I don't think this is quite that extreme of a slippery slope.
For one, areas of unrest are already restricted by physical police and national guard barriers. For example, during the unrest in 2020, Chicago physically raised its drawbridges. Anyone who really wants to get somewhere difficult would probably choose a bicycle or legs, so you need physical police barriers in that case.
Refusing to drive you to the gun store sounds kind of silly when the government would more easily just ban gun stores (the right to bear arms doesn't include the right to buy them at a retail store). I realize you're just giving out an example but it was not a great one. Preventing you from driving somewhere is a simple as putting up a gate and closing it.
Also, driving at all is not a right. It's a licensed privilege that can be taken away if you break traffic laws or drive while intoxicated.
I think your perspective is coming from a car-focused area of the country (which is most of them). But, someone in NYC or Chicago might point out to you that they use a transit card that has the ability to track their movements through stations, and that they mainly travel by buses and trains that have government-owned surveillance cameras all over them. Despite this, it has has failed to turn into any kind of dystopian urban nightmare.
What I'm getting at is that the technology is blamed for things that are actually just public policy, laws, and law enforcement. The privacy implications for using a smartphone in the Western world are a lot different than in China, even though the technology itself is identical.
What we actually need is legislation surrounding automotive communication and centralized control and privacy. The rights that automobile owners have should be better enshrined in law rather than trusting auto manufacturers. This, I think, will eventually happen. We're still sorely lacking a general nationwide privacy law on the Internet in the US.
Nah, I will continue to buy disconnected vehicles for as long as possible since I chose to live in a rural area of the country, and I expect my machine to start when I tell it to. People that live in Chicago or New York choose to give up their ability to travel without the need for the government that is their choice. And didn't the pandemic have a major impact on some public transit lines operation? Again I believe in personal responsibility and freedom, I choose not to have that level of reliance on others.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/nyregion/mass-transit-ser...
And while driving on public roads is not a right, I still want my vehicle to start regardless of the governments opinions on whether I should be traveling :)
I chose guns because it was something that large corps like to virtue signal about. Also, while the bill of rights does not protect buying guns at retail, most of the cries for increased gun control actually want people to be forced to buy firearms in a retail setting so that the transfer can be tracked in the nation DB, which does not happen with private sales.
> I still want my vehicle to start regardless of the governments opinions on whether I should be traveling :)
No government was involved here, just a private company, who has the freedom to do as they please with their property and the responsibility to protect their assets.
> People that live in Chicago or New York choose to give up their ability to travel without the need for the government that is their choice.
What you're implying here is that city dwellers are government-dependent babies, which is very condescending to them. Choosing to drive your car on the public roads of your suburb or rural town doesn't make you any less dependent on society or the government.
Yes, transit systems had cuts due to ridership and revenue issues, and shut down at certain stations during unrest. Do you think a bank should keep its doors unlocked when there's unrest going on outside? These city transit systems were exercising their personal responsibility to protect public property, right?
> Again I believe in personal responsibility and freedom, I choose not to have that level of reliance on others.
Like it or not, you rely on others. There is little choice involved. There is almost no way to end that relationship entirely.
You probably drink from water that was managed by a government, and your poop is taken away either in a public sewer or on a septic truck driving on a public road. Unless you literally live out in the woods off of the land and never leave, you are a part of society, and libertarian hyper-individualist rhetoric can't change that. "Freedom" doesn't mean you're just allowed to do whatever you want at all times regardless of how it affects other people, but a lot of Americans have misconstrued the concept of freedom to mean just that.
Freedom as in democratic freedom has a lot more to do with freedom of speech, press, and elections. It doesn't mean you're free to drive on a road that is closed.
I was very clear in stating that I believe we need laws to prevent technology from becoming dystopian, but also I don't believe technology reaching the most dystopian version of its theoretical capabilities is inevitable or even particularly common. We can blame the technology all we want but it is rules of society that protects us from its abuse, not "personal freedom and responsibility."
The irony of your messaging is that your belief in freedom and responsibility would have to be applied to corporations as well as individuals. If you're free to make any choice, so are companies. Again, Tesla is, allegedly, exercising its own freedom and responsibility to protect its asset by repossessing its car.
Self-driving, interconnected cars could be an incredible boon to public safety, as car crashes are one of the top causes of premature death. Cars that can talk to each other and basically never crash into each other would be a dream world. We can talk about how technology would turn that into a surveillance dystopia, or we can build systems, laws, and checks on power that would make that technology enhance everyone's lives without significant downside or encroachment on "freedom."
The fact that Tesla cars are connected to a central server isn't the cause of abuses, it's the present legality of their harmful business practices. A great example: the car dealer system that Tesla lobbies against was put in place to protect consumers against overbearing manufacturers. Has that worked? In some cases, yes, in some cases, no.
In our present and most definitely not-libertarian society, the government has at least curbed unchecked corporate power by enacting laws like HIPAA that protect consumer rights and enforce interoperability. We need similar legislation and enforcement for non-healthcare technology. We need our own GDPR, but better, more comprehensive, and better designed. That will be difficult to achieve given the corporate influence on politics, but I do think we'll eventually get something, because even the elites in our society need protection from companies who want to exercise their freedom.
We have different lifestyles, needs, and goals. I realize mine may be flawed but these are the opinions I have due to my personal experience. I am not trying to force anyone to share my lifestyle and I simply ask the same.
OK, I don't want a private company to be able to have any control over the starting over my car either. I didn't say we should ban these cars, I originally said that I don't think people realize how much freedom and privacy they are giving up by owning them
>What you're implying here is that city dwellers are government-dependent babies, which is very condescending to them. Choosing to drive your car on the public roads of your suburb or rural town doesn't make you any less dependent on society or the government.
I am not implying anything, I am stating my opinion that the people that choose to live in those cities have decided to trade personal freedom and privacy for the luxuries that come from living in those cities. These are tradeoffs, I chose to build a home in rural America with the goal of trading luxuries for personal freedom and privacy, as well as a reduction in crime.
And I realize why the transit systems had cuts and why they shut down due to unrest, but that is some of the freedom those who live in major cities give up. I am not far from the Twin cities metro and I was able to get in my car and drive to Minneapolis the morning after the riots started to personally look at the damage.
I do have a well and septic system, every few years it has to be pumped, you are right about that. I never said I was not part of society, nor did I say that my lifestyle is not dependent on society's infrastructure. I choose to live on the end of the spectrum to reduce my reliance on others as much as possible because I have personally seen and learned first hand what government oppression and social unrest can do to dense communities.
AFAIK under US law Tesla is well within their rights to use their technology to repossess their cars if they want to, or enforce whatever restrictions they want on the use of their vehicles, but it won't be from me. I am not advocating for tesla to be stopped by the government, I am simply asking for people to think through the consequences of their purchases. I completely agree that tesla is free to do what they want as a corporation(within the current laws), and I am free to not buy their vehicles as a citizen, you are correct about that.
You can feel free to give up your freedoms in the name of public safety, and eventually I will be forced to as well, but I will continue to resist as long as possible. I very much enjoy the act of driving to the point of it being one of my hobbies, I am in no rush for the impending future of driving being a luxury for the rich. I distinctly remember the feeling of freedom I got when I got my driver's license at 16 and bought my first car, it was actually a pretty critical point in my life and allowed me much more autonomy, freedom, and responsibility than I had ever had before.
I just really think that your desire for federal laws for privacy protection are wishful thinking and quite unlikely to happen, hell our current president has actively tried to ban encryption without backdoors on a few occasions(actually indirectly causing pgp to be developed https://www.wired.com/2012/12/joe-biden-private-email/), this seems actively antiprivacy to me.
For one, areas of unrest are already restricted by physical police and national guard barriers. For example, during the unrest in 2020, Chicago physically raised its drawbridges. Anyone who really wants to get somewhere difficult would probably choose a bicycle or legs, so you need physical police barriers in that case.
Refusing to drive you to the gun store sounds kind of silly when the government would more easily just ban gun stores (the right to bear arms doesn't include the right to buy them at a retail store). I realize you're just giving out an example but it was not a great one. Preventing you from driving somewhere is a simple as putting up a gate and closing it.
Also, driving at all is not a right. It's a licensed privilege that can be taken away if you break traffic laws or drive while intoxicated.
I think your perspective is coming from a car-focused area of the country (which is most of them). But, someone in NYC or Chicago might point out to you that they use a transit card that has the ability to track their movements through stations, and that they mainly travel by buses and trains that have government-owned surveillance cameras all over them. Despite this, it has has failed to turn into any kind of dystopian urban nightmare.
What I'm getting at is that the technology is blamed for things that are actually just public policy, laws, and law enforcement. The privacy implications for using a smartphone in the Western world are a lot different than in China, even though the technology itself is identical.
What we actually need is legislation surrounding automotive communication and centralized control and privacy. The rights that automobile owners have should be better enshrined in law rather than trusting auto manufacturers. This, I think, will eventually happen. We're still sorely lacking a general nationwide privacy law on the Internet in the US.