You're thinking about your own situation - that's normal, but not enough: there are still loads of folks who don't have a computer but are expected to interface with their governments (municipal, county, state) using a computer, and have had to pay disproportionately more being in the least affluent and/or most vulnerable demographic.
It's not about losing access to laptops, it's about guaranteeing the right to even have access to the same tools that folks like us think everyone already has access to.
That seems like something different though. My understanding is that this is not about the government handing out free laptops, the same way the second amendment is not about the government handing out free guns. Rather, this is saying people have the right to own general purpose computers.
As far as government expecting you to interface with them using a computer, I loathe this trend. And of course it's infinitely worse if they require a specific proprietary platform like iOS or Android. But I don't think this is about that.
I'm totally with you as far as requiring a proprietary platform, but at some point we do just have to cut off obsolete methods of communication. We can't just keep supporting them forever.
Methods of communication like "face to face" or "mail" are not obsolete. Yes you can support them forever if that's literally your job as the government. And it should be.
Mail is completely obsolete and we shouldn't spend money to support it. I can't think of anything stupider than writing a message down on paper and physically transporting it to its destination. Not one cent of my taxes should be spent on maintaining it as a standard means of communication.
Mail is the opposite of obsolete. Ever bought anything and had it shipped to you? You probably used mail. A paper letter is just a special case of mail.
My taxes shouldn't be spent on putting up walls around the government and juicy contracts with technocrats excluding people from being able to sort things out with government. If I must first pay some technocrat to buy their computing terminal to contact government then government failed me.
Yes, and it happens to be the special case we are talking about here since the entire thing is about communication with the government. If you refuse to use email you choose to segregate yourself and it should be your own problem to deal with that, not anyone else's.
if you are so crazy about not paying more tax than needed think that having to buy a device is also a tax.
also next you will say there's too much email spam so we can't waste taxpayer money making them go through it, so we can only contact them using the approved app on approved hardware with remote atteststion to ensure you didn't root it. if you refuse, it's your problem segregating yourself.
of course later that app will require you to first talk to an LLM. only if LLM decides your problem is important enough you can really contact the government. why waste taxpayer money on supporting various legacy means of talking to taxpayers if it can be spent on billion dollar contracts with tech companies instead
Well you are the one who insists the government should support any means of communication anyone wants to use. So really you are the one advocating for LLMs and stupid device attestation crap. I just don't have patience for people who can't use email.
Not support any means, but means most open to people. People are not born with a computer and a phone, they are born with two legs, two hands and a mouth. So if they want to walk to the office or send a letter by post they should be able to.
a government that says contact us only using whatever current tech we think is fashionable today... I don't care, fax, email, tiktok, chatgpt, neuralink... for me is a government that is trying to avoid talking to its people (and to enrich tech lobbiers)
It's not about losing access to laptops, it's about guaranteeing the right to even have access to the same tools that folks like us think everyone already has access to.