patrick.net

NY Democrats want to censor.

Actually, toll roads worked out so well, they want "toll speech". Certain proscribed speech can only be indulged by putting coins in a booth.

Wow, hopefully this has zero chance of passing because it is so clearly unconstitutional:

But the deeper problem with the bill is simply that it aims to censor what people say, under a broad, vague test based on what the government thinks the public should or shouldn’t be discussing. It is clearly unconstitutional under current First Amendment law, and I hope First Amendment law will stay that way (no matter what rules other countries might have adopted).

Remember: There is no “right to be forgotten” in the abstract; no law can ensure that, and no law can be limited to that. Instead, the “right” this aims to protect is the power to suppress speech — the power to force people (on pain of financial ruin) to stop talking about other people, when some government body decides that they should stop.

Here are the usurpers of the constitution that residents of NY should be voting against forever more:

http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/David-I-Weprin/
https://www.nysenate.gov/senators/tony-avella

Well, I would sorta like it Google was forced to omit searches for people IN CERTAIN INSTANCES, but what we have to keep in mind is the question of WHO is to judge which "certain instances" are "valid", and which are not. That being so, we have certain burdens to bear if we value our free speech

(of course, there is a question of treating corporations as "persons" with rights. If we do away with this, then Google has no right to do anything -- which would be excellent)

Personally, I feel that only natural persons should enjoy rights

Can you imagine how many articles Trump could censor under this bill? Millions!

Herb says

Personally, I feel that only natural persons should enjoy rights

But what about collections of natural persons? I think the Citizens United argument was that corporations (and unions) as collections of people should enjoy the same rights as their constituent members. Maybe I didn't understand it right.

In part, because the theoretical "representative" character of institutions has failed. They are taken over by various officers or bureaucrats or others, or they exist to begin with because a corrupt billionaire funded them to advance his/her interests, and controls their actions. They are fundamentally pseudo-democratic or anti-democratic at a certain point. And a "collection" is nothing but a legal abstraction to allow dislocation of politcal power (into the hands of these giants that stalk the land in the form of LLCs, corporations, partnerships, lobbyists, churches, most unions, and associations of every type. "Collections" (more properly "collectives" or "collectivities") come into existence either to facilitate dislocations (misallocations) of power into the hands of those that control them, or to counter-act other collectivities which are already abusing the class agents ("individuals", if you like) who can only oppose them through forming similar collectivities with opposing purposes

It's called a certain level of class struggle / class domination. But it leads to Byzantinism, which I understand to mean "collectivities whose attributed or selected members enjoy certain privileges, rights, immunities, and so on for those who comprise them", and who are sucking off the dying hog known as the United States. In a nutshell, this is the situation.

Bigger question is: should concentrations of capital/power be allowed at all? But who is to prevent their concentration to begin with? That entity then become the Ur of corruption and abuse. Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. I know of no satisfactory answer to this eternal question.