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> But we all know Excepting the approval of end to end encryption and residential zoning, pretty much every problem thread on HN is littered with comments abou

> But we all know Excepting the approval of end to end encryption and residential zoning, pretty much every problem thread on HN is littered with comments about how we need more regulation and laws to solve X or Y or Z. Wanting the "good guys" to have more power is pretty much the default response on here nowadays. I remember earlier- including before I had signed up for an account- when HN was much more libertarian, compared to the relative minority it seems to be now.

j16sdiz 5y ago
disclaimer: I am not American, and know nothing about American politics. I think all these start around Trump's administration. Trump start calling some media/social media as fake news, and some media/social media start censoring his supporter. After seeing the worse effects of misleading information, many free-speech-supporter back off alot.
- nyokodo 5y ago
  > Trump...misleading information...free-speech-supporter back off alot. Trump is a correlation to (not cause of) both the left and right in America turning sharply populist and inward looking in recent years. Populists tend not to be concerned with principles like freedom of speech, or the concerns of the global community.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- mantas 5y ago
  > After seeing the worse effects of misleading information, many free-speech-supporter back off alot. Rather democracy supporters back off…
- zdragnar 5y ago
  Nah, there was a noticable shift already in the later Obama years, if not earlier. It is ironic that we should trust government to be an arbiter of truth, given that our government has been a source of "misinformation" for years (a.k.a. blatantly lying to support an agenda).
- iso1210 5y ago
  McCarthyism predates Trump, and I'm sure that social pressures of what you can and can't say in public date back far further
smaudet 5y ago
The flip side to being a libertarian is that you still support legislation to e.g. breakup monopolies and protect 'basic' rights, as needed. A sibling comment mentions Trump - he went so far in the opposite direction there is a considerable backlash to seeing what a truly regulated and unprotected environment looks like... Trump it can be argued went so far to break basic things like US mail, and encourage corporate monopoly, the course correction in the other direction is not only reasonable but expected...turns out divisive (fascist) wannabe dictators are not a good recipe for freedom either...
vkou 5y ago
> Wanting the "good guys" to have more power is pretty much the default response on here nowadays. The alternative to giving a democratic government power isn't 'nobody has power'. The alternative to giving a democratic government power is ceding it to undemocratic, unelected oligarchs. When a democratic government has it, you get some say in how it is used.
- blangkz 5y ago
  In 2014 a Princeton study posited that the US is more of an oligarchy, than a democracy.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- kelnos 5y ago
  I think that view is a little too simplistic. There are some powers you probably just shouldn't give to governments, ever. There are some powers that are fine to give to governments, because they're unlikely to be abused, because abusing them confers little benefit to the abuser. Then there is a third class of power, where it's useful for the government to have it, but abuse of it can be really bad. So you need to make it really hard to abuse that power. Maybe using the power requires a lot of people to agree. Maybe a list of difficult-to-forge and difficult-to-abuse conditions need to be met before that power can be used. Maybe the power is designed so a lot about how it is used ends up being public, so people can audit its use. And so on. But I think if there's a power that is likely to be abused by government, and really hard to put checks on that (ab)use, then the government just should not have that power, no matter how useful that power might be. The problem with assuming that last bit isn't a big deal because they're the "good guys" is that even if they genuinely are the good guys, you never know who is going to get elected during the next cycle (or the next-next, or the next-next-next, or...). They might not be the good guys, but they still get to use that power, and certainly won't pass laws to take that power away.
- kragen 5y ago
  Often the alternative to giving a democratic government power really is for nobody to have that power, and in many other cases the alternative is for the power to be decentralized, so that many people have some of it. For example, we might give a democratic government the power to tap everybody's phone calls at once, but if we don't, that doesn't necessarily imply that undemocratic, unelected oligarchs, or anyone else, is tapping everybody's phone calls at once. There might just be nobody who has the power to tap phone calls, as is the case with secure free software running on trustworthy hardware, or there might be many people who have the power to tap only a few phone calls. And we might give a democratic government the power to assign workers to jobs, for example, as the Soviets did. Alternatively, undemocratic, unelected oligarchs could assign workers to jobs, as in a coal-mining company town; but an additional possibility is that workers and employers, or unions and employers, negotiate with one another, each limiting the power of the other. We might give a democratic government the power to decide what's for dinner each day, which sounds ridiculous but is exactly the standard practice in kibbutzim and in school lunch programs in democracies. Conceivably, undemocratic, unelected oligarchs could decide what's for dinner each day, though I don't know of any examples; the usual alternative is for each family to decide what's for dinner each day independently, though in many cases this degenerates to an undemocratic, unelected head of household deciding. Often enough, some household members prefer school cafeteria foodoid products to the results, despite having no say in that decision-making process either.
oblio 5y ago
So you're saying that HN has matured? :-)
- zdragnar 5y ago
  There is certainly a whole lot less of "we could build an app to solve it!" But there is also more naivete in other ways. I think this is more broadly reflected in society as a whole.
bratwurst3000 5y ago
Honestly … times have changed. I was a optimistic liberterian once … I still am… but look at reality. You give people and bussines to much freedome and they use it for things that harm society. Facebook and telegram for example. Snake oil sellers where allways a problem but now it seeems to explode and destroy my liberterian word view :(
- ComodoHacker 5y ago
  Just interesting, how does Telegram specifically harm society? By letting right wing freaks have their echo chambers there, or do you mean something else?
  - bratwurst3000 5y ago
    I meant that. Telegram was symbolic for how the freedom of some can impair the freedom of others. I have nothing against e2e encryption or privacy but as I said my liberterian worldview starts to crumble … toward what? I dont know
    - ComodoHacker 5y ago
      If you deny them Telegram, Facebook, Parler or any other online platform, people would gather offline and have their echo chambers there. Just as they did before Internet. So you're basically saying 1st amendment harms society, not online platforms.
      - bratwurst3000 5y ago
        Hmm no I am not saying that. The problem is that if they would meet offline they wouldnt be a group of 20.000 people or so in one room with the easy possibility to spread their worldview. Free speech is something valuable but beeing able to downstream information to thousand of people instant that easy is a problem. There is a difference between free speach and lying with intent to spread a certain world view. Edit; As I said I’m a libertarian and a group of whatever people talking what ever where ever is totally fine with me but manipulating people with intent is not protected by the First Amendment And shouldn’t be confused with free speech

j16sdiz 5y ago

disclaimer: I am not American, and know nothing about American politics. I think all these start around Trump's administration. Trump start calling some media/social media as fake news, and some media/social media start censoring his supporter. After seeing the worse effects of misleading information, many free-speech-supporter back off alot.

nyokodo 5y ago
> Trump...misleading information...free-speech-supporter back off alot. Trump is a correlation to (not cause of) both the left and right in America turning sharply populist and inward looking in recent years. Populists tend not to be concerned with principles like freedom of speech, or the concerns of the global community.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
mantas 5y ago
> After seeing the worse effects of misleading information, many free-speech-supporter back off alot. Rather democracy supporters back off…
zdragnar 5y ago
Nah, there was a noticable shift already in the later Obama years, if not earlier. It is ironic that we should trust government to be an arbiter of truth, given that our government has been a source of "misinformation" for years (a.k.a. blatantly lying to support an agenda).
iso1210 5y ago
McCarthyism predates Trump, and I'm sure that social pressures of what you can and can't say in public date back far further

smaudet 5y ago

The flip side to being a libertarian is that you still support legislation to e.g. breakup monopolies and protect 'basic' rights, as needed. A sibling comment mentions Trump - he went so far in the opposite direction there is a considerable backlash to seeing what a truly regulated and unprotected environment looks like... Trump it can be argued went so far to break basic things like US mail, and encourage corporate monopoly, the course correction in the other direction is not only reasonable but expected...turns out divisive (fascist) wannabe dictators are not a good recipe for freedom either...

vkou 5y ago

> Wanting the "good guys" to have more power is pretty much the default response on here nowadays. The alternative to giving a democratic government power isn't 'nobody has power'. The alternative to giving a democratic government power is ceding it to undemocratic, unelected oligarchs. When a democratic government has it, you get some say in how it is used.

blangkz 5y ago
In 2014 a Princeton study posited that the US is more of an oligarchy, than a democracy.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
kelnos 5y ago
I think that view is a little too simplistic. There are some powers you probably just shouldn't give to governments, ever. There are some powers that are fine to give to governments, because they're unlikely to be abused, because abusing them confers little benefit to the abuser. Then there is a third class of power, where it's useful for the government to have it, but abuse of it can be really bad. So you need to make it really hard to abuse that power. Maybe using the power requires a lot of people to agree. Maybe a list of difficult-to-forge and difficult-to-abuse conditions need to be met before that power can be used. Maybe the power is designed so a lot about how it is used ends up being public, so people can audit its use. And so on. But I think if there's a power that is likely to be abused by government, and really hard to put checks on that (ab)use, then the government just should not have that power, no matter how useful that power might be. The problem with assuming that last bit isn't a big deal because they're the "good guys" is that even if they genuinely are the good guys, you never know who is going to get elected during the next cycle (or the next-next, or the next-next-next, or...). They might not be the good guys, but they still get to use that power, and certainly won't pass laws to take that power away.
kragen 5y ago
Often the alternative to giving a democratic government power really is for nobody to have that power, and in many other cases the alternative is for the power to be decentralized, so that many people have some of it. For example, we might give a democratic government the power to tap everybody's phone calls at once, but if we don't, that doesn't necessarily imply that undemocratic, unelected oligarchs, or anyone else, is tapping everybody's phone calls at once. There might just be nobody who has the power to tap phone calls, as is the case with secure free software running on trustworthy hardware, or there might be many people who have the power to tap only a few phone calls. And we might give a democratic government the power to assign workers to jobs, for example, as the Soviets did. Alternatively, undemocratic, unelected oligarchs could assign workers to jobs, as in a coal-mining company town; but an additional possibility is that workers and employers, or unions and employers, negotiate with one another, each limiting the power of the other. We might give a democratic government the power to decide what's for dinner each day, which sounds ridiculous but is exactly the standard practice in kibbutzim and in school lunch programs in democracies. Conceivably, undemocratic, unelected oligarchs could decide what's for dinner each day, though I don't know of any examples; the usual alternative is for each family to decide what's for dinner each day independently, though in many cases this degenerates to an undemocratic, unelected head of household deciding. Often enough, some household members prefer school cafeteria foodoid products to the results, despite having no say in that decision-making process either.

oblio 5y ago

So you're saying that HN has matured? :-)

zdragnar 5y ago
There is certainly a whole lot less of "we could build an app to solve it!" But there is also more naivete in other ways. I think this is more broadly reflected in society as a whole.

bratwurst3000 5y ago

Honestly … times have changed. I was a optimistic liberterian once … I still am… but look at reality. You give people and bussines to much freedome and they use it for things that harm society. Facebook and telegram for example. Snake oil sellers where allways a problem but now it seeems to explode and destroy my liberterian word view :(

ComodoHacker 5y ago
Just interesting, how does Telegram specifically harm society? By letting right wing freaks have their echo chambers there, or do you mean something else?
- bratwurst3000 5y ago
  I meant that. Telegram was symbolic for how the freedom of some can impair the freedom of others. I have nothing against e2e encryption or privacy but as I said my liberterian worldview starts to crumble … toward what? I dont know
  - ComodoHacker 5y ago
    If you deny them Telegram, Facebook, Parler or any other online platform, people would gather offline and have their echo chambers there. Just as they did before Internet. So you're basically saying 1st amendment harms society, not online platforms.
    - bratwurst3000 5y ago
      Hmm no I am not saying that. The problem is that if they would meet offline they wouldnt be a group of 20.000 people or so in one room with the easy possibility to spread their worldview. Free speech is something valuable but beeing able to downstream information to thousand of people instant that easy is a problem. There is a difference between free speach and lying with intent to spread a certain world view. Edit; As I said I’m a libertarian and a group of whatever people talking what ever where ever is totally fine with me but manipulating people with intent is not protected by the First Amendment And shouldn’t be confused with free speech