<story><title>Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names</title><url>https://torrentfreak.com/z-library-aftermath-reveals-that-the-feds-seized-dozens-of-domain-names-221107/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>somenameforme</author><text>The founding vision of the US was one where the further away government was from the people, the less impact it would have on their lives. The Federal government was to have an extremely limited role in society, largely tasked with things such as international relations. Your day to day would primarily be affect by your state, and ideally on downward with a further delegation of responsibilities getting closer and closer to you.&lt;p&gt;This also helps curtail corruption. It is ostensibly easier to coerce&amp;#x2F;bribe&amp;#x2F;etc a state than a nation, but you have to do this for every single state and then try to keep them all under your thumb. A federal government may ostensibly be harder to corrupt, but once corrupted they can affect your whims on a national level and be relatively easier to maintain control of.&lt;p&gt;This decentralization of power seems to be the easiest way to have a functioning political system. It&amp;#x27;s always the same decision. Centralization paired with selflessness, benevolence, and competence will trend towards utopia. Centralization paired with selfishness, greed, or incompetence will trend towards dystopia. Decentralization will always just trend towards mediocrity as a mish mash of the averages of society.</text></item><item><author>vegetablepotpie</author><text>That doesn’t happen because most people can’t or won’t participate in government. This is because many government meetings are held during the day, during working hours, usually in places far from the individuals affected.&lt;p&gt;The people who do show up are independently wealthy, retirees, and people being paid to represent an organization. Representitive government doesn’t, and cannot represent the people.</text></item><item><author>boxed</author><text>What is needed is a strong government for the people, by the people. Without that, it really doesn&amp;#x27;t matter what tech you can cobble together.</text></item><item><author>psychphysic</author><text>It would have been a godsend when I was still academic. This and sci-hub.&lt;p&gt;The way they eviscerated the service makes clear that in general we need more robust web services. Tor is not ideal for this, onions are excellent and fill their niche really well.&lt;p&gt;But we need something simpler here.</text></item><item><author>tyingq</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve personally used sites like this as a sort of protest to what universities and authors did to the textbook market.  You used to be able to buy used physical textbooks for classes at reasonable prices.  They took advantage of the shift to digital by forcing arbitrary changes in edition numbers, solely to sell more books, or by requiring obscure, low-volume books, often written by the professor leading the class.  With prices often exceeding $100.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>whoknew1122</author><text>The founders were also deathly afraid of a standing army. This is why a defense authorization bill is passed every two years. People might debate how much money should be put toward defense spending, but few people would argue that we should dissolve the military and call up citizens only when conflict happens.&lt;p&gt;They also explicitly dismissed the idea of one person, one vote.&lt;p&gt;And this all ignores the fact that there wasn&amp;#x27;t a singular, cohesive founding vision. Alexander Hamilton, for example, argued for a strong federal government.&lt;p&gt;With all that said, we shouldn&amp;#x27;t be hamstrung by what a deeply flawed group of people decided in the late 1700s.</text></comment>
<story><title>Z-Library Aftermath Reveals the Feds Seized Dozens of Domain Names</title><url>https://torrentfreak.com/z-library-aftermath-reveals-that-the-feds-seized-dozens-of-domain-names-221107/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>somenameforme</author><text>The founding vision of the US was one where the further away government was from the people, the less impact it would have on their lives. The Federal government was to have an extremely limited role in society, largely tasked with things such as international relations. Your day to day would primarily be affect by your state, and ideally on downward with a further delegation of responsibilities getting closer and closer to you.&lt;p&gt;This also helps curtail corruption. It is ostensibly easier to coerce&amp;#x2F;bribe&amp;#x2F;etc a state than a nation, but you have to do this for every single state and then try to keep them all under your thumb. A federal government may ostensibly be harder to corrupt, but once corrupted they can affect your whims on a national level and be relatively easier to maintain control of.&lt;p&gt;This decentralization of power seems to be the easiest way to have a functioning political system. It&amp;#x27;s always the same decision. Centralization paired with selflessness, benevolence, and competence will trend towards utopia. Centralization paired with selfishness, greed, or incompetence will trend towards dystopia. Decentralization will always just trend towards mediocrity as a mish mash of the averages of society.</text></item><item><author>vegetablepotpie</author><text>That doesn’t happen because most people can’t or won’t participate in government. This is because many government meetings are held during the day, during working hours, usually in places far from the individuals affected.&lt;p&gt;The people who do show up are independently wealthy, retirees, and people being paid to represent an organization. Representitive government doesn’t, and cannot represent the people.</text></item><item><author>boxed</author><text>What is needed is a strong government for the people, by the people. Without that, it really doesn&amp;#x27;t matter what tech you can cobble together.</text></item><item><author>psychphysic</author><text>It would have been a godsend when I was still academic. This and sci-hub.&lt;p&gt;The way they eviscerated the service makes clear that in general we need more robust web services. Tor is not ideal for this, onions are excellent and fill their niche really well.&lt;p&gt;But we need something simpler here.</text></item><item><author>tyingq</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve personally used sites like this as a sort of protest to what universities and authors did to the textbook market.  You used to be able to buy used physical textbooks for classes at reasonable prices.  They took advantage of the shift to digital by forcing arbitrary changes in edition numbers, solely to sell more books, or by requiring obscure, low-volume books, often written by the professor leading the class.  With prices often exceeding $100.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>starkd</author><text>If given a choice, I think I would opt for the &amp;quot;decentralization with a mishmash of the averages of society&amp;quot; over a dystopia.  The &amp;quot;centralization with selflessness, benevolence, and competence&amp;quot; path toward utopia seems like wishful thinking to me.  You can never legislate morality, and without a non-secular religion as a guide,  a default moral people is not a reasonable expectation.</text></comment>