...outweigh the needs of the few.

Hyper-individualism and hyper-capitalism don't work in an interconnected world. Decisions of individuals, groups, corporations or countries can reverberate across the globe as technological platforms, environmental woes and faith in economic systems become ever more entwined on a global scale.

This means we need regulation. On a local level (think of zoning), on a provincial/state level, on a national level and on a global level. A common framework of morality: How do we protect consumers? What warranties can I expect when I buy something from overseas? Is product safety in order? But also: What about privacy? And in the middle of a pandemic: does this business pose a risk to the population?

As such, the role of government is to protect its citizens.

In the Netherlands, we've had a sort of constitution since the Unie van Utrecht was drafted in 1579, culminating in our modern unified Constitution as written in 1851. This constitution doesn't talk about silly shit like citizens' right to commit violence. Because make no mistake, the notion that weapon ownership is a constitutional right is just bloody silly.

Our Constitution started out as a statement of intent against the Spanish empire: It said, in a Catholic-dominated empire, that every citizen should enjoy the freedom to investigate the nature of being and faith, and draw his or her own conclusions. It was, in other words, to make sure citizens enjoy freedom of religion.

Later, this constitution to amended to a bill of rights and duties that gave the government a Duty of Care towards its citizens:
- Citizens shall not be discriminated against
- Citizens can congregate freely
- Citizens can adhere to whatever religion (or lack thereof) they please
- Citizens can speak their mind, barring stuff like slander, hate-speech and discrimination
- Citizens shall have a safe environment that includes housing
- Citizens shall be educated
- Citizens shall have access to health-care

Those are some of my rights, and some of the government's duties of care.

In the light of this, government should be for the people. Not for corporations, not for an elite, but the actual people. In the Netherlands, we never speak of our Constitution. We take for granted that the system follows those tenets.

The United States' citizens have a perverted view on their Constitution. Under the guise of "Freedom", "The Second Amendment" and the notion that "Commies are bad", social help for citizens has eroded in the last fifty years. Nobody has a debate on safe housing, illiteracy or health care anymore as soon as someone starts yelling "socialism", "abortion" or "theytook'ur'guns".

Therefore, this is a silly debate that will be met with bemusedly raised eyebrows in most of Europe. Of course the government has a basic duty to close businesses, or to break up conglomerates, or to intervene in other ways if the greater good of the citizens is at risk.

This is, we feel, why the government exists.

With that said, this question seems to be a specifically American one. Not even the libertarian streak of the UK questions this notion, over here. My view is that Americans would do well to quit viewing their government as an enemy force that will potentially oppress them, and start seeing it as a bunch of folks that will provide support for the American people, because it has a duty of care. Hand in your damn guns, and do something to eradicate poverty and untimely death within your borders. And curb your moneyed elites: They are hollowing out your entire middle class.

So whoever said "no" to this question could ask themselves what the hell freedom is worth if you're toothless, living in a carboard box, in the dead of winter, with no food and a bad case of the Covid.

Ease of use and stability.

For many years I built gaming PC's, and there was always some shit that was unstable, just a bit slower than the rest, software that needed updating for this or that. Until I got sick of it (around the release of GTA IV, which I had a hell of a time running) and bought a Wii and after a while a PS3. The latter turned into a PS4, and that will turn into a PS5. I love it. it sits below the TV, unobtrusive. I pop it on and within 2 minutes I'm gaming away. Never had any issue with the thing. The Wii and PS3 are in the attic, set up with a screen in case I want to do some retro gaming. :)

In the meantime, my PC is an HP ProDesk mini PC. Silent, unobtrusive and with a high spec for what I do with it. I do "everything else" on that thing, some light photo editing, music curation, browsing, forum memberships and shopping.

The updates that @Austerity Empowers talk about: Sure. They happen. But they are usually quite quick and unobtrusive, and I can elect to play off line if I want.

There's an amount of behavioral research that suggests that if the top is not incompetent to begin with, they automatically become so if you over-pay them. Performance drops dramatically above and below certain levels of reward, so there seems to be a goldilocks-zone for appropriate reward for any behaviour if it's competence and performance you're after.

No it isn't. Coffee drinkers feel invigorated when they get their coffee because their brain level reverts to the healthy state of what a non-coffee drinker feels like in the morning. So at the end of the day we just do it to get over the low.

Nootropics, and I had to google that, seem to be snake-oil that people sell to help you done thunk better.

Personally? I do use brain boosters in that, after my coffee, I sometimes actually still read a book. :)

In order to know the current weather, one could look out the window. Or worse: Actually walk outside and have a feel.

Granted, where I live "buienradar" is a good thing since it allows you to plan around rainfall at a given location at a given time, but this smartwatch bug seems to be a first world problem if ever I saw one.

The solar system we live in is finite. If we are serious about the survival of us as a species, we need to put some eggs in a second basket. Going to the fourth rock from the sun won't help one iota aside from potentially being mildly educational. It's still the same basket.

It seems to me Mars is inhospitable and pointlessly close to earth. As a matter of scientific inquiry I could envision some sort of base there, but given the one-way rhetoric I doubt you'll find many enthusiasts to go there.

From my perspective mankind should get its head out of its ass and investigate three things:
1) Sustainable life on Earth
2) Speed of light propulsion
3) Generational starships, potentially with a self-sustaining ecology on board.

In the absence of the 2nd, the 3rd becomes a bit of a must.

Which is why governments can step in with subsidies, minimum and maximum price levels, tariffs and other protectionist measures.

There is no such thing as a free market, by the way. Theoretically such a thing contains an infinite number of sellers, an infinite number of buyers and no regulations whatsoever. So don't come and tell me you believe in letting the market decide when, for instance, you dislike the notion of child labour or slavery: The minute you decide to impart any kind of moral or regulation on a trade, the market is not free. The minute you have a skewed market (towards monopsony or monopoly), it's not free.

So regulating things or making decisions about how a society should function and distribute it's wealth, freedom and safety is not exactly a gateway drug to balls to the wall Stalinism. I'm just putting it out there for all US citizens on this thread.

Freedom of expression trumping the right to live... What poppycock.

In most countries the freedom of expression is limited not only to avoid threats, but also to avoid slander, incitement to hate, false marketing, insults and in some nations blasphemy. With the exception of the latter, all of these are good and fair limitations. Even in the US.

In my country, it's also illegal to express yourself above a given volume from ten in the evening tillseven thirty in the morning.

There are preciously few area's in life that would benefit from absolute freedom. Certainly not as long as we are what we are, and seven billion of us to boot.

To quote economist Ha Joon Chang: A level playing field only makes sense if the players are equal to each other.

The internet, like all things, should be somewhat regulated. Like in Europe we now have the General Data Protection Regulation which is supposed to safeguard our privacy and security because it details the consent companies need to collect from citizens about storing, processing and using their data. Furthermore, breach and data loss detection and reporting are enshrined, as is the right to erasure insofar it doesn't bite other laws.

For years I was with you. I was all for net neutrality until the thought occurred to me that in a free for all both corporations like Amazon, Google and Facebook can do whatever they please, as well as governments and law enforcement agencies, insurance and financial companies and finally every Tom, Dick and Harry with the means to afford a BI solution and a data set of any kind.

Not all information is created equal, and neither are the consumers of said information. Hence, some form of regulation and even triage may be needed. It is indeed closer to a public utility these days. In the Netherlands, my government doesn't send me letters anymore: I communicate with my local government, my federal government and my tax authorities via the internet. These services should indeed prevail over more trivial traffic if and when the situation calls for it.

A lot of shopping has moved to the internet. Consumer protection boils down to regulation. Privacy concerns, data integrity and the right to erasure from public forums are all supposed to be regulated, because as a Citizen of the Netherlands I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is the ultimate guardian of my life and well being. Constitutionally, my government has that task if I, my family or my circle of friends fail to fulfill it.

There are whole swaths of research that suggest teams that are comprised of a healthy mix of males and females are actually more performant than their less diverse counterparts. Therefore, it would be in the interest of economic and societal stability to not let the nation's jewels be guarded by an incestuous gentleman's club.

Speaking of which, I still don't understand society's fascination with "economic growth". I for one would strive for a comfortable equilibrium instead. But that's just me. It seems I have a fetish for balance above all.

You should flip the order of your concerns. The tax one is the most important one.

Lower taxes for the wealthy and for corporations means the lower and middle classes are either squeezed for more money or will receive fewer benefits and shittier service, and thus have a crap life while .05% of society walks off scot free with the nation's collective resources.

This will breed poverty and discontent, which in turn might breed violence and instability, especially give the rather onerous decision to let all manner of weaponry float about in society.

My good man! I'm not sure you have bothered to ever understand Nazi ideology. Do read up on them a bit, if you get the chance.

To me it seems that state sanctioned civil violence is a jolly bad idea. It's uncivilized, it makes your country less safe (judging by the murder rate) and what's worse, this whole poppycock about owning guns (which you shouldn't) distracts from more pertinent political debates such as poverty, income and capital inequality, employment and education for all and lastly the deplorable state of health of quite a few Americans. That last bit is one of mine... The girth of many Americans is becoming quite unacceptable, you see, and they are very poorly insured.

Socialism is just a way of looking at economic re-distribution, it does not equate a violent racist regime. I for one am a socialist. This means I am constitutionally conservative (I wish to conserve Dutch constitutional values, not the shoddy American one with the guns and distrust), progressive by nature, non-violent, in favour of greater socio-economic equality and against too much free market kool-aid. No more, no less.

Being a socialist does not mean I want to invade Poland or kill homosexuals, you see. But do carry on trying to add to this rather lively and colourful debate.

True that, amazingly.

On the night of the election I actually spoke to a colleague of mine in Vegas. She appears to be a technician, republican, lesbian-in-wait-to-be-married (but can't, because it's illegal), Texan, Gun Lover and Pro-lifer.

When I asked her why she'd vote for a party that would stop her from marrying her love, she mumbled something about guns and freedom. Then when I asked her how she reconciles the notion of being a Gun Lover while proclaiming to be "pro-life" she basically told me to bugger off.

These people really don't like it when you start rubbing their cognitive dissonance too much.

The Democrats are oddly the American party that thinks state intervention in things like healthcare and social benefits are good, so one should logically expect Democrats to not mind a bit more state surveillance either.

But then I've always thought it funny that it's precisely the Republicans who tend to cry "no government is good government" while simultaneously voting for significant government interference:
- The State should stop abortion, which is a private matter
- The State should stop gay marriages, another private matter
- The State should increase their police, surveillance and armed force apparatus
- The State should willy-nilly be able to collect large amounts of data on its citizenry

None of the above is really a move towards more "freedom" and "autonomy" for the citizens, although they do call anyone opposed to these ideas a socialist. As if that would be an insult.

I truly don't logically understand American politics, the US or its citizens very well. Having just returned from an involuntary week in Las Vegas I can only say I am happy to not be living there if only because the coffee sucks and portions are jolly well uncivilized.

Well... If you say a couple of evangelical DJ's caused the genocide in Rwanda, you are casually sidestepping 200 years of colonialist politics on the African continent where western powers (In the case of Rwanda Germany and mostly Belgium) defined borders that went straight across areas regardless of culture, tribal status or inhabitants. What's worse, the propensity of the Belgian colonialists to incite the population divide by elevating one of the present tribes to a position of privilege so as to secure their own footing in said colony didn't exactly stabilize the region either.

But hey, I do doubt said evangelical DJ's helped matters much, I'll give you that.