>You think the standard of life you enjoy today is because of the triumph of local parochialism?

My standard of life involves democracy and self-determination. Americans are 'pathetic' about that because it turns out at the end of the day liberty is a bit more durable of an idea than buying yet another pile of junk.

If you think you can just throw fortune cookie economic slogans at people to convince them they want to live in Mark Zuckerbergs or Elon's Borg cube you're in for a few rough decades, on both sides of the political spectrum that is.

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godwinson__4-8 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Who uses Zuckerbergs products? Why is he a billionaire?

He's so evil but the vast majority of Americans can't give up his products?

Is he forcing people to login to Instagram or Facebook?

The same populace is going to suddenly do what? Inaugurate in some utopia that somehow eliminates the global nature of our economy and way of life? What elections have you been following? The American electorate cares more about inflation than "democracy and self-determination".

Did you actually read Adams speech? It's just overt, 19th century propaganda. Is this the fortune cookie you were speaking of? I'd love for you to actually go through paragraph by paragraph and attempt a robust defense of any of it.

Maybe start with this section:

Fellow-Citizens, it was in the heat of this war of moral elements, which brought one Stuart to the block, and hurled another from his throne, that our forefathers sought refuge from its fury, in the then wilderness of this Western World.

They were willing exiles from a country dearer to them than life.—But they were the exiles of liberty and of conscience, dearer to them even than their country. They came too with Charters from their kings: for even in removing to another hemisphere, they “cast longing, lingering, looks behind,” and were anxiously desirous of retaining ties of connexion with their country, which, in the solemn compact of a charter, they hoped by the corresponding links of allegiance and protection to preserve.

But to their sense of right, the charter was only the ligament between them, their country, and their king. Transported to a new world, they had relations with one another, and relations with the aboriginal inhabitants of the country to which they came, for which no royal charter could provide. The first settlers of the Plymouth colony, at the eve of landing from their ship, therefore, bound themselves together by a written covenant; and, immediately after landing, purchased from the Indian natives the right of settlement upon the soil.

Thus was a social compact formed upon the elementary principles of civil society, in which conquest and servitude had no part. The slough of brutal force was entirely cast off: all was voluntary; all was unbiassed consent; all was the agreement of soul with soul.

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GolfPopper 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>Is he forcing people to login to Instagram or Facebook?

Yes. The "no one is putting a gun to users' heads" argument is irrelevant when it comes a trillion-dollar company invested in behavioral modeling deliberately driving engagement.

"Social media apps are 'deliberately' addictive to users" (2018)

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44640959

"Addicted by Design: The Hidden Psychology Behind Social Media’s Hold on Us" (2025)

https://information-warfare.com/addicted-by-design-the-hidde...

	▲	godwinson__4-8 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		What an interesting instinct for civics you have. You get to strip hundreds of millions of people of individual agency on the basis of your stumbling through a handful of headlines, all adhering to the recent trend of reducing human conduct into some neat pathology. What does this portend for your politics? How to manage this vast polity of addicts? What regime of involuntary commitment will you come up with to force virtue into those that have slipped into this addictive vice? Maybe while you're at it you can repeal the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment. After all, surely this is what John Quincy Adams was after as he expounded upon the nature of American freedom in such flowery terms. The power to moralize over your fellow man, too feeble to resist the likes of fermentation, Facebook or the fruit.

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Barrin92 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>He's so evil but the vast majority of Americans can't give up his products? Is he forcing people to login to Instagram or Facebook?

People are perfectly fine with him making products, what they aren't fine with is he (and his peers) starting to think they're kings and trying to overrule the citizens of a state he doesn't live in. If it comes down to a chatbot and the latter they'll chose the latter. The datacenter opposition, of which there are by the way hundreds at this point across the country generally attract 70/30 if not higher majorities.

I'm also not sure what I'm not supposed to support in those paragraphs because, as to your point about inflation, that is currently the consequence of America's ongoing military action in the world, as unpopular as the datacenters, and as the founders were fond to point out the reason for ever more higher levels of taxation, increased state size and lower prosperity. As true today as it was back then.

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godwinson__4-8 an hour ago | parent [-]

The modern American standard of life is based on global integration and state power.

If you want to go back to some Garden of Eden fiction regarding Plymouth Rock based on the propagandizing of America's first nepo president you will not find much competition in your pursuit of a life of poverty and subsistence farming. Go log off and enjoy the woods.

Or get serious and propose a plan for continued American economic dominance and standard of life in a world where data centers are demonized, when the economic engine of the future is compute.

	▲	Barrin92 36 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		>The modern American standard of life is based on global integration The United States is virtually the least trade dependent country in the world[1] which is why you frequently see American governments wield trade policy as a weapon. Economically the US is practically self sufficient. And insofar as the broad prosperity and provision of good jobs is concerned, those haven't improved in the computer age, they've been decimated, outsourced, and now threaten to be replaced by the very same data centers ordinary people are protesting. The explicit and stated goal by the people we have been talking about is not to increase the autonomy of the average person, it's to automate them away and put them on basic income. [1]https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.TRD.GNFS.ZS?most_rec...

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watwut 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> He's so evil but the vast majority of Americans can't give up his products?

Hello maynmar genocide. Hello selling weight loss products to teenagers algorithms determined as having low self esteem.

Yes, in winner takes all economy, one person can be prettt evil and have all tge economic power.

	▲	godwinson__4-8 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		What complicity in such evil does a user of his products face, if any? Are most people evil then? If not, what excuse for them can you offer that does not rob them of their human agency? Or do you agree with another commenter that all users of his products are necessarily zombies? Speaking of such creatures: If someone trolls you on his platform, is that his fault too? What conduct should he control on such a wide platform? What should he not? Is an oversight in said control, in either direction, tantamount to the guilt of conducting the act in question itself? Is your version of the dead internet theory that Mark Zuckerberg authors all posts on Facebook? Do you have any answers? Or do you offer only scapegoats?