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In similar news the well-known direct democracy of Switzerland just voted a new rule giving police similar surveillance powers without judicial oversight. So it

by soco 5y ago

In similar news the well-known direct democracy of Switzerland just voted a new rule giving police similar surveillance powers without judicial oversight. So it's obviously the people wishing to be better surveilled and we're the outliers here.

mullingitover 5y ago
I would expect as much, just based on how badly direct democracies have performed historically. John Adams said, "Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy." In the past, democracy was viewed as a form of government that republics devolved into.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  This was covered by Plato 2,500 years ago. But we don’t learn about that ancient outdated stuff anymore, as it isn’t beneficial for the economy.
- stereolambda 5y ago
  Well, it's interesting, then, that Switzerland is one of the oldest political regimes in Europe. This kind of rhetoric tends to come from elitist thinkers that would want a guarantee of power over people because they think they are right and somehow destined to have it. If we are on topic of exchanging opinions of famous men, I think Machiavelli said that the people can be misled and go astray but are not prevented by pride from correcting themselves, like rulers would.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    > Switzerland is one of the oldest political regimes in Europe. The age of their regime has nothing to do with their history of practicing direct democracy, that happened well after the founding of the US. > This kind of rhetoric tends to come from elitist thinkers that would want a guarantee of power over people because they think they are right and somehow destined to have it. On the contrary, I'm just defending the wisdom of the existing constitutional republic framework that we have currently. There's obvious value in constitutional safeguards against the whims of the mob, while still giving the citizenry a say in the long-term direction of the state.
  - Nasrudith 5y ago
    Yeah - democracies are downright miraculously stable in comparison to dictatorships. Look at a period of 200 years of the US - one civil war. Look at the history of England. If you say its "civil war" you need to be more specific than even by century! Stability of dictatorships is a "trains run on time" style Big Lie.
    - mullingitover 5y ago
      I don't think anyone was saying that dictatorships were good either - that's another system of government that was considered to be a devolution of a republic.
guerrilla 5y ago
That's terrible news. I wonder how this will interact with ProtonMail (which I just switched to.) On the other hand, I don't think you can draw your conclusion from those two examples. Also, other than the cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus, Switzerland isn't really a direct democracy, semi-direct at best. You'll notice they have representatives in a federal structure, despite having mechanisms for some direct democracy, and that's not for nothing.
- merlinscholz 5y ago
  One advantage of ProtonMail is that they are not easy to tamper with, as the data is encrypted with the password you provide at login which is (hopefully) not being stored.
  - kertoip_1 5y ago
    Is that password sent anywhere or is it just used on client side decryption?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- soco 5y ago
  That might be a different discussion but the mentioned police surveillance law was voted in a national referendum.
donatj 5y ago
This is why I've always had doubts about direct democracy. Most people are idiots who scare easily and whose views should not be considered.
- jliptzin 5y ago
  I’ve always wondered how hard it would be to start your own country, people start new companies all the time to solve problems, I think it’s time we start a new country for the first time in how many years? Maybe a government that actually does respect privacy and doesn’t just throw it out the window because of “terrorism” or whatever the thing of the moment might be. Also would be nice to live somewhere that doesn’t have atrocious wars on its historical record or hundreds of years of exploitation of other peoples.
  - bserge 5y ago
    I think the closest you can get these days is a village in some poor but relatively stable country. In Eastern Europe for example. The government will ignore a lot of things for a pretty long time as long as you're building, doing stuff and paying taxes. But an independent country? Maybe on a bunch of ships in international waters. Otherwise you'll quickly find yourself with a small army at your "borders". Too many people these days, soldiers, guns and ammunition are cheap and all land is taken.
  - personlurking 5y ago
    An idea I've heard is that some tech billionaire decides to purchase a little-used state of another country - say in Central America - and turns it into a technolibertarian country of sorts. While treating it like a company, and thus paying the country for its use, iirc.
  - nyokodo 5y ago
    > I’ve always wondered how hard it would be to start your own country Really really hard. You have only a few choices and they're all terrible. First one is revolution, see history for how that tends to go. Second is conquest and then colonization followed by eventual independence, again see history for how much this sucks for your stated aims. Seasteading might work but if you develop and build the stuff to make it work you're unlikely to get any acknowledgement of your statehood from any other nation but might get attacked by them [1]. The last option is outer space somewhere and self-sufficient space colonies are still science fiction and once they're not the early pioneers are going to die a lot and their living situation is going to be awful. 1: https://reason.com/2019/10/14/how-two-seasteaders-wound-up-marked-for-death/ https://reason.com/2019/10/14/how-two-seasteaders-wound-up-m...
gorwell 5y ago
That means the government and media successfully manufactured consent with the population. A majority of the US supported the War on Terror. That was manufactured consent with thanks to the corporate press. It was only the outliers that protested from the beginning, only proven correct after 20 years, thousands of lives and trillions of dollars wasted in Afghanistan. Now that this has ended, be on alert for the next campaign of fear that will be used to erode freedom and increase the surveillance state. Australia is a look at the near future of western "democracy" if they are successful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  Democracy is rule by the media. This has been a criticism of it for hundreds of years.
- lp0_on_fire 5y ago
  > Now that this has ended, be on alert for the next campaign of fear that will be used to erode freedom and increase the surveillance state. You mean like a seemingly never-ending virus with a 99%+ survival rate?
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Agreed. My expectation from a community like HN would be total rebellious culture from the mainstream attitude, full of interesting perspectives, data-backed arguments, anti-mob pro-objectivity discussions, and no shortage of nutjobs posting crazy theories - the good ol' hacker culture. What terrifies me is that HN community continues to double-down anything but mainstream and conformity. This is in direct relation to larger societal trends that you're highliting. Even the slightest neutral stance will get you downvoted. If no one on HN is doing the legwork for raising concerns, who will?
  - christophilus 5y ago
    Plenty of us are still libertarian and think for ourselves. (Including you, I’d guess.) Every platform is likely to eventually reflect the most common forms of groupthink from the culture. The reason I love HN is that I regularly see counter points and good perspective here that I simply don’t see anywhere else.
snarf21 5y ago
That's unfair. People are exhausted. The world is too complex. We have almost no control of anything. People just want to eat, sleep and spend time with their family. They don't have hours a day to get up to speed on the most complicated new tech law that will just be rubber stamped by people who are supposed to represent our interests for campaign dollars. Some of these laws get push back and trend hashtags for a couple of days. Then the powers that be just try again in 2 months. And again, and again. You know, because of the children......

by soco 5y ago

mullingitover 5y ago

I would expect as much, just based on how badly direct democracies have performed historically. John Adams said, "Remember Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes exhausts and murders itself. There never was a Democracy Yet, that did not commit suicide. It is in vain to Say that Democracy is less vain, less proud, less selfish, less ambitious or less avaricious than Aristocracy or Monarchy." In the past, democracy was viewed as a form of government that republics devolved into.

ceilingcorner 5y ago
This was covered by Plato 2,500 years ago. But we don’t learn about that ancient outdated stuff anymore, as it isn’t beneficial for the economy.
stereolambda 5y ago
Well, it's interesting, then, that Switzerland is one of the oldest political regimes in Europe. This kind of rhetoric tends to come from elitist thinkers that would want a guarantee of power over people because they think they are right and somehow destined to have it. If we are on topic of exchanging opinions of famous men, I think Machiavelli said that the people can be misled and go astray but are not prevented by pride from correcting themselves, like rulers would.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  > Switzerland is one of the oldest political regimes in Europe. The age of their regime has nothing to do with their history of practicing direct democracy, that happened well after the founding of the US. > This kind of rhetoric tends to come from elitist thinkers that would want a guarantee of power over people because they think they are right and somehow destined to have it. On the contrary, I'm just defending the wisdom of the existing constitutional republic framework that we have currently. There's obvious value in constitutional safeguards against the whims of the mob, while still giving the citizenry a say in the long-term direction of the state.
- Nasrudith 5y ago
  Yeah - democracies are downright miraculously stable in comparison to dictatorships. Look at a period of 200 years of the US - one civil war. Look at the history of England. If you say its "civil war" you need to be more specific than even by century! Stability of dictatorships is a "trains run on time" style Big Lie.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    I don't think anyone was saying that dictatorships were good either - that's another system of government that was considered to be a devolution of a republic.

guerrilla 5y ago

That's terrible news. I wonder how this will interact with ProtonMail (which I just switched to.) On the other hand, I don't think you can draw your conclusion from those two examples. Also, other than the cantons of Appenzell Innerrhoden and Glarus, Switzerland isn't really a direct democracy, semi-direct at best. You'll notice they have representatives in a federal structure, despite having mechanisms for some direct democracy, and that's not for nothing.

merlinscholz 5y ago
One advantage of ProtonMail is that they are not easy to tamper with, as the data is encrypted with the password you provide at login which is (hopefully) not being stored.
- kertoip_1 5y ago
  Is that password sent anywhere or is it just used on client side decryption?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
soco 5y ago
That might be a different discussion but the mentioned police surveillance law was voted in a national referendum.

donatj 5y ago

This is why I've always had doubts about direct democracy. Most people are idiots who scare easily and whose views should not be considered.

jliptzin 5y ago
I’ve always wondered how hard it would be to start your own country, people start new companies all the time to solve problems, I think it’s time we start a new country for the first time in how many years? Maybe a government that actually does respect privacy and doesn’t just throw it out the window because of “terrorism” or whatever the thing of the moment might be. Also would be nice to live somewhere that doesn’t have atrocious wars on its historical record or hundreds of years of exploitation of other peoples.
- bserge 5y ago
  I think the closest you can get these days is a village in some poor but relatively stable country. In Eastern Europe for example. The government will ignore a lot of things for a pretty long time as long as you're building, doing stuff and paying taxes. But an independent country? Maybe on a bunch of ships in international waters. Otherwise you'll quickly find yourself with a small army at your "borders". Too many people these days, soldiers, guns and ammunition are cheap and all land is taken.
- personlurking 5y ago
  An idea I've heard is that some tech billionaire decides to purchase a little-used state of another country - say in Central America - and turns it into a technolibertarian country of sorts. While treating it like a company, and thus paying the country for its use, iirc.
- nyokodo 5y ago
  > I’ve always wondered how hard it would be to start your own country Really really hard. You have only a few choices and they're all terrible. First one is revolution, see history for how that tends to go. Second is conquest and then colonization followed by eventual independence, again see history for how much this sucks for your stated aims. Seasteading might work but if you develop and build the stuff to make it work you're unlikely to get any acknowledgement of your statehood from any other nation but might get attacked by them [1]. The last option is outer space somewhere and self-sufficient space colonies are still science fiction and once they're not the early pioneers are going to die a lot and their living situation is going to be awful. 1: https://reason.com/2019/10/14/how-two-seasteaders-wound-up-marked-for-death/ https://reason.com/2019/10/14/how-two-seasteaders-wound-up-m...

gorwell 5y ago

That means the government and media successfully manufactured consent with the population. A majority of the US supported the War on Terror. That was manufactured consent with thanks to the corporate press. It was only the outliers that protested from the beginning, only proven correct after 20 years, thousands of lives and trillions of dollars wasted in Afghanistan. Now that this has ended, be on alert for the next campaign of fear that will be used to erode freedom and increase the surveillance state. Australia is a look at the near future of western "democracy" if they are successful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

ceilingcorner 5y ago
Democracy is rule by the media. This has been a criticism of it for hundreds of years.
lp0_on_fire 5y ago
> Now that this has ended, be on alert for the next campaign of fear that will be used to erode freedom and increase the surveillance state. You mean like a seemingly never-ending virus with a 99%+ survival rate?
systemvoltage 5y ago
Agreed. My expectation from a community like HN would be total rebellious culture from the mainstream attitude, full of interesting perspectives, data-backed arguments, anti-mob pro-objectivity discussions, and no shortage of nutjobs posting crazy theories - the good ol' hacker culture. What terrifies me is that HN community continues to double-down anything but mainstream and conformity. This is in direct relation to larger societal trends that you're highliting. Even the slightest neutral stance will get you downvoted. If no one on HN is doing the legwork for raising concerns, who will?
- christophilus 5y ago
  Plenty of us are still libertarian and think for ourselves. (Including you, I’d guess.) Every platform is likely to eventually reflect the most common forms of groupthink from the culture. The reason I love HN is that I regularly see counter points and good perspective here that I simply don’t see anywhere else.

snarf21 5y ago

That's unfair. People are exhausted. The world is too complex. We have almost no control of anything. People just want to eat, sleep and spend time with their family. They don't have hours a day to get up to speed on the most complicated new tech law that will just be rubber stamped by people who are supposed to represent our interests for campaign dollars. Some of these laws get push back and trend hashtags for a couple of days. Then the powers that be just try again in 2 months. And again, and again. You know, because of the children......