social

Seeing lots of people on Twitter dunk on this new law in Australia preventing children under 16 from using social media. 

What do you think?

cypherpunk wannabe, engineer working on @frames /open-frames /opencast
https://stephancill.co.za create stories at https://stories.steer.fun

One nuance often missed when these seemingly authoritarian things out of Australia pop up Twitter (cigarette taxes & plain packaging, gun control, lockdowns and vaccination policy etc) is that we have historically had a very different relationship with our government than the US. 

The social contract is different. We give up more freedoms and expect more from our government in return. Contrast compulsory voting and universal healthcare with the US.
We have a higher expectation of responsibility from both government and citizens.

We might share a language and Crocodile Dundee might have promoted an image of us as rough and rugged, country living individualists, but 90% of us live in cities and we’re really been quite social democratic in the same  way as western Europe for much of our history.

Horticulturalist. Environmental hand wringer. Open source enthusiast.

I think you misunderstand. I’m talking about historical context. I agree that since the early 90s this social contract has become increasingly fractured for younger people. Housing is completely unaffordable and many of the things that the government did to hold up it’s end of the bargain have disappeared or declined. 

The commonwealth employment service actually used to help you find a job. Private health insurance was an unnecessary luxury. A heavily unionised workforce and a small population drove some of highest incomes in the world.

For many older people who still remember this time, and in many ways still reap the benefits (largely through the property market) this bargain is still good one and they’re happy to acquiesce. 

But if you’re young it’s easy to feel like you’re giving up freedoms for nothing, because the government isn’t holding up their end of the bargain anymore.

No it's not. Our government is responsible for the dismal state of education, the progressive enshittification of public healthcare, uncontrolled visa scam immigration, some of the worst data leaks in history every 6 months and the worst salary to property price ratio IN THE WORLD.

The only thing keeping this together is the free money we get from exporting rocks to China. Remember when substantial amounts of parliament were revealed to be in the pocket of the CCP by the way?

We are simply too comfortable and incompetent to care.