3 ms·

Let's hypothesize that a would-be administration in a Western country would like to accomplish full Russian-style autocracy relatively quickly. Let's say they h

Let's hypothesize that a would-be administration in a Western country would like to accomplish full Russian-style autocracy relatively quickly. Let's say they have stated publicly that their plan is to go after immigrants first, opposition leaders second. Numerically, these are two small categories, relatively speaking. The first question is, what about the third and fourth categories? Would they be dissenters in general, or specific kinds (judged to be riskier for the autocratization process) and which? The second question is, how would they go about identifying them? Are there products and services at Palantir that may have been designed for this goal?

ktagh 2y ago
[flagged]
- bborud 2y ago
  > The Biden administration had authoritarian, Russian style COVID policies. During the pandemic I read various descriptions of what disease outbreaks were like during various times. Including descriptions of the plague of 1665. What is interesting is that the approach to managing outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases hasn't really changed that much. Because we discovered relatively early on what helps. (Though we no longer nail houses shut with infected people inside them and post armed guards outside). What policies would you suggest to manage outbreaks of infectious diseases? How many deaths do you think is acceptable? Can you pick a number? It will be interesting to see what happens during the next pandemic. Because there will be pandemics in the future. Do you think that a population disinclined to act cautiously in a situation where correct information will be scarce for months, possibly years, is a good thing or do you think it might represent a problem. The most sinister thing a government could possibly do would be to do as little as possible and just accept loss of human life.
  - gnmlaxr 2y ago
    Either the lockdown policy before March 2022 was correct or the sudden "back to normal" after March 2022 was correct. The virus was still there and does not care about presidential edicts and speeches. Given the the world still exists, I think the pre-2022 policies were a gross overreach and the cancellations of the likes of Malone are an eternal shame for the U.S. that is comparable to what happened in the Soviet Union.
    - mind-blight 2y ago
      You should really take into account the advent of COVID vaccines, the evolution of the disease (it appears that less lethal variants), and how human immunology works (people create antibodies if they survive the first round of a disease). There's a tendency amongst folks who have strong opinions on covid measures to create false dichotomies and ignore how context changed over time. Lockdowns appear to have been a good idea during some of the disease (i.e. before we knew how to treat it, and before vaccines became readily available), and became less important as the context changed.
      - lrewh 2y ago
        You would be right, except that the policy change was sudden. We went from hardliner measures like vaccine mandates (EUR 15,000 proposed fines in Austria), lockdowns, layoffs for the unvaccinated, gag orders for medical personnel up to December 2021 to almost complete freedom in March 2022. You could watch consent manufacturing in real time as former hardliner outlets like the NYT and the Atlantic started to insert timid opinion pieces that questioned school lockdowns and masking of children. The Ukraine invasion may also have played an additional role in getting Western leaders focus on important things again.
        BlueTemplar 2y ago
        That seems fitting for something that became a seasonal disease.
        nonameiguess 2y ago
        Who is "we" in this context? This thread is descended from people complaining about American policies and speculating that Biden is trying to make us into the USSR. The US is not Austria and never had fines for being unvaccinated. Vaccine mandates themselves were never federal and can't be. It's up to individual businesses and schools and what not to decide if they care. The government itself only ever mandated vaccines for its own employees. Lockdowns were similarly never federal and mostly on a city by city basis. Some cities hardly anyone was out on the street ever and in-person services businesses were closed for a long time. In other cities, virtually nothing changed at all outside of maybe a few months immediately after March 2020. Where I live, Dallas had a "lockdown" for like three months. This ended way before Ukraine was invaded.
  - BlueTemplar 2y ago
    It's interesting to look at the pandemic before Covid (in the West), which was the Hong-Kong flu of 1968-1970, with 1-4M deaths worldwide and 0.1 M in the USA. It was mostly ignored, worse, its impact was minimized by upper class journals, all the while hospitals were running out of space. (So comparisons with Covid are hard to make, since the response was so different.) The medical sector paid attention after the fact though, and supposedly the reaction to it basically created the (postmodern?) discipline of epidemiology !
- insane_dreamer 2y ago
  Trump says a bunch of shit that no one really believes (except his cultish followers). He also deserves to be locked up. As for COVID policies, those were pretty universal among industrialized nations. and if you think those were Russian style I’d say you know very little about Russia (I’ve lived there so I know what I’m talking about). Our COVID policies were nothing like China — that was authoritarian.

ktagh 2y ago

[flagged]

bborud 2y ago
> The Biden administration had authoritarian, Russian style COVID policies. During the pandemic I read various descriptions of what disease outbreaks were like during various times. Including descriptions of the plague of 1665. What is interesting is that the approach to managing outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases hasn't really changed that much. Because we discovered relatively early on what helps. (Though we no longer nail houses shut with infected people inside them and post armed guards outside). What policies would you suggest to manage outbreaks of infectious diseases? How many deaths do you think is acceptable? Can you pick a number? It will be interesting to see what happens during the next pandemic. Because there will be pandemics in the future. Do you think that a population disinclined to act cautiously in a situation where correct information will be scarce for months, possibly years, is a good thing or do you think it might represent a problem. The most sinister thing a government could possibly do would be to do as little as possible and just accept loss of human life.
- gnmlaxr 2y ago
  Either the lockdown policy before March 2022 was correct or the sudden "back to normal" after March 2022 was correct. The virus was still there and does not care about presidential edicts and speeches. Given the the world still exists, I think the pre-2022 policies were a gross overreach and the cancellations of the likes of Malone are an eternal shame for the U.S. that is comparable to what happened in the Soviet Union.
  - mind-blight 2y ago
    You should really take into account the advent of COVID vaccines, the evolution of the disease (it appears that less lethal variants), and how human immunology works (people create antibodies if they survive the first round of a disease). There's a tendency amongst folks who have strong opinions on covid measures to create false dichotomies and ignore how context changed over time. Lockdowns appear to have been a good idea during some of the disease (i.e. before we knew how to treat it, and before vaccines became readily available), and became less important as the context changed.
    - lrewh 2y ago
      You would be right, except that the policy change was sudden. We went from hardliner measures like vaccine mandates (EUR 15,000 proposed fines in Austria), lockdowns, layoffs for the unvaccinated, gag orders for medical personnel up to December 2021 to almost complete freedom in March 2022. You could watch consent manufacturing in real time as former hardliner outlets like the NYT and the Atlantic started to insert timid opinion pieces that questioned school lockdowns and masking of children. The Ukraine invasion may also have played an additional role in getting Western leaders focus on important things again.
      - BlueTemplar 2y ago
        That seems fitting for something that became a seasonal disease.
      - nonameiguess 2y ago
        Who is "we" in this context? This thread is descended from people complaining about American policies and speculating that Biden is trying to make us into the USSR. The US is not Austria and never had fines for being unvaccinated. Vaccine mandates themselves were never federal and can't be. It's up to individual businesses and schools and what not to decide if they care. The government itself only ever mandated vaccines for its own employees. Lockdowns were similarly never federal and mostly on a city by city basis. Some cities hardly anyone was out on the street ever and in-person services businesses were closed for a long time. In other cities, virtually nothing changed at all outside of maybe a few months immediately after March 2020. Where I live, Dallas had a "lockdown" for like three months. This ended way before Ukraine was invaded.
- BlueTemplar 2y ago
  It's interesting to look at the pandemic before Covid (in the West), which was the Hong-Kong flu of 1968-1970, with 1-4M deaths worldwide and 0.1 M in the USA. It was mostly ignored, worse, its impact was minimized by upper class journals, all the while hospitals were running out of space. (So comparisons with Covid are hard to make, since the response was so different.) The medical sector paid attention after the fact though, and supposedly the reaction to it basically created the (postmodern?) discipline of epidemiology !
insane_dreamer 2y ago
Trump says a bunch of shit that no one really believes (except his cultish followers). He also deserves to be locked up. As for COVID policies, those were pretty universal among industrialized nations. and if you think those were Russian style I’d say you know very little about Russia (I’ve lived there so I know what I’m talking about). Our COVID policies were nothing like China — that was authoritarian.