7 ms·

I agree with the author wholeheartedly, except for the mathematical analysis at the end. I believe one of the existential threats to our country is becoming a

by blennon 11y ago

I agree with the author wholeheartedly, except for the mathematical analysis at the end. I believe one of the existential threats to our country is becoming a dictatorship. I'm always shocked when I share this point of view with people around me and their reaction is basically, "that's so unlikely it's not worth worrying about". There are many examples of this throughout history, e.g. the Roman Republic, the Weimar Republic, those that the author cites, etc. We should not be so arrogant to think that we are somehow exceptional and immune to this. My personal belief is that there are certain constants in the dynamics of human nature, and one of them is seek power. Broad, unchecked domestic surveillance is a dangerous tool to give to a potential dictator. We should not set up a framework where a power-seeking individual can circumvent our democracy through coercion.

Zigurd 11y ago
There are some who make a compelling case that representation of the people has been nerfed already, and we're in a dictatorship of the deep state. If that's true it is inevitable that "security" will be defined in terms of the continuity of control of the deep state.
slg 11y ago
Can we really use the Roman empire as a predictor for the Unites States? I like to think some things have changed with the world in the last millennia and a half. Maybe I am missing something obvious, but I can't think of any recent examples of a mature democracy that succumbed to a dictatorship without being manipulated by a stronger foreign power. Do you have any examples?
- Create 11y ago
  http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1020_ageofempire/index.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1020_ageofempire/... We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world. This should not actually be a complicated inquiry. https://archive.org/details/EbenMoglen-WhyFreedomOfThoughtRequiresFreeMediaAndWhyFreeMedia https://archive.org/details/EbenMoglen-WhyFreedomOfThoughtRe... Surveillance is not an end toward totalitarianism, it is totalitarianism itself.
  - XorNot 11y ago
    Said as only a clueless American can. There are people alive today, in the startup founders age bracket, who lived under Soviet-style communism and escaped it. Get a grip.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  > without being manipulated by a stronger foreign power That's what always happened and will be happening as long as there's more than one nation state. Moreover, the difference today is that we've created multinational corporations, which are basically like nation states, except they're not tied to the land and they can't raise an army openly.
- marcoperaza 11y ago
  This whole concept of "mature democracy", like "developed country", especially the implied transcendence and permanence, is just our own historical ego. It's really only been a thing for the last century or so, maybe a bit longer for the US and UK. This is but a brief flash of light in a history of darkness for freedom. Like Ben Franklin said, we have "a republic, if you can keep it". Despite all of our technology, the human condition is fundamentally unchanged. We are subject to the same forces that felled Athens and Rome, and the same forces that made them great.
- brookside 11y ago
  Hundreds of more recent examples. You've made the criteria rather narrow, but Germany and Cambodia are two scary examples of how the power dynamic in a country can change in a flash. There is a real chance of Donald Trump or similar taking power in the white house. "Mature" or not, every democracy is a despot away from crumbling.
- blennon 11y ago
  No! Humanity has not fundamentally changed. We are still made of flesh and blood, we still have the same cognitive biases, we are still fighting religious wars, we still feel jealously, greed, fear and yearn for power. In that sense, nothing has changed. The only shot we have is learning from history.
sf_rob 11y ago
>Broad, unchecked domestic surveillance is a dangerous tool to give to a potential dictator. We should not set up a framework where a power-seeking individual can circumvent our democracy through coercion. I really like the term that I heard for this: "Turnkey Dictatorship".
- imglorp 11y ago
  Actually, it's going to be a global totalitarian oligarchy. The international agreements for trade, defense, and surveillance cooperation are intersecting with the interests of their respective oligarchies and corporations. Just ten years ago, who would have thought we'd be extraditing and jailing someone for copyright infringement? How about governments subverting civilian infosec and sharing the exploits? It makes going to war for plain old oil rights and defense profiteering seem quaint.
rdtsc 11y ago
> our country is becoming a dictatorship. Our country will never become a dictatorship, and our country is already a dictatorship. To be more precise it is an oligarchy or what was that word... plutocracy? Anyone has a link to that paper? It is basically ruled by the very few powerful interests. There are multiple methods of how it is done: One of the most effective is regulatory capture -- look at heads of FCC, FDA, USDA, Military and corresponding industries: communications, pharma, military industrial complex companies. There is a giant revolving door between them. Senators and legislature in general (state and federal) can be easily bought as well. Judicial can be subverted as well. This happens easier on the state level were judges are elected. I found "Hot Coffee" movie pretty interesting and accessible in understanding how the process works: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1445203/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1445203/ Election campaigns are basically a big theater where future political favors are sold for campaign funds. And finally the PR involved in polarizing the population and manipulating their opinions. On paper the country will never be a dictatorship so this just means spending extra on manipulating public opinion. Bush did a good job mobilizing Evangelical voters. Obama capitalized on liberal votes and sold a story of hope, change, plus added the racial card in there as well. It really was a very well run campaign, not unlike what Coke or Pepsi would have. This is not just a random internet person talking, AdAge -- one of the main marketing interest groups gave Obama an award in 2008 http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-marketer-year/131810/ http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-market... for the best marketing campaign. Other usual winners are Coke, Nike, Apple. The other thing that helps out is that various segments of the population, which would benefit from having a unified voice and position, are divided. It happens naturally in society, but it is of course helped a bit by media: Fox News vs liberal news etc. The division lines are multiple: conservative vs liberal; racial: Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, immigrants; regional: North, South, East vs West; by religion: non-religious, vs Christians vs whatever. It is a bit like the sports fans, the hate the other fans, but in fact they are closer to the other fans in terms of interests, income status, and general life outlook, than they are they with the players they are rooting for, who could be all driving sports cars, and hang out in exclusive expensive downtown bars together. So minus some PR juggling and the need for some extra rhetoric about "Freedom, democracy, and exceptionalism, mixed with a bit of God and manifest destiny" you are not too far off treating the country like a well run dictatorship.
btilly 11y ago
I deliberately made my analysis overly conservative because I didn't want to come off as a paranoid nut. I could have easily come to much higher figures. Here is an example. Let's suppose that we're observing the USA at a random point in its history. Then there is a 10% chance that we're looking at it within the last 10% of its history. The USA turns 240 this year, so that means that there is a 10% chance of it collapsing in the next 24 years. That figure is much, much higher than the 1% odds I used of collapse in the next 30 years. It is also likely to be more realistic. "Stable governments" survive in periods measured in centuries, not millennia. However that number is so high that it would have left me more easily dismissed as a paranoid nut, so I avoided it. History demonstrates that humans tend to over-estimate the stability of whatever exists now. And are surprised when the present turns out not to be permanent. You should try to compensate for such perceptual biases when you find them in yourself. And should try not to trip such biases in others.
- moheeb 11y ago
  Can you explain the math as to how you know there is a 10% chance that we're seeing the US in the last 10% of its history? I don't understand that part.
  - charrisku 11y ago
    He's saying that if you looked at the whole history of the US and divided that into 10 equal parts, then there would be a 10% chance of any random observation falling into the last part. Hence, all else equal, we have a 10% chance that we are looking at the US in the last 10% of it's history.
    - hamburglar 11y ago
      This would imply that there is also a 10% chance we are currently looking at the first 10% of the country's existence, which means you have confidently calculated the odds of the USA lasting at least 2350 years at 10% based on absolutely nothing. These probabilities are nonsense.
  - 11y ago
cmurf 11y ago
Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10885465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10885465

by blennon 11y ago

Zigurd 11y ago

There are some who make a compelling case that representation of the people has been nerfed already, and we're in a dictatorship of the deep state. If that's true it is inevitable that "security" will be defined in terms of the continuity of control of the deep state.

slg 11y ago

Can we really use the Roman empire as a predictor for the Unites States? I like to think some things have changed with the world in the last millennia and a half. Maybe I am missing something obvious, but I can't think of any recent examples of a mature democracy that succumbed to a dictatorship without being manipulated by a stronger foreign power. Do you have any examples?

Create 11y ago
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1020_ageofempire/index.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1020_ageofempire/... We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world. This should not actually be a complicated inquiry. https://archive.org/details/EbenMoglen-WhyFreedomOfThoughtRequiresFreeMediaAndWhyFreeMedia https://archive.org/details/EbenMoglen-WhyFreedomOfThoughtRe... Surveillance is not an end toward totalitarianism, it is totalitarianism itself.
- XorNot 11y ago
  Said as only a clueless American can. There are people alive today, in the startup founders age bracket, who lived under Soviet-style communism and escaped it. Get a grip.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
> without being manipulated by a stronger foreign power That's what always happened and will be happening as long as there's more than one nation state. Moreover, the difference today is that we've created multinational corporations, which are basically like nation states, except they're not tied to the land and they can't raise an army openly.
marcoperaza 11y ago
This whole concept of "mature democracy", like "developed country", especially the implied transcendence and permanence, is just our own historical ego. It's really only been a thing for the last century or so, maybe a bit longer for the US and UK. This is but a brief flash of light in a history of darkness for freedom. Like Ben Franklin said, we have "a republic, if you can keep it". Despite all of our technology, the human condition is fundamentally unchanged. We are subject to the same forces that felled Athens and Rome, and the same forces that made them great.
brookside 11y ago
Hundreds of more recent examples. You've made the criteria rather narrow, but Germany and Cambodia are two scary examples of how the power dynamic in a country can change in a flash. There is a real chance of Donald Trump or similar taking power in the white house. "Mature" or not, every democracy is a despot away from crumbling.
blennon 11y ago
No! Humanity has not fundamentally changed. We are still made of flesh and blood, we still have the same cognitive biases, we are still fighting religious wars, we still feel jealously, greed, fear and yearn for power. In that sense, nothing has changed. The only shot we have is learning from history.

sf_rob 11y ago

>Broad, unchecked domestic surveillance is a dangerous tool to give to a potential dictator. We should not set up a framework where a power-seeking individual can circumvent our democracy through coercion. I really like the term that I heard for this: "Turnkey Dictatorship".

imglorp 11y ago
Actually, it's going to be a global totalitarian oligarchy. The international agreements for trade, defense, and surveillance cooperation are intersecting with the interests of their respective oligarchies and corporations. Just ten years ago, who would have thought we'd be extraditing and jailing someone for copyright infringement? How about governments subverting civilian infosec and sharing the exploits? It makes going to war for plain old oil rights and defense profiteering seem quaint.

rdtsc 11y ago

> our country is becoming a dictatorship. Our country will never become a dictatorship, and our country is already a dictatorship. To be more precise it is an oligarchy or what was that word... plutocracy? Anyone has a link to that paper? It is basically ruled by the very few powerful interests. There are multiple methods of how it is done: One of the most effective is regulatory capture -- look at heads of FCC, FDA, USDA, Military and corresponding industries: communications, pharma, military industrial complex companies. There is a giant revolving door between them. Senators and legislature in general (state and federal) can be easily bought as well. Judicial can be subverted as well. This happens easier on the state level were judges are elected. I found "Hot Coffee" movie pretty interesting and accessible in understanding how the process works: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1445203/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1445203/ Election campaigns are basically a big theater where future political favors are sold for campaign funds. And finally the PR involved in polarizing the population and manipulating their opinions. On paper the country will never be a dictatorship so this just means spending extra on manipulating public opinion. Bush did a good job mobilizing Evangelical voters. Obama capitalized on liberal votes and sold a story of hope, change, plus added the racial card in there as well. It really was a very well run campaign, not unlike what Coke or Pepsi would have. This is not just a random internet person talking, AdAge -- one of the main marketing interest groups gave Obama an award in 2008 http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-marketer-year/131810/ http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-market... for the best marketing campaign. Other usual winners are Coke, Nike, Apple. The other thing that helps out is that various segments of the population, which would benefit from having a unified voice and position, are divided. It happens naturally in society, but it is of course helped a bit by media: Fox News vs liberal news etc. The division lines are multiple: conservative vs liberal; racial: Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, immigrants; regional: North, South, East vs West; by religion: non-religious, vs Christians vs whatever. It is a bit like the sports fans, the hate the other fans, but in fact they are closer to the other fans in terms of interests, income status, and general life outlook, than they are they with the players they are rooting for, who could be all driving sports cars, and hang out in exclusive expensive downtown bars together. So minus some PR juggling and the need for some extra rhetoric about "Freedom, democracy, and exceptionalism, mixed with a bit of God and manifest destiny" you are not too far off treating the country like a well run dictatorship.

btilly 11y ago

I deliberately made my analysis overly conservative because I didn't want to come off as a paranoid nut. I could have easily come to much higher figures. Here is an example. Let's suppose that we're observing the USA at a random point in its history. Then there is a 10% chance that we're looking at it within the last 10% of its history. The USA turns 240 this year, so that means that there is a 10% chance of it collapsing in the next 24 years. That figure is much, much higher than the 1% odds I used of collapse in the next 30 years. It is also likely to be more realistic. "Stable governments" survive in periods measured in centuries, not millennia. However that number is so high that it would have left me more easily dismissed as a paranoid nut, so I avoided it. History demonstrates that humans tend to over-estimate the stability of whatever exists now. And are surprised when the present turns out not to be permanent. You should try to compensate for such perceptual biases when you find them in yourself. And should try not to trip such biases in others.

moheeb 11y ago
Can you explain the math as to how you know there is a 10% chance that we're seeing the US in the last 10% of its history? I don't understand that part.
- charrisku 11y ago
  He's saying that if you looked at the whole history of the US and divided that into 10 equal parts, then there would be a 10% chance of any random observation falling into the last part. Hence, all else equal, we have a 10% chance that we are looking at the US in the last 10% of it's history.
  - hamburglar 11y ago
    This would imply that there is also a 10% chance we are currently looking at the first 10% of the country's existence, which means you have confidently calculated the odds of the USA lasting at least 2350 years at 10% based on absolutely nothing. These probabilities are nonsense.
- 11y ago

cmurf 11y ago

Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10885465 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10885465