I grew up in a third-world country, and I've noticed a palpable shift in the moods of my educated, middle-class friends and family back home.
People in many third-world countries have been fed the line that democracy is the correct form of government.
This isn't accidental: the soft power of Hollywood and the myth of American exceptionalism have been powerful incentives to have faith in the ability of democratic institutions to improve lives: it's an odd form of cargo-cultism, and if you are a believer in freedom and democracy, a "helpful delusion". The educated elites in third world democracies have recoiled from the notion of authoritarianism, and from the idea of having every aspect of their lives surveilled for safety.
Political events in the US, the rise of social media, and the risks of virality unexpectedly unleashing mob chaos have made them a lot more wary. Openness and the exchange of ideas exposes the worst of human nature: the trolls whose ideas are magnified by algorithms seeking to capture attention. The propagandists and bots with their massive reach are noticed by educated people, who can see how powerless or unwilling social networks and governments are to stop them. It doesn't matter whether the propagandists succeed or not-their mere unfettered existence is enough to disturb people.
With the weakening of democratic norms, other options are suddenly back on the table. As people have theoretically become freer, they seem to seek more security. Blanketing a city with CCTV seems to be a pragmatic trade-off for personal safety. The censorship of China seems to be attractive because of the endless hateful noise of social media, the orderliness of having criminals removed from society permanently via the death penalty suddenly seems attractive. The lesser-educated never really cared for abstract notions of liberty anyway. In short, the authoritarian surveillance state is an increasingly attractive proposition to large swathes of humanity.
I know many from various Middle Eastern countries who share a similar viewpoint.
As an Arab myself, I see it as nothing more than a defeatist attitude that is typically held by those who have enough money and connections (typically upper class).
Safety and democracy can coexist and are not mutually exclusive as you claim. The safest countries in the world are democracies last I checked.
Democracy is not only about “abstract notions of liberty”, but also (and more importantly) about justice and equality for all. When these “lesser-educated” people are held in prison without trial for watching the wrong Youtube video or practicing the wrong religion, they also realize this fact.
While I agree with your overall point, I am not sure I would attribute defeatism to the rest of the world so much as the West. It is the West that is set to remove any form of commonality and turn to a state of legalized corruption and nepotism. The Chinese, Russians and Arabs are just copying the West. They are the ones getting the high-rises, roads and subways. And people are actually seeing progress.
If the West ever returns to the idea of democratic society where everyone should have access to education, housing and good working conditions. Where we run our countries, our infrastructure and invest in scientific progress together. And where we believe that running businesses in line with the values of society is better. Then they would want democracy as well.
> The Chinese, Russians and Arabs are just copying the West.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that those countries are categorically different from democracies.
Those countries do not have the interlocking systems of laws, elections, values, that constitute democracy, things like 1) rule of law 2) private property rights 3) protections for minorities 4) independent judiciaries 5) systematic transitions of power through electoral systems with competing parties 6) independent constitutions that require 2/3rds or more majorities to amend, 7) separation of church and state (this includes cult of personalities), I could go on.
Superficially, it seems fair to compare democratic western countries to China, Russia, and Arab monarchies/dictatorships. But you easily slide into a category error. The very fact that they are not democracies means the people in those countries lack concrete tangible mechanisms and systems to ensure their freedom, independence, and safety, in a productive society that also protects minorities. The people are just fundamentally less free than they would be if they were in a democracy.
Your criticisms of western democracies are well founded. The biggest problem in modern democracies is simple greed and regulatory capture (and intensification of capital in a low % of the population but that's connected to greed and regulatory capture). But that's not an argument to adopt a Chinese, Russian, or Arab, system if there is one beyond greed and authoritarian control. That's an argument to fix our democracies (ironically, the idea of fixing a government and society in this way is unique to happening within a democracy, otherwise what are you fighting for? more oppression?).
The grass is always greener when you assume you'll be in the powerful, rich, or successful, portion of society. But you can't assume that. So we have democracy.
I don't disagree with democracy. It is just that the system isn't its idea, but what it delivers. Most people never looked up to the US because it was the most democratic, because it wasn't. But because it delivered relative to other systems. The US system gave some of its people prosperity as in a decent sized house, the independence of a car to use the extensive highway network, an education and a career. Essentially a future.
Today it doesn't deliver. People go to the US because the status and the money, despite the visa process, the education system, the housing market and the infrastructure. Soon enough they will catch up to the status and the money, and the West will have little to offer.
It is easy the point the finger to everyone else, but it is the West that aren't fighting for it. We want the global markets, the large companies and the Chinese investments. You can't have both. You can't on the one hand have an idea of how things should be, and on the other sell it to highest bidder.
There are probably hundreds of articles about China "stealing" industries from the West. But overall they are just buying them to the delight of the owners, either with money or effort. And then the West somehow thinks that the Chinese should be the ones considering them successful.
I personally wouldn't jump at the chance to live in the US, but I still would. I absolutely would not ever live in a country that is not a democracy. That is the distinction I think you are kind of eliding. A puttering democracy is still better than a thriving authoritarian country.
In general, I agree with you. I would not use the current US as a stirling example, historically, though the US system has been largely successful. We probably disagree on the level of success though.
I can't speak from the US perspective, but in Canada many people come and they like it here. Not just because of status or money. Because people don't just need or want status or money. They like it here because here we actually work to balance security and opportunity. Not everyone is happy. But they're not unhappy and without rights, they're just unhappy. Liberal democracies have been trying to create [Rawlsian justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_Two_Pr...) and some have been more successful than others.
I think the idea that economic success and liberal democratic values coincide has been too quickly conflated. I share your view of West - China trade. The West thought that liberalizing economic markets would naturally cause liberalized societies and democracies. Allowing China to enter the WTO without serious stipulations and controls to ensure democratic transition was a mistake. And now they flaunt their economic "success" as the sign of a successful counter to democracy. Western industries and governments that cozy up to China risk serious moral hazard and we are already seeing the effects of that.
We missed our chance to seriously allow a liberal China to take shape when it would have been best to.
But China still relies on the west for trade. And that is our leverage. Going alone against China is suicide. As a block of democracies, however, we could stand up to them quite easily. We just can't be greedy. That's a hard sell in 2019 apparently.
> In general, I agree with you. I would not use the current US as a stirling example, historically, though the US system has been largely successful. We probably disagree on the level of success though.
That is sort of the point. People see the US as an example of democracy because of its prosperity, not because of its democracy. If you want democracy you probably go to Finland instead.
Everything is worse in these authoritarian countries not just the freedom. That is another thing people generally don't understand. There is nothing to catch up to. We just have to make sure to not get worse ourselves. And to actually use the advantages we had. That is why I am saying that it is the West that is defeatist. It is we that are changing our ways, to a large extent from our post war ideals.
If you want the feature of democracy you have actually be democratic. Which many areas of our societies increasingly aren't. It is nice to be able to say whatever you want, but if no one is listening there is no effect. The point is that something should happen, otherwise we are just cargo culting ourselves and being jesters for those in power.
The democracy thing is how the power centers like to represent it. Democracies without inalienable rights (specifically to property ownership, speech and self defense) are inherently unstable.
I like the idea that it isn't all about conflating economics success with democratic values. There are plenty of people who just want to go live in a hut in the woods alone, or in an ashram and practice yoga, or start a oddball political thinktank. The democratic values and freedom let them do that. People may think you're weird, but they'll generally let you do it. Other places, you have to be careful about which political thinktank you start, or which yoga teacher you subscribe to...
This results in people _experimenting_ with things, and sometimes they work sometimes they don't. But there is a huge variety of experience and people just trying things out, or doing their own thing-- which increases the culture vibrancy and tapestry of diversity.
> Soon enough they will catch up to the status and the money, and the West will have little to offer.
You'd think that, but the middle income trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap happens for a reason, and widespread liberal or even democratic values might be required in order to escape it. The thing is that the wealthiest countries in the world, aside from special cases like big natural-resource endowments, have always featured broadly-liberal values and a reasonably-diffuse power base. Starting at least from the Italian and German renaissance, The Netherlands in the early-modern period, etc. And this dynamic has only become more important in a modern service economy where growth is powered by continued entrepreneuship and innovation - it would be huge news if this became suddenly untrue.
I don't know. Seems like we are the ones in the trap. We make more money, but we generally don't get more for it. 20 years China couldn't produce cars, at least not as far I know. Now they bought Volvo. They bought KUKA robots. High speed trains. And can import almost anything if they want to.
Chances are if you look back at those societies it wasn't the liberalism. They were probably horrible by modern standards. It might just have been the trade of information and resources. Today you can do probably do that without the values. Or at least if the West doesn't do it that way, who is the competition?
If everyone in the US is worried about their mortgage, who is going to be more creative than Google to the point where Google can't just buy them? The same probably goes for society. If the West doesn't do democracy very well, who are the Chinese losing to?
Maybe you are right, but I still would trust the future to some idea. That is when you lose. When you think "well this can't happen" and then it does. Because the quote about astrophysics also goes for society, that "the universe has no obligation to make sense to you". Chances are it doesn't have to be certain way at all. Most of history certainly isn't fair.
re: the universe has no obligation. This is a central statement in the book of Job. The idea of prosperity theology is rebuked in Job: that better people are wealthy and therefore more godlike and vice versa. God and Satan make a bet, Satan says Job is only loyal to God because of his wealth. When that wealth is taken away as part of the bet, Job gets mad, and demands an answer about all this unfairness from God, who then (in effect) says: I have no obligation to make sense to you, I created everything, and you created nothing.
Of course, that's what you'd expect a deity to say, but American Evangelicalism is chock full of prosperity theology adherents: good people are rich people, rich people are good people, they are closer to god, and rich people closer to god deserve more and better things: Privilege. Bloodlines. Family name. Everything should be a product so that the wealthy can buy anything and as much of it as they want. Everyone else gets less or inferior versions, including public education, health care, environment, and justice. It's foundational in all ideologies, except liberal democracies - which at least in political science we don't actually say the U.S. started out as one. Rather it was designed to be a polyarchy in contrast to a monoarchy, using representative democracy with highly restricted access (you had to be a "better" person to participate, i.e. white, male, landowner) but it is a potential liberal democracy and has tracked that way over time, but does often resist. It is tedious. But that is the system. Churchill said it was the worst form of government except for all the others.
Most of history is not fair, indeed it was also not prosperous. It saw centuries of anemic economic growth, and it was very violent. Genetics show we aren't all that different, we're mainly products of environment, the bloodlines nonsense is just that nonsense. We are best off educating as many as possible, and mostly letting people make their own decisions. In aggregate, I trust most people most of the time make good choices slightly more than 50% of the time. If it's not true, and instead the state of man's nature is so hideously flawed that we need lords, then I saw we are doomed. We never get off the planet. We will destroy it, and ourselves with it.
All rapid technological change brings risk to economic and political stability. I think it's useful to see anti-tech more as a desire to spend time being deliberate and integrate it, rather than as curmudgeon.
I think it is less important that people have 100% trust all the time in their government, than trusting it's possible to change it when it is failing.
When any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.http://www.civiced.org/resources/curriculum/mason
I have ever only heard the quote from Neil deGrasse Tyson. I guess that is his sense of humor. I do think it makes sense. Things rarely are as you want them to be.
I am not saying that things shouldn't be fair. I am saying the opposite. Things should be fair and you should make it so. That is sort of my argument here, that you can't expect things to be fair. If you design your system around hierarchies it doesn't necessarily matter if it is capitalist or socialist. Democracy isn't going to win that. China is amazing at being unfair.
Things don't stop at the border. If all your clothes are all made under undemocratic conditions or your real estate is bought by oligarchs, how democratic are you? In a non-scares world what defines you is what you don't do. China also produces things under even worse condition other Asian countries.
My thesis is that democracy doesn't fall with China, it falls with the West. Because we are the ones not finding our way. I mean, to take a capitalist approach we want China to not be able to handle technology. That is the somewhat point, that in democracy you can do more sophisticate things and still live to see it. Now instead we find ourselves at disadvantage because we don't now how to handle things.
People DID look up to it because it WAS democratic, and fair, and awesome. JUst because you say something in a comment section does not make your alt-reality true.
I'm not sure where this current trend of pretending that democracy isn't worth it came from, but lets hope it passes by fairly soon, as its boring and tiresome.
Not ot mention the hypocrisy.. You cant type/write what you just did, where you just did, and then dump on Democracy. Try doing it in a place where there is no Democracy. (And of course you could always move to a country with no democracy, if you like/prefer that alternative system.)
> people in those countries lack concrete tangible mechanisms and systems to ensure their freedom, independence, and safety, in a productive society that also protects minorities
China does have these mechanisms. They may not be as effective as the ones in democracy, but they do exist. For example, their affirmative action policies are among the strongest in the world.
Also, China faces growing pains that the US already dealt with long ago. Just like how Americans viewed native Americans as fundamentally incompatible with contemporary civilization, China views the Uighurs and other minorities the same way. The American solution was war and driving natives on to ever smaller patches of land. The Chinese solution is forced assimilation. While I'd like to think that the US could deal with this problem a lot better today, our pattern of military intervention leaves me skeptical.
> If the West ever returns to the idea of democratic society where everyone should have access to education, housing and good working conditions. Where we run our countries, our infrastructure and invest in scientific progress together. And where we believe that running businesses in line with the values of society is better. Then they would want democracy as well.
In that matter, don't you think it's the financial status that pushes all the ideas back?
There is a fundamental tradeoff between resources spent on individuals vs total resources.
> There is a fundamental tradeoff between resources spent on individuals vs total resources.
Indeed. The world as a whole is heading towards a situation where a larger and larger fraction of resources is under the control of a shrinking number of extremely rich people.
It's important to note that this is the narrative, but what's really happening is that a larger and larger fraction of resources is under the control of a shrinking number of extremely rich corporations.
The corporations largely have diffuse ownership (they're owned by a hundred million people's 401(k)), and the top level executives are generally "rich" but e.g. Tim Cook has less than 1% as much money as Apple Inc.
And who controls the corporations? Shareholder activism is really limited; to a great extent execs can pay themselves what they want, hire who they want, and donate to the politicians they want.
But that's a completely different dynamic. It's like saying "who controls the government" because democratic control is really limited in a two party system where both parties have similar (or equally problematic) policies on many issues, unelected administrative agencies have wide latitude to set policy (including ones that profit them personally through the revolving door), government employees and government employee unions are a large voting and lobbying block despite the obvious conflict of interest against other citizens, etc.
The problem isn't that Bill Gates has too much money, it's that we have institutions with too much power and not enough accountability, both government and corporate. And then they use that power to conspire together against ordinary people.
What we need is to shrink the size of all entities to be less monolithic and more local and manageable.
> what's really happening is that a larger and larger fraction of resources is under the control of a shrinking number of extremely rich corporations.
Corporations are a legal fiction by which power is granted to people, so, no, that's not what is “really happening”. Corporations obscure the real distribution of power.
The reality is a ever narrower class of ever more wealthy (relatively as well as absolutely) people directs society.
> The corporations largely have diffuse ownership
Not so diffuse; the set of major capitalists is very small compared to the whole population, and the share of stock (and overall wealth) they control is quite large.
> Corporations are a legal fiction by which power is granted to people, so, no, that's not what is “really happening”. Corporations obscure the real distribution of power.
The point is that corporations distort the real distribution of power. Apple's money nominally belongs to its shareholders, but in practice it's under the control of their executives, and they have many perverse incentives derived out of everything from personal enrichment at the expense of the shareholders to tax avoidance to empire building.
Moreover, even under the set of incentives they're "supposed" to have, it means that a significant chunk of the economy is set toward advancing the interests of the fictional entity Apple Inc. even if its interests are not aligned with any individual person.
> Not so diffuse; the set of major capitalists is very small compared to the whole population, and the share of stock (and overall wealth) they control is quite large.
It's diffuse even then. Jeff Bezos is the richest man, has more than a hundred billion dollars, most of that money is in his own company, and yet even then he doesn't have majority ownership of even that company.
An "ordinary" billionaire, i.e. someone with a billion dollars, could invest 100% of their money into Apple and still barely own 0.1% of it.
Moreover, nearly all of the wealth of the rich is invested in corporations. Those investments yield returns, but the corporations are controlled far more by their executives than the nominal owners. Most importantly, that wouldn't change even if there were less "wealth inequality" unless the corporations were also made smaller -- it would in fact get worse, because the ownership would be even more diffuse, leaving the executives with even less accountability.
> The point is that corporations distort the real distribution of power
That's not the claim that was made, which was the corporations are the real holders of power, which was offered as an explicit denial of the claim that a narrow set of wealthy individuals hold power. That corporations are a vehicle by which the exact distribution of power among individuals may vary from what you'd think by looking at net worth alone does not change the fact that power is really held by a narrow set of wealthy individuals. (In fact, it concentrates power even more narrowly in the most wealthy by suppressing the effective power of the diffuse minority of wealth held by broad masses in a way somewhat similar to how FPTP electoral systems dilute the political power of diffuse minorities of votes.)
> Apple's money nominally belongs to its shareholders
No, it nominally belongs to Apple. Shareholders do not, either nominally or practically, own the assets of the corporation, they own a claim to a share of the liquidated net assets after satifying liabilities in the event of corporate dissolution, along with certain rights defined in law and corporate governance documents with regard to governance of the corporation while it is a going concern.
In practice, this increases the effective relative power of major (even if not majority individually) shareholders and reduces the power of small minority shareholders beyond what share of ownership alone would suggest.
> That's not the claim that was made, which was the corporations are the real holders of power, which was offered as an explicit denial of the claim that a narrow set of wealthy individuals hold power.
That is a refutation of that claim, because the distortion takes the control away from any individual and constrains it within the path defined by "law and corporate governance documents with regard to governance of the corporation while it is a going concern."
Bezos can make himself CEO despite not holding a majority position, but if he gets cancer he can't decide to liquidate all of the company's assets (not just his personal shares) and then use it all to look for a cure. Because he's still not in control of it, the corporation is, which is different.
He also can't decide to purposely suffer major losses in order use the company's resources to solve significant social problems like climate change, even if he wanted to, without the consent of the other shareholders.
> In fact, it concentrates power even more narrowly in the most wealthy by suppressing the effective power of the diffuse minority of wealth held by broad masses in a way somewhat similar to how FPTP electoral systems dilute the political power of diffuse minorities of votes.
Yes, absolutely, but the thing causing that to happen is the incredibly large size of corporations, not the wealth of particular individuals. If Amazon was 10% its current size and correspondingly Bezos owned all of it, he would be in control of fewer resources than he is now despite having the exact same amount of personal wealth.
And then he could decide to use the company's resources to cure cancer or fight climate change, because he would be the sole owner, so there would be even less power bound up in corporate restrictions.
> No, it nominally belongs to Apple.
You can't have it both ways. Either the corporation is a legal fiction and the real power lies with some natural persons, who for a corporation are nominally ultimately the shareholders, or the corporation is a thing unto itself with its own rules and goals and is the owner of the assets, in which case the distinction between the corporation and the individuals is quite relevant precisely because it affects how the resources are used.
> If the West ever returns to the idea of democratic society where everyone should have access to education, housing and good working conditions.
This seems to have been caused by democracy and lack of adequate checks on it. Our political system has gotten too good at pitting people against themselves.
For example, housing. It costs too much and people can't afford it. There are multiple policies we could adopt to address it.
One is to make housing prices go even higher. It's not such a problem to pay $500K for a house that should cost $200K if it can be sold for $1M by the time you retire. People like the idea of this because it allows them to make money "for free", especially the people who have already overpaid for a house. So it remains a popular policy even though it's blatantly an unsustainable ponzi scheme.
Another is to have the government subsidize housing or otherwise adopt policies like rent control or designated affordable housing. But the common factor in all of these policies is to have the effect of raising overall rents, and on top of that the ones that cost money then have to be paid for from taxes that could otherwise have gone to something actually useful.
So then the middle class gets presented with a false dichotomy which is really squeezing them from both sides. Then the ones who think they're going to be rich choose policies that purposely increase housing prices so they can make money even though they're just inflating a bubble that may pop before they can get out. The others support policies they think will make housing more affordable, not realizing that they won't qualify for the programs so they're really the ones paying the higher rents and taxes to support them.
Then the half of the middle class that votes with the rich allows them to get their policies, and the other half that votes with the indigent allows them to get their policies as well, even though both policies hurt the middle class.
The traditional solution to this was to place limits on government power so that they're not even allowed to enact the policies that bring about this kind of myopic kleptocracy, but that seems to have fallen out of favor, presumably because enacting it requires being in power and if you're already in power then it's more profitable not to limit your own power as a kleptocrat. Or even more problematically, to expand it every time you have enough of a majority to do something like passing the Seventeenth Amendment, threatening to pack the Supreme Court if they won't uphold your unreasonably broad interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause, or removing state-level restrictions on what kind of zoning/housing laws individual cities can pass.
Democracy as a shallow concept is mainly good at handling despots. The 0.1% can't get much power even if their influence is relatively large because the other 99.9% is against their one sided interests. But if you manage to convince 10% of something they could potentially get 51% of the influence, especially locally, at which point you have a big problem. Now 10% of the people can decide what to do against the interests of 90% of the people. A two party system makes this even worse in the US.
That said, it can be solved within democracy. It isn't the first nor the last challenge facing society, especially a changing one. I think we need to realize that we are in a second industrial revolution, with information this time.
>It is the West that is set to remove any form of commonality and turn to a state of legalized corruption and nepotism.
This is silly, the west has always had legalized corruption and nepotism. John f Kennedy employed his brother as secretary of state, and raped his 19 year old intern. Things are getting better, not worse.
But as I said, if the lesser corruption doesn't deliver then it doesn't matter. The West can keep pretending that increasingly not delivering cost effective housing, education, health care and other things of importance in a knowledge economy is just repeated "flaws" and not a result of the current system.
Maybe is better to pay consultant instead of corrupt politicians, even if the consultants then tend to award the politicians after the fact. The problem is that the corrupt politicians in some of these other countries are now delivering results.
Shenzhen has opened a new subway station every month on average for the last 15 years. And there are certainly cities in the West that need more subway stations. Maybe cities in the West could even produce subways better than the Chinese. With less corruption and at lower cost relative to income. But as long as that isn't happening, the ability to do so doesn't matter much. So at least to the extent that the West can't produce these things it is still a problem.
"the West ever returns to the idea of democratic society where everyone should have access to education, housing and good working conditions"
That sounds more like a value system rather than a philosophy of governance. An authoritarian or a libertarian could make a case that their way will deliver those things.
I don't think the would, or at least hopefully could. De facto egalitarianism is to a large extent a democratic ideal. An authoritarian or a libertarian don't in general care about equality, but that the inequality is fair. They would say as long as the system or the conditions are fair the outcomes are also fair.
They are related, but still different concepts and one doesn't imply the other.
An obvious example is the "three wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner" problem. Democratic, not egalitarian.
Both democracy and egalitarianism have many forms and interpretations and open up unresolved philosophical problems. Bundling them together just causes more confusion.
> An authoritarian or a libertarian don't in general care about equality, but that the inequality is fair. They would say as long as the system or the conditions are fair the outcomes are also fair.
Can you be more specific about what you think the difference between fairness and equality is? For example, if one person is smart enough to become a doctor and another isn't, but then doctors get paid more than housekeepers, is that the difference? The system is fair (anyone smart enough and willing to can become a doctor) but not equal (some people aren't smart enough and doctors get paid more).
But using that as the difference is more of a communist ("to each according to his needs") ideal than a democratic one.
And authoritarians generally don't even care if the system is fair -- if it's unjustly enriching their own people then it's authoritarianism working as intended.
From a democratic perspective the doctor can in theory earn much more as long as that doesn't grant them more influence or rights. Someone having a sports car isn't in isolation a democratic problem. Access to education, communities and security is.
I guess there in theory there could be libertarians that have very high criteria for what an informed choice would be. To a point where it would be democratic. But that is probably closer to social liberalism.
One can of course question whether most authoritarians care much about their own ideology. But as an ideology they do care that the system is fair, just not society overall. People do believe that it is fair to have a "strong leader". They might not care much if the leader is enriching themselves as they aren't equals. They would care if the leader loses face and don't seem as "strong" as thought. Because then their position would be unwarranted.
> From a democratic perspective the doctor can in theory earn much more as long as that doesn't grant them more influence or rights. Someone having a sports car isn't in isolation a democratic problem. Access to education, communities and security is.
I think this is a misunderstanding of why people want money. Because none of that stuff is boolean. You don't have education or not. Harvard and community college are both "education" but they're not the same.
Even when people buy a sports car, it's not because they derive $60,000 worth of benefit from fast acceleration, it's primarily a method of status signaling. Which in turn creates social opportunities in everything from business networking to romance.
You can create a minimum floor for everyone (NB: a UBI is an outstanding way to do this across all domains), but "money buys stuff" applies to pretty much anything, including incremental amounts of education, community and security.
> One can of course question whether most authoritarians care much about their own ideology. But as an ideology they do care that the system is fair, just not society overall. People do believe that it is fair to have a "strong leader".
This is fundamentally impossible. There is conflict in politics not only because of misunderstandings but also because different people have different interests. The "strong leader" will have to make choices that benefit some people over others. If all you're doing is redefining fairness to mean whatever the leader decides it is then you're not creating a fair society, you're just creating a society and defining fairness as whatever subsequently happens.
In some sense that is also what we do with the output of the democratic process, but that only has a claim to fairness as a result of the fairness in the inputs (one person one vote). With authoritarianism the selection process can make no such claim, not least because the existing "strong leader" would by definition have enough de facto control to stay in power indefinitely and then anoint a successor at the end.
The thing that makes authoritarianism superficially attractive in the Middle East is the absolute lack of anything even loosely resembling civil-society institutions of the sorts that are ubiquitous in Western societies. Why allow basic freedoms when the people aren't going to use them for the good of society? It's a vicious cycle and a very thorny issue to address.
Ironically enough, the closest thing these folks get to actual civil society, is their religious institutions - the mosques, the madrassas and so forth. This also makes Islamic fundamentalism a lot more seductive to them than it might otherwise be, because in many ways they experience religion as the best working, least corrupt, etc. part of their society, and they naturally seek something that can replicate that relative openness and lack of corruption across the board.
You are looking at this the wrong way: no civil society exists because there are no freedoms. The correct question to ask is: why participate in civil society if the president can just shut it all down after a bad breakfast?
Counterexample time! Lebanon and Tunisia. I’m from Tunisia, so I can talk about that a bit more if you like, but a strong civil society has rapidly formed since the 2011 revolution. Granted, we have had a relatively active civil society pre-2011, but it has flourished immensely post-2011.
I think you’re also a bit off with your point on why Islamic fundamentalism becomes attractive. Yes, in many Muslim countries, mosques become the only refuge for discourse, but Islamic fundamentalism typically comes to the forefront only when these freedoms are clamped down on. People who used to seek refuge from autocracy in the mosque now find that all doors have been shut in their faces, so they naturally look for alternatives. Unfortunately, some end up veering towards extremism...
> ... but Islamic fundamentalism typically comes to the forefront only when these freedoms are clamped down on.
That probably describes Tunisia and Lebanon - I find it very unlikely that it's an accurate description of the average Middle-Eastern country, even of Egypt. Never mind elections, even freedoms can be almost irrelevant when, by and large, people have never even come close to knowing a free society and what the basic values of one look like. A truly free people doesn't elect the frickin' Muslim Brotherhood to run their country!
Exactly. This was the tragedy of post-"Arab Spring" Egypt: the country had been run as a military dictatorship under a permanent "state of emergency". In 2011 it was overthrown by what we might glibly call Twitter liberals, through the takeover of Tahrir Square and struggles with the police.
Reasonably free and fair elections were held for the first time. And who did the people elect? The Muslim Brotherhood, an international illiberal Islamist group in favour of mandatory veils.
So there had to be another military coup, the establishment of a constitution banning religious parties, and another go at elections.
Ah, the good old Western pundit view of the Egyptian revolution. I was waiting for this!
There had to be a coup? What happened to elections? And it is unfair to omit the fact that said coup involved a brutal massacre.
If you don’t deny that the elections were free and fair, then it is none of your business who the citizens of a sovereign state decide to elect. This is democracy 101.
I guess the problem is that if the government doesn't represent the people it will become a far greater risk to the average person's safety than criminals ever were.
"Criminals" as in "a thief in a modern society": certainly. "Criminals" as in "an aggressive group/tribe that will enslave or murder you if giving the chance": probably not.
> The safest countries in the world are democracies last I checked.
More importantly, they are rather wealthy countries with a long history of highly functioning societies and political continuity where power was gradually transferred from royalty to citizenry (typically by force), usually somewhat collectivist (the US being the exception, but they're also not the safest), widespread higher education, without a strong emphasis on tribal kinship. You need a strong foundation to build a fragile house like a liberal democracy, it's not like Western Countries transcended from tribal societies in a constant state of war to modern democracies in a generation or two.
Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, even Chile, would say otherwise. It doesn’t require a centuries long history of institutionalized representative government to foster wellbeing.
You seem to be focusing too much on a single part. My point is that democracy relies on multiple pillars, it's not just a concept that you explain and voila, it works, you need a mix of pre-requirement. If you have none or few of those, chances are you won't keep a democratic system even if installed.
What does a "highly functioning society" look like, in practice? I think you'll find that the answer basically involves widespread awareness (however achieved - e.g., via basic education) of liberal/bourgeois values. It's not rocket surgery! And yes, we don't do nearly as much as would be appropriate to educate people about these, even in the West.
To me it mostly involves stability, both politically and economically, centralized organization and institutions, and medium and long term predictability.
You're certainly right that it doesn't seem complicated on a meta level, but I don't believe that educating people is enough to jump start it. It takes trust in your neighbors, the processes, institutions and the system, and trust needs to be earned and developed.
>The irony is that ECU-911 has not been effective at stopping crime, many Ecuadoreans said, though the system’s installation paralleled a period of falling crime rates.
Giving up liberty in exchange for security doesn't work, not really. Any shelter from street criminals gained is lost tenfold to criminals higher up, yet across the world people are jumping at the opportunity to rid themselves (or others) of their rights to fight {terrorism,criminality,child/women abuse,gun violence,scary minorities,drug use}. In the end, the trade off rarely ever has the stated effect and is never worth it.
> In short, the authoritarian surveillance state is an increasingly attractive proposition to large swathes of humanity.
The dark side is that people are generally far too comfortable or even gleeful at having their inconvenient neighbors "removed". They just assume it won't happen to them. By the time they realise the authoritarianism is a problem it's too late and too dangerous to complain. This is a problem even in the freest parts of the West.
If you take a step back, both major US parties represent a majority of people whom want the other side to abide by their tyranny.
Even to get progress on gay rights it ended up being pushed through as more of something about pride and "against-hate" than about liberty and freedom. At first this distinction may sound strange to people, but it is important. This has led us into such a strange time when gay men like Peter Thiel are criticized as hateful simply because they don't see why they should be proud to be gay... Granted we traded one form of tyranny for what many argue is a much lesser one, the point is to illustrate that people don't understand human liberty. It is much, mucher easier to get them to go along with justified tyrannies. And if that weren't the case, the US legacy of liberal, constitutional democracy wouldn't be such an outlier in history. I think this reality is scary, and hopefully more people take it more seriously.
> more of something about pride and "against-hate" than about liberty and freedom. At first this distinction may sound strange to people, but it is important
Yeah, you're going to have to expand on how a movement based on freedom from violence, freedom from discrimination, and freedom to marry isn't about freedom. Otherwise this turns into one of those "the people insisting I stop using slurs are the REAL tyranny" arguments.
The difference is how one uses the reasoning to apply to others.
Take freedom from discrimination. That isn't the argument used. Freedom from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is the argument used. While it works the same for those who were facing discrimination because of their sexual orientation, it doesn't protect those facing discrimination because of their gender identity, the conforming to gender norms, their sexual attraction, their age, their appearance, ect.
Now, the LGBT movement has been increasing what they want to include to be protected, but it has taken time and effort and even today you'll find some who support freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation but do not support freedom from discrimination for gender identity. And in 10 years we will look back and other groups who were included which are currently not included (except for perhaps the most counter of counter cultures).
It also allows for some people to evolve a view of freedom from discrimination based on minority status. I think the better example of this is with freedom from discrimination based on gender minority, which has led to some people encouraging certain forms of discrimination if it is against the groups they think are okay to discriminate against.
For a very recent example of the legal impact of this, look at places that are currently passing laws to restrict the rights of adults based on them being 18-20 years old. Freedom from discrimination would cover discriminating against adults because of their age. But instead the law says that it is only freedom from discrimination based on being above a certain age and many people actively support discriminating and restrict the rights of adults because of their age being too young.
That is appealing to the concept of "freedom" to advocate for a specific goal, not advocating for the wider concept in general. Paraphrasing, what you've basically said is "movement based on [its members being not subject to] violence, [its members not being subject to] discrimination, and [ability to have the state facilitate its members] to marry. I agree that any reasonable person should agree with the first two, and at least cede the third under the current system - but specific non-prohibited actions have little to do with freedom itself!
The point is that this movement has been based around advocating for specific proclivities to be overtly accepted into wider society, rather than a general concept of freedom for everyone to live and let live.
If the only reason one is at odds with society is because of their sexual orientation, the two have the same effect. And for sure, positive-identity collective action is needed to organize to push back against the wrongs of anti-identity oppression.
But over time, these groups calcify and become prescriptive. For anyone that is otherwise marginalized, the two framings are drastically different. Which is why this identity politics then splinters into a million different group narratives - because it's ultimately based on emphasizing people's differences and tweaking top-down models in service of new "majorities" (quorums within subcultures, really).
I don't expect to get this across well, precisely for the same reason we're in the political bind we're in - most people can't fathom simply not meddling with others because they are extroverts and don't understand not being meddled with! But dictating other's personal choices is what each of these political teams has ultimately become fashioned around - essentially just bikeshedding over base bodily functions. From my perspective, whether you're insisting that I think a certain way due to the age old space ghost or a reformist political movement, you're still trying to force me into adopting an overprescriptive model.
(Likewise marijuana is being generally deillegalized, but the state continues on restricting the general freedom to alter one's consciousness. Getting to choose between specific state sanctioned options is not freedom!)
I don't understand where these sweeping statements are coming from. I grew up in a third-world country too, and transitioned myself from belonging to a lower middle class family, into an upper middle class life. I don't have an iota of acceptance for any form of surveillance being put in place without it being approved through proper channels of well put process in place (i.e. democracy, representatives of people debating and agreeing upon it)
A majority of india uses aadhar, a biometric ID. The govt constantly coerced and frightens the remanant people into getting aadhar.
A biometric ID is as obviously a lynchpin of a surveillance state as the necessity of a unique key to run a database.
London and the U.K. had invested surveillance in old school cameras even before the internet blew up.
China is China.
A majority of the world is already OK with a surveillance state. And most of the affected aren’t in a position to understand why it matters.
—————
Further- after the impact of the American election and brexit on america and the U.K. respectively, all nation states are aware that other nation states can hijack their national “thought streams” or whatever you want to call them.
No matter what, countries are not going to let that happen to them.
The added bonus of political advantage is not lost on the political class.
It’s not much to make sweeping statements from that position.
Especially given that all of private tech enterprise depends on snooping on your private information.
Hah. We are well and truly the product being sold on the larger global market.
Perhaps Nations are simply building fences to keep their products from being stolen.
> A biometric ID is as obviously a lynchpin of a surveillance state as the necessity of a unique key to run a database.
That's disingenuous. A government is also a lynchpin for a surveillance state, so you'll support anarchy?
A biometric id is very useful for various purposes. Subsidy targeting, financial inclusion, simplification of various datasets, and cracking down on tax evasion to name a few.
Sounds like a sweeping statement. Not sure your example of aadhar is relevant. Everyone needs to have some form of ID so they can be represented in "a database".
My reply was in the context of the new mass surveillance equipment referred to in the article.
1) india already has a plethora of ID options which were not mandatory and not biometric
2) similar biometric ID programs have been shot down in the US and UK precisely because of the threat to privacy and surveillance
3) a majority of Indians, as you will see even on HN, support such programs. The support is under the same aegis that Chinese citizens defend their firewall - it makes their life better, cost to privacy, threat of surveillance state be damned.
Even more obvious surveillance tools are acceptable and championed by the citizenry.
Such sweeping statements are not sweeping but factual representations of the state on the ground in the second most populous nation in the world.
The only people I know who are now organized and trying to combat it are the IFF.
>I don't have an iota of acceptance for any form of surveillance being put in place without it being approved through proper channels of well put process in place...
I don't know man?
I'm an American, so I really have no dog in this whole "Third World Viewpoint" fight. Having said that, it sounds to me like you have no problem at all with the surveillance state...
> As people have theoretically become freer, they seem to seek more security
I don't think it has so much to do with being free as to China having growth for the last 40 years. If you're poor but becoming richer, then you're a lot more happy then someone who was rich and is now poorer. I'm curious to see how the Chinese population reacts to a recession.
Your argument and supporting comments below are not new arguments against democracy. Democracies were always attacked both from outside and inside. No system is perfect but democracy has one big advantage: it is the only system that can learn from its mistakes and improve itself. For other systems, mistakes result in people suffering or dying in masses.
>For other systems, mistakes result in people suffering or dying in masses...
Well, just trying to be evenhanded here, but even for democracies, people will suffer and die in masses due to mistakes. I'm American, and in the US we had slavery. Which I believe qualifies as a mistake for which people suffered and died in masses. (Though in some parts of the US that certainly may not be the consensus view.)
In my opinion, the great virtue of any democracy is not that it can correct its mistakes. (Indeed, oftentimes many democratic governments will not correct their mistakes.) Rather the great virtue of democracy is that a democratic people always get exactly the government they deserve. For good or for ill.
Does rather raise the distinction between "democracy" in which only some people have the vote and a "liberal democracy" which widens the franchise as far as possible, includes guarantees on basic rights of minorities against majoritarianism, and so on.
By that reckoning, America wasn't a democracy until 1964.
You could argue that modern liberal democracies just hide the ugly parts, not necessarily end them.
Whether you have your neighbors working 16 hour shifts in your factory or you have people in Bangladesh work 16 hour shifts in your factory doesn't really make a large difference: you're still making people work 16 hour shifts in your factory, only different people.
Democracy is high maintenance, it needs the people to be vigilant all the time, ultimately democracy is the people instead of a fancy term, as you can see the outcomes of democracies are hardly the same.
So when the people just want more income, easier life and minimal seemingly irrelevant political hassle, either caused by their history or indoctrination, the "China Model" can be very attractive.
I don’t know how “minimal political hassle” and “China Model” can be used in the same sentence. Looks like censorship is working pretty well.
Sorry, but your argument does not make sense. People want all of the things you mentioned in all societies.
People who want to live in a modern democracy do not experience lots of political fights because they want it. It is because a modern democracy makes it all visible to all members of democracy that there are so many different voices, right or wrong. Other political systems try to hide that fact by either killing or censoring. And eventually all of them collapse.
Any current issues of modern democracies are “the current issues” that need to be solved. It is naive to say that there are systems that solve all problems. Not even close. I just prefer my system to not hide current problems in my society, so I can work on them.
I'm not advocating and peddling the "China Model", I'm only speaking my understanding dealing with it. More often than not countries are controlled by the priviledged, and they can more easily shaped people' mind now.
When you pitch democracy to Chinese, the vast majority of them will rebut your every arguement with their pragmatic "narrative", they only want a tiny part of it or simply don't. Their upper class tour western countries and see dilapitated infrastruture, "people being poor", streets not safe, cities old "like villages", they feel proud.
And the system essentially hijacked their wealth, it will be too costly to change, care only about how much money made and what to buy and nothing else.
Until the "China Model" suddenly collapses, it will be shiny to some.
Robustness against mistakes comes from dispersion of power, it is not necessary for a democracy. A genocide can happen in a democratic system, but in that event people theoretically have some way of reigning in the powers that be.
Hypocrisy is one of the originals of the Western culture. For example, I can be evil because the God will forgive me eventually. I can commit crimes and invade you but you can't because you need to be a Saint. I'm talking about the society as a whole instead of any individuals. This is the same as the Totalitarianism is one of the originals of the Eastern culture. These cultural traits date way before Democracy and Science, and start crawling back during the past decades. The Democracy was only invented several hundreds of years ago. It's an political ideal that's implemented with the Scientific methodology systematically. Without the sophisticated design over the system, the Democracy would never be successful. In fact, It's far from being mature and has been stalled for nearly half a century compared with the advancement of the Science.
We need to put down our arrogance and emotional attachment to the good old days. We need to stop the Hypocrisy and reinvent the Democracy with the new Science. It sucks but it is necessary for the future of the entire human race.
> People in many third-world countries have been fed the line that democracy is the correct form of government. This isn't accidental: the soft power of Hollywood and the myth of American exceptionalism have been powerful incentives to have faith in the ability of democratic institutions to improve lives
American exceptionalism is largely, in America, an excuse for advocating against the value of pursuing liberal democracy in the developing world as general policy; it's intimately tied into the effort to export neoliberal economics for the benefit of US I terests with less concern for democracy, especially Western-style liberal democracy.
The idea that US success is attributable to replicable social technologies like liberal democracy (or even liberal economics; exceptionalists seek exporting liberal economics as a way of extending US economic power on the view that US hegemony is a moral imperative, and that people around the world benefit from US power because other countries are fundamentally unable to replace the US as leaders) is opposed to exceptionalism.
> Blanketing a city with CCTV seems to be a pragmatic trade-off for personal safety.
There isn't a theoretical problem with having a democratic surveillance state. Indeed, the major democracies basically are surveillance states. My understanding is that Britain has invested heavily with CCTV, for example.
Surveillance is a threat to personal liberty, because it makes it easier for a centralised government to control what people do and do not. Liberty has historically been a core western value, but liberty and democracy are very separate things.
Interesting. As someone who was raised in and still lives in America, I agree that our media and government propaganda has been strong, but I have a different takeaway.
For all the talk of democracy in our country, it has been just that - talk. More propaganda to make the people believe they have a voice, when in reality property owners are the ones in control.
This leads me and others clamoring for genuine democracy, not oligarchy where we are told to be thankful for our fake democracy. And we already feel the pain from oligarchs, so it's clear a more centralized authority would only be worse.
Development is more important than democracy because it caters to more basic needs.
China can demonstrate that its system has led to rapid development, although of course the cultural aspect means that it cannot be copied verbatim (but Western systems cannot either).
The West has been going on about 'freedom' and 'democracy' for 70 years. It didn't really help develop any country.
Even if people believe that democracy is the 'best' form of government for individuals I think that they want to see development results even if it means an authoritarian government for the time being.
Countries need to develop themselves. You will not find any form of government that you can prescribe other countries to follow.
> The West has been going on about 'freedom' and 'democracy' for 70 years
And came up mostly on top regardless of the metric that is applied. Wealth, culture, influence, you name it...
Democracies can be very good at developing themselves. It is hubris to think that anything rises or falls by the form of governance, if a country doesn't perform to economic standards. Especially if said governance is externally imposed.
China is comparably successful with its investments in Africa because there is less contrast between economies, so real trade can flourish. But if that will be a success story is still in question.
> Good governance is crucial. Western democracy does not seem to.
Strange though that it seems necessary to keep your people in the dark about some of the disadvantages.
Perhaps democracy is indeed not a prerequisite for economic growth, but that would be a pretty one sided perspective, no?
And yes, the growth was only possible because of strong democracies fiancing it. That should certainly not be left out of that equation, faulty as it may be.
> It doesn't matter whether the propagandists succeed or not-their mere unfettered existence is enough to disturb people.
Are you sure that the demonopolization of the marketplace of public opinion isn't disturbing a small minority that in turn riles up the public? That is: are you sure that "the people" at large are worried about "populism", "propaganda" and "trolls", or are they merely worried because the media tells them that it's basically the end of the world as we know it?
You're presenting a false dichotomy. There are CCTV cameras everywhere in Japan too (most of them are not operated by the government, but the government asks for footage when necessary), which is one of the safest countries in the world and the Japanese government is not authoritarian.
China, on the other hand, is authoritarian government using safety as an excuse for government-based mass surveillance, most famously used for oppression of dissidents. Somehow, some people are buying this.
> As people have theoretically become freer, they seem to seek more security. Blanketing a city with CCTV seems to be a pragmatic trade-off for personal safety.
Is there informed consent for CCTV, or does it just happen when technology vendors end up working with politicians, the former caring only about selling their product, the latter caring about only getting re-elected?
My son's kickboard scooter was stolen last month, he left it parked less than 20 paces from the front entrance to his school, in a courtyard with only one way in and out.
There's no CCTV.
Despite the theft, I'm still against the use of CCTV, particularly around schools.
> who can see how powerless or unwilling social networks [...] are to stop them
They're not powerless. They're certainly unwilling, and demonstrate an obvious active mindset _against_ democracies:
1. Nothing, nothing in Facebook' or Twitter' CEOs, PR deparments or boards demonstrate an inch of knowledge or understanding of what a democracy is.
2. On the other hand, their actions and their words clearly speak that they ought to make their (privately owned and controlled) platforms fundamental building and governance blocks for society.
"Openness and the exchange of ideas" is not something that developing countries are known for, though - and not something that would be promoted by having government-sponsored "propagandists and bots" around, either!
In general, while democracy in the sense of having regular elections might be a bit overrated (as shown, e.g. by the failure to "export" it in places like Iraq!), basic freedom, openness and widespread awareness about the values of a "commercial society" (sometimes called "bourgeois values") are extremely important and the closest thing we know of to a recipe for successful development and enduring wealth.
But the failure of democracy in Iraq isn't due to systemic failure of democracy. That can quickly be falsified. It was due to interest groups. Not differentiating here is a mental short circuit. It would have failed with any other form of governance. A democracy isn't guaranteed to succeed, like any form of governance. Autocratic regimes however are destined to fail at some point.
> A democracy isn't guaranteed to succeed, like any form of governance. Autocratic regimes however are destined to fail at some point.
This is a powerful manifestation of implied bias. This and the whole preceding sentence make it all seem weirdly propaganda-y. Like trying to say "no government will succeed forever" and yet also the doublethink that democracy is special, despite autocratic rule dominating human history. For example, consider the opposite and whether it sounds "normal":
> Autocracy isn't guaranteed to succeed, like any form of governance. Democratic regimes however are destined to fail at some point.
Edit: I am pro-democracy but have no delusions that it is free (as in beer), natural (as in humans will naturally tend towards it), nor easy (as in effort is required to maintain it). It's none of the above.
Your guess is only half right (if not using the Cold War term for first world and instead using it purely in terms of economic development). I am very happy with my life.
I'm not sure what the line about "helpfulness" is talking about (bias or democracy), thanks to the ambiguities of the English language.
Democracy is competing interest groups. Just that they're supposed to compete nonviolently for the favour of public opinion.
Iraq should be a good lesson, though. Far too little effort has gone into understanding and explaining what was intended and how it failed, including what the weaknesses of good intent were. To me, it looks like the problem was trying to airdrop "democracy" consisting only of voting, without much thought given to parties, media, class structure, ethnic division, and economic crisis.
True, but in this context I meant interest groups trying to consolidate their power which they felt would be threatened through democracy. Understandable, if you know about the religious minority that ruled the country.
But making a statement about the viability of democracy because Iraq struggled to form a stable government is complete nonsense.
> interest groups trying to consolidate their power which they felt would be threatened through democracy. Understandable, if you know about the religious minority that ruled the country.
This could apply to a surprisingly large number of Western countries in the 20th century. Or the whole US "voter suppression" debate.
Empirically, autocratic regimes can last longer than democracies -- but there have been many more tried, so it's not clear if we're just witnessing expected outliers.
But the Roman empire lasted fifteen hundred years, while the republic only lasted five hundred -- as a classic example.
The unquestionable notion that democracy with capitalism is the only reasonable form of society has created highly corrupt states with facade institutions pretending to be democratic, serving the interests of the local elites behind the scenes. Democracy is just one possible way for a society and it has to be developed organically through history, not forced upon populations. Many people are perfectly happy with someone else making decisions for them, as long as they trust that other person.
Casting a vote in a "real" democracy means putting your trust in a person or group with the promise of representing you and your interests. Without the ability to define your interests in a practical way, you are voting for the most charismatic, most loudly speaking representative.
Not being able to define your interest can be due to lack of education, unwillingness to take part in the political process, etc.
BINGO! It's been taken as a given that more voting is always a better idea. In fact limiting the voter pool for more distant offices (Senators chosen by state legislatures, President elected by... electors) as was originally done in the US might have been a pretty good idea, though the system might need some tweaking Electors are a fine idea, but it's de-facto just a low-information-voter popularity contest vote—when's the last time you even knew who the electors you were voting for were? Have you ever? No one votes based on who the elector is, just who they've pledged to support. Maybe state legislatures, or some part of them, should take that over, too.
Similarly, we've done a decent job of crushing political machines and corrupt unions... but a poor job of crushing the powerful business interests and anti-the-small-guy forces they (sometimes) effectively opposed. As a friend of mine put it, our system used to feature various kaiju fighting, all of them wrecking cities, but some of them doing so while trying to save us, some while trying to harm us. We eliminated all the kaiju that were working to save us (smashing a city block here and there and eating the occasional fire truck, sure) but didn't do anything about the ones trying to harm us, with predictable results.
Trust isn't everlasting, specially for a "person". I can put more of my trust in a "process" (e.g. democracy) and its continuous evolution towards betterment, than letting "someone else" make my decisions for me.
Actual political scientists use the term to describe the US. Everyone knows what it means as a blanket, general term for a class of governmental systems. Unless there's a good reason to split that hair, they don't, and you shouldn't either. No-one's confused or gets the wrong idea when someone describes the US as a democracy.
But a democratic republic or representative democracy with republican form (as opposed to, e.g., a constitutional monarchy) is both a form of democracy and a form of republic.
There are autocratic and/or theocratic republics, among others, that are not forms of democracy.
A rebulic is a form of democracy the same way a moon is a form of planet. Instead of orbiting around the sun, it's orbiting around a planet and that planet is orbiting around the sun. Or, instead of voting directly for things, people vote for other people, that vote directly for things.
I've just spent three years driving through 35 countries in Africa. Before that I spent 2 years driving through 16 countries in Latin America.
I completely agree with your comment.
It's fascinating to sit in a third world country watching the developed world preach on and on about capitalism and democracy being the greatest thing since sliced bread, while on the news we get to see extremely violent protests in France, Brexit completely grinding the UK to a halt, the longest government shutdown in US history, Australia have 7 Prime Ministers in 10 years[1], fears of another giant economic collapse, etc. etc.
These are supposed to be the leaders of the free world, and for all intents and purposes they're dysfunctional.
From the outside looking in, Democracy hasn't turned out to be the "magic" solution it was marketed as.
This was never more true than when I was sitting with a bunch of locals watching the violent protests in DC when Trump was inaugurated. None of the locals could understand why there was violence, and kept asking me "But don't they have democracy there?" ... "Why are they being so violent"?"
[1] I like to say Australia has had more Coups can the Congo.
Protests mean Democracy is working. Look at protests in France and the US vs protests in the Middle East or even Turkey. How do protests fair in China? Ask the unknown number of citizens in education camps.
*Typed up on an America-based forum for startups, using a medium invented within America, on a device created, refined, and popularized inside of America.
"The lesser-educated never really cared for abstract notions of liberty anyway". You know this for sure, do you? This is the kind of unpleasant sweeping generalisation that should at least come with strong supporting evidence.
This is the kind of statement that comes from a well-connected, upper class dictator supporter who enjoys reaping the benefits but tries to come up with a different reason for why the status quo must remain.
The country is a democracy, not a dictatorship, and a slowly failing state. The only thing keeping it from turning into an autocracy is the (eroding) faith of its educated elites in democracy. And when I refer to the less educated, I mean that literally...
I come from a country that is in a similar situation. In general, I try to (1) look at the overall situation in a positive light and (2) avoid belittling and dismissing those who were less fortunate than I am when it comes to education.
While true, they are wrong of course. I also don't really think that trolls are a real issue, even if they have been thoroughly fed the last years. They also don't represent the worst in humanity. Everything that happened people did to themselves and they are looking for scapegoats and someone to blame. This is the worst of humanity. Granted, you could blame trolls, but that should not convince anyone.
At least not worse than the frightful recoil, abandoning ideals like free expression/speech, democracy and freedom. Equality still seems to be the holy cow even if it will collide with freedom at some point.
Stability can be convincing, but people in western nation do not have that excuse. Reading something on the net you don't like is no reason to abandon principles that any modern nation is based upon.
Democracy is the correct form of government, since it is the only form of governance that doesn't extract its legitimacy from power. Democracy requires emancipated voters. You cannot apply that to any third world country and suddenly things get better. It has to come from within a society.
There is also a secret to online mobs/trolls: ignore them and nothing happens. I also do not believe in the power of bots aside from faking ad reach. That would require an example of a talking point. This is why it was difficult to believe in far reaching Russian propaganda efforts: The message was lacking.
I do see the "hateful noise" of social media. If that matters to me is fully in my hands.
> their mere unfettered existence is enough to disturb people.
What's the ideal size of a polis? Too small: there's no privacy. Too large: also no privacy.
In the first case, for example a roving band of stone-agers, say N = 30 with all males related and everybody knowing the leader. Which is good because whatever the political system, leadership entails consent of the led. But bad because the leader knows everyone so it's harder to act or think differently. Errors in understanding the world are firmly entrenched.
The second case might be for example a modern state of N = 100M, with IT. There are notional leaders but they are partly controlled by unseen oligarchs, possibly residents of other states. The bureaucracy and businesses collect and sell information about everybody. Voting, if it exists at all, generates little consent, since only a negligible fraction of people know the official leaders, let alone the oligarchs, let alone what sort of decisions will be consequently be made.
The ideal is therefore presumably where N is some fairly low multiple of Dunbar's Number. But even if we wanted to we don't have the technology or knowledge to implement this yet.
It's almost as if decentralized federalism of the United States, with a limited federal government, states which are essentially 50 laboratories to experiment with which ideas work, which don't, and which need to be different, with lots of county and town level control as befits the granularities of each level of affiliation, starts to make sense.
>states which are essentially 50 laboratories to experiment with which ideas work, which don't
I've been noticing an edge case where a bunch of people sharing certain beliefs about how government should work manage to ruin one state with their belief but because they're fairly well off they can then flee to several other states and put them on the same path before the experimental results from the first state can be analyzed and published. Of course no raindrop feels responsible for the flood so nobody ever has to think about their personal impact on society.
Freedom of travel and inability to restrict cross(-state)-border commerce mean that whole classes of potentially-very-nice policies can't be part of those "experiments", though, or can be but only at much higher cost than they'd be if states could control those things. Others don't make much sense at a state level, like environmental regulation—you can regulate pollution all you like, but the states up-stream or up-wind might choose "defect" on that particular dilemma and then you're screwed anyway.
I think you make a great point here. Certain aspects of interstate commerce law in its current form shouldn't be off the table for reconsideration. The experiment is yielding results that merit discussion, particularly around guns.
All countries doing their own experiments, no wars, and people being free to travel across borders at any time, to live in and support the ideals they prefer.
Doesn't work that well if people move to other countries to change them to become like their original country. Would only work if travel across borders with the intention of staying was forbidden. Would also incentivize people to change their own country for the better when they can see other successful countries they just have to copy.
That seems like a non sequitur. If each country were left to decide on its own, it seems that many, in fact historically nearly all, would not have open boarders. It seems like you're assuming the freedom of a group to govern themselves would result in them choosing what you personally find ideal. The world as it is now is the null hypothesis. People choose to form countries, and countries choose to have boarders.
If you want a sci-fi description of something like this, consider Too Like the Lightning by Ada Palmer. Enjoyed her take on “hives” which form as groups of people choose how to govern themselves and are relatively free to join. Some choose autocracy, others full democracy.
> to experiment with which ideas work, which don't
And this only works if people care about the results of the so-called experiments and use them to improve things. The GOP doesn't seem to care that trickle-down economics has never worked, and yet they still keep implementing it:
No, it is not “almost as if” that at all because the mode of that interaction determines everything. You can have all the things you describe and still fail. India’s system, for instance, is modeled off the US in part and it has different problems. Other governments are modeled differently and work well. This is a facile statement that is simply appealing to national pride.
I agree but I'm not quite sure what you mean with your last statement. Lacking knowledge of "perfect" size for cities (and countries) is one thing, and iirc there are people studying just that (looking at stability, self-reported happiness of citizens, crime, mental health etc), but what technology would we need to implement the results? "Let's split this country into five smaller ones" doesn't sound like a technological problem ;)
This focus on surveillance in China is incredibly disingenuous because things aren't actually all that different in the West. We all carry phones that collect a ton of information on us, and we now know that this information is shared with the government. The only difference is that in China you know that the state watches you while here we pretend that it's not the case. The reality is that Chinese government is just more open about it. We also have a social credit system here it's your credit rating score. Your value in the West is determined solely by the size of your bank account.
So, perhaps if we don't like what we see in China, it's time to start looking inward instead of pointing fingers.
> things aren't actually all that different in the West
Really. I feel there's a massive difference between agencies background lurking looking for signs of extremism to focus limited physical surveillance resources and a 'social credit score' where you ability to work a job, attend a school or catch a plane etc is based on a computer generated score on how the govt feels you should act from their surveillance.
Well, this particular article is about surveillance tech sold by China. The complain is that Chinese companies don't have the sense of responsibility that Western companies have.
While I'd agree that domestically, the West doesn't have China's direct illegalizing of dissent, for the sales of tech to other nations (Saudi Arabia or China itself), claims of Western superiority seem awfully stretched.
> agencies background lurking looking for signs of extremism to focus limited physical surveillance resources
A common pattern in stories about people interned in "reeducation camps" in Xinjiang is that they spent some time abroad, e.g. in Kazakhstan, then returned to their hometown and were arrested as terrorist suspects.
China's surveillance capabilities are pretty similar to the West, the greatest difference is in the way that information is used, since they aren't as worried about targeting innocent people.
So just address the problems with this "limited physical surveillance" first. Because this approach got copied by many countries, sanctioned by western democracy and freedom.
An approach born out of fear and incapability of interpreting data related to "extremism" while simultaneously instilling paranoia in anyone.
The calculation around security is way off and created whole industries that want to keep it that way. This is the worst form of policy making in the last 50-70 years. And it has a solid head start.
So yes, it would be indeed wise to keep your criticism to yourself, because it should be considered improper.
The crazy thing for me is the lack of reason around talking about China and the West.
The article basically says: "China is bad because it sells technology irresponsibly" (while implying the west does it responsibly)
yogthos points out that this is wrong, since there is ample evidence of the US and it's companies selling repressive technology to repressive regimes.
Then people start attacking his argument by saying "but IN CHINA it is worse". And there are a lot of these comments despite the fact that the article, nor the comment, are talking about 'where it's worse'.
If it was any other line of reasoning, this wouldn't be happening on hacker news.
I think this particular set of responses is talking not about selling repressive technologies, but about the state of surveillance in those home countries.
That is my interpretation of yogthos' comment wasn't that there was ample evidence of the U.S. selling repressive technology to repressive regimes (FWIW indeed there is), but rather that it's rich for Western residents to criticize Chinese surveillance (within China) given that the West has essentially the same surveillance within its respective countries, just hidden a lot better. Hence there is no moral high ground for the West to stand on.
My own take is that I don't care about moral high ground or no moral high ground, nor am I even sure I'm criticizing the Chinese government per se. I do think the state of surveillance is a factor in China's current economic success (in fact that's one reason I find it rather terrifying from a personal perspective since that makes it attractive as a model to follow) and that's done wonders for a lot of people in China (though certainly not everyone).
I do think though that the situation is very different between the two areas (certainly at least China and the U.S.), to the degree that saying the two systems are essentially the same, just with different amounts of public acknowledgment from their respective governments, is glossing over too many important differences.
Agreed. I'm not saying that it's right, but China selling surveillance technology in South America really isn't different from the West's long history of selling arms and weapons to political/terrorist groups in the same region. They're both means to control and oppress, they just achieve them in different ways.
There are parts of schenzen where if you jaywalk in the road you instantly get a fine deducted from your account. Via facial recognition. I don't think that's the same as getting your license plate photographed if you skip a signal in the US.
Well, in the US, you get a invoice sent to your home with the fine. So, the govt has all the required information already. (Just like how people justify using Google products, some might even consider it convenient if things got automatically deducted.)
China still feels worlds apart to me, even on a day-to-day basis. Here are some examples in tech:
* Connecting to free WiFi at the airport? Need to provide ID.
* Want to set up a website? Need to apply for a license with the government and provide a local Chinese ID.
* Want to use Aliyun (the equivalent of AWS)? Need to provide ID.
I also suspect this information transmission is two-way. I am fairly certain private institutions in China have gotten my information from the government.
The U.S. has problems. Many problems. But the scary thing about China is it's way way out there, and most people seem fine with it. The Overton Window is leaps and bounds ahead of the U.S. A vending machine is asking for your personal information to buy a soda (because all transactions are done through cellphone and they request permission from Alipay before you can pay)? Why not. I really want the soda (real example). No one bats an eye.
And from an economic perspective it works! People like it; China's growing. And wow it makes things convenient for all parties involved (apart from annoying problems when first registering)! This makes other countries sit up and take notice and maybe think about adapting it for themselves.
How are taxes handled, do they automate based on digital records or are those still the individuals duty to report?
How was that before widespread digitalization, how much privacy is/was ingrained in chinese culture? I'm asking because I had this "worlds apart" feeling recently as well when I googled my swedish uncle's address to see whether I had it formatted correctly. One click later and I was looking at his income, how many cars are registered to him & his family, what make and model they are etc.
As a dutch citizen from a city near Utrecht, I am baffled by the number of surveillance systems in place operated by surveillance capitalists. This has to stop. Uncontrolled invasion of our public space without properly informing the subjects and giving a choice is totally unacceptable.
Sadly I find that the Dutch, in general, are extremely indifferent and even antagonistic towards political activism.
I'm not entirely sure why this is. Perhaps it's general wealth/comfort, or perhaps a history of, at best, amoral profit-seeking.
Or maybe I'm just seeing things. But in general my experience has been that the kinds of people that I would expect to be activists are much less so over here than in, say, Germany or France or Spain.
Well, before talking about the reason why we are moderate in activism (which is debatable), I'd like to understand why you believe the Dutch are particularly amoral profit-seekers. Do you have references comparing the Dutch history with the Spanish? With the slavery practices among the African tribes? With the destruction and mass-murder of the American natives by the Brits? With the plundering of the South American treasures.
At least the Dutch stayed independant during the first world war, while entire generations were slaughtered on the battlefield from other nations. For what? Economic reasons.
No, we're meek activists for simpler reasons. Our population density is high, so we needed to build on a culture of tolerance and acceptance. We are constantly battling a common enemy: water from the seas and the rivers. This required understanding, cooperation and negotiation. We are a country with diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, which also requires a certain level of cooperation instead of activism.
And yet, I think we are actually quite high on the political activism ladder, but not on the militant activism. Hurting our neighbours entails hurting ourselves, so we prefer talking over destroying.
No, I've always been befuddled by how both the Dutch and Belgian have basically had their colonial reigns of terror handwaved away.
It's likely that neither nation really acknowledges it or has anyone agitating internally for the nation to own up to it. So like you said, they're rich and a bit amoral.
My impression is that we don't even bother to hand-wavy and justify or defend any of it. We just don't care. It happened. It's in the past. And we didn't personally do it.
I wouldn't have a problem with PMCs replacing police for pretty much everything but detective work. It would actually give society a lot more leverage over law enforcement and separating after the fact investigation and prosecution from active enforcement would remove a lot of bad incentives from the current system. If the PMCs you've hired to do cop things shoot someone wrongfully you can sue them and not be suing the taxpayer. You can force them to have insurance as part of the contract. You can fail to renew their contract if they screw up. Having a profit motive removes the desire to have unnecessary military hardware for the same reason your local landscaper doesn't own a mining dump truck.
Obviously there's trade-offs but it seems like having privately security instead of cops would be an end run around most of the things that are bad about modern policing.
Like the TSA private partner screening program [0]. They didn't have any staffing issues during the shutdown, because they're not a magic money Government entity. I don't have the source handy, but I believe they're more efficient and do a better job than the TSA at catching contraband.
Yeah but that was in an active warzone where there was little to no retribution for poor behavior. If you have to live next door to the people you police, you're probably going to behave a bit better.
They run prisons, young offenders institutions and offer private security etc.
They are not known for good behaviour though.
They are known for cost-cutting, hiring people with questionable qualifications and experience, sexual assaults on minors and covering up evidence of their own incompetence and malice.
That's what I think of when people suggest privatising law enforcement and military. Greed, malice and power-mongering.
A genuine dystopia, because I don't have the same faith that you do that a profit motive will be anything other than destructive in these spheres.
I wonder if Ecuador is the best example to use for the export of technology enabled authoritarianism?
I strongly suspect the generation of equipment installed in Ecuador misses the more recent and far more ominous AI/ML force multiplier effect of surveillance technology.
Mass customised surveillance price/performance is making an Orwellian/Stasi state a reality.
In terms of authoritarianism versus democracy my thoughts are:
Votes can’t be eaten
Votes can’t shelter you
Votes can’t employ you
Votes can’t educate your children
Votes can’t ensure a better quality of life for you children
Votes don’t equate to trust
I strongly prefer living under democracy than authoritarianism.
But if there was a hypothetical binary choice between:
Corrupt democratic government
And
Net Promoter Score responsive authoritarian government
I believe the needle will be shifting away from the former and towards the latter.
Perhaps the perception of democracy as a luxury with a questionable value proposition to many is one that should be better considered?
Do we want/need Government as a Service/Subscription?
It's always right when the West and big corporations do it, because they are the good guys, right?. Everyone has an agenda, whether its open or hidden.
Any form of violation of privacy or rights and anyone who does it should be held accountable. Just don't pick and choose to suit your bias.
The oddest thing about 1984 is how the education system ( at least here in the US ) has turned it into a warning about the soviet union when it was in fact a warning about the west. Animal farm was about the soviet union. 1984 was about the west. And yet we are taught over and over again that 1984 was about the soviet union.
George Orwell worked as a propagandist for the BBC during ww2.
"I was wasting my own time and the public money on doing work that produces no result. I believe that in the present political situation the broadcasting of British propaganda to India is an almost hopeless task."
Orwell based the Ministry of Truth and Room 101 on the BBC. And yet the BBC is building a statue for Orwell for his work as a "journalist" at the BBC. What an insane world we live in. The BBC is co-opting Orwell to burnish their own reputation, even though Orwell criticized and warned us about the BBC. You have to respect the hubris even if you disagree with the misrepresentation.
But it makes sense the west tried to reframe it. Otherwise Londoners would have been highly skeptical of the mass installation of CCTV and nationwide disarmament.
The history of China's rise as a technologically enabled state is in direct contradiction to the premise of the accusation.
The West invented technologically enabled surveillance. The Stasi in Germany - for example - developed a records and accounting system and would use home telephony equipment to spy on dissidents. As of the 70s and 80s the United States NSA has backdoored much of the modern global communications systems - and has build these systems to scale intelligence into actionable intelligence for partner enforcement organizations (CIA/FBI/etc). At a municipal scale, the United States is networked with threat scoring systems, camera networks with facial recognition, ISMI interceptors (with continuous passive collections events over all major cities), data fusion centers between policing and data networks, requirements to data holding companies to compel data access, and much more - these systems were build several decades ago but are constantly being updated.
China was struggling through these decades to reestablish itself, and has only recently copied modern Western systems of surveillance.
I don't really have teeth in that game though. I realize this is a political topic ("blame"). The fact that the West employs a sophisticated and pervasive surveillance state should not restrict us from criticizing Eastern implementations of the same gross mal-application of technology. And the fact is that who "invented" it is a bit of a non-starter, as state surveillance existed thousands of years ago in rudimentary forms that have evolved independently between states - and the application of modern technology is just one aspect of historical picture.
Of course the surveillance situation in the United States goes much further, with state intelligence agencies actively "engaged" with the public so that public perception can be shaped. The NSA calls this combination of surveillance and engagement "active listening". I don't know whether China has learned from this yet (such topics are hard to research) but it wouldn't surprise me.
It's amazing how many of the top-selling IP cameras on Amazon (including "Amazon's Choice" like Wyze) have buyer reviews where people discovered their cameras contacting servers in China, Russia, etc.
And that's why we made an autonomous, cloud-less video security assistant. We should probably do a Show HN at some point!
How many people in this thread advocating for surveillance are doing so because they, as information workers, would personally have an advantage under such a system?
It’s pretty clear through China’s history and several Chinese writers might have pointed it out, that the majority of Chinese people won’t be awakened unless the government screwed up extremely badly(e.g. partially how cultural revolution ended). As Lin Yutang pointed out(in 1930s, still holds), ““Chinese are culturally old but racially young” and a “prolonged childhood”. It’s then appeared totally strange, as a culture to exhibit “retaining some of the adaptability, flexibility” from ones childhood. A example is how Management talents are in a huge demand in China and it could be amazing to see how bad the management could be in common Chinese enterprises.
Surveillance which is a big deal to mature western culture, might not incur broad critical thinking in China because it might fall into this flexibility domain that most people won’t give it a second thought. People will actually try to adapt and workaround first.
Sadly this peculiar culture IMHO is great fit for an authoritarian system and a long way to go for democratic system to work for it
We will get there for sure. Unless, of course, all of you here and elsewhere wake up and stop advocating just a bit of tyranny applied just to the right place.
Uk just outsourced surveillance to huawei.
Is spying on the tax payer going to be cheaper now, no. even more money will be laundered across the border by those contracted by state in the name of security.
If there is money to be made reminding people they are under attack, you can be sure that your government has it properly monetised.
Lol, if you down vote me fast enough, what i said might not be true,
> including Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Kenya, the United Arab Emirates and Germany
Germany finds itself in great company... With a more sane migration politic this shouldn't have been necessary? Not so long ago there was a time where e.g. Christmas Fairs in Berlin didn't need a fortress built around.
People in many third-world countries have been fed the line that democracy is the correct form of government. This isn't accidental: the soft power of Hollywood and the myth of American exceptionalism have been powerful incentives to have faith in the ability of democratic institutions to improve lives: it's an odd form of cargo-cultism, and if you are a believer in freedom and democracy, a "helpful delusion". The educated elites in third world democracies have recoiled from the notion of authoritarianism, and from the idea of having every aspect of their lives surveilled for safety.
Political events in the US, the rise of social media, and the risks of virality unexpectedly unleashing mob chaos have made them a lot more wary. Openness and the exchange of ideas exposes the worst of human nature: the trolls whose ideas are magnified by algorithms seeking to capture attention. The propagandists and bots with their massive reach are noticed by educated people, who can see how powerless or unwilling social networks and governments are to stop them. It doesn't matter whether the propagandists succeed or not-their mere unfettered existence is enough to disturb people.
With the weakening of democratic norms, other options are suddenly back on the table. As people have theoretically become freer, they seem to seek more security. Blanketing a city with CCTV seems to be a pragmatic trade-off for personal safety. The censorship of China seems to be attractive because of the endless hateful noise of social media, the orderliness of having criminals removed from society permanently via the death penalty suddenly seems attractive. The lesser-educated never really cared for abstract notions of liberty anyway. In short, the authoritarian surveillance state is an increasingly attractive proposition to large swathes of humanity.
As an Arab myself, I see it as nothing more than a defeatist attitude that is typically held by those who have enough money and connections (typically upper class).
Safety and democracy can coexist and are not mutually exclusive as you claim. The safest countries in the world are democracies last I checked.
Democracy is not only about “abstract notions of liberty”, but also (and more importantly) about justice and equality for all. When these “lesser-educated” people are held in prison without trial for watching the wrong Youtube video or practicing the wrong religion, they also realize this fact.
If the West ever returns to the idea of democratic society where everyone should have access to education, housing and good working conditions. Where we run our countries, our infrastructure and invest in scientific progress together. And where we believe that running businesses in line with the values of society is better. Then they would want democracy as well.
The problem with that line of reasoning is that those countries are categorically different from democracies.
Those countries do not have the interlocking systems of laws, elections, values, that constitute democracy, things like 1) rule of law 2) private property rights 3) protections for minorities 4) independent judiciaries 5) systematic transitions of power through electoral systems with competing parties 6) independent constitutions that require 2/3rds or more majorities to amend, 7) separation of church and state (this includes cult of personalities), I could go on.
Superficially, it seems fair to compare democratic western countries to China, Russia, and Arab monarchies/dictatorships. But you easily slide into a category error. The very fact that they are not democracies means the people in those countries lack concrete tangible mechanisms and systems to ensure their freedom, independence, and safety, in a productive society that also protects minorities. The people are just fundamentally less free than they would be if they were in a democracy.
Your criticisms of western democracies are well founded. The biggest problem in modern democracies is simple greed and regulatory capture (and intensification of capital in a low % of the population but that's connected to greed and regulatory capture). But that's not an argument to adopt a Chinese, Russian, or Arab, system if there is one beyond greed and authoritarian control. That's an argument to fix our democracies (ironically, the idea of fixing a government and society in this way is unique to happening within a democracy, otherwise what are you fighting for? more oppression?).
The grass is always greener when you assume you'll be in the powerful, rich, or successful, portion of society. But you can't assume that. So we have democracy.
Today it doesn't deliver. People go to the US because the status and the money, despite the visa process, the education system, the housing market and the infrastructure. Soon enough they will catch up to the status and the money, and the West will have little to offer.
It is easy the point the finger to everyone else, but it is the West that aren't fighting for it. We want the global markets, the large companies and the Chinese investments. You can't have both. You can't on the one hand have an idea of how things should be, and on the other sell it to highest bidder.
There are probably hundreds of articles about China "stealing" industries from the West. But overall they are just buying them to the delight of the owners, either with money or effort. And then the West somehow thinks that the Chinese should be the ones considering them successful.
In general, I agree with you. I would not use the current US as a stirling example, historically, though the US system has been largely successful. We probably disagree on the level of success though.
I can't speak from the US perspective, but in Canada many people come and they like it here. Not just because of status or money. Because people don't just need or want status or money. They like it here because here we actually work to balance security and opportunity. Not everyone is happy. But they're not unhappy and without rights, they're just unhappy. Liberal democracies have been trying to create [Rawlsian justice](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice#The_Two_Pr...) and some have been more successful than others.
I think the idea that economic success and liberal democratic values coincide has been too quickly conflated. I share your view of West - China trade. The West thought that liberalizing economic markets would naturally cause liberalized societies and democracies. Allowing China to enter the WTO without serious stipulations and controls to ensure democratic transition was a mistake. And now they flaunt their economic "success" as the sign of a successful counter to democracy. Western industries and governments that cozy up to China risk serious moral hazard and we are already seeing the effects of that.
We missed our chance to seriously allow a liberal China to take shape when it would have been best to.
But China still relies on the west for trade. And that is our leverage. Going alone against China is suicide. As a block of democracies, however, we could stand up to them quite easily. We just can't be greedy. That's a hard sell in 2019 apparently.
That is sort of the point. People see the US as an example of democracy because of its prosperity, not because of its democracy. If you want democracy you probably go to Finland instead.
Everything is worse in these authoritarian countries not just the freedom. That is another thing people generally don't understand. There is nothing to catch up to. We just have to make sure to not get worse ourselves. And to actually use the advantages we had. That is why I am saying that it is the West that is defeatist. It is we that are changing our ways, to a large extent from our post war ideals.
If you want the feature of democracy you have actually be democratic. Which many areas of our societies increasingly aren't. It is nice to be able to say whatever you want, but if no one is listening there is no effect. The point is that something should happen, otherwise we are just cargo culting ourselves and being jesters for those in power.
The United States is a constitutional republic.
This results in people _experimenting_ with things, and sometimes they work sometimes they don't. But there is a huge variety of experience and people just trying things out, or doing their own thing-- which increases the culture vibrancy and tapestry of diversity.
That is your opinion. You'll find that many people disagree. Maybe not here, in HN, openly.
You'd think that, but the middle income trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_income_trap happens for a reason, and widespread liberal or even democratic values might be required in order to escape it. The thing is that the wealthiest countries in the world, aside from special cases like big natural-resource endowments, have always featured broadly-liberal values and a reasonably-diffuse power base. Starting at least from the Italian and German renaissance, The Netherlands in the early-modern period, etc. And this dynamic has only become more important in a modern service economy where growth is powered by continued entrepreneuship and innovation - it would be huge news if this became suddenly untrue.
Chances are if you look back at those societies it wasn't the liberalism. They were probably horrible by modern standards. It might just have been the trade of information and resources. Today you can do probably do that without the values. Or at least if the West doesn't do it that way, who is the competition?
If everyone in the US is worried about their mortgage, who is going to be more creative than Google to the point where Google can't just buy them? The same probably goes for society. If the West doesn't do democracy very well, who are the Chinese losing to?
Maybe you are right, but I still would trust the future to some idea. That is when you lose. When you think "well this can't happen" and then it does. Because the quote about astrophysics also goes for society, that "the universe has no obligation to make sense to you". Chances are it doesn't have to be certain way at all. Most of history certainly isn't fair.
Of course, that's what you'd expect a deity to say, but American Evangelicalism is chock full of prosperity theology adherents: good people are rich people, rich people are good people, they are closer to god, and rich people closer to god deserve more and better things: Privilege. Bloodlines. Family name. Everything should be a product so that the wealthy can buy anything and as much of it as they want. Everyone else gets less or inferior versions, including public education, health care, environment, and justice. It's foundational in all ideologies, except liberal democracies - which at least in political science we don't actually say the U.S. started out as one. Rather it was designed to be a polyarchy in contrast to a monoarchy, using representative democracy with highly restricted access (you had to be a "better" person to participate, i.e. white, male, landowner) but it is a potential liberal democracy and has tracked that way over time, but does often resist. It is tedious. But that is the system. Churchill said it was the worst form of government except for all the others.
Most of history is not fair, indeed it was also not prosperous. It saw centuries of anemic economic growth, and it was very violent. Genetics show we aren't all that different, we're mainly products of environment, the bloodlines nonsense is just that nonsense. We are best off educating as many as possible, and mostly letting people make their own decisions. In aggregate, I trust most people most of the time make good choices slightly more than 50% of the time. If it's not true, and instead the state of man's nature is so hideously flawed that we need lords, then I saw we are doomed. We never get off the planet. We will destroy it, and ourselves with it.
All rapid technological change brings risk to economic and political stability. I think it's useful to see anti-tech more as a desire to spend time being deliberate and integrate it, rather than as curmudgeon.
I think it is less important that people have 100% trust all the time in their government, than trusting it's possible to change it when it is failing.
When any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community has an indubitable, inalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter, or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal. http://www.civiced.org/resources/curriculum/mason
I am not saying that things shouldn't be fair. I am saying the opposite. Things should be fair and you should make it so. That is sort of my argument here, that you can't expect things to be fair. If you design your system around hierarchies it doesn't necessarily matter if it is capitalist or socialist. Democracy isn't going to win that. China is amazing at being unfair.
Things don't stop at the border. If all your clothes are all made under undemocratic conditions or your real estate is bought by oligarchs, how democratic are you? In a non-scares world what defines you is what you don't do. China also produces things under even worse condition other Asian countries.
My thesis is that democracy doesn't fall with China, it falls with the West. Because we are the ones not finding our way. I mean, to take a capitalist approach we want China to not be able to handle technology. That is the somewhat point, that in democracy you can do more sophisticate things and still live to see it. Now instead we find ourselves at disadvantage because we don't now how to handle things.
I'm not sure where this current trend of pretending that democracy isn't worth it came from, but lets hope it passes by fairly soon, as its boring and tiresome.
Not ot mention the hypocrisy.. You cant type/write what you just did, where you just did, and then dump on Democracy. Try doing it in a place where there is no Democracy. (And of course you could always move to a country with no democracy, if you like/prefer that alternative system.)
China does have these mechanisms. They may not be as effective as the ones in democracy, but they do exist. For example, their affirmative action policies are among the strongest in the world.
Also, China faces growing pains that the US already dealt with long ago. Just like how Americans viewed native Americans as fundamentally incompatible with contemporary civilization, China views the Uighurs and other minorities the same way. The American solution was war and driving natives on to ever smaller patches of land. The Chinese solution is forced assimilation. While I'd like to think that the US could deal with this problem a lot better today, our pattern of military intervention leaves me skeptical.
In that matter, don't you think it's the financial status that pushes all the ideas back? There is a fundamental tradeoff between resources spent on individuals vs total resources.
Indeed. The world as a whole is heading towards a situation where a larger and larger fraction of resources is under the control of a shrinking number of extremely rich people.
The corporations largely have diffuse ownership (they're owned by a hundred million people's 401(k)), and the top level executives are generally "rich" but e.g. Tim Cook has less than 1% as much money as Apple Inc.
The problem isn't that Bill Gates has too much money, it's that we have institutions with too much power and not enough accountability, both government and corporate. And then they use that power to conspire together against ordinary people.
What we need is to shrink the size of all entities to be less monolithic and more local and manageable.
Corporations are a legal fiction by which power is granted to people, so, no, that's not what is “really happening”. Corporations obscure the real distribution of power.
The reality is a ever narrower class of ever more wealthy (relatively as well as absolutely) people directs society.
> The corporations largely have diffuse ownership
Not so diffuse; the set of major capitalists is very small compared to the whole population, and the share of stock (and overall wealth) they control is quite large.
The point is that corporations distort the real distribution of power. Apple's money nominally belongs to its shareholders, but in practice it's under the control of their executives, and they have many perverse incentives derived out of everything from personal enrichment at the expense of the shareholders to tax avoidance to empire building.
Moreover, even under the set of incentives they're "supposed" to have, it means that a significant chunk of the economy is set toward advancing the interests of the fictional entity Apple Inc. even if its interests are not aligned with any individual person.
> Not so diffuse; the set of major capitalists is very small compared to the whole population, and the share of stock (and overall wealth) they control is quite large.
It's diffuse even then. Jeff Bezos is the richest man, has more than a hundred billion dollars, most of that money is in his own company, and yet even then he doesn't have majority ownership of even that company.
An "ordinary" billionaire, i.e. someone with a billion dollars, could invest 100% of their money into Apple and still barely own 0.1% of it.
Moreover, nearly all of the wealth of the rich is invested in corporations. Those investments yield returns, but the corporations are controlled far more by their executives than the nominal owners. Most importantly, that wouldn't change even if there were less "wealth inequality" unless the corporations were also made smaller -- it would in fact get worse, because the ownership would be even more diffuse, leaving the executives with even less accountability.
That's not the claim that was made, which was the corporations are the real holders of power, which was offered as an explicit denial of the claim that a narrow set of wealthy individuals hold power. That corporations are a vehicle by which the exact distribution of power among individuals may vary from what you'd think by looking at net worth alone does not change the fact that power is really held by a narrow set of wealthy individuals. (In fact, it concentrates power even more narrowly in the most wealthy by suppressing the effective power of the diffuse minority of wealth held by broad masses in a way somewhat similar to how FPTP electoral systems dilute the political power of diffuse minorities of votes.)
> Apple's money nominally belongs to its shareholders
No, it nominally belongs to Apple. Shareholders do not, either nominally or practically, own the assets of the corporation, they own a claim to a share of the liquidated net assets after satifying liabilities in the event of corporate dissolution, along with certain rights defined in law and corporate governance documents with regard to governance of the corporation while it is a going concern.
In practice, this increases the effective relative power of major (even if not majority individually) shareholders and reduces the power of small minority shareholders beyond what share of ownership alone would suggest.
That is a refutation of that claim, because the distortion takes the control away from any individual and constrains it within the path defined by "law and corporate governance documents with regard to governance of the corporation while it is a going concern."
Bezos can make himself CEO despite not holding a majority position, but if he gets cancer he can't decide to liquidate all of the company's assets (not just his personal shares) and then use it all to look for a cure. Because he's still not in control of it, the corporation is, which is different.
He also can't decide to purposely suffer major losses in order use the company's resources to solve significant social problems like climate change, even if he wanted to, without the consent of the other shareholders.
> In fact, it concentrates power even more narrowly in the most wealthy by suppressing the effective power of the diffuse minority of wealth held by broad masses in a way somewhat similar to how FPTP electoral systems dilute the political power of diffuse minorities of votes.
Yes, absolutely, but the thing causing that to happen is the incredibly large size of corporations, not the wealth of particular individuals. If Amazon was 10% its current size and correspondingly Bezos owned all of it, he would be in control of fewer resources than he is now despite having the exact same amount of personal wealth.
And then he could decide to use the company's resources to cure cancer or fight climate change, because he would be the sole owner, so there would be even less power bound up in corporate restrictions.
> No, it nominally belongs to Apple.
You can't have it both ways. Either the corporation is a legal fiction and the real power lies with some natural persons, who for a corporation are nominally ultimately the shareholders, or the corporation is a thing unto itself with its own rules and goals and is the owner of the assets, in which case the distinction between the corporation and the individuals is quite relevant precisely because it affects how the resources are used.
This seems to have been caused by democracy and lack of adequate checks on it. Our political system has gotten too good at pitting people against themselves.
For example, housing. It costs too much and people can't afford it. There are multiple policies we could adopt to address it.
One is to make housing prices go even higher. It's not such a problem to pay $500K for a house that should cost $200K if it can be sold for $1M by the time you retire. People like the idea of this because it allows them to make money "for free", especially the people who have already overpaid for a house. So it remains a popular policy even though it's blatantly an unsustainable ponzi scheme.
Another is to have the government subsidize housing or otherwise adopt policies like rent control or designated affordable housing. But the common factor in all of these policies is to have the effect of raising overall rents, and on top of that the ones that cost money then have to be paid for from taxes that could otherwise have gone to something actually useful.
So then the middle class gets presented with a false dichotomy which is really squeezing them from both sides. Then the ones who think they're going to be rich choose policies that purposely increase housing prices so they can make money even though they're just inflating a bubble that may pop before they can get out. The others support policies they think will make housing more affordable, not realizing that they won't qualify for the programs so they're really the ones paying the higher rents and taxes to support them.
Then the half of the middle class that votes with the rich allows them to get their policies, and the other half that votes with the indigent allows them to get their policies as well, even though both policies hurt the middle class.
The traditional solution to this was to place limits on government power so that they're not even allowed to enact the policies that bring about this kind of myopic kleptocracy, but that seems to have fallen out of favor, presumably because enacting it requires being in power and if you're already in power then it's more profitable not to limit your own power as a kleptocrat. Or even more problematically, to expand it every time you have enough of a majority to do something like passing the Seventeenth Amendment, threatening to pack the Supreme Court if they won't uphold your unreasonably broad interpretation of the Interstate Commerce Clause, or removing state-level restrictions on what kind of zoning/housing laws individual cities can pass.
Democracy as a shallow concept is mainly good at handling despots. The 0.1% can't get much power even if their influence is relatively large because the other 99.9% is against their one sided interests. But if you manage to convince 10% of something they could potentially get 51% of the influence, especially locally, at which point you have a big problem. Now 10% of the people can decide what to do against the interests of 90% of the people. A two party system makes this even worse in the US.
That said, it can be solved within democracy. It isn't the first nor the last challenge facing society, especially a changing one. I think we need to realize that we are in a second industrial revolution, with information this time.
This is silly, the west has always had legalized corruption and nepotism. John f Kennedy employed his brother as secretary of state, and raped his 19 year old intern. Things are getting better, not worse.
But as I said, if the lesser corruption doesn't deliver then it doesn't matter. The West can keep pretending that increasingly not delivering cost effective housing, education, health care and other things of importance in a knowledge economy is just repeated "flaws" and not a result of the current system.
Maybe is better to pay consultant instead of corrupt politicians, even if the consultants then tend to award the politicians after the fact. The problem is that the corrupt politicians in some of these other countries are now delivering results.
Shenzhen has opened a new subway station every month on average for the last 15 years. And there are certainly cities in the West that need more subway stations. Maybe cities in the West could even produce subways better than the Chinese. With less corruption and at lower cost relative to income. But as long as that isn't happening, the ability to do so doesn't matter much. So at least to the extent that the West can't produce these things it is still a problem.
That sounds more like a value system rather than a philosophy of governance. An authoritarian or a libertarian could make a case that their way will deliver those things.
An obvious example is the "three wolves and a sheep deciding on dinner" problem. Democratic, not egalitarian.
Both democracy and egalitarianism have many forms and interpretations and open up unresolved philosophical problems. Bundling them together just causes more confusion.
Can you be more specific about what you think the difference between fairness and equality is? For example, if one person is smart enough to become a doctor and another isn't, but then doctors get paid more than housekeepers, is that the difference? The system is fair (anyone smart enough and willing to can become a doctor) but not equal (some people aren't smart enough and doctors get paid more).
But using that as the difference is more of a communist ("to each according to his needs") ideal than a democratic one.
And authoritarians generally don't even care if the system is fair -- if it's unjustly enriching their own people then it's authoritarianism working as intended.
I guess there in theory there could be libertarians that have very high criteria for what an informed choice would be. To a point where it would be democratic. But that is probably closer to social liberalism.
One can of course question whether most authoritarians care much about their own ideology. But as an ideology they do care that the system is fair, just not society overall. People do believe that it is fair to have a "strong leader". They might not care much if the leader is enriching themselves as they aren't equals. They would care if the leader loses face and don't seem as "strong" as thought. Because then their position would be unwarranted.
I think this is a misunderstanding of why people want money. Because none of that stuff is boolean. You don't have education or not. Harvard and community college are both "education" but they're not the same.
Even when people buy a sports car, it's not because they derive $60,000 worth of benefit from fast acceleration, it's primarily a method of status signaling. Which in turn creates social opportunities in everything from business networking to romance.
You can create a minimum floor for everyone (NB: a UBI is an outstanding way to do this across all domains), but "money buys stuff" applies to pretty much anything, including incremental amounts of education, community and security.
> One can of course question whether most authoritarians care much about their own ideology. But as an ideology they do care that the system is fair, just not society overall. People do believe that it is fair to have a "strong leader".
This is fundamentally impossible. There is conflict in politics not only because of misunderstandings but also because different people have different interests. The "strong leader" will have to make choices that benefit some people over others. If all you're doing is redefining fairness to mean whatever the leader decides it is then you're not creating a fair society, you're just creating a society and defining fairness as whatever subsequently happens.
In some sense that is also what we do with the output of the democratic process, but that only has a claim to fairness as a result of the fairness in the inputs (one person one vote). With authoritarianism the selection process can make no such claim, not least because the existing "strong leader" would by definition have enough de facto control to stay in power indefinitely and then anoint a successor at the end.
Ironically enough, the closest thing these folks get to actual civil society, is their religious institutions - the mosques, the madrassas and so forth. This also makes Islamic fundamentalism a lot more seductive to them than it might otherwise be, because in many ways they experience religion as the best working, least corrupt, etc. part of their society, and they naturally seek something that can replicate that relative openness and lack of corruption across the board.
Counterexample time! Lebanon and Tunisia. I’m from Tunisia, so I can talk about that a bit more if you like, but a strong civil society has rapidly formed since the 2011 revolution. Granted, we have had a relatively active civil society pre-2011, but it has flourished immensely post-2011.
I think you’re also a bit off with your point on why Islamic fundamentalism becomes attractive. Yes, in many Muslim countries, mosques become the only refuge for discourse, but Islamic fundamentalism typically comes to the forefront only when these freedoms are clamped down on. People who used to seek refuge from autocracy in the mosque now find that all doors have been shut in their faces, so they naturally look for alternatives. Unfortunately, some end up veering towards extremism...
That probably describes Tunisia and Lebanon - I find it very unlikely that it's an accurate description of the average Middle-Eastern country, even of Egypt. Never mind elections, even freedoms can be almost irrelevant when, by and large, people have never even come close to knowing a free society and what the basic values of one look like. A truly free people doesn't elect the frickin' Muslim Brotherhood to run their country!
Reasonably free and fair elections were held for the first time. And who did the people elect? The Muslim Brotherhood, an international illiberal Islamist group in favour of mandatory veils.
So there had to be another military coup, the establishment of a constitution banning religious parties, and another go at elections.
There had to be a coup? What happened to elections? And it is unfair to omit the fact that said coup involved a brutal massacre.
If you don’t deny that the elections were free and fair, then it is none of your business who the citizens of a sovereign state decide to elect. This is democracy 101.
> it is none of your business who the citizens of a sovereign state decide to elect.
This rather depends on what the new government is actually doing and whether it's getting people killed in the street again.
More importantly, they are rather wealthy countries with a long history of highly functioning societies and political continuity where power was gradually transferred from royalty to citizenry (typically by force), usually somewhat collectivist (the US being the exception, but they're also not the safest), widespread higher education, without a strong emphasis on tribal kinship. You need a strong foundation to build a fragile house like a liberal democracy, it's not like Western Countries transcended from tribal societies in a constant state of war to modern democracies in a generation or two.
You're certainly right that it doesn't seem complicated on a meta level, but I don't believe that educating people is enough to jump start it. It takes trust in your neighbors, the processes, institutions and the system, and trust needs to be earned and developed.
>The irony is that ECU-911 has not been effective at stopping crime, many Ecuadoreans said, though the system’s installation paralleled a period of falling crime rates.
Giving up liberty in exchange for security doesn't work, not really. Any shelter from street criminals gained is lost tenfold to criminals higher up, yet across the world people are jumping at the opportunity to rid themselves (or others) of their rights to fight {terrorism,criminality,child/women abuse,gun violence,scary minorities,drug use}. In the end, the trade off rarely ever has the stated effect and is never worth it.
> In short, the authoritarian surveillance state is an increasingly attractive proposition to large swathes of humanity.
The dark side is that people are generally far too comfortable or even gleeful at having their inconvenient neighbors "removed". They just assume it won't happen to them. By the time they realise the authoritarianism is a problem it's too late and too dangerous to complain. This is a problem even in the freest parts of the West.
Even to get progress on gay rights it ended up being pushed through as more of something about pride and "against-hate" than about liberty and freedom. At first this distinction may sound strange to people, but it is important. This has led us into such a strange time when gay men like Peter Thiel are criticized as hateful simply because they don't see why they should be proud to be gay... Granted we traded one form of tyranny for what many argue is a much lesser one, the point is to illustrate that people don't understand human liberty. It is much, mucher easier to get them to go along with justified tyrannies. And if that weren't the case, the US legacy of liberal, constitutional democracy wouldn't be such an outlier in history. I think this reality is scary, and hopefully more people take it more seriously.
Yeah, you're going to have to expand on how a movement based on freedom from violence, freedom from discrimination, and freedom to marry isn't about freedom. Otherwise this turns into one of those "the people insisting I stop using slurs are the REAL tyranny" arguments.
Take freedom from discrimination. That isn't the argument used. Freedom from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is the argument used. While it works the same for those who were facing discrimination because of their sexual orientation, it doesn't protect those facing discrimination because of their gender identity, the conforming to gender norms, their sexual attraction, their age, their appearance, ect.
Now, the LGBT movement has been increasing what they want to include to be protected, but it has taken time and effort and even today you'll find some who support freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation but do not support freedom from discrimination for gender identity. And in 10 years we will look back and other groups who were included which are currently not included (except for perhaps the most counter of counter cultures).
It also allows for some people to evolve a view of freedom from discrimination based on minority status. I think the better example of this is with freedom from discrimination based on gender minority, which has led to some people encouraging certain forms of discrimination if it is against the groups they think are okay to discriminate against.
For a very recent example of the legal impact of this, look at places that are currently passing laws to restrict the rights of adults based on them being 18-20 years old. Freedom from discrimination would cover discriminating against adults because of their age. But instead the law says that it is only freedom from discrimination based on being above a certain age and many people actively support discriminating and restrict the rights of adults because of their age being too young.
The point is that this movement has been based around advocating for specific proclivities to be overtly accepted into wider society, rather than a general concept of freedom for everyone to live and let live.
If the only reason one is at odds with society is because of their sexual orientation, the two have the same effect. And for sure, positive-identity collective action is needed to organize to push back against the wrongs of anti-identity oppression.
But over time, these groups calcify and become prescriptive. For anyone that is otherwise marginalized, the two framings are drastically different. Which is why this identity politics then splinters into a million different group narratives - because it's ultimately based on emphasizing people's differences and tweaking top-down models in service of new "majorities" (quorums within subcultures, really).
I don't expect to get this across well, precisely for the same reason we're in the political bind we're in - most people can't fathom simply not meddling with others because they are extroverts and don't understand not being meddled with! But dictating other's personal choices is what each of these political teams has ultimately become fashioned around - essentially just bikeshedding over base bodily functions. From my perspective, whether you're insisting that I think a certain way due to the age old space ghost or a reformist political movement, you're still trying to force me into adopting an overprescriptive model.
(Likewise marijuana is being generally deillegalized, but the state continues on restricting the general freedom to alter one's consciousness. Getting to choose between specific state sanctioned options is not freedom!)
Any nation given an entire continent of temperate arable land nearly for free¹, might have fared as well.
1: Cleared of inhabitants mostly by disease but also with brutal wars.
Japan is the opposite...
A majority of india uses aadhar, a biometric ID. The govt constantly coerced and frightens the remanant people into getting aadhar.
A biometric ID is as obviously a lynchpin of a surveillance state as the necessity of a unique key to run a database.
London and the U.K. had invested surveillance in old school cameras even before the internet blew up.
China is China.
A majority of the world is already OK with a surveillance state. And most of the affected aren’t in a position to understand why it matters.
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Further- after the impact of the American election and brexit on america and the U.K. respectively, all nation states are aware that other nation states can hijack their national “thought streams” or whatever you want to call them.
No matter what, countries are not going to let that happen to them.
The added bonus of political advantage is not lost on the political class.
It’s not much to make sweeping statements from that position.
Especially given that all of private tech enterprise depends on snooping on your private information.
Hah. We are well and truly the product being sold on the larger global market.
Perhaps Nations are simply building fences to keep their products from being stolen.
That's disingenuous. A government is also a lynchpin for a surveillance state, so you'll support anarchy?
A biometric id is very useful for various purposes. Subsidy targeting, financial inclusion, simplification of various datasets, and cracking down on tax evasion to name a few.
Sounds like a sweeping statement. Not sure your example of aadhar is relevant. Everyone needs to have some form of ID so they can be represented in "a database".
My reply was in the context of the new mass surveillance equipment referred to in the article.
1) india already has a plethora of ID options which were not mandatory and not biometric
2) similar biometric ID programs have been shot down in the US and UK precisely because of the threat to privacy and surveillance
3) a majority of Indians, as you will see even on HN, support such programs. The support is under the same aegis that Chinese citizens defend their firewall - it makes their life better, cost to privacy, threat of surveillance state be damned.
Even more obvious surveillance tools are acceptable and championed by the citizenry.
Such sweeping statements are not sweeping but factual representations of the state on the ground in the second most populous nation in the world.
The only people I know who are now organized and trying to combat it are the IFF.
I don't know man?
I'm an American, so I really have no dog in this whole "Third World Viewpoint" fight. Having said that, it sounds to me like you have no problem at all with the surveillance state...
so long as they do the proper paperwork first.
I don't have a problem with "discussing issues" and "coming to an agreement (or disagreement)".
I don't think it has so much to do with being free as to China having growth for the last 40 years. If you're poor but becoming richer, then you're a lot more happy then someone who was rich and is now poorer. I'm curious to see how the Chinese population reacts to a recession.
Well, just trying to be evenhanded here, but even for democracies, people will suffer and die in masses due to mistakes. I'm American, and in the US we had slavery. Which I believe qualifies as a mistake for which people suffered and died in masses. (Though in some parts of the US that certainly may not be the consensus view.)
In my opinion, the great virtue of any democracy is not that it can correct its mistakes. (Indeed, oftentimes many democratic governments will not correct their mistakes.) Rather the great virtue of democracy is that a democratic people always get exactly the government they deserve. For good or for ill.
By that reckoning, America wasn't a democracy until 1964.
Whether you have your neighbors working 16 hour shifts in your factory or you have people in Bangladesh work 16 hour shifts in your factory doesn't really make a large difference: you're still making people work 16 hour shifts in your factory, only different people.
So when the people just want more income, easier life and minimal seemingly irrelevant political hassle, either caused by their history or indoctrination, the "China Model" can be very attractive.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/05/world/africa/ethiopia-gov...
Sorry, but your argument does not make sense. People want all of the things you mentioned in all societies.
People who want to live in a modern democracy do not experience lots of political fights because they want it. It is because a modern democracy makes it all visible to all members of democracy that there are so many different voices, right or wrong. Other political systems try to hide that fact by either killing or censoring. And eventually all of them collapse.
Any current issues of modern democracies are “the current issues” that need to be solved. It is naive to say that there are systems that solve all problems. Not even close. I just prefer my system to not hide current problems in my society, so I can work on them.
When you pitch democracy to Chinese, the vast majority of them will rebut your every arguement with their pragmatic "narrative", they only want a tiny part of it or simply don't. Their upper class tour western countries and see dilapitated infrastruture, "people being poor", streets not safe, cities old "like villages", they feel proud.
And the system essentially hijacked their wealth, it will be too costly to change, care only about how much money made and what to buy and nothing else.
Until the "China Model" suddenly collapses, it will be shiny to some.
American exceptionalism is largely, in America, an excuse for advocating against the value of pursuing liberal democracy in the developing world as general policy; it's intimately tied into the effort to export neoliberal economics for the benefit of US I terests with less concern for democracy, especially Western-style liberal democracy.
The idea that US success is attributable to replicable social technologies like liberal democracy (or even liberal economics; exceptionalists seek exporting liberal economics as a way of extending US economic power on the view that US hegemony is a moral imperative, and that people around the world benefit from US power because other countries are fundamentally unable to replace the US as leaders) is opposed to exceptionalism.
There isn't a theoretical problem with having a democratic surveillance state. Indeed, the major democracies basically are surveillance states. My understanding is that Britain has invested heavily with CCTV, for example.
Surveillance is a threat to personal liberty, because it makes it easier for a centralised government to control what people do and do not. Liberty has historically been a core western value, but liberty and democracy are very separate things.
For all the talk of democracy in our country, it has been just that - talk. More propaganda to make the people believe they have a voice, when in reality property owners are the ones in control.
This leads me and others clamoring for genuine democracy, not oligarchy where we are told to be thankful for our fake democracy. And we already feel the pain from oligarchs, so it's clear a more centralized authority would only be worse.
I heard a saying during the Dubya years:
The good thing about democracy is that anyone can become President; the bad thing about democracy is that anyone can become President.
China can demonstrate that its system has led to rapid development, although of course the cultural aspect means that it cannot be copied verbatim (but Western systems cannot either).
The West has been going on about 'freedom' and 'democracy' for 70 years. It didn't really help develop any country.
Even if people believe that democracy is the 'best' form of government for individuals I think that they want to see development results even if it means an authoritarian government for the time being.
> The West has been going on about 'freedom' and 'democracy' for 70 years
And came up mostly on top regardless of the metric that is applied. Wealth, culture, influence, you name it...
Democracies can be very good at developing themselves. It is hubris to think that anything rises or falls by the form of governance, if a country doesn't perform to economic standards. Especially if said governance is externally imposed.
China is comparably successful with its investments in Africa because there is less contrast between economies, so real trade can flourish. But if that will be a success story is still in question.
Most of these countries are very poor and without any democratic experience.
Now China comes and provides an example of a country that managed breathtaking development without democracy.
> It is hubris to think that anything rises or falls by the form of governance
Good governance is crucial. Western democracy does not seem to.
> China is comparably successful with its investments in Africa
Well, Western countries do not invest in Africa. China is successful because they are willing to.
Strange though that it seems necessary to keep your people in the dark about some of the disadvantages.
Perhaps democracy is indeed not a prerequisite for economic growth, but that would be a pretty one sided perspective, no?
And yes, the growth was only possible because of strong democracies fiancing it. That should certainly not be left out of that equation, faulty as it may be.
It more about sensible governance and perhaps culture than democracy.
Are you sure that the demonopolization of the marketplace of public opinion isn't disturbing a small minority that in turn riles up the public? That is: are you sure that "the people" at large are worried about "populism", "propaganda" and "trolls", or are they merely worried because the media tells them that it's basically the end of the world as we know it?
China, on the other hand, is authoritarian government using safety as an excuse for government-based mass surveillance, most famously used for oppression of dissidents. Somehow, some people are buying this.
Is there informed consent for CCTV, or does it just happen when technology vendors end up working with politicians, the former caring only about selling their product, the latter caring about only getting re-elected?
My son's kickboard scooter was stolen last month, he left it parked less than 20 paces from the front entrance to his school, in a courtyard with only one way in and out.
There's no CCTV.
Despite the theft, I'm still against the use of CCTV, particularly around schools.
They're not powerless. They're certainly unwilling, and demonstrate an obvious active mindset _against_ democracies:
1. Nothing, nothing in Facebook' or Twitter' CEOs, PR deparments or boards demonstrate an inch of knowledge or understanding of what a democracy is.
2. On the other hand, their actions and their words clearly speak that they ought to make their (privately owned and controlled) platforms fundamental building and governance blocks for society.
I would see it as negative if opinions are removed for political reasons. And that is what I see advocated here.
In general, while democracy in the sense of having regular elections might be a bit overrated (as shown, e.g. by the failure to "export" it in places like Iraq!), basic freedom, openness and widespread awareness about the values of a "commercial society" (sometimes called "bourgeois values") are extremely important and the closest thing we know of to a recipe for successful development and enduring wealth.
This is a powerful manifestation of implied bias. This and the whole preceding sentence make it all seem weirdly propaganda-y. Like trying to say "no government will succeed forever" and yet also the doublethink that democracy is special, despite autocratic rule dominating human history. For example, consider the opposite and whether it sounds "normal":
> Autocracy isn't guaranteed to succeed, like any form of governance. Democratic regimes however are destined to fail at some point.
Edit: I am pro-democracy but have no delusions that it is free (as in beer), natural (as in humans will naturally tend towards it), nor easy (as in effort is required to maintain it). It's none of the above.
Additionally, democracies excel in freedom, wealth, safety and stability against any other form of government in today's world. And then some.
Let me take a guess: You are living in a first world country and you are a bit unsatisfied with your life?
If the answer is yes, I extracted that solely from bias. Helpful, isn't it?
I'm not sure what the line about "helpfulness" is talking about (bias or democracy), thanks to the ambiguities of the English language.
Democracy is competing interest groups. Just that they're supposed to compete nonviolently for the favour of public opinion.
Iraq should be a good lesson, though. Far too little effort has gone into understanding and explaining what was intended and how it failed, including what the weaknesses of good intent were. To me, it looks like the problem was trying to airdrop "democracy" consisting only of voting, without much thought given to parties, media, class structure, ethnic division, and economic crisis.
But making a statement about the viability of democracy because Iraq struggled to form a stable government is complete nonsense.
This could apply to a surprisingly large number of Western countries in the 20th century. Or the whole US "voter suppression" debate.
But the Roman empire lasted fifteen hundred years, while the republic only lasted five hundred -- as a classic example.
How do you weigh each one of those? What if a country is more transparent but also has more violence than another one?
Isn't that why we vote?
Not being able to define your interest can be due to lack of education, unwillingness to take part in the political process, etc.
Similarly, we've done a decent job of crushing political machines and corrupt unions... but a poor job of crushing the powerful business interests and anti-the-small-guy forces they (sometimes) effectively opposed. As a friend of mine put it, our system used to feature various kaiju fighting, all of them wrecking cities, but some of them doing so while trying to save us, some while trying to harm us. We eliminated all the kaiju that were working to save us (smashing a city block here and there and eating the occasional fire truck, sure) but didn't do anything about the ones trying to harm us, with predictable results.
Trust isn't everlasting, specially for a "person". I can put more of my trust in a "process" (e.g. democracy) and its continuous evolution towards betterment, than letting "someone else" make my decisions for me.
No, it's not.
But a democratic republic or representative democracy with republican form (as opposed to, e.g., a constitutional monarchy) is both a form of democracy and a form of republic.
There are autocratic and/or theocratic republics, among others, that are not forms of democracy.
I completely agree with your comment.
It's fascinating to sit in a third world country watching the developed world preach on and on about capitalism and democracy being the greatest thing since sliced bread, while on the news we get to see extremely violent protests in France, Brexit completely grinding the UK to a halt, the longest government shutdown in US history, Australia have 7 Prime Ministers in 10 years[1], fears of another giant economic collapse, etc. etc.
These are supposed to be the leaders of the free world, and for all intents and purposes they're dysfunctional.
From the outside looking in, Democracy hasn't turned out to be the "magic" solution it was marketed as.
This was never more true than when I was sitting with a bunch of locals watching the violent protests in DC when Trump was inaugurated. None of the locals could understand why there was violence, and kept asking me "But don't they have democracy there?" ... "Why are they being so violent"?"
[1] I like to say Australia has had more Coups can the Congo.
It's unwise to compare a country in which protests are allowed (and ingrained in the political culture) with countries that suppress them.
*Typed up on an America-based forum for startups, using a medium invented within America, on a device created, refined, and popularized inside of America.
At least not worse than the frightful recoil, abandoning ideals like free expression/speech, democracy and freedom. Equality still seems to be the holy cow even if it will collide with freedom at some point.
Stability can be convincing, but people in western nation do not have that excuse. Reading something on the net you don't like is no reason to abandon principles that any modern nation is based upon.
Democracy is the correct form of government, since it is the only form of governance that doesn't extract its legitimacy from power. Democracy requires emancipated voters. You cannot apply that to any third world country and suddenly things get better. It has to come from within a society.
There is also a secret to online mobs/trolls: ignore them and nothing happens. I also do not believe in the power of bots aside from faking ad reach. That would require an example of a talking point. This is why it was difficult to believe in far reaching Russian propaganda efforts: The message was lacking.
I do see the "hateful noise" of social media. If that matters to me is fully in my hands.
> their mere unfettered existence is enough to disturb people.
Mostly induced by false media reports.
In the first case, for example a roving band of stone-agers, say N = 30 with all males related and everybody knowing the leader. Which is good because whatever the political system, leadership entails consent of the led. But bad because the leader knows everyone so it's harder to act or think differently. Errors in understanding the world are firmly entrenched.
The second case might be for example a modern state of N = 100M, with IT. There are notional leaders but they are partly controlled by unseen oligarchs, possibly residents of other states. The bureaucracy and businesses collect and sell information about everybody. Voting, if it exists at all, generates little consent, since only a negligible fraction of people know the official leaders, let alone the oligarchs, let alone what sort of decisions will be consequently be made.
The ideal is therefore presumably where N is some fairly low multiple of Dunbar's Number. But even if we wanted to we don't have the technology or knowledge to implement this yet.
I've been noticing an edge case where a bunch of people sharing certain beliefs about how government should work manage to ruin one state with their belief but because they're fairly well off they can then flee to several other states and put them on the same path before the experimental results from the first state can be analyzed and published. Of course no raindrop feels responsible for the flood so nobody ever has to think about their personal impact on society.
All countries doing their own experiments, no wars, and people being free to travel across borders at any time, to live in and support the ideals they prefer.
You can make the exact same argument against 'states as laboratories'.
And this only works if people care about the results of the so-called experiments and use them to improve things. The GOP doesn't seem to care that trickle-down economics has never worked, and yet they still keep implementing it:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trickle-down_economics
Most recently Trump tax cuts and the Kansas experiment:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
See also education cuts (e.g., Oklahoma) and economic growth:
* https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/education... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Education_economics#Returns_on...
So, perhaps if we don't like what we see in China, it's time to start looking inward instead of pointing fingers.
Really. I feel there's a massive difference between agencies background lurking looking for signs of extremism to focus limited physical surveillance resources and a 'social credit score' where you ability to work a job, attend a school or catch a plane etc is based on a computer generated score on how the govt feels you should act from their surveillance.
While I'd agree that domestically, the West doesn't have China's direct illegalizing of dissent, for the sales of tech to other nations (Saudi Arabia or China itself), claims of Western superiority seem awfully stretched.
A common pattern in stories about people interned in "reeducation camps" in Xinjiang is that they spent some time abroad, e.g. in Kazakhstan, then returned to their hometown and were arrested as terrorist suspects.
E.g. https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=666287509
> 'social credit score' where you ability to work a job, attend a school or catch a plane etc is based on a computer generated score
Such a thing does not exist yet, and although it might become reality at some point, it's all speculation so far: https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/11/16/chinas-orwellian-social...
China's surveillance capabilities are pretty similar to the West, the greatest difference is in the way that information is used, since they aren't as worried about targeting innocent people.
An approach born out of fear and incapability of interpreting data related to "extremism" while simultaneously instilling paranoia in anyone.
The calculation around security is way off and created whole industries that want to keep it that way. This is the worst form of policy making in the last 50-70 years. And it has a solid head start.
So yes, it would be indeed wise to keep your criticism to yourself, because it should be considered improper.
The article basically says: "China is bad because it sells technology irresponsibly" (while implying the west does it responsibly)
yogthos points out that this is wrong, since there is ample evidence of the US and it's companies selling repressive technology to repressive regimes.
Then people start attacking his argument by saying "but IN CHINA it is worse". And there are a lot of these comments despite the fact that the article, nor the comment, are talking about 'where it's worse'.
If it was any other line of reasoning, this wouldn't be happening on hacker news.
That is my interpretation of yogthos' comment wasn't that there was ample evidence of the U.S. selling repressive technology to repressive regimes (FWIW indeed there is), but rather that it's rich for Western residents to criticize Chinese surveillance (within China) given that the West has essentially the same surveillance within its respective countries, just hidden a lot better. Hence there is no moral high ground for the West to stand on.
My own take is that I don't care about moral high ground or no moral high ground, nor am I even sure I'm criticizing the Chinese government per se. I do think the state of surveillance is a factor in China's current economic success (in fact that's one reason I find it rather terrifying from a personal perspective since that makes it attractive as a model to follow) and that's done wonders for a lot of people in China (though certainly not everyone).
I do think though that the situation is very different between the two areas (certainly at least China and the U.S.), to the degree that saying the two systems are essentially the same, just with different amounts of public acknowledgment from their respective governments, is glossing over too many important differences.
* Connecting to free WiFi at the airport? Need to provide ID.
* Want to set up a website? Need to apply for a license with the government and provide a local Chinese ID.
* Want to use Aliyun (the equivalent of AWS)? Need to provide ID.
I also suspect this information transmission is two-way. I am fairly certain private institutions in China have gotten my information from the government.
The U.S. has problems. Many problems. But the scary thing about China is it's way way out there, and most people seem fine with it. The Overton Window is leaps and bounds ahead of the U.S. A vending machine is asking for your personal information to buy a soda (because all transactions are done through cellphone and they request permission from Alipay before you can pay)? Why not. I really want the soda (real example). No one bats an eye.
And from an economic perspective it works! People like it; China's growing. And wow it makes things convenient for all parties involved (apart from annoying problems when first registering)! This makes other countries sit up and take notice and maybe think about adapting it for themselves.
How was that before widespread digitalization, how much privacy is/was ingrained in chinese culture? I'm asking because I had this "worlds apart" feeling recently as well when I googled my swedish uncle's address to see whether I had it formatted correctly. One click later and I was looking at his income, how many cars are registered to him & his family, what make and model they are etc.
I'd love to know how you use AWS or paypal services anonymously.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-dutch-surveillance-kings-o...
I'm not entirely sure why this is. Perhaps it's general wealth/comfort, or perhaps a history of, at best, amoral profit-seeking.
Or maybe I'm just seeing things. But in general my experience has been that the kinds of people that I would expect to be activists are much less so over here than in, say, Germany or France or Spain.
At least the Dutch stayed independant during the first world war, while entire generations were slaughtered on the battlefield from other nations. For what? Economic reasons.
No, we're meek activists for simpler reasons. Our population density is high, so we needed to build on a culture of tolerance and acceptance. We are constantly battling a common enemy: water from the seas and the rivers. This required understanding, cooperation and negotiation. We are a country with diverse religious and ethnic backgrounds, which also requires a certain level of cooperation instead of activism.
And yet, I think we are actually quite high on the political activism ladder, but not on the militant activism. Hurting our neighbours entails hurting ourselves, so we prefer talking over destroying.
No, I've always been befuddled by how both the Dutch and Belgian have basically had their colonial reigns of terror handwaved away.
It's likely that neither nation really acknowledges it or has anyone agitating internally for the nation to own up to it. So like you said, they're rich and a bit amoral.
Private military forces are going to become a lot more common.
Obviously there's trade-offs but it seems like having privately security instead of cops would be an end run around most of the things that are bad about modern policing.
[0] https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/travel/tsa-screening-partner...
Look at companies like G4S in the UK or Blackwater (or whatever their new name is) for private security horror stories.
I'm sure other countries have even worse tales.
They run prisons, young offenders institutions and offer private security etc.
They are not known for good behaviour though.
They are known for cost-cutting, hiring people with questionable qualifications and experience, sexual assaults on minors and covering up evidence of their own incompetence and malice.
That's what I think of when people suggest privatising law enforcement and military. Greed, malice and power-mongering.
A genuine dystopia, because I don't have the same faith that you do that a profit motive will be anything other than destructive in these spheres.
> But I can sleep away from my neighbors
Then you're no longer their neighbor.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticism
The chinese police can stop an Uighur person on the streets and make sure he has the government mandated software installed on his phone.
So,yes....exactly like the US/UK..
I strongly suspect the generation of equipment installed in Ecuador misses the more recent and far more ominous AI/ML force multiplier effect of surveillance technology.
Mass customised surveillance price/performance is making an Orwellian/Stasi state a reality.
In terms of authoritarianism versus democracy my thoughts are:
Votes can’t be eaten Votes can’t shelter you Votes can’t employ you Votes can’t educate your children Votes can’t ensure a better quality of life for you children
Votes don’t equate to trust
I strongly prefer living under democracy than authoritarianism.
But if there was a hypothetical binary choice between:
Corrupt democratic government
And
Net Promoter Score responsive authoritarian government
I believe the needle will be shifting away from the former and towards the latter.
Perhaps the perception of democracy as a luxury with a questionable value proposition to many is one that should be better considered?
Do we want/need Government as a Service/Subscription?
Any form of violation of privacy or rights and anyone who does it should be held accountable. Just don't pick and choose to suit your bias.
Poor George. He'll get a statue as the "godfather of our peaceful watchful state" and not for warning us.
George Orwell worked as a propagandist for the BBC during ww2.
"I was wasting my own time and the public money on doing work that produces no result. I believe that in the present political situation the broadcasting of British propaganda to India is an almost hopeless task."
https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-orwell-sta...
Orwell based the Ministry of Truth and Room 101 on the BBC. And yet the BBC is building a statue for Orwell for his work as a "journalist" at the BBC. What an insane world we live in. The BBC is co-opting Orwell to burnish their own reputation, even though Orwell criticized and warned us about the BBC. You have to respect the hubris even if you disagree with the misrepresentation.
should and will happen in most countries.
> CCTV
too many people per sq km to proper police.
The West invented technologically enabled surveillance. The Stasi in Germany - for example - developed a records and accounting system and would use home telephony equipment to spy on dissidents. As of the 70s and 80s the United States NSA has backdoored much of the modern global communications systems - and has build these systems to scale intelligence into actionable intelligence for partner enforcement organizations (CIA/FBI/etc). At a municipal scale, the United States is networked with threat scoring systems, camera networks with facial recognition, ISMI interceptors (with continuous passive collections events over all major cities), data fusion centers between policing and data networks, requirements to data holding companies to compel data access, and much more - these systems were build several decades ago but are constantly being updated.
China was struggling through these decades to reestablish itself, and has only recently copied modern Western systems of surveillance.
I don't really have teeth in that game though. I realize this is a political topic ("blame"). The fact that the West employs a sophisticated and pervasive surveillance state should not restrict us from criticizing Eastern implementations of the same gross mal-application of technology. And the fact is that who "invented" it is a bit of a non-starter, as state surveillance existed thousands of years ago in rudimentary forms that have evolved independently between states - and the application of modern technology is just one aspect of historical picture.
Of course the surveillance situation in the United States goes much further, with state intelligence agencies actively "engaged" with the public so that public perception can be shaped. The NSA calls this combination of surveillance and engagement "active listening". I don't know whether China has learned from this yet (such topics are hard to research) but it wouldn't surprise me.
And that's why we made an autonomous, cloud-less video security assistant. We should probably do a Show HN at some point!
It’s time to understand the implications of a govt sanctioned whitelist of information.
Surveillance which is a big deal to mature western culture, might not incur broad critical thinking in China because it might fall into this flexibility domain that most people won’t give it a second thought. People will actually try to adapt and workaround first.
Sadly this peculiar culture IMHO is great fit for an authoritarian system and a long way to go for democratic system to work for it
Lol, if you down vote me fast enough, what i said might not be true,
Germany finds itself in great company... With a more sane migration politic this shouldn't have been necessary? Not so long ago there was a time where e.g. Christmas Fairs in Berlin didn't need a fortress built around.