Is It "Just Me," or Are We STILL in a 3T?

[pbrower2a]

(02-14-2022, 10:53 AM)David Horn Wrote:

(02-14-2022, 12:50 AM)JasonBlack Wrote:

(02-13-2022, 10:36 AM)David Horn Wrote: I don't see anything even vaguely similar to your item 3.  Government reach has been declining for decades due primarily to a well thought-out campaign against anything that impedes the full exercise of private power.  In short, the government has been neutered, and nothing gets resolved as long as that continues.

You mean like vaccine passports, forced shut downs, police arresting people because they had gatherings in their own homes of over 10 people? It's true, most of this has been on the state rather than federal level, but the extension of government powers into said domains hasn't exactly been subtle. Once we get out of the country, it gets even worse. France has gone police state and Australia has gone straight up Orwellian (forcing people to verify their location with face pics at random intervals, armed police patrolling residential neighborhood streets, helicopters being sent out to find people).

Vaccine Passports have happened outside the US, but only a very few states have attempted anything similar.  I personally favor that approach, but its water under the bridge at this point.  Forcing behavior on the unwilling is part of what government does.  Sorry, you can't just rob this store -- you're getting arrested.  Vaccinating your children before they attend school is another example, and one followed everywhere for a long time.  These are fully rational responses to irrational provocations.  The blind freedom to do as one pleases only works when those freedoms are self-regulated.  We're way past that now.

We are likely to end up with something that few of us ever expected: internal passports.Those could include data useful for medical purposes such as blood type, ongoing prescriptions, and allergy warnings. Such could save lives and some legal trouble: diabetic comas look much like drunkenness but are very different in treatment both medical and legal. Whether one has had the appropriate inoculations, as for COVID-19, will be there. So might educational achievement. Such a passport could connect to welfare services and rights of the disabled.

People will accept these if they make life easier. On the other hand we have the possible retort: what could be wrong? I can imagine the potential abuses. Work history, criminal records, driving records, religion (in case you are in the worst possible situation you may or may not want Catholic last rites), voting behavior, ethnic origin, credit history, outstanding debts... it could get ugly. It is a great myth that Big Business stands for individual freedom; it believes in such for the well connected, but not for the common man whose employment, spending habits, and affiliations it would like to control.Just as the totalitarian Soviet Union had its ideal of the New Soviet Man and China has its social credit system, I can easily imagine our plutocratic-bureaucratic order might have its own ideal in the Perfect Servant, someone whose personal life is objectively miserable or full of self-destructive behavior yet who puts on the big, bright Happy to Serve You smile despite it all.

I can imagine that in the wake of some economic downturn that Big Business will seek to direct consumer spending so that it serves overall prosperity. Note well that gambling and marijuana are now legal; when something gets profitable and economically controllable, Big Business wants it legalized. So it will be with prostitution, which will be marketed just as efficiently under some corporate label. You may personally despise gambling (I think it is for fools), marijuana (I don't trust it), or prostitution (would you want your precious daughter leasing her body to complete strangers for their transitory bliss)... yet I can imagine a system that controls people by dictating their behavior as consumers mandating that the participate in lucrative activities such as gambling, recreational marijuana (the stuff is expensive), or prostitution.