My take on the social media ban for children.
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My take on the social media ban for children. Who knows what the Bill will actually look like. The choice to not regulate is also a regulatory choice and a powerful one; and the language that goes with that, especially in tech-friendly places like this one—that it’s impossible, that it could never work, that it’s a moral panic, that it’s not based on evidence—is identical to language and ideological argument we’ve all heard for decades not to address other identifiable social ills. In fact social media is extremely young and dominated by a few major international firms, very profitable ones
Gee, the housing market is hard, it’s a wicked problem. The evidence shows doing anything to improve affordability would affect capital returns and the economy. And who doesn’t like their house price going up?
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There’s a specific complacent attitude to regulatory powers that goes with IT acculturation and being good at computers that annoys the hell out of me.
My field is urban planning. Do you want to see what the result of two centuries of complacent arguments from ‘evidence’ that paper over self-interest and she’ll be right look like? Look at any given city, and you can see a physical object that’s been the subject of arguments about how impossible it is to regulate or control.
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@liamvhogan If only some of us had been proposing evidence-backed regulatory approaches and nuanced policy for many years that could have been chosen at any time.
And yet the system keeps picking kneejerk reactionary options that don't work. I wonder why that is?
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The style of anti regulation language going on here is heir to the ideology that’s dominated all our adult lives: the unitary inevitableness of capitalism and complex markets. Free trade, low tariffs, no industry policy, deregulation, cuts to income support and social payments.
Finance loves to wrap itself up in impenetrability and complexity and to present itself as something that’s always been the way it is, and should be allowed.
In fact it’s very easy and good and fun to regulate the fuck out of markets and governments usually find themselves popular and successful when they do
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@daedalus is it because such an evidence based regulatory approach is also a product of ideology concerning what can and can’t be done with technologies?
I don’t know, tell me more about the deployment of political language and ideas to influence power and law, I’ve got Jonesy on 2UE and he’s got Premier Bob Carr as his guest to talk knife crime.
C’mon man. At some stage you have to stop stepping on rakes, expecting ‘evidence’ to stand ideology free on its own
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@daedalus if you persist in looking at the State as a system that’s amenable to better functions and improvement rather than as a place of power where some groups win and some groups lose, of course you’re going to be shocked and surprised when groups that have a better grasp of political language and power win. That sucks. Losing is unpleasant. I know. There’s absolutely no excuse for it. Losing an argument is also a very strong form of evidence in its own right.