I think you’re onto something here with people thinking they know a lot, but isn’t the real issue anonymous internet posting? Having to take zero responsibility for sharing ideas has ruined intelligent discourse society-wide: Web 2.0, then social media, turned out to be the beginning of the end of experts having credibility. Journalists, scientists, all experts became demonized by persuasive bots or anonymous internet posters. Instead of a world of democratized intelligence as promised, we got a world of “anyone’s opinion is valid, and I don’t even need to know their credentials or who they are.” If we forced everyone to have to stand by everything they said online on every forum, we’d have a lot fewer strong opinions and conspiracies, IMO. People (voters) would be thinking a lot harder about their ideas and seeing a lot fewer validations of the extreme parts of themselves.
My hottest take is that it wasn’t anonymity, but auto correct, that spelled (literally) the end. Without autocorrect and auto-grammar, ideas were tagged with the credential/authority of “I can use they’re / their / there” correctly, which was a high ass bar.
You think people don't have those ideas in person? They absolutely do, and not being anonymous does not stop most of them.
While I agree the Internet has contributed to this belief, I do not see how being anonymous or not would fix that. To say nothing of the myriad other issues that would come with a non-anonymous Internet.
>I do not see how being anonymous or not would fix that.
I mean there are some valid things that show up here. For example Bob is racist, and Steve is racist, but they don't know they are deeply racist. You typically have to slowly enter into conversation to ensure you don't offend them.
Being anonymous can shortcut this process. You show up on a semi-local forum as Anon1 and talk to Anon2 about how you want get rid of all those dirty $_fill_in_the_blank's. You realize you share the same convictions, and it's safer to exchange details on who you really are.
Now, it's correct non-anonymous internet is bad, especially if you are a targeted group that hasn't done anything wrong, for example gay groups.
You don't need to be a targeted group for anonymity to be important, nor do you need a "valid" reason to be anonymous on the Internet. I have yet to hear a compelling reason otherwise.
People like to say, "Well you're not anonymous IRL" and ... well, yes, we are. We are not forced to say, "My name is X and I live at Y" when we stay stuff in public
>We are not forced to say, "My name is X and I live at Y" when we stay stuff in public
I mean these days you can pretty much be immediately identified by facial recognition. Not saying it's a good thing, but it is the world in which we live.
If you're mad at one, then be mad that the other because this is what technology enables.
It's more like we've fell into a raging torrent screaming down river at 30km/h and the best we can do is a backstroke 1km/h upstream.
I mean, I'm not saying it's impossible to slow it down or stop it, but I feel that in itself would require it's own dystopian level of enforcement as it opens up game theory to the one that defects and progresses technology as the winner in being able to control others.
We flew towards the sun, and went to high, and then the sun swallowed us.
It’s still “new tech” to our monkey brains and it takes a long time, and probably a lot of destruction, before our we develop better cultural norms for dealing with it. Our cultural immune system has only just started to kick in.
So many excellent plots for a great sci fi series here. Who is writing the newest ones? No references pre ChatGPT please; I want the (human) author who is taking these latest concepts, capabilities and fears and turning them into a better Ex Machina. Maybe it's still too new, novels take a while, etc but someone has to be working on it...
Serenbe is a very cool example, thank you. Do you know of any others?
I definitely think local political pushback is one of the potential challenges. But I will also admit that part of the plan would be to move in enough people to gain political control.
It's a very viable, legal political strategy to ship 60k families into a new urban enclave in Wyoming or Montana and thereby turn it blue. 120k blue votes would do it.
I honestly thought that was Amazon's plan with HQ2, which is what made me think of it. A company the size of Amazon could create that many great jobs in one of these states in a single election year. If they paired it with tasteful property development, I would be shocked if a good chunk of their Seattle employees didn't swarm the new town.
But let's assume that:
1 - no existing large company will do this. Patagonia or similar could, but most don't wade this deeply into politics.
2 - locals would dislike it but would also get rich selling their land. So this is not hostile to them, and we don't need to obsess over their feelings too much. It's just capitalism.
Seems to me a better mechanism would be to assemble the interest, then collect the money, and then buy the plot of land. You wouldn't want to project too much ahead of time for fear of scaring or intimidating. But once you secured the land, assuming you could still subdivide it and develop it (ie, assuming local politicians didn't stop you first), you could sell it off, get the new residents registered and you're done. You just took over.
This could sound too premeditated, but developers wielding local laws in unexpected ways to their economic advantage is nothing new. See Robert Moses.
I think a DAO should be the next Robert Moses, only not racist and focused on making all of the gorgeous land in this country habitable for young people. This is a massive country. The only reason we all huddle in cities is because the rest of it is so left behind that we don't want to help it anymore.
BTW, I don't think there's much difference between taking over a town and starting a new one. You start a new one and the neighboring towns plus the county will still freak out. It's in your best interest to control local politics, ideally all the way to the governor, either way.
> Serenbe is a very cool example, thank you. Do you know of any others?
Not off the top of my head, but there were a lot of attempts at something like that in the 20th century. Most of them were associated with escaping social norms (e.g. communes, cults, etc.) and ultimately failed.
> 120k blue votes would do it
You're missing a few factors:
1. Land votes, not people. One of the reasons Republicans are a minority party and control the country, even at most state levels, is because of gerrymandering. You need far more than 50% of the state to take it back over, especially if the Supreme Court is tolerant of extreme gerrymandering (as it has been for years now).
2. A large percentage of people don't vote. If you want 120k votes, you need probably 200k+ potential voters.
3. There is an explicit strategy by the GOP to make purple states (like Texas) scary or unpleasant to live in for Democrats.
> The only reason we all huddle in cities is because the rest of it is so left behind that we don't want to help it anymore.
I'm not sure this is true. I think the #1 reason for living in a city has been the job opportunities, and the #2 reason was the social connections. Maybe it's close to friends, family, or a like-minded community.
You don't have those things in a random spit of land in the middle of nowhere. You won't have an airport, convenient highways, easy weekend getaways, nearby beaches, etc.
Serenbe is cool, but it took decades to develop it into a real competitor to a city, and it was also consciously built close to the busiest airport in the world. You can't replicate those conditions quickly or easily.
I think if you had $30B to spend, you could either build a town or boost the endowment for youth voter turnout, and I think the latter would give you better social returns on your investment.
I hear on you social connections, which is why this must be a coordinated effort. Moving slowly in will not be that appealing, but having everything set up ahead of time and then moving en masse would work.
RE: politics, the governorship isn't elected by land. Take out the governor and you can fix political gerrymandering (or wield it to your benefit).
End of the day, the vision as I see it isn't to build a new city or to make a small town feel like a city. It's to enjoy the benefits of large plots of land and large houses, but to do so with a modern, youthful population and great restaurants and entertainment.
I'm envisioning Bend, OR but all across the country. Or Los Alamos, etc, the examples above. These towns didn't happen by accident. Someone had a plan, and then a tipping point was reached that cemented the place as a modern small town.
That can be reverse engineered and purposefully carried out. Not saying it's easy, but it's 100% doable. And I want to know who's trying, because I want to help.
The "small town vibe" is what holds back the value. It's undesirable to modern young people to not have a vibrant creative atmosphere. Obviously this is a generalization but it's clearly true on average. That's bad for the town no matter which way you look at it -- top young talent leaves at first opportunity, so no companies invest because no ambitious talent pool, so no dollars flow through local economy, and it becomes a death spiral. Don't pretend like locals want this.
If the town has great real estate, someone should help it find its maximum value. Sure some locals will claim to dislike the change, sort of like those old SFers that complain about the good ol days of Haight Ashbury. But they did OK if they owned. And this is what capitalism is all about -- if it's empirically good, it gets bid up with higher prices.
To pretend like small towns have precious virtue on their own or want to shun value appreciation is naive.
Small town home owners should love to find out young people moved in and made their home worth millions. They can cash out and go hide somewhere forgotten if they really want. Either way, if they pretend they have some right to not have their land value improved, they misunderstand how capitalism in America works.
Your whole argument seems to be based on turning a small town into a big town... doesn't that defeat the whole purpose? Sure, the early adopters will make a profit on their property values, but then what? Do companies just keep hopping from town to town to keep this going, and what happens when they leave for the next hip place?
It is possible for small towns to grow an evolve while maintaining their culture. A small town doesn't need to become a tech hub full of hipsters to grow. Slow sustainable growth is what most of these towns want, not a massive boom and culture shock.
I grew up in a small town. Yes, I left right after high school and so did my sister, but she moved back once she had a family. A lot of people move to the city to start their career, make some money, and meet someone, then transition to a smaller town (or at least a suburb) once they have kids. This is an intentional choice. If the small town turned into a big one, they would likely look to leave and go somewhere else.
The place I grew up voted down a freeway proposed near town when I was in high school. They didn't even want faster access to a bigger city, because they were afraid of people working in those cities living in town and the impact that would have. I didn't agree with it, as I wanted a fast way out of there, but that's democracy. If a city, and it's people, want this to happen... ok. But a company deciding on its own that their way is the best way and changing the entire culture of a city by force is no better than one country invading another to try and impose their political structures as "best".
I moved to an area that was near freeways, but I still understand why some people don't like it. I kind of like the pace of small town life, but I want more job options, so I chose a larger area. Transforming a small town doesn't seem like it will solve anything. If I want the pace of a small town and that pace changes to bring in more job options, then it would no longer have that small town pace. The last place I lived had a lot of rules in place to keep it from feeling too "big". They had max building heights, didn't allow chains downtown, etc. I left for a few years and when I went back, a lot of that seemed to have changed. They are building giant condo complexes downtown, there are chains going in left and right, traffic is a mess. The place is worse and it lost the essence that made people want to be there in the first place.
LOL nearly everyone. The term has negative connotations but technically it refers to "a person who follows the latest trends and fashions."
Traditionalists, people with bad taste, or generally uncurious folks don't motivate large amounts of people to change behavior. But large groups of young people trying new things and inventing new experiences do.
SF, NYC, LA, even Miami real estate booms are all because of hipsters. Young creative people make the place interesting, then richer but more boring people crash the party and bid up prices. It gets too expensive for young creatives eventually so they leave, and then the cycle repeats.
Geography on its own isn't enough. NYC was a disaster in the 70s; only when the young people started moving back did it become desirable, hence valuable.
So you need hipsters. Without them, the place you live is just a boring bedroom community. Could be anywhere, likely not valuable.
At least in NYC it is still fashionable to dress well (as in curating one's own style or to the upper-end styling haute couture well). If in NYC it is still fashionable, I am pretty sure it is still fashionable in a lot of places :)
My finger may not be on the pulse here, but I think we all deep down believe that a classic suit and tie is still dressing well... even if we choose not do it.
I've always wondered -- if I used this on the board room window to listen into public company earnings meetings, is that inside information? Technically, the information is "public" in that anyone could do what I'm doing...
Along similar lines, I've wondered about how often restaurant and bar owners have bugged their own premises.
There's probably a lot of valuable information discussed in such establishments.. especially, say, around Wall St.
Regarding the legal aspects, I'm not sure how much of a legal expectation of privacy one has in a "public" place such as a restaurant or bar, and we've pretty much already accepted ubiquitous video surveillance in such places (even if such videos are often without sound).
Someone could potentially infer speech just by lipreading soundless videos, but if someone did decide to use audio surveillance on their own property in a bar, restaurant, or other place of business, is there any law against that?
Quite apart from the legal and ethical objections that might arise against doing this, I'm sure some business owners are not above giving in to the temptation to spy on their patrons, especially if there's a big profit motive (like getting access to inside information by spying on Wall St execs gossiping over drinks or dinner).
That's not to mention dirt that might be revealed in conversations considered to be "private", which could be used to blackmail people or for other nefarious purposes.
The technology to perform such spying has been around for a long time, and in a bar or restaurant the owner (or rogue employee, or customer even) wouldn't have to resort to exotic techniques such as this light bulb trick. A simple microphone would suffice.
> Along similar lines, I've wondered about how often restaurant and bar owners have bugged their own premises.
In a few select Houston strip clubs.. all the time, or at least ten years ago some did, the ones owned by certain organizations. I haven’t been around that scene for a decade, so I can’t speak to now. I know of a few other places that seemed to magically never have trouble with city officials or permitting. Another such place, an after hours club, was frequented by the mayor’s “party-oriented” daughter, never had trouble with police raids, or fire marshals. The venue survived unscathed until the next mayor took over and such leverage became unavailable. The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission was the only real challenge, but often the local cops would be knowledgeable about pending raids and would graciously provide some advance notice. It certainly helped that many of those cops were paid as off duty private security by the venue. DEA was another frequent adversary, but those folks aren’t as undercover as they thought they were. I might suggest that the DEA was (or maybe still is,) one of the more sketchy law enforcement agencies in the government.
Just under the surface of “normal,” there is some really fascinating stuff that goes on.
Some Dunkin Donuts stores in the New England area were (decades ago) accused of listening to their customers by having microphones at seats where customers ate. Not sure if that was intentional or part of their security system as they claimed. [0]
I'm sure that one way or the other, that question has been dealt with exhaustively. My guess, the information you obtain is considered definitely not public, even though it's possible for a member of the public to obtain.
