 11:26 pm, in reply to "Milton Friedman on net censorship"

    Excellent piece. Just a couple of quibbles:

    re "Like equality, truth is a noble goal. However, in both cases, history warns that attempts to enforce these ideals can be deeply counterproductive. Enforced economic levelling has a track record of leaving everyone worse off – not the sort of equality we had in mind. Worse still, programs of supposed equalisation are often little more than revised structures of inequality."

    Worse off than what? Not sure the track record is as clear-cut as suggested. Another, less tendentious phrase for "enforced economic levelling" is "government implemented resource redistribution to correct existing inequality" and what history warns is that, without it, an oligarchy will end up owning everything and democracy and the biosphere will be destroyed. Under existing inequality, the most extreme and apocalyptic the world has ever seen, the historical warning you mention comes across as counterrevolutionary.

    re The pioneers of the internet recognised a unique and precious opportunity. For the first time since Gutenberg, common folk had a means of sharing ideas and expressing opinions without the sanction of commercial or state publishers, without the permission of the powerful.

    The pioneers of the internet were basically the US security state. Yasha Levine has an excellent book about this called Surveillance Valley. Maybe it should be "With the advent of the internet, activists and dissidents recognised a unique and precious opportunity..."

    Anyway, as I say, just quibbles and really over phrasing, not concepts. Very good piece.

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