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Noah
I wonder how many people who are outraged at the idea of TIA even know how much information about them is readily available - and used - by commercial data mining operations. What do they know about you? Is it accurate? What if criminals buy your data from them?
I wonder if TIA isn't just a better version of this:
"It is not information that is the biggest threat to controlling people, unless you are a criminal, it is control of your wallet or pocketbook and making you reliant on government for your subsistence that really controls. Control the money and you control the people. Allow them to keep enough to create the illusion of freedom, and they will never know, it's the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society and their proffered 'communal good'."
Amazing...in KMAJ's worldview, it seems, the government can come upon you as a highwayman and say, "Your money or (all the information about) your life" and KMAJ think's his money is the important thing to protect. That is a great insight, though not about the threat of an overwheening government. It is a great insight about KMAJ himself, his lack of insight, his distaste of autonomy.
Quite the analyst du jour, I wouldn't quit your day job. While certainly it was a simplistic point, instead of a dissertation, your prognostic abilities must be legendary to draw such non-tangential and incoherent conclusions. I'll clue you in, Ross, just to make it easy for you, I don't like socialism. I don't believe in the nanny state. I made a basic economic statement, it was not about 'my' money. Without economic freedom, social freedom is an illusion. But I must have struck a nerve, as I did not mention anyone in particular in that statement, just expressed a socio-economic point of view. Maybe it is your responses need to attack that tells us more about you ? Now if you care to try to make an on point rebuttal where you can prove otherwise, I would be happy to hear it. How do you think communism works ? The point was your freedom is threatened more by high taxes than it is by information being known, unless you have something to hide. And Bush should be smacked in the head for some of his irresponsible fiscal policies.
For those who don't like to be bored by the minutiae of micro and macro economic theory, I recommend this site:
Grandfather Economic Report
Don't just take my recommendation:
I think you will find a lot of people here who believe strongly in economic freedom and see the government as presenting a threat to economic freedom. But many of those same people will also be concerned about the government possessing "total information" about people. In short, there is no rule which says you can only be concerned about one of these things at a time.
As Medis notes, many people, certainly myself and the man you reference, Nobelist Friedman, believe that civil liberties AND economic liberties are vital to human freedom and both are threatened by governments. See his classic Capitalism &Freedom. I'm confident Dr. Friedman would be as apalled as I by a government that, while willing to cut back on taxes a bit, needed to know all the data (including, if it helps you see the point, your financial data) that make up your life.
To make it clear, I completely AGREE with your point about the deleterious effect of welfare, "foreign aid", and high taxes. I simply think, as totalitarianism goes, it's hard to imagine a night-watchman state that knows EVERYTHING about you.
Incidentally, I assume you are a strong critic of the Bush Administration and the GOP Congress, given the massive and consistent increases in federal government spending under their leadership.
Do you have any evidence to support this?
You can support greater privacy laws for consumers against corporations and other people; Or You can support abolishing those protections. But the current dichotomy is simply stupid - As if government agencies can't or won't have access to info that the neighborhood blue-collar worker will soon have access to if he has a hundred bucks.
The total listed budgets for Topsail, Genoa II, Basketball, etc., sum to something like $25-30 million over a few years. These aren't exactly giant programs. Trailblazer, which was (and maybe still is) one of NSA's big modernation programs (it was to help the agency to quickly sort through boat loads of information) was estimated at ~$1.2 billion.
Given that these rather small budgetary figures are just about all the hard data we have on the programs, I would be reluctant to pass judgment on this too quickly... for either side.
Fortunately we know that all expenditures by the NSA are carefully listed for public review.
I have serious concerns about some of Bush's fiscal policies. He has put himself in a Catch 22, the tax cuts have stimulated the economy and increased tax revenues, but without reining in spending, it becomes a no win situation. You can;'t raise taxes without hurting the economy, which would decrease revenues. The only solution is to rein in spending, and Bush has been weak, actually non-existent, in wielding the veto to do so, and Congress hasn't been much better. I wish democrats provided a viable option, but their attachment to entitlement programs, unwillingness to reform them and penchant for raising taxes, makes them as an option untenable.
Friedman is a strong believer in tax cuts as a way to force government to rein in spending. At what point does Congress become responsible and do so ? I don't think democrats would do any better, except to cut defense and intelligence spending to pay for entitlement spending. That is a dangerous trade-off.
Ross,
I think to jump the gun on leaks of classified information is short-sighted. None of us knows what these programs entail or how they are being used. I would assume, as with the NSA program, the intelligence committees know about them, and they had raised no warning signs. It is for that reason that I find the leaks more troublesome than the programs they leaked about.
Capitalism and Freedom is an excellent book, even if a little dry, if you liked that, you have to read Free to Choose, it had more of an impact on my views on economics, government and politics.