Why Government Social
8 minute read
Why World Governments Need to Enter the Social Media Space
I do not know if other countries are disillusioned with the idea that corporations make better governments that governments do; Like we seem to be here in the United States. We seem to have forgotten that in a democratic country the government is by the people and for the people. Now in the United States we have a system of bribery and so our government is corrupted by those who have the most money. Even our supreme court ruled that money is speech and the more money you have the louder your speech is within that government. And somehow that seemed fair to many. I work for people that consider themselves socially liberal and financially conservative. That point always confused me. I consider myself extremely liberal socially and financially. I don’t think society should put itself in dept socially or financially. But I do believe there is a need for the people to share the burden and expense to better their lives, the species and the environment around them. In the US both the left and right think to fix things is to throw money at things. We also tend to worship those that have the most money to throw. No matter if they are socially, morally or ironically financially bankrupt. My employer once made a comment to the effect that they supported the view that only those with property should have rights to run things. How is that socially liberal?
There is a movement among the haves that they and they alone have the intelligence to run society. Rarely are they scientist or engineers that understand how the world works. Sometimes they are, but then seem to be mentally bankrupt in all other areas of their lives.
The point is the world needs social and moral capital to survive. If you want to throw in financial capital to that equation, so be it. But finance, as we have all seem to have forgotten is a tool. Social and moral capital are assets to our humanity. Finance and things are not. They are tools, not assets.
Do not get me wrong as long as the world is a capitalistic society, I have no issues with private super rich snowballs helping humanity to accomplish things. But we should have no illusion that it is somehow for anything other than adding to the bottom line financially. When the betterment of humanity is the actual goal then the bottom line is irrelevant with the exception of sustainability in the capitalistic society we have built. I would also like to remind everyone, that in spite of what neoliberals preach to you. Capitalism is not something natural that follows the rules of the universe or even the rules of supply and demand, once corrupted or all encompassing. It is a man made construct designed to make bartering easier. With procedures and planning and with all of humanity working for the good of it’self, both bartering and it’s modern day equivalent become not only irrelevant but a weight on society pulling it down and preventing humanity from reaching the next level in it’s evolution. I by no means think we are even close to being there yet, but know feel it is the future.
There are things that should not be done for profit. Things that all of humanity needs to grow and prosper. These things require that the people working together as a single entity for the betterment of themselves, their lives and fellow beings on the planet are accomplished in spite of the bottom line. Where the bottom line does not matter beyond ensuring the resources exist to accomplish the goals humanity sets out to better it’self and it’s environment.
Those things are planned and started by the people. If we really believed that privatizing everything for profit was the only way to do things we would have never gone to the moon, built space stations, produced life saving treatments. One wonders if we would just now start building roads and rail lines to improve commerce and off course it would only be available to the corporations and extremely wealthy. If not for the government and people of that government paying for and planning on knowing the bottom line did not matter (to it’s logical extent). It is a little frightening to think how far regressed society would be.
That is why I feel that now is the time we must create our online public squares not from corporations trying to build the bottom line with advertisers and algorithms that help those advertisers and the bottom line. But from the people.
Think of the recent chain of events from the geniuses man child. We had an online square which was a cesspool built to fatten the bottom line. At times I wonder if it was sincerely built to be a public square, but of course in a capitalistic society the only way to garner and support the resources is to generate revenue. I can not totally blame the man child for the actions he took after all his intent is to save humanity (only his version of a just humanity). But hey even if your morally and socially bankrupt at least trying to save the property and asset owners has to count for something.
But what if instead of having to make a profit, we as a society paid for and built our own online public square. I think we have a pretty decent test ground and I have belonged to it for a while. But I was inactive for years, because the conversation was happening on Facebook until I and everyone younger than me became disillusioned with it. I liked the pre man child version of twitter. It was the only social media platform I used. And by use, I mean trolling and listening as I rarely have anything of value to add to society. The occasion exception like this post here. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against corporations creating and making things for profit. Some of the best trashy, mediocre things in life happen this way. But it always seems the best things in life happen when people try to fill a need outside the bottom line. Things like: Linux; Free/Open/NetBSD; Federated apps like Hubzilla, GnuSocial, Mastodon, which I’m familiar with and many others I am not are things that come to mind for me because I’m a computer nerd. People can and still do make money from those free things. But they seem to fuck it up when they do. The value add seems minimal at best because the technology and benefit to humanity start to take a back seat to profits. Don’t get me wrong I still like RedHat and Conical, but it always seems to move away from the utopian Star Trek universe when money becomes the deciding factor, the goal and not just the tool.
Think if governments (ideally ruled by the people, but even if not) were the creators of the public square online. I look at Mastodon for the almost perfect model and federated protocols for the glue to hold it all together. Nations could be instances. Bad nations could be de-federated (hopefully only temporarily). You could still have your instances for special interest. I like computer security https://infosec.exchange/ and like the BSD variants of operating systems https://bsd.network/ and I’m liberal and want a semi safe space from those who are not https://freeradical.zone/ You can still have your semi-profit motivated sites, people have to pay the bills after all. https://counter.social/ Though I doubt I would ever join you always have mastodon copied code trying to pass itself off as original 100% for profit and power https://truthsocial.com/ I can and only want to imagine what a shit show that must be.
Some people don’t trust governments and thats OK, neither do I. But unlike many at least in my country, I absolutely do not trust corporations. I always feel it’s better if people make the product rather than people be the product. I have heard things in the past that I would not trust the government with my data. Spoiler alert they already have it, staring from the time you were born to present. Then there is the concern that a corrupt government is controlling the instance you are on. Really? have you seen what corporations do? Places like China and Russia control the narrative and the people online already. In the US the corporations do the same. Other countries have varying states from both ends of the spectrum.
There needs to be a place for citizens of each country and ultimately federated up to citizens of the planet to have a place to discuss our desires, goals and dreams and it would really be nice if those discussions were paid for by the people through their governments instead of being manipulated for emotion and add revenue or even check mark subscriptions.