8 ms·

This all boils down to the question of how to reign in the administrative state, and the problem here is that no one really wants to reign it in, they want to c

by rsj_hn 5y ago

This all boils down to the question of how to reign in the administrative state, and the problem here is that no one really wants to reign it in, they want to control it and point it in the direction they prefer, that is, they want an extra-judicial, extra-legislative source of power to exist, but just not do any of the things they don't like. But I don't think this is possible, once you have an administrative state, of course it's going to monitor and spy on everyone, it's going to arrest people and not give them fair trials (hello Assange), it's going to try to manipulate democratic processes and it's going to crush any force that it perceives as a threat to its own survival. In short, it will have a mind of its own, with its own goals, and by definition it will not be bound by legislative or judicial restraints.

sneak 5y ago
Do you think it would be fair to say that countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies? I have my own thoughts on the matter but I'm curious based on this assessment of yours what other people think about the implications of the situation.
- samcal 5y ago
  I think it's probably most accurate to say that there are democracies of different sizes. Your country is a more of democracy as more people have equal agency over their government. This obviously has never happened to a complete extent, and it's still an open question whether that should happen. But a discrete separation between "democracies" and "not democracies" will run into these sorts of problems in any case.
- noja 5y ago
  > Do you think it would be fair to say that countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies? Such an agency operating outside of the visibility of those voting is by definition not democratic. But that doesn't mean the rest of the democracy isn't there.
  - sneak 5y ago
    Just because the rest of the democracy is there doesn't mean the country is actually a democracy though, if the machinery of democracy exists but can't control and regulate the totality of the state.
  - drran 5y ago
    IMHO, people prefer "trust, but check" over "blind trust". You can cast a referendum, if you are unsure. Hitler was elected in a democratic way, so it's possible that your democratic ally can turn into a totalitarian enemy at a next election. Also, it is easier to check for Russian spies in a government from outside, than from inside. For example, soviet agent in Germany government, called "D-104" in memories of Yurii Drozdov, is still not found. I suspect Schröder, which works for Russian Gasprom now, but he may leave a replacement agent, to work after him. (Merkel?)
- bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I think it would be fair to say that any Democracy past a certain size (and that size is probably not going to be much bigger than a medium sized city) is going to have parts of it that will not be exposed to public scrutiny and operate independently of the public will. I'm pretty sure the majority of Danes would be against helping the U.S spy on other EU nations. But it was done because the country was not asked. There are of course other things that the government wants to do that they are prevented from by popular sentiment. Both Autocracy and Democracy are present in any system, their distribution just changes due to circumstances.
  - visualradio 5y ago
    Any state which enforces private land tenure in a non-reciprocated manner will tend towards autocracy over time. A distinguishing feature of high functioning republics is the ability to organize reliable public assessments of direct taxes on landed property within their borders. Under corrupt governments the assessments are never kept up to date and the nobility is given arbitrary and excessive privileges and exemptions to shift direct contributions to the least advantaged members of society. Maybe 50% of local governments and 20% of regional states in the U.S. are high functioning. The federal government was able to organize assessments in 1798, 1813-1816, and 1861 but is generally not high functioning.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- KMag 5y ago
  I think any moderately sized nation state quickly develops an inner state with autocratic tendencies. Democracy combined with a healthy press and strong protections on free speech are a strong check on the domestic powers of this inner state, but are much less effective in curbing the autocratic inner state overseas. The nation state hasn't ceased to be democratic, but its internal autocratic state is running amuck overseas.
- mlang23 5y ago
  Democracy is a lie which was constructed to pacify the people. If you think you have some control, you feel more free and superior to others.
  - Cybotron5000 5y ago
    The word democracy derives from the Greek words for ‘People’ - ‘Demos’ and ‘Power’ - ‘-cracy’. So, literally: ‘people power’ or ‘power of/to or government of the people by the people’. Originally, very roughly speaking, it was an alternative form of government to being ruled by tyrants. If you are seriously disparaging one of the many forms in which human beings have tried to implement some form of democracy, arguably all of which have some flaws, and not just shilling for some authoritarian interest or other (or your own, possibly benighted, or imagined self-interest?), then you need to be more specific. (P.S. Churchill had some useful thoughts on the matter :)
    - Telemakhos 5y ago
      The Greek concept of democracy looked nothing like the modern republic. A Greek democracy did not elect legislators: that function belonged to the people assembled as a whole. Nor did it elect ordinary magistrates, who were instead selected by random lot from lists of willing volunteers in a process now called "sortition." The rationale behind sortition relied on the notion that the ordinary business of government was mundane and required no special competence or knowledge aside from the ordinary citizen's share of justice and patriotism. The ancient Greek democracy elected only ambassadors and generals, people in whom authority needed to be concentrated and yet who also had to be competent rather than simply willing. There was an ancient form of government in between tyranny and democracy: oligarchy. In an oligarchy, a few people were selected to make decisions for the rest. There were in different cities various methods of selecting the oligarchs, but popular election was certainly among them. The downside to regularly scheduled, popular elections, in contrast to the random chance of democratic sortition, was that the expectation of elections generated political parties or factions to attempt to influence or control the outcome of the popular election and thus control the oligarchy. This was, of course, impossible in a democracy, since no election was held: sortition makes partisan politics pointless. In short, the reason that the word "democracy" is never found in the American Constitution is that America was never intended to be a democracy in the ancient sense, the only sense in which the Founders understood the term. The modern "democracy" of an elected legislature and elected magistrates is, in fact, what the Greeks would have termed an oligarchy.
- heresie-dabord 5y ago
  > countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies? Such countries do not extend democratic values to ~other countries~. In fact, they may actively erode democracy in other countries. If the power structure of a country no longer extends democratic values to other countries, the power structure ~may~ no longer understand democratic principles and have deep problems within its own nation as a result.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
estomagordo 5y ago
Missing a few steps between "having an administrative state" and "spy on everyone" there, buddy.
- qeternity 5y ago
  Sure, but history has shown that the former almost universally leads to the latter…so the intermediate steps are somewhat irrelevant. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Has always been this way.
- tgv 5y ago
  Organisations creep until they are stopped when left untended. They can stop growing because of money shortage, political decisions, lack of manpower, pressure from stakeholders, etc., but there's a strong tendency in all organisations to grow and expand influence. There's no reason why this should not hold for spying and policing agencies. It's not inevitable, but there certainly is a non-negligible probability.
  - niksakl 5y ago
    >There's no reason why this should not hold for spying and policing agencies Isn't that what democracies call "constitution"? Something that protects citizens' rights again wrong-doing of powerful entities including legislators and the state itself?
    - amcoastal 5y ago
      And how's thats working out so far?
      - buran77 5y ago
        Democracy is the best we have for the people. But while the theory is sound, the practical implementation is usually flawed. The people are "in power" just for that day while they're giving their blessing to their representative. After this, as long as things aren't too abrupt and disadvantage the regular person obviously enough to trigger a violent response, that representative can pretty much represent and defend any other point of view. Usually the one from the otherwise equal but not quite equal, much richer person. And with education being on the bottom of everyone's list, it just gets easier to cover these things up. For things that concern interests far from home it's even easier. Freedom also means you're free to pump as much one sided information as possible. So as long as one can flood the people with Middle Eastern terrorism, Russian hackers, or Chinese human rights abuses, who's going to care about the home team doing the same even at home? Superficially democracy is alive and well but it's like religion, most people observe it only in theory and when it matters to them personally. And when it does matter to them, it doesn't matter to enough other people. Which is why most talking points don't have a strong majority, and they're mostly dealt in a compromising way, which makes everyone equally unhappy (except a very few).
lucian1900 5y ago
It’s not some independent entity, it serves industrial and mafia interests.
dundarious 5y ago
Private institutions are even less accountable. I don’t see an alternative for advanced civilization right now.
- titzer 5y ago
  Every organization needs mechanisms to root out corruption, not just hope and prayers. Transparency, accountability, rule of law are just the start. You need to design checks and balances, internal policing mechanisms, accounting for every dollar, processes to eliminate conflicts of interest, self-dealing, cronyism, etc. Sadly, it seems that these institutions are prone to a kind of rot that means you can't just set them up once and forget. You need constant vigilance against these institutions corrupting themselves. Vigilance requires attention, not just from officials, but from journalists, media, the public. We're all so damn distracted that things are now rotting faster than ever.
  - bobthepanda 5y ago
    It also doesn’t help that newsrooms have been totally gutted by the loss of advertising revenues. This is particularly acute at the local level, where traditionally you had local newspaper staff at meetings for local councils, but these have largely disappeared in a lot of places.
- meroes 5y ago
  I've wondered if the future posed in the last story in I, Robot gives a taste of an alternative. I've felt like Asimov tried to explore similar ideas. Four "supercomputers" are so advanced and powerful that countries which don't utilize them would become left in the dust. The technology is so advanced it enforces a new paradigm - play by the new rules or die out. Is there some (non-disastrous) technological (or cultural?) development that will upend all traditional power structures in a similar way? The robots in Asimov's story are basically uncorruptable. The closest modern example I can think of is encryption + bitcoin. But governments while they can't break encryption can go after exchanges and enact harsh legal penalties thereby extending traditional power structures. Would a neuralink+pocket AI get you out of any situation, even a government coming after you? Would personal faster-than-light ships allow everyone to escape to their own worlds? The fact that these examples are so fanciful shows how entrenched power is I'd say. But maybe some single advancement will provide a new modality, or a continual buildup of decentralized tech like torrents, crypto, blockchain, encryption, and cheap computing power. And as far as cultural changes, maybe that was one purpose of ancient gods. To posit a supernatural power that can destroy any man-made power. But religion also seems to entrench worldly power on the flip-side. (sorry for the semi off-topic)
arthur_sav 5y ago
> of course it's going to monitor and spy on everyone Um... no. Why "of course".

by rsj_hn 5y ago

sneak 5y ago

Do you think it would be fair to say that countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies? I have my own thoughts on the matter but I'm curious based on this assessment of yours what other people think about the implications of the situation.

samcal 5y ago
I think it's probably most accurate to say that there are democracies of different sizes. Your country is a more of democracy as more people have equal agency over their government. This obviously has never happened to a complete extent, and it's still an open question whether that should happen. But a discrete separation between "democracies" and "not democracies" will run into these sorts of problems in any case.
noja 5y ago
> Do you think it would be fair to say that countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies? Such an agency operating outside of the visibility of those voting is by definition not democratic. But that doesn't mean the rest of the democracy isn't there.
- sneak 5y ago
  Just because the rest of the democracy is there doesn't mean the country is actually a democracy though, if the machinery of democracy exists but can't control and regulate the totality of the state.
- drran 5y ago
  IMHO, people prefer "trust, but check" over "blind trust". You can cast a referendum, if you are unsure. Hitler was elected in a democratic way, so it's possible that your democratic ally can turn into a totalitarian enemy at a next election. Also, it is easier to check for Russian spies in a government from outside, than from inside. For example, soviet agent in Germany government, called "D-104" in memories of Yurii Drozdov, is still not found. I suspect Schröder, which works for Russian Gasprom now, but he may leave a replacement agent, to work after him. (Merkel?)
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
I think it would be fair to say that any Democracy past a certain size (and that size is probably not going to be much bigger than a medium sized city) is going to have parts of it that will not be exposed to public scrutiny and operate independently of the public will. I'm pretty sure the majority of Danes would be against helping the U.S spy on other EU nations. But it was done because the country was not asked. There are of course other things that the government wants to do that they are prevented from by popular sentiment. Both Autocracy and Democracy are present in any system, their distribution just changes due to circumstances.
- visualradio 5y ago
  Any state which enforces private land tenure in a non-reciprocated manner will tend towards autocracy over time. A distinguishing feature of high functioning republics is the ability to organize reliable public assessments of direct taxes on landed property within their borders. Under corrupt governments the assessments are never kept up to date and the nobility is given arbitrary and excessive privileges and exemptions to shift direct contributions to the least advantaged members of society. Maybe 50% of local governments and 20% of regional states in the U.S. are high functioning. The federal government was able to organize assessments in 1798, 1813-1816, and 1861 but is generally not high functioning.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
KMag 5y ago
I think any moderately sized nation state quickly develops an inner state with autocratic tendencies. Democracy combined with a healthy press and strong protections on free speech are a strong check on the domestic powers of this inner state, but are much less effective in curbing the autocratic inner state overseas. The nation state hasn't ceased to be democratic, but its internal autocratic state is running amuck overseas.
mlang23 5y ago
Democracy is a lie which was constructed to pacify the people. If you think you have some control, you feel more free and superior to others.
- Cybotron5000 5y ago
  The word democracy derives from the Greek words for ‘People’ - ‘Demos’ and ‘Power’ - ‘-cracy’. So, literally: ‘people power’ or ‘power of/to or government of the people by the people’. Originally, very roughly speaking, it was an alternative form of government to being ruled by tyrants. If you are seriously disparaging one of the many forms in which human beings have tried to implement some form of democracy, arguably all of which have some flaws, and not just shilling for some authoritarian interest or other (or your own, possibly benighted, or imagined self-interest?), then you need to be more specific. (P.S. Churchill had some useful thoughts on the matter :)
  - Telemakhos 5y ago
    The Greek concept of democracy looked nothing like the modern republic. A Greek democracy did not elect legislators: that function belonged to the people assembled as a whole. Nor did it elect ordinary magistrates, who were instead selected by random lot from lists of willing volunteers in a process now called "sortition." The rationale behind sortition relied on the notion that the ordinary business of government was mundane and required no special competence or knowledge aside from the ordinary citizen's share of justice and patriotism. The ancient Greek democracy elected only ambassadors and generals, people in whom authority needed to be concentrated and yet who also had to be competent rather than simply willing. There was an ancient form of government in between tyranny and democracy: oligarchy. In an oligarchy, a few people were selected to make decisions for the rest. There were in different cities various methods of selecting the oligarchs, but popular election was certainly among them. The downside to regularly scheduled, popular elections, in contrast to the random chance of democratic sortition, was that the expectation of elections generated political parties or factions to attempt to influence or control the outcome of the popular election and thus control the oligarchy. This was, of course, impossible in a democracy, since no election was held: sortition makes partisan politics pointless. In short, the reason that the word "democracy" is never found in the American Constitution is that America was never intended to be a democracy in the ancient sense, the only sense in which the Founders understood the term. The modern "democracy" of an elected legislature and elected magistrates is, in fact, what the Greeks would have termed an oligarchy.
heresie-dabord 5y ago
> countries that operate in this way are no longer democracies? Such countries do not extend democratic values to ~other countries~. In fact, they may actively erode democracy in other countries. If the power structure of a country no longer extends democratic values to other countries, the power structure ~may~ no longer understand democratic principles and have deep problems within its own nation as a result.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

estomagordo 5y ago

Missing a few steps between "having an administrative state" and "spy on everyone" there, buddy.

qeternity 5y ago
Sure, but history has shown that the former almost universally leads to the latter…so the intermediate steps are somewhat irrelevant. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Has always been this way.
tgv 5y ago
Organisations creep until they are stopped when left untended. They can stop growing because of money shortage, political decisions, lack of manpower, pressure from stakeholders, etc., but there's a strong tendency in all organisations to grow and expand influence. There's no reason why this should not hold for spying and policing agencies. It's not inevitable, but there certainly is a non-negligible probability.
- niksakl 5y ago
  >There's no reason why this should not hold for spying and policing agencies Isn't that what democracies call "constitution"? Something that protects citizens' rights again wrong-doing of powerful entities including legislators and the state itself?
  - amcoastal 5y ago
    And how's thats working out so far?
    - buran77 5y ago
      Democracy is the best we have for the people. But while the theory is sound, the practical implementation is usually flawed. The people are "in power" just for that day while they're giving their blessing to their representative. After this, as long as things aren't too abrupt and disadvantage the regular person obviously enough to trigger a violent response, that representative can pretty much represent and defend any other point of view. Usually the one from the otherwise equal but not quite equal, much richer person. And with education being on the bottom of everyone's list, it just gets easier to cover these things up. For things that concern interests far from home it's even easier. Freedom also means you're free to pump as much one sided information as possible. So as long as one can flood the people with Middle Eastern terrorism, Russian hackers, or Chinese human rights abuses, who's going to care about the home team doing the same even at home? Superficially democracy is alive and well but it's like religion, most people observe it only in theory and when it matters to them personally. And when it does matter to them, it doesn't matter to enough other people. Which is why most talking points don't have a strong majority, and they're mostly dealt in a compromising way, which makes everyone equally unhappy (except a very few).

lucian1900 5y ago

It’s not some independent entity, it serves industrial and mafia interests.

dundarious 5y ago

Private institutions are even less accountable. I don’t see an alternative for advanced civilization right now.

titzer 5y ago
Every organization needs mechanisms to root out corruption, not just hope and prayers. Transparency, accountability, rule of law are just the start. You need to design checks and balances, internal policing mechanisms, accounting for every dollar, processes to eliminate conflicts of interest, self-dealing, cronyism, etc. Sadly, it seems that these institutions are prone to a kind of rot that means you can't just set them up once and forget. You need constant vigilance against these institutions corrupting themselves. Vigilance requires attention, not just from officials, but from journalists, media, the public. We're all so damn distracted that things are now rotting faster than ever.
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  It also doesn’t help that newsrooms have been totally gutted by the loss of advertising revenues. This is particularly acute at the local level, where traditionally you had local newspaper staff at meetings for local councils, but these have largely disappeared in a lot of places.
meroes 5y ago
I've wondered if the future posed in the last story in I, Robot gives a taste of an alternative. I've felt like Asimov tried to explore similar ideas. Four "supercomputers" are so advanced and powerful that countries which don't utilize them would become left in the dust. The technology is so advanced it enforces a new paradigm - play by the new rules or die out. Is there some (non-disastrous) technological (or cultural?) development that will upend all traditional power structures in a similar way? The robots in Asimov's story are basically uncorruptable. The closest modern example I can think of is encryption + bitcoin. But governments while they can't break encryption can go after exchanges and enact harsh legal penalties thereby extending traditional power structures. Would a neuralink+pocket AI get you out of any situation, even a government coming after you? Would personal faster-than-light ships allow everyone to escape to their own worlds? The fact that these examples are so fanciful shows how entrenched power is I'd say. But maybe some single advancement will provide a new modality, or a continual buildup of decentralized tech like torrents, crypto, blockchain, encryption, and cheap computing power. And as far as cultural changes, maybe that was one purpose of ancient gods. To posit a supernatural power that can destroy any man-made power. But religion also seems to entrench worldly power on the flip-side. (sorry for the semi off-topic)

arthur_sav 5y ago

> of course it's going to monitor and spy on everyone Um... no. Why "of course".