5 ms·

Unfortunately almost no countries do want a "ready" population, since such population can react effectively against it's own government if it does not respect a

• wffurr 5y ago
  Practical Doomsday, the book form of this post from a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30466733 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30466733, goes into exactly some of those kinds of considerations. https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/prep/ Probably significantly more relevant for most people than the OP book.
• ganzuul 5y ago
  In an age when education instead of war is being used to control population, arming everyone is no longer seems too implausible. A sense of justice needs time to flourish.
  • kkfx 5y ago
    IMVHO such sense is already flourished only without awareness. Most young people do not want to really fight nor oppress anyone else. Most people these days do want universal peace and prosperity, do prefer sharing than real competition. Unfortunately now like in the past such people are unable to stand in the real world for long, they are easy to betray and push toward destructive paths, that's why trained people (in the more broad sense, not just in military sense, trained as Citizens instead of subjects) are feared by any government. When things became tough people's react, badly at first in general, but when there is a calm period all defenses get dropped quickly. And a new slow destruction of conquered calm and prosperity start. Just imaging the power of a strike: if vast majority of workers are "wealthy" enough to have a house, food and water and can stop to work for a not super-short period of time, like an entire month, a strike is always winning especially when you strike to protest against poor working/social conditions, because both companies and governments in such situations are not resilient. Now imaging how little is possible and how little is effective a strike in an almost automated society where people live in small flat full depending from all services of a smart city: they going to starve quickly. No water, no food, no way to move (only public transportation or car sharing alike services) meanwhile no disruption of business activities since they are automated. That's the point: being armed and trained is just one aspect of being citizen, owning a house, having a certain independence is another essential part. Without all the above there are no Citizens, just more or less, more or less formally oppressed subjects. In IT terms, since we are on HN a network of desktops, a peer to peer or at least a common decentralized service like usenet, emails etc is democracy, always depend on third party services that by nature tend to be more and more oligarch is being slave. Just see classic stocks (a paper sheet delivered to the buyer) vs digital one, classic bank accounts than actual one: theoretically, technically we can make bank transactions as a common standard (for instance the EU mandatory, only between banks, OpenBank API) and operate via owner + black signed text (XML/JSON) exchanges. No one actually do that witch means that banks do have the total control on money and their customers have exactly nothing in hand. Crypto? Since the blockchain is an ever-grown append-only "file" sooner or later there will be not enough iron to operate directly on them at home and so an exchange, typically a Big of IT one, will became mandatory by nature. Again no power to the people. And I can go forward with Google&c ban and so on. Benefiting from cooperation and commerce is good, being forced it not. Trusting others is good, until you can verify that trust is well placed, the need of trust on contrary is a weakness. On arms imaging a peaceful and legit protest: with an armed and trained people ALL SIDES know well that in case of abuse anyone will suffer much => all party likely choose to act peacefully under democratic rules. In case of only one side armed?
    • nest0r 5y ago
      • kkfx 5y ago
        Consider that I'm coming from a family of Partisans (Italian, nephew of) and I've always had definitively leftist ideas... The fact that you find my words "from the alt-right" means that you get trapped in actual propaganda where: PR of one side try to push ideas against their will as ideas that came from very bad people. It's a classic technique present even in classic Greeks tails. Indeed these days I found more leftist certain discourse form well-know nazi-fascist parties/politicians, parties I'll NEVER vote for, than the one from formally leftist parties. Another proof, at least in EU (I do not know the actual political composition in USA), more and more workers classically voting left are now voting right, not because they change their mind but because they keep voting the very same idea and do not know much the history... It's not a critic but a serious observation: try to confute it an I'm pretty sure it will surprise you.
        • nest0r 5y ago
          • deleted 5y ago
            [deleted]
          • deleted 5y ago
            [deleted]
          • wikidani 5y ago
            And no actual critique from your side? Just leave him be, this won't be a constructive conversation from either side
            • nest0r 5y ago
  • Terry_Roll 5y ago
    they have even been able to double the IQ of people with Downs Syndrome over 6 months just by supplementing them histidine, so whilst education is good, the security services and other global entities will still be monitoring everything and preemptively taking action on kids to nip problems in the bud later on in life. Thats why diversity and acceptance is being taught in schools, and sex (free online porn) is being used to placate people, and drugs legal and illegal including alcohol. The only time some Govt's wanted a healthy population was right after WW2, so the Govt mandated cod liver oil and malt powder is quite inciteful.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• wikidani 5y ago
  You are very right, specially when it comes to smaller countries. An armed population must be kept ready in case of invasion, It's a sad fact, but in a word where the smaller fish get eaten there's just no other way
• michaelt 5y ago
  > Unfortunately almost no countries do want a "ready" population, since such population can react effectively against it's own government Maybe - but there's also the problem anything you publish to train your population will end up in the hands of your enemies, and your allies' enemies. You can't teach the American public to make tank-busting IEDs without also training everyone from ISIS to the IRA. Of course, there are other forms of readiness - physical fitness, for example - but no government I've ever heard of bans that, even if it's not encouraged as much as it could be.
  • kkfx 5y ago
    IMVHO you see the issue from a too strict POV: why countries goes to war? Definitively not because of ideology, of course they use ideology to train their own soldiers, they use propaganda on both sides from equal reasons, but the real reasons behind a war are more practical: countries goes to war to conquer someone else resources they need or to protect their own. Guerrilla warfare do work only on ground, not for an invasion, at least, in case of an invasion guerrilla must be "domestic, on the enemy ground", so if a country train it's citizen to guerrilla at maximum teach other countries citizens how to protect their own land. Unless that country do not need/want in the future invade/steal from someone else there is nothing harmful in that knowledge spread. IRA itself formally and substantially act in Ireland against the British who invaded them first, their "Irish" descendants of the North later, they do not invaded UK, USA, or any other country, if they have made attacks outside Ireland they are just hyper-rare cases. ISIS... Well... IMVHO ISIS is a byproduct of USA intelligence, not joking, no "conspiracy theory", simply for their own interest USA went abroad they have established or make arrangement with local regimes and for a certain period of time that work. After those dictatorships get a bit more power to aspire to being independent. So the USA need a way to overthrow these governments, they can't act directly, USA population would never approve such actions, like most of the world population, so they need something else: they arm and train local criminals, some idealists, some desperate and angry people and push them to overthrow the dictatorship in charge. They do that, like the so called Arab springs, but in the end a new dictatorship is wanted and sometimes USA intelligence succeed sometimes fail, one of that failure is named ISIS witch wasn't even much a failure since it give enough to shift American's public opinion to accept a long row of wars. Even after they know they was already betrayed with the lie of Saddam's weapons, Afghanistan as the protector of osama bin laden etc. Even though: did you really ISIS harm USA government? People, yes. But government? More surveillance is accepted by the people because of terrorism, more power was given, more state-backed crimes accepted as legal etc. ISIS have make good things for USA gov. Similarly Bataclan and Nice attacks for French gov. against their people. Long story short, I'm not convinced that a trained population can be a threat because some foreigners can also benefit from such training. About "bans and encouragements" some police actions, legal in the USA, in some other countries are not only illegal but might be a justification for a violent and armed reaction against officers because in those cases they are consider a threat to be counter in legitimate defense. So yes, no country bans certain physical fitness etc, but allow and forbid things for the clear intent of avoid forming a "ready and active" citizenship...
• gnramires 5y ago
  > Then most important lesson is never learned: si vis pacem para bellum, if we want peace we need to be prepared to war, war between countries, between People and Government, between single humans each others etc. This is not true. It did not work to prevent WWII. The truth is that if you want peace, you need to work for it, not wish for the best. You need to keep a close eye on other actors, to act before a conflict arises, to promote understanding and cultural exchanges, and to do your best to ensure everywhere has a minimum of freedom and humanity. This is what worked with the European Union, and how we should approach conflicts everywhere (conversation, verification, deescalation). In fact by weakening all military forces, we buy time before disaster happens. If everyone walks with a loaded and unlocked gun, sooner or later there will be (mis)firings.