4 ms·

Freest country I've ever seen was Russia in the 90s. When Americans talk about "freedom" they have not a foggiest clue what it is. The US is a borderline police

by m0zg 5y ago

Freest country I've ever seen was Russia in the 90s. When Americans talk about "freedom" they have not a foggiest clue what it is. The US is a borderline police state in comparison. In fact, all in all, I think it currently has about as much "freedom" as Putin's Russia, which is to say almost none. There's quite a bit of hypocrisy and hectoring towards the rest of the world emanating from here, that's for sure, but it's starting to sound increasingly tone deaf, and sometimes downright laughable. OTOH we certainly could do much worse, like Australia for example. What do we do about this? Like Durov, I don't know. My country of birth has been through several massive upheavals that left tens of millions of people dead, so I'm not into that. But I do not see a peaceful, rational way out of this.

version_five 5y ago
I'm not american but the sense I get is that they have jurisdictional competition in a sense, so you have places that are very un-free but you also can move to freer places- or vice versa, if you value x over liberty, you can find a state or city that does too. But the competition keeps everyone honest in some sense. Contrast that with more centralized countries, whoever has the majority or balance of power (and it's often some big urban centre) gets to enforce their will one everyone else.
- m0zg 5y ago
  That's why the federal government is trying to centralize power here. Federal voting bills and abolition of electoral college are just two recent examples. It sure would be more comfortable _to them_ if a few moustache twirling lobbyists in DC decided who wins elections. No trillion dollar gravy trains would ever be upset again in that case. It's almost like that already (purely accidental win of Trump notwithstanding), but they'd like the remainder of control. For our own "good" of course, and no other reason. Additionally, over the past few years, trillion dollar megacorporations and the federal government have become essentially one and the same.
  - DenisM 5y ago
    > trillion dollar megacorporations and the federal government have become essentially one and the same. Aren't you getting carried away? How is Apple one with the US gov?
    - m0zg 5y ago
      Apple is only starting to play these games (with "CSAM", which is fundamentally designed to circumvent E2E encryption and will be inevitably expanded over time), but Google, Facebook and Amazon are fully onboard. Jen Psaki admitted a couple of months back that WH now tells Facebook what to take down on their site. Zuckerberg spent $300M of his money to elect Biden. How that's legal, I have no idea, but here we are with a senile president who can't remember the name of his Secretary of Defense. Google censors its search results to the point where I had to switch to Brave Search (the only independent search engine with its own index). Both Google and FB run one-sided "fact checks" which gaslight the public in favor of the current official narratives. Google, Facebook, and Twitter rather crudely and obviously manipulate their various rankings and trends for the same purpose, and have thousands of staff that do nothing all day but suppress dissent. And so on and so forth. US Big Tech is increasingly perceived today as a menace and the propaganda arm of the US government (or to be more exact, the non-replaceable part of it known as the "deep state"), and rightly so. Putin had no idea he could do any of such things, US corporations are teaching him many valuable lessons. Maybe not "one and the same" but give it time, that's the way it'll be.
      - DenisM 5y ago
        You have a convincing case, thanks for spelling it out. I'm not sure if I'm ready to be convinced yet, but there is something in it.
crazy_horse 5y ago
It's no secret that the freedom of the 90s (gangsters running amok) led to the oligarchs and Putin. I mean Putin's chef, (owns Wagner) was in Soviet prison for pimping out minors.
baybal2 5y ago
> What do we do about this? Like Durov, I don't know. My country of birth has been through several massive upheavals that left tens of millions of people dead, so I'm not into that. But I do not see a peaceful, rational way out of this. I do not see a peaceful, rational way out of this too, but I am not discouraged at all to see the regime's end, whatever are the means needed. Moreover, if the "massive upheaval leaving millions of people dead" is increasingly becoming the only way out of this, it becomes an even more important matter. We know, the regime will end, sooner, or later. People die, and tyrants are people too. Would you like the end of it becoming an all out civil war with millions dead, or will you do your effort to end this regime in some more graceful manner?

by m0zg 5y ago

version_five 5y ago

I'm not american but the sense I get is that they have jurisdictional competition in a sense, so you have places that are very un-free but you also can move to freer places- or vice versa, if you value x over liberty, you can find a state or city that does too. But the competition keeps everyone honest in some sense. Contrast that with more centralized countries, whoever has the majority or balance of power (and it's often some big urban centre) gets to enforce their will one everyone else.

m0zg 5y ago
That's why the federal government is trying to centralize power here. Federal voting bills and abolition of electoral college are just two recent examples. It sure would be more comfortable _to them_ if a few moustache twirling lobbyists in DC decided who wins elections. No trillion dollar gravy trains would ever be upset again in that case. It's almost like that already (purely accidental win of Trump notwithstanding), but they'd like the remainder of control. For our own "good" of course, and no other reason. Additionally, over the past few years, trillion dollar megacorporations and the federal government have become essentially one and the same.
- DenisM 5y ago
  > trillion dollar megacorporations and the federal government have become essentially one and the same. Aren't you getting carried away? How is Apple one with the US gov?
  - m0zg 5y ago
    Apple is only starting to play these games (with "CSAM", which is fundamentally designed to circumvent E2E encryption and will be inevitably expanded over time), but Google, Facebook and Amazon are fully onboard. Jen Psaki admitted a couple of months back that WH now tells Facebook what to take down on their site. Zuckerberg spent $300M of his money to elect Biden. How that's legal, I have no idea, but here we are with a senile president who can't remember the name of his Secretary of Defense. Google censors its search results to the point where I had to switch to Brave Search (the only independent search engine with its own index). Both Google and FB run one-sided "fact checks" which gaslight the public in favor of the current official narratives. Google, Facebook, and Twitter rather crudely and obviously manipulate their various rankings and trends for the same purpose, and have thousands of staff that do nothing all day but suppress dissent. And so on and so forth. US Big Tech is increasingly perceived today as a menace and the propaganda arm of the US government (or to be more exact, the non-replaceable part of it known as the "deep state"), and rightly so. Putin had no idea he could do any of such things, US corporations are teaching him many valuable lessons. Maybe not "one and the same" but give it time, that's the way it'll be.
    - DenisM 5y ago
      You have a convincing case, thanks for spelling it out. I'm not sure if I'm ready to be convinced yet, but there is something in it.

crazy_horse 5y ago

It's no secret that the freedom of the 90s (gangsters running amok) led to the oligarchs and Putin. I mean Putin's chef, (owns Wagner) was in Soviet prison for pimping out minors.

baybal2 5y ago

> What do we do about this? Like Durov, I don't know. My country of birth has been through several massive upheavals that left tens of millions of people dead, so I'm not into that. But I do not see a peaceful, rational way out of this. I do not see a peaceful, rational way out of this too, but I am not discouraged at all to see the regime's end, whatever are the means needed. Moreover, if the "massive upheaval leaving millions of people dead" is increasingly becoming the only way out of this, it becomes an even more important matter. We know, the regime will end, sooner, or later. People die, and tyrants are people too. Would you like the end of it becoming an all out civil war with millions dead, or will you do your effort to end this regime in some more graceful manner?