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I feel like the last year of 'quarantine' for most of the Western world has made people more comfortable with authoritarian governments and actions. It's rather

I feel like the last year of 'quarantine' for most of the Western world has made people more comfortable with authoritarian governments and actions. It's rather alarming how widespread and quickly this change in ideology has happened.

ezekg 5y ago
It's crazy to me because I would have thought the last year or so would produce the opposite effect. But a fearful populace is a malleable populace, I guess.
lvs 5y ago
The analogy doesn't hold. It's hard to say that video games are an acute crisis causing hundreds of thousands of deaths.
knownjorbist 5y ago
This is comparing apples and oranges, frankly.
- honkdaddy 5y ago
  I would say in both cases it's the government exhibiting control over its citizens lives under the notion that it's for their own protection. I think everyone has a point at which government control becomes tyranny. For some it's lockdowns during a pandemic, for others it's time-limits on video games. Seems like all apples, to me.
  - dlp211 5y ago
    Your kid playing videogames 12 hours a day has no impact on my life. You giving me Covid does. These situations are not the same and the complete lack of nuance on when government authority is good and needed, and when it is bad and harmful is...well, I don't have the word(s), perhaps disappointing. I don't get the desire to see everything as black and white and boil everything problem down to a slippery slope fallacy.
    - zarzavat 5y ago
      Authoritarianism often comes with a good reason, in a moment of crisis, such as war, ethnic tensions, etc. The problem is getting rid of it once the crisis abates. Power tends to work on a ratchet. If you are only looking for a cartoon villain and not, say, yourself, you might be caught flat footed when it arrives at your door.
      - knownjorbist 5y ago
        Okay, but this example doesn't really apply here as we've already seen what relatively limited restrictions were imposed rolled back across states and localities to varying degrees. It doesn't have to be so dramatic.
    - honkdaddy 5y ago
      One could absolutely argue that kids playing videogames 12h a day has an impact on your life, because if every kid spent their time that way, society would crumble in a generation because young people are choosing to play games instead of work. The topic in question was whether Covid restrictions has made people more comfortable with other authoritarian measures which are implemented to benefit society as a whole. I actually think it's a very apt point and I'm surprised you don't see the connection.
echelon 5y ago
> I feel like the last year of 'quarantine' for most of the Western world has made people more comfortable with authoritarian governments and actions. Half of the US is up in arms about it, for better or worse. I think you'd have a hard time imposing anything on the US. The other half doesn't think immunizations are authoritarian, just science. Maybe 1% of the loud and attention grabbing people on either side of the isle wants to impose things on the other just for the sake of imposing them. So not exactly.
- UnFleshedOne 5y ago
  That 1%, if they are loud enough, can move overton window for the whole society. Recall how fast vaccine passports moved from a crazy right wing conspiracy theory to an obvious and necessary measure. Last year is full of such examples.
  - 1270018080 5y ago
    I think you have it backwards. In the last year, vaccines passports (in other words, immunization records) went from an obvious and necessary measure to a crazy wight wing conspiracy theory.
    - honkdaddy 5y ago
      A year ago in my country, vaccine passports were very much a conspiracy theory, and back in 2020, our PM assured us they wouldn't be coming. [1] A year later, as the GP mentioned, this has instead become the standard to expect going forward. [2]. Exactly what they described has happened, something which was once considered an irrational fear of libertarians has become reality. [1] https://globalnews.ca/news/7576955/coronavirus-vaccine-passports-canada-trudeau/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7576955/coronavirus-vaccine-passp... [2] https://globalnews.ca/news/8104692/canada-getting-proof-of-vaccination-passport-for-international-travel/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8104692/canada-getting-proof-of-v...
anonporridge 5y ago
Perhaps because we've all seen firsthand the reckless social irresponsibility of a massive segment of the population. Faced with this, it's not surprising to me that many people would see a more authoritarian government to be preferable to a laissez faire approach that requires the vast majority of individuals to make reasonably good choices for the collective and understand the wider implications of their behavior. It would be ironic if the right wing shrieking for 'freedom' ends up backlashing on all of us because they've simultaneously demonstrated that we're not mature enough to handle that level of freedom.
- ryandrake 5y ago
  COVID has convinced me that a functioning society can’t just throw its hands up and exclusively rely on Nash Equilibrium to deal with all problems. If you rely on everyone being rational self-interest-optimizing actors, you’ll never solve problems that require voluntary collective, coordinated action. It just ends up as a giant game of prisoner’s dilemma with everyone choosing DEFECT.
  - TillE 5y ago
    Yeah, there's basically no way the pandemic is ever going to end without broad vaccine mandates. I would expect China to be one of the first countries to move in that direction, but we'll see.
keyb0ardninja 5y ago
This is exactly what F. A. Hayek warned us about in his book The Road to Serfdom.
- trompetenaccoun 5y ago
  I don't know why this man has such a large following outside of economics. There are a lot of better analysis of how such oppressive systems form. I respect Hayek but The Road to Serfdom is a boring read.
908B64B197 5y ago
Australia seems to be rushing toward that future at an out of control pace.
- AustinDev 5y ago
  My wife and I were actually considering moving there. We even started some of the paperwork but after seeing the absurdity of their covid measures We have decided against it for now.
  - theintern 5y ago
    What about their covid measures put you off? When for so much of the pandemic they were seen as absolute world leaders and were living as normal when the rest of us were in lockdowns?
    - majani 5y ago
      That's an opinion from your filter bubble. Try get some info from conservative and libertarian sources. The results may shock you.
    - ehvatum 5y ago
      I can describe my own objection to international travel to restrictive countries: Australia was a model for success, until a cab driver in Sydney contracted the delta variant. Much of the country is now in total lockdown, while the army patrols Sydney streets and daily COVID cases continue to rise exponentially, far exceeding any previous COVID outbreak in Australia. There is no ten billion dollar program to develop vaccines for new variants, no path to eradication, and no way out of the continuing crisis except to ignore it. Therefore, I expect that this situation of mandatory quarantines, mandatory vaccination proof, mandatory negative test result proof, and multiple new-variant outbreaks and lockdowns annually will continue until politically untenable, and I conclude that countries instituting hard lockdowns are not places where I want to live or travel, until they eventually reform.
      - 5y ago
staunch 5y ago
Temporary and mild authoritarian measures during a once-in-a-century pandemic make complete sense, even to very libertarian people. The U.S. has a track record of such measures being temporary, such as the much more extreme measures taken during WW2. Comparing this kind of thing to what China is doing is drawing a false equivalency. There is no legitimate comparison to be made.
- pageandrew 5y ago
  Temporary? We're a year and a half in, with no end in sight. If the vaccines weren't the end game, there is no end game. Indefinite public health authoritarianism. Mild? Australians can't travel more than 5km from their homes. For essential purposes only. Vaccinated Australians can only leave their homes for 2 hours a day (unvaxed 1 hour a day).
  - yupper32 5y ago
    > If the vaccines weren't the end game, there is no end game. Your argument is already flawed. We don't have vaccines available to everyone in the US yet.
  - nightfly 5y ago
    I mean, delta changed the math of how effective the vaccine was at preventing spread and mild illness. This is why the idea of a _novel_ coronavirus epidemic was bad, we had no idea where it was gonna go. In Oregon we were on a very bad trajectory in the last two weeks with hospitals full and "elective" medical procedures suspended in some areas (my family being directly effected by this), that is now being deflected a bit by the renewed mask mandate. And in America we're very fortunate with how easy access we have to vaccines, other places aren't as lucky so they have to enact harsher measures...
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      This is all true, but at the same time, it is a legitimate question to ask 'when does this stop?' I think we can all agree that it can't last forever. But Kate Brown mandated masks even outdoors, and while her intentions may be pure, she didn't provide any metrics that she will use to decide the mandate can be dropped. We are past the 70% vaccination threshold she originally used. Even then, the metric was created well after the mandates, and I disagree with that. When we are going to put such rules in place they should be defined from the beginning as temporary or permanent, and in the case of the former should come with a definition for the end. A date, a set of metrics, something specific.
goostavos 5y ago
I don't even know where people are coming from any more. Like literally everyone else in tech who knows how the sausage gets made, I'm appalled by the teams of Ph.Ds which exist solely to exploit the dopamine response of children. However, it never would have ever crossed my mind to jump from "here's a particular problem" to "the government should control how much of a specific activity your child can do at home"
- ryan93 5y ago
  You make it sound a lot more scientific than it is.
  - eric-hu 5y ago
    Seconded. It doesn’t take a team of PhD’s to run A/B testing on features and variations that improve lift. Tie performance bonuses to improved engagement and sales, and you can motivate many non doctorates to find novel ways to make things addictive.
    - Jensson 5y ago
      Pretty sure Candy Crush has such a team of PhD's though. Not all games, but the big games definitely do. You can read about it here from their own page: https://careers.king.com/kingdom-news/data-at-king/ https://careers.king.com/kingdom-news/data-at-king/ > That experiment is typical of how we learn from data at King. We have about 150 people working in data roles, out of a total workforce of 2,000. They come from a range of backgrounds. Many are from the games industry, of course, but we also bring in lots of recruits straight from university. > These people will have just done their masters or PhD in a wide range of disciplines. Many of our team studied statistics, physics or computer science but we also have people who came from theoretical biology because work on DNA sequencing in that field has produced a lot of data-sophisticated people. Others are behavioural psychologists or behavioural economists. Now in the specific example they choose to highlight they saw that making the game less frustrating made people spend more money. However if making the game more frustrating turned out to make more money since users bought more powerups then they absolutely would do it.

ezekg 5y ago

It's crazy to me because I would have thought the last year or so would produce the opposite effect. But a fearful populace is a malleable populace, I guess.

lvs 5y ago

The analogy doesn't hold. It's hard to say that video games are an acute crisis causing hundreds of thousands of deaths.

knownjorbist 5y ago

This is comparing apples and oranges, frankly.

honkdaddy 5y ago
I would say in both cases it's the government exhibiting control over its citizens lives under the notion that it's for their own protection. I think everyone has a point at which government control becomes tyranny. For some it's lockdowns during a pandemic, for others it's time-limits on video games. Seems like all apples, to me.
- dlp211 5y ago
  Your kid playing videogames 12 hours a day has no impact on my life. You giving me Covid does. These situations are not the same and the complete lack of nuance on when government authority is good and needed, and when it is bad and harmful is...well, I don't have the word(s), perhaps disappointing. I don't get the desire to see everything as black and white and boil everything problem down to a slippery slope fallacy.
  - zarzavat 5y ago
    Authoritarianism often comes with a good reason, in a moment of crisis, such as war, ethnic tensions, etc. The problem is getting rid of it once the crisis abates. Power tends to work on a ratchet. If you are only looking for a cartoon villain and not, say, yourself, you might be caught flat footed when it arrives at your door.
    - knownjorbist 5y ago
      Okay, but this example doesn't really apply here as we've already seen what relatively limited restrictions were imposed rolled back across states and localities to varying degrees. It doesn't have to be so dramatic.
  - honkdaddy 5y ago
    One could absolutely argue that kids playing videogames 12h a day has an impact on your life, because if every kid spent their time that way, society would crumble in a generation because young people are choosing to play games instead of work. The topic in question was whether Covid restrictions has made people more comfortable with other authoritarian measures which are implemented to benefit society as a whole. I actually think it's a very apt point and I'm surprised you don't see the connection.

echelon 5y ago

> I feel like the last year of 'quarantine' for most of the Western world has made people more comfortable with authoritarian governments and actions. Half of the US is up in arms about it, for better or worse. I think you'd have a hard time imposing anything on the US. The other half doesn't think immunizations are authoritarian, just science. Maybe 1% of the loud and attention grabbing people on either side of the isle wants to impose things on the other just for the sake of imposing them. So not exactly.

UnFleshedOne 5y ago
That 1%, if they are loud enough, can move overton window for the whole society. Recall how fast vaccine passports moved from a crazy right wing conspiracy theory to an obvious and necessary measure. Last year is full of such examples.
- 1270018080 5y ago
  I think you have it backwards. In the last year, vaccines passports (in other words, immunization records) went from an obvious and necessary measure to a crazy wight wing conspiracy theory.
  - honkdaddy 5y ago
    A year ago in my country, vaccine passports were very much a conspiracy theory, and back in 2020, our PM assured us they wouldn't be coming. [1] A year later, as the GP mentioned, this has instead become the standard to expect going forward. [2]. Exactly what they described has happened, something which was once considered an irrational fear of libertarians has become reality. [1] https://globalnews.ca/news/7576955/coronavirus-vaccine-passports-canada-trudeau/ https://globalnews.ca/news/7576955/coronavirus-vaccine-passp... [2] https://globalnews.ca/news/8104692/canada-getting-proof-of-vaccination-passport-for-international-travel/ https://globalnews.ca/news/8104692/canada-getting-proof-of-v...

anonporridge 5y ago

Perhaps because we've all seen firsthand the reckless social irresponsibility of a massive segment of the population. Faced with this, it's not surprising to me that many people would see a more authoritarian government to be preferable to a laissez faire approach that requires the vast majority of individuals to make reasonably good choices for the collective and understand the wider implications of their behavior. It would be ironic if the right wing shrieking for 'freedom' ends up backlashing on all of us because they've simultaneously demonstrated that we're not mature enough to handle that level of freedom.

ryandrake 5y ago
COVID has convinced me that a functioning society can’t just throw its hands up and exclusively rely on Nash Equilibrium to deal with all problems. If you rely on everyone being rational self-interest-optimizing actors, you’ll never solve problems that require voluntary collective, coordinated action. It just ends up as a giant game of prisoner’s dilemma with everyone choosing DEFECT.
- TillE 5y ago
  Yeah, there's basically no way the pandemic is ever going to end without broad vaccine mandates. I would expect China to be one of the first countries to move in that direction, but we'll see.

keyb0ardninja 5y ago

This is exactly what F. A. Hayek warned us about in his book The Road to Serfdom.

trompetenaccoun 5y ago
I don't know why this man has such a large following outside of economics. There are a lot of better analysis of how such oppressive systems form. I respect Hayek but The Road to Serfdom is a boring read.

908B64B197 5y ago

Australia seems to be rushing toward that future at an out of control pace.

AustinDev 5y ago
My wife and I were actually considering moving there. We even started some of the paperwork but after seeing the absurdity of their covid measures We have decided against it for now.
- theintern 5y ago
  What about their covid measures put you off? When for so much of the pandemic they were seen as absolute world leaders and were living as normal when the rest of us were in lockdowns?
  - majani 5y ago
    That's an opinion from your filter bubble. Try get some info from conservative and libertarian sources. The results may shock you.
  - ehvatum 5y ago
    I can describe my own objection to international travel to restrictive countries: Australia was a model for success, until a cab driver in Sydney contracted the delta variant. Much of the country is now in total lockdown, while the army patrols Sydney streets and daily COVID cases continue to rise exponentially, far exceeding any previous COVID outbreak in Australia. There is no ten billion dollar program to develop vaccines for new variants, no path to eradication, and no way out of the continuing crisis except to ignore it. Therefore, I expect that this situation of mandatory quarantines, mandatory vaccination proof, mandatory negative test result proof, and multiple new-variant outbreaks and lockdowns annually will continue until politically untenable, and I conclude that countries instituting hard lockdowns are not places where I want to live or travel, until they eventually reform.
    - 5y ago

staunch 5y ago

Temporary and mild authoritarian measures during a once-in-a-century pandemic make complete sense, even to very libertarian people. The U.S. has a track record of such measures being temporary, such as the much more extreme measures taken during WW2. Comparing this kind of thing to what China is doing is drawing a false equivalency. There is no legitimate comparison to be made.

pageandrew 5y ago
Temporary? We're a year and a half in, with no end in sight. If the vaccines weren't the end game, there is no end game. Indefinite public health authoritarianism. Mild? Australians can't travel more than 5km from their homes. For essential purposes only. Vaccinated Australians can only leave their homes for 2 hours a day (unvaxed 1 hour a day).
- yupper32 5y ago
  > If the vaccines weren't the end game, there is no end game. Your argument is already flawed. We don't have vaccines available to everyone in the US yet.
- nightfly 5y ago
  I mean, delta changed the math of how effective the vaccine was at preventing spread and mild illness. This is why the idea of a _novel_ coronavirus epidemic was bad, we had no idea where it was gonna go. In Oregon we were on a very bad trajectory in the last two weeks with hospitals full and "elective" medical procedures suspended in some areas (my family being directly effected by this), that is now being deflected a bit by the renewed mask mandate. And in America we're very fortunate with how easy access we have to vaccines, other places aren't as lucky so they have to enact harsher measures...
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    This is all true, but at the same time, it is a legitimate question to ask 'when does this stop?' I think we can all agree that it can't last forever. But Kate Brown mandated masks even outdoors, and while her intentions may be pure, she didn't provide any metrics that she will use to decide the mandate can be dropped. We are past the 70% vaccination threshold she originally used. Even then, the metric was created well after the mandates, and I disagree with that. When we are going to put such rules in place they should be defined from the beginning as temporary or permanent, and in the case of the former should come with a definition for the end. A date, a set of metrics, something specific.

goostavos 5y ago

I don't even know where people are coming from any more. Like literally everyone else in tech who knows how the sausage gets made, I'm appalled by the teams of Ph.Ds which exist solely to exploit the dopamine response of children. However, it never would have ever crossed my mind to jump from "here's a particular problem" to "the government should control how much of a specific activity your child can do at home"

ryan93 5y ago
You make it sound a lot more scientific than it is.
- eric-hu 5y ago
  Seconded. It doesn’t take a team of PhD’s to run A/B testing on features and variations that improve lift. Tie performance bonuses to improved engagement and sales, and you can motivate many non doctorates to find novel ways to make things addictive.
  - Jensson 5y ago
    Pretty sure Candy Crush has such a team of PhD's though. Not all games, but the big games definitely do. You can read about it here from their own page: https://careers.king.com/kingdom-news/data-at-king/ https://careers.king.com/kingdom-news/data-at-king/ > That experiment is typical of how we learn from data at King. We have about 150 people working in data roles, out of a total workforce of 2,000. They come from a range of backgrounds. Many are from the games industry, of course, but we also bring in lots of recruits straight from university. > These people will have just done their masters or PhD in a wide range of disciplines. Many of our team studied statistics, physics or computer science but we also have people who came from theoretical biology because work on DNA sequencing in that field has produced a lot of data-sophisticated people. Others are behavioural psychologists or behavioural economists. Now in the specific example they choose to highlight they saw that making the game less frustrating made people spend more money. However if making the game more frustrating turned out to make more money since users bought more powerups then they absolutely would do it.