No. It serves as a defense for people to criticize government. Its why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag.
People who 'advocate' for threats, assault, or death of people should never be permitted. Like, for example, Kiwi Farms. They've advocated for online bullying, threats, and ended up getting a bunch of people killed.
> No. It serves as a defense for people to criticize government. It's why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag.
> Theres different ways to protest. Being an obvious target isn't what I do.
The point is that your statements here are completely contradictory. First you say:
> "Its why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag."
But then you say:
> "But I also stay quiet publicly. Speaking out is a way to get the hammer."
In other words, you're afraid to exercise your first amendment rights. You feel that you can't, in fact "insult and talk terrible of president Turnip" without unacceptable consequences.
A lot of people get angry when I call out people as liars, but sometimes these people are just fucking lying to everyone and you have to call a spade a spade.
Not necessarily. According to the Supreme Court, "implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance".
That seems asinine to me, and it's just one in a long line of reasons to hold the court in utter contempt. But they're in charge and I'm not.
Until you realize that child pornography would be protected by the First Amendment without obscenity carved out.
The Miller Test is what defines obscenity, and it seems pretty reasonable to me: is it about gross sex according to the average person (not the most Karen person), and does it lack serious literary, political, scientific, or artistic merit.
Honestly, I'm not aware of a Supreme Court case that held something to be obscene that was IMO wrongly decided. Pornography is fine. Even lolicon (cartoon sex of children) has been protected under the First Amendment and not deemed obscene.
> We age gate other harmful objects: firearms, alcohol, driving, et cetera.
We can easily prove those have harms.
> trouble you can cause with an Internet connection
Why don't we age gate hands? Number one source of human problems right there. Perhaps we should outfit our children like Harrison Bergeron until they reach the age of majority?
Making this sort of reductio ad absurdum doesn't make you seem witty or clever. It just makes you seem pedantic and unable to reason about things like a functioning adult.
It's discrimination, should be 65 like everywhere else.
Seriously, I won't limit the maximum age, but would rather use a cognitive ability assessment. It in fact already exists, e.g. as the TV debates for presidential candidates. Were the voters paying attention,..
This identity verification business for porn sites is a nightmare for privacy. Will just result in more personal info being hacked and blackmail given the subject matter.
That’s a good call out, I should be more careful with my words. Practically, I haven’t seen age verification implemented online without some kind of identify credential furnished. But I didn’t mean to imply some kind of IAL2 compliant identity assurance or something
Because in an environment with personal computing devices and where consumer tech companies' primary business is surveillance, the two are equivalent.
(Personal computing devices make it so anyone of a certain age can run software that proxies their credentials to another user (either for profit or activism), and the surveillance business makes it so that third parties cannot be trusted to mask your identity)
This doesn't work, because something still has to be stored (unless you like the idea of being nagged everywhere you go online (including just clicking links) to "verify your age"). That upends the entire "well it's just like verifying your age at a bar" idea.
This is why I don't by alcohol online for delivery: the delivery person is required by their company to scan my ID. Places I order from already know enough about me - they don't also need a copy of my identification.
Unfortunately no. In my state all the bars and nightclubs near colleges scan IDs and keep a copy.
The fakes are so good now that the state basically admits they can't expect the bouncer to detect them. So they keep an image to prove "hey we tried our best".
what's the difference between porn and any arbitrary category here? even with porn isn't it just arbitrary that porn has been defined as "adult?" presumably Texas could just legislate that all apps are "adult" content, and then this would apply, no?
given the same judge per the article did this block which ultimately was overturned by the Supreme Court, I doubt this will go differently
I think you might find it not so arbitrary that kids should watch 6 men “use” a young man or girl; or even 3 grannies using a young boy as a toy. Is it really arbitrary?
Yes, if the botany app shares sensitive information like their exact location and possibly home/workplace then the app is to blame if it allows children and even adults to publish such information without explicit share-with-world opt in design.
I don't necessary like this law or precedent, but there are several major issues I have with the opposition.
One is that it is not individuals that have their speech restricted, I have a very big problem with companies continuing to be treated as if they're people, they're not. Individuals have rights by default, companies have only obligations, unless explicitly stated by the government as a right of incorporated entities, ideally at least.
There is also the issue of "freedom of speech is not freedom of reach", as in you can shout fire, but being able to reach a mass audience is reach. At least as far as content creators are concerned.
Lastly, I don't know of the union has a chance of lasting if we can't allow states to enact ridiculous laws we don't like. Resistance to state law by the federal government should be rare and only in defense or actual harm being caused to citizens. My point isn't that freedom of speech is a minor right, but that the requirement to prove harm (since everyone agrees, speech isn't a right if there is harm) should not be strong on the part of states.
The mere subjective opinion that the moral character of texans would be corrupted (as if! lol) by the content should be enough. why? because democracy, that's why. it's what texans keep voting for, states should have some level of self determination, otherwise they're just federal provinces.
I don't think anyone serious is arguing that porn for children is fine. The problem is everyone else having to pay for it by verifying age. You may have a strong opinion on this, as do I, but if the democratic government of texas chooses to levy burdens on adults to protect children (at least in their view and belief), why should outsiders intervene or have an opinion on it?
I would argue, that the burden of proof here to require the intervention of the federal government and legitimate invoking of federal rights should only be done if the plaintiff can prove harm was done to them, in this case by being required to verify their age. Or the content creators not being able to reach enough consumers.
I think a lot of the core issues we have in the US are caused by a now entrenched culture, where states are required to have similar laws. Let's say you're a mormon or something and want to raise your kids in a strict state, if states can't age verify, what choice do mormons have left? You may not care for mormons, but this stuff adds up. You'll have a large voter base (I argue - that's what MAGA is in a way) that is consistently left out of options, because the terrible, ignorant, backwards, etc.. views they have can't be represented by any state. It all becomes a federal matter, eventually the only way to solve it would be conflict.
I think enforcement of the civil right act/voting rights act set this precedent. It was the right thing to do, because it had to do with people's participation in voting, education and government, the very things which need to be protected so that states can claim they're representing the views of their population when passing disagreeable laws.
But if the sentiment is that porn creators and consumers' rights in this case trumps states' rights, then we no longer have a system of government where different states can pursue different democratic experiments. The voters of federal/general election swing states determine every aspect of amercians' lives, their views are tyrannically forced upon everyone else.
I don't think your argument addresses the substance of the judge's opposition, which is that the law as proposed will apply to all apps and all websites, not just ones that might do harm. That does seem like genuine overreach, and it is not even likely that it's what Texans were really asking for in the first place. It's just a bad law.
Id say even if you ignore the first amendment case, the federal government still has legitimate constitutional grounds to review these kinds of laws since it is definitely in the realm of interstate commerce.
I like the way you've stated your position, but I do have some questions.
> Lastly, I don't know of the union has a chance of lasting if we can't allow states to enact ridiculous laws we don't like.
I can understand the idea that people in one state may enact laws that people in other states disagree with (although see below), but saying we must allow ridiculous laws seems to be stretching it a bit far. It seems to me that the purpose of having different levels of government is that more local levels can enact their own policies, while at the same time higher levels can restrict those local jurisdictions from egregiously misusing their legislative power.
It then just becomes a matter of what kinds of laws are "too ridiculous" to be allowed. Maybe this is and maybe it isn't, but if you allow that any laws within one jurisdiction can be overridden by laws from a larger encompassing jurisdiction, then you must accept the underlying principle that the will of the whole can override the will of a part. Of course we can also debate what threshold must be met (e.g., will you require a supermajority of some sort at the federal level), but still the underlying principle holds. And I think we must all accept this principle, because the alternative is to accept that state law can do literally anything (e.g., execute people at random) as long as it is duly enacted by the state government.
The debate is then no longer about the theoretical balance between state and federal governments, but about the concrete question of whether this particular policy is too ridiculous to allow. As I'll say more about below, I tend to think that this is where almost all arguments about federalism lead. Unless you are prepared to allow one level or the other to have untrammeled power, it always comes down not to procedural questions about jurisdictions but to substantive questions about the actual content of the policies involved.
> The mere subjective opinion that the moral character of texans would be corrupted (as if! lol) by the content should be enough. why? because democracy, that's why. it's what texans keep voting for, states should have some level of self determination, otherwise they're just federal provinces.
Do you believe that this specific policy (or various others) in fact reflect the will of the people of Texas? The reason I ask is that I believe there are many policies (in some cases "policies of omission") at the state and federal levels which do not reflect the will of the people. As an example, polls, consistently show overwhelming support for universal background checks for gun purchases, and yet that is not the policy we have. It seems that the reason for this is that people have attached themselves to certain procedural characteristics of government (e.g., the constitution, certain mechanisms of legislative districting, etc.) rather than to more basic principles like "democracy".
If we're going to resort to fundamental principles like "because democracy", then it is hard to see why we should not insist that all policies directly reflect the will of the public in this way. I think indeed our system would benefit from removing certain anti-democratic features (e.g., the absurdly high bar for amending the constitution). But at the same time there is legitimacy in the desire to "lash ourselves to the mast" and declare certain policies off-limits ahead of time. Thus again we are really arguing not about "democracy" but about the substantive content of the laws and whether certain laws in their substantive content warrant some kind of special procedures or consideration.
Moreover, there is an interaction between the two points I made. If we allow that "ridiculous" laws should sometimes be allowed, and we also want democracy, then why can we not allow the larger jurisdiction (e.g., the federal government) to pass a "ridiculous" law restricting the actions of smaller jurisdictions? In other words, if 51% of Texans want to pass such-and-such a law, but 51% of Americans don't want any jurisdiction to be able to pass such a law, which democracy wins? It is hard to decouple the philosophical notion of democracy from concrete questions about where the boundaries are in which you're counting votes.
> You may have a strong opinion on this, as do I, but if the democratic government of texas chooses to levy burdens on adults to protect children (at least in their view and belief), why should outsiders intervene or have an opinion on it?
> I think a lot of the core issues we have in the US are caused by a now entrenched culture, where states are required to have similar laws.
My question with these issues of federalism is always the same: why is it particularly a concern when this is about state governments and federal governments? What if the democratic government of the city of Podunk, Texas wants to do something, while the democratic government of Podunk County (in which Podunk sits) wants the opposite? And then what if the Texas government wants something else and the federal government something different yet? And what if even within Podunk there is a neighborhood of four square blocks or so where the residents overwhelmingly disagree with the majority view within the city?
People often try to answer such questions by referencing the constitution, but I don't consider that a legitimate answer if we want to take seriously concepts like "democracy". If democracy is our goal, we need to be prepared to question whether the US Constitution achieves it, and so be willing to engage with the entire mess of how we resolve "51% vs. 51%" disputes of the type I mentioned above.
> Let's say you're a mormon or something and want to raise your kids in a strict state, if states can't age verify, what choice do mormons have left?
Let's say you like pork and want to eat some bacon, but most people in your area consider pork unclean and have banned the production and import of pork. What choice do you have? Or let's say you think 5G towers cause cancer, but most people in your area disagree and have allowed the construction of 5G towers. What choice do you have? Let's say you want to build a small nuclear device (for research purposes only, of course!), but the people in your area have decided to ban the possession of plutonium. What choice do you have? Let's say you're a member of a certain cult and want to raise your kids in a really strict state where you're allowed to beat them with a heavy stick if they fail to recite the Flying Spaghetti Monster's catechism with perfect accuracy. What choice do you have?
My point is simply that there are endless questions of this sort, and the answers people are comfortable with ultimately have nothing to do with "states' rights", because people disagree more about certain matters than others. People think of some things as "well that's not for me but that's cool if you want to do it", and other things as "I don't think anyone should do that but I guess it's your choice" and other things as "No one should ever do that and I am prepared to forcibly intervene to stop you from doing it if necessary". You cannot resolve these questions with an appeal to "federalism" without considering the substantive content of the policies. (And when you do, you then can run up against the universal-background-checks problem mentioned above, where you have a policy that everyone seems to want but is somehow blocked by a tiny minority.)
There is no getting around the fact that sometimes if you are in the minority you are not going to be able to do what you want. We can try to make allowances and provide protections, but still there is going to come a point at which the majority will say that the minority position is "too ridiculous" (or "too burdensome") and simply will not be accommodated.
And this has nothing to do with federalism! The issue is just that the consensus within a group of people may not match the consensus within every subgroup. Federalism is just our word for talking about a very particular instance of this, which we have convinced ourselves has some special status because a piece of paper written many years ago uses the word "state" a lot. But if we want to think about democracy we need to broaden our view a bit.
These are exactly the harmful and dangerous consequences of the social memes going around with delusions that 'screens' are harmful and that somehow multi-media from screens, despite not having any mechanism to directly alter incentive salience in any way, is just like addictive incentive salience altering drugs like cocaine.
When you use phrases like "internet addiction" "social media addiction" and the like these are the government uses of force you are supporting.
The judge asking for concrete evidence of these harms and them being unable to provide them, or even a hint of them probably won't change people's perceptions. Just look in this very comment thread for those ignoring the fact the entire article is about lack of proof of harms.
Because of this delusional grassroots support of the concept the authoritarian governments will just keep throwing this scientifically unsupported feces against the wall till it sticks. There's big money in the treatment camps (the anti-gay conversion camp people's new scam), etc, and big potential in the censorship and control of information.
A good saying I heard recently is that the first amendment doesn’t exist to protect the speech you like, it exists to protect the speech you hate.
“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” — Voltaire
No. It serves as a defense for people to criticize government. Its why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag.
People who 'advocate' for threats, assault, or death of people should never be permitted. Like, for example, Kiwi Farms. They've advocated for online bullying, threats, and ended up getting a bunch of people killed.
If you don't fear the gulag, you're not paying attention. He routinely attempts to put his political enemies in jail.
Oh I'm paying attention. But I also stay quiet publicly. Speaking out is a way to get the hammer.
Theres different ways to protest. Being an obvious target isn't what I do.
> No. It serves as a defense for people to criticize government. It's why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag.
> Theres different ways to protest. Being an obvious target isn't what I do.
How do you reconcile those two statements?
Think of https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
Pay close attention to section "General Interference with Organizations and Production" pages 28-32.
The point is that your statements here are completely contradictory. First you say:
> "Its why I can insult and talk terrible of president Turnip (spit) and not fear the gulag."
But then you say:
> "But I also stay quiet publicly. Speaking out is a way to get the hammer."
In other words, you're afraid to exercise your first amendment rights. You feel that you can't, in fact "insult and talk terrible of president Turnip" without unacceptable consequences.
He is lying or suffering cognitive dissonance.
A lot of people get angry when I call out people as liars, but sometimes these people are just fucking lying to everyone and you have to call a spade a spade.
Not necessarily. According to the Supreme Court, "implicit in the history of the First Amendment is the rejection of obscenity as utterly without redeeming social importance".
That seems asinine to me, and it's just one in a long line of reasons to hold the court in utter contempt. But they're in charge and I'm not.
> That seems asinine to me
Until you realize that child pornography would be protected by the First Amendment without obscenity carved out.
The Miller Test is what defines obscenity, and it seems pretty reasonable to me: is it about gross sex according to the average person (not the most Karen person), and does it lack serious literary, political, scientific, or artistic merit.
Honestly, I'm not aware of a Supreme Court case that held something to be obscene that was IMO wrongly decided. Pornography is fine. Even lolicon (cartoon sex of children) has been protected under the First Amendment and not deemed obscene.
We age gate other things that are genuinely useful but can be harmful when used incorrectly or with malice.
Given how much trouble you can cause with an Internet connection, I’m surprised this hasn’t happened already.
> We age gate other harmful objects: firearms, alcohol, driving, et cetera.
We can easily prove those have harms.
> trouble you can cause with an Internet connection
Why don't we age gate hands? Number one source of human problems right there. Perhaps we should outfit our children like Harrison Bergeron until they reach the age of majority?
>Why don't we age gate hands?
Making this sort of reductio ad absurdum doesn't make you seem witty or clever. It just makes you seem pedantic and unable to reason about things like a functioning adult.
That might be the case if they weren't correct. I notice you didn't actually say anything about what's wrong with the point.
Internet service is age gated by the provider and the prerequisites like a physical address and bank account
If you've got cash, you can go to Walmart and setup a prepaid cell phone with internet access. No ID or address required.
It would be like age gating a library.
Kids cannot check out adult materials. Nor can they attend a library alone until middle school. (At least around here.)
I guess the already normalized lack of liberty shouldn’t surprise me anymore.
Where do you live?
My son got his first library card at 5 and walked over there by himself when he was 6 or 7.
Middle school is way too late to build good reading habits. What a shame.
Human bare hands and teeth can be lethal if used skillfully. I wonder why isn't operating them age-gated.
Speaking can do a lot of harm, from emotional distress to swindling a victim out of millions through a scam.
World's safest place is a solitary confinement cell. It comes with some downsides though.
> I wonder why isn't operating them age-gated.
It is! Have you met a baby before... no teeth, severely diminished strength and muscle control
Surely you must see the difference between what is a utility and...firearms and alcohol?
Age gate positions of power, that is, you can't hold them after you're 55
It's discrimination, should be 65 like everywhere else.
Seriously, I won't limit the maximum age, but would rather use a cognitive ability assessment. It in fact already exists, e.g. as the TV debates for presidential candidates. Were the voters paying attention,..
Isn't the median like 65 already? Seems like it's closer to the minimum.
This identity verification business for porn sites is a nightmare for privacy. Will just result in more personal info being hacked and blackmail given the subject matter.
I wonder why identity verification is even mentioned, when age verification is all that's needed.
That’s a good call out, I should be more careful with my words. Practically, I haven’t seen age verification implemented online without some kind of identify credential furnished. But I didn’t mean to imply some kind of IAL2 compliant identity assurance or something
Because in an environment with personal computing devices and where consumer tech companies' primary business is surveillance, the two are equivalent.
(Personal computing devices make it so anyone of a certain age can run software that proxies their credentials to another user (either for profit or activism), and the surveillance business makes it so that third parties cannot be trusted to mask your identity)
A novel approach would be to verify age and then discard identity records, which is standard in the brick and mortar equivalents like bars.
This doesn't work, because something still has to be stored (unless you like the idea of being nagged everywhere you go online (including just clicking links) to "verify your age"). That upends the entire "well it's just like verifying your age at a bar" idea.
One place tried to scan my id recently. Hopefully others will speak up against it but I am not optimistic.
This is why I don't by alcohol online for delivery: the delivery person is required by their company to scan my ID. Places I order from already know enough about me - they don't also need a copy of my identification.
[delayed]
Unfortunately no. In my state all the bars and nightclubs near colleges scan IDs and keep a copy.
The fakes are so good now that the state basically admits they can't expect the bouncer to detect them. So they keep an image to prove "hey we tried our best".
what's the difference between porn and any arbitrary category here? even with porn isn't it just arbitrary that porn has been defined as "adult?" presumably Texas could just legislate that all apps are "adult" content, and then this would apply, no?
given the same judge per the article did this block which ultimately was overturned by the Supreme Court, I doubt this will go differently
I think you might find it not so arbitrary that kids should watch 6 men “use” a young man or girl; or even 3 grannies using a young boy as a toy. Is it really arbitrary?
“Because apparently tracking your morning run is a clear and present danger to minors.”
Well yes, Strava is a danger to at risk adults even let alone children. In fact, it is a risk to US bases around the world.
> In fact, it is a risk to US bases around the world.
If US army botany enthusiasts post a load of location data online on their favourite botany app, is that the app’s fault?
I’d say it’s the soldier and US army who are at fault.
Yes, if the botany app shares sensitive information like their exact location and possibly home/workplace then the app is to blame if it allows children and even adults to publish such information without explicit share-with-world opt in design.
I don't necessary like this law or precedent, but there are several major issues I have with the opposition.
One is that it is not individuals that have their speech restricted, I have a very big problem with companies continuing to be treated as if they're people, they're not. Individuals have rights by default, companies have only obligations, unless explicitly stated by the government as a right of incorporated entities, ideally at least.
There is also the issue of "freedom of speech is not freedom of reach", as in you can shout fire, but being able to reach a mass audience is reach. At least as far as content creators are concerned.
Lastly, I don't know of the union has a chance of lasting if we can't allow states to enact ridiculous laws we don't like. Resistance to state law by the federal government should be rare and only in defense or actual harm being caused to citizens. My point isn't that freedom of speech is a minor right, but that the requirement to prove harm (since everyone agrees, speech isn't a right if there is harm) should not be strong on the part of states.
The mere subjective opinion that the moral character of texans would be corrupted (as if! lol) by the content should be enough. why? because democracy, that's why. it's what texans keep voting for, states should have some level of self determination, otherwise they're just federal provinces.
I don't think anyone serious is arguing that porn for children is fine. The problem is everyone else having to pay for it by verifying age. You may have a strong opinion on this, as do I, but if the democratic government of texas chooses to levy burdens on adults to protect children (at least in their view and belief), why should outsiders intervene or have an opinion on it?
I would argue, that the burden of proof here to require the intervention of the federal government and legitimate invoking of federal rights should only be done if the plaintiff can prove harm was done to them, in this case by being required to verify their age. Or the content creators not being able to reach enough consumers.
I think a lot of the core issues we have in the US are caused by a now entrenched culture, where states are required to have similar laws. Let's say you're a mormon or something and want to raise your kids in a strict state, if states can't age verify, what choice do mormons have left? You may not care for mormons, but this stuff adds up. You'll have a large voter base (I argue - that's what MAGA is in a way) that is consistently left out of options, because the terrible, ignorant, backwards, etc.. views they have can't be represented by any state. It all becomes a federal matter, eventually the only way to solve it would be conflict.
I think enforcement of the civil right act/voting rights act set this precedent. It was the right thing to do, because it had to do with people's participation in voting, education and government, the very things which need to be protected so that states can claim they're representing the views of their population when passing disagreeable laws.
But if the sentiment is that porn creators and consumers' rights in this case trumps states' rights, then we no longer have a system of government where different states can pursue different democratic experiments. The voters of federal/general election swing states determine every aspect of amercians' lives, their views are tyrannically forced upon everyone else.
I don't think your argument addresses the substance of the judge's opposition, which is that the law as proposed will apply to all apps and all websites, not just ones that might do harm. That does seem like genuine overreach, and it is not even likely that it's what Texans were really asking for in the first place. It's just a bad law.
Id say even if you ignore the first amendment case, the federal government still has legitimate constitutional grounds to review these kinds of laws since it is definitely in the realm of interstate commerce.
I like the way you've stated your position, but I do have some questions.
> Lastly, I don't know of the union has a chance of lasting if we can't allow states to enact ridiculous laws we don't like.
I can understand the idea that people in one state may enact laws that people in other states disagree with (although see below), but saying we must allow ridiculous laws seems to be stretching it a bit far. It seems to me that the purpose of having different levels of government is that more local levels can enact their own policies, while at the same time higher levels can restrict those local jurisdictions from egregiously misusing their legislative power.
It then just becomes a matter of what kinds of laws are "too ridiculous" to be allowed. Maybe this is and maybe it isn't, but if you allow that any laws within one jurisdiction can be overridden by laws from a larger encompassing jurisdiction, then you must accept the underlying principle that the will of the whole can override the will of a part. Of course we can also debate what threshold must be met (e.g., will you require a supermajority of some sort at the federal level), but still the underlying principle holds. And I think we must all accept this principle, because the alternative is to accept that state law can do literally anything (e.g., execute people at random) as long as it is duly enacted by the state government.
The debate is then no longer about the theoretical balance between state and federal governments, but about the concrete question of whether this particular policy is too ridiculous to allow. As I'll say more about below, I tend to think that this is where almost all arguments about federalism lead. Unless you are prepared to allow one level or the other to have untrammeled power, it always comes down not to procedural questions about jurisdictions but to substantive questions about the actual content of the policies involved.
> The mere subjective opinion that the moral character of texans would be corrupted (as if! lol) by the content should be enough. why? because democracy, that's why. it's what texans keep voting for, states should have some level of self determination, otherwise they're just federal provinces.
Do you believe that this specific policy (or various others) in fact reflect the will of the people of Texas? The reason I ask is that I believe there are many policies (in some cases "policies of omission") at the state and federal levels which do not reflect the will of the people. As an example, polls, consistently show overwhelming support for universal background checks for gun purchases, and yet that is not the policy we have. It seems that the reason for this is that people have attached themselves to certain procedural characteristics of government (e.g., the constitution, certain mechanisms of legislative districting, etc.) rather than to more basic principles like "democracy".
If we're going to resort to fundamental principles like "because democracy", then it is hard to see why we should not insist that all policies directly reflect the will of the public in this way. I think indeed our system would benefit from removing certain anti-democratic features (e.g., the absurdly high bar for amending the constitution). But at the same time there is legitimacy in the desire to "lash ourselves to the mast" and declare certain policies off-limits ahead of time. Thus again we are really arguing not about "democracy" but about the substantive content of the laws and whether certain laws in their substantive content warrant some kind of special procedures or consideration.
Moreover, there is an interaction between the two points I made. If we allow that "ridiculous" laws should sometimes be allowed, and we also want democracy, then why can we not allow the larger jurisdiction (e.g., the federal government) to pass a "ridiculous" law restricting the actions of smaller jurisdictions? In other words, if 51% of Texans want to pass such-and-such a law, but 51% of Americans don't want any jurisdiction to be able to pass such a law, which democracy wins? It is hard to decouple the philosophical notion of democracy from concrete questions about where the boundaries are in which you're counting votes.
> You may have a strong opinion on this, as do I, but if the democratic government of texas chooses to levy burdens on adults to protect children (at least in their view and belief), why should outsiders intervene or have an opinion on it?
> I think a lot of the core issues we have in the US are caused by a now entrenched culture, where states are required to have similar laws.
My question with these issues of federalism is always the same: why is it particularly a concern when this is about state governments and federal governments? What if the democratic government of the city of Podunk, Texas wants to do something, while the democratic government of Podunk County (in which Podunk sits) wants the opposite? And then what if the Texas government wants something else and the federal government something different yet? And what if even within Podunk there is a neighborhood of four square blocks or so where the residents overwhelmingly disagree with the majority view within the city?
People often try to answer such questions by referencing the constitution, but I don't consider that a legitimate answer if we want to take seriously concepts like "democracy". If democracy is our goal, we need to be prepared to question whether the US Constitution achieves it, and so be willing to engage with the entire mess of how we resolve "51% vs. 51%" disputes of the type I mentioned above.
> Let's say you're a mormon or something and want to raise your kids in a strict state, if states can't age verify, what choice do mormons have left?
Let's say you like pork and want to eat some bacon, but most people in your area consider pork unclean and have banned the production and import of pork. What choice do you have? Or let's say you think 5G towers cause cancer, but most people in your area disagree and have allowed the construction of 5G towers. What choice do you have? Let's say you want to build a small nuclear device (for research purposes only, of course!), but the people in your area have decided to ban the possession of plutonium. What choice do you have? Let's say you're a member of a certain cult and want to raise your kids in a really strict state where you're allowed to beat them with a heavy stick if they fail to recite the Flying Spaghetti Monster's catechism with perfect accuracy. What choice do you have?
My point is simply that there are endless questions of this sort, and the answers people are comfortable with ultimately have nothing to do with "states' rights", because people disagree more about certain matters than others. People think of some things as "well that's not for me but that's cool if you want to do it", and other things as "I don't think anyone should do that but I guess it's your choice" and other things as "No one should ever do that and I am prepared to forcibly intervene to stop you from doing it if necessary". You cannot resolve these questions with an appeal to "federalism" without considering the substantive content of the policies. (And when you do, you then can run up against the universal-background-checks problem mentioned above, where you have a policy that everyone seems to want but is somehow blocked by a tiny minority.)
There is no getting around the fact that sometimes if you are in the minority you are not going to be able to do what you want. We can try to make allowances and provide protections, but still there is going to come a point at which the majority will say that the minority position is "too ridiculous" (or "too burdensome") and simply will not be accommodated.
And this has nothing to do with federalism! The issue is just that the consensus within a group of people may not match the consensus within every subgroup. Federalism is just our word for talking about a very particular instance of this, which we have convinced ourselves has some special status because a piece of paper written many years ago uses the word "state" a lot. But if we want to think about democracy we need to broaden our view a bit.
These are exactly the harmful and dangerous consequences of the social memes going around with delusions that 'screens' are harmful and that somehow multi-media from screens, despite not having any mechanism to directly alter incentive salience in any way, is just like addictive incentive salience altering drugs like cocaine.
When you use phrases like "internet addiction" "social media addiction" and the like these are the government uses of force you are supporting.
The judge asking for concrete evidence of these harms and them being unable to provide them, or even a hint of them probably won't change people's perceptions. Just look in this very comment thread for those ignoring the fact the entire article is about lack of proof of harms.
Because of this delusional grassroots support of the concept the authoritarian governments will just keep throwing this scientifically unsupported feces against the wall till it sticks. There's big money in the treatment camps (the anti-gay conversion camp people's new scam), etc, and big potential in the censorship and control of information.
I have always been chronically online, but now I'm online seeing stupid short form videos for hours on end, and everyone around me is doing the same.
Half the population watching 4 hours of short form content online is a problem.