9 ms·

Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest

Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper. Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything, and it's not some third world backhole that was suffering already anyway, but you yourself that are the worst victims of all their laws and wars.

deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
rdevilla 7mo ago
The west is lost.
- boothby 7mo ago
  It will live on, encoded in the weights of LLMs
- rabbitlord 7mo ago
  The world is lost, I don't think it is any better in non-western countries.
chii 7mo ago
yep. You are not wrong. Those who trade freedom for security will obtain neither.
graemep 7mo ago
Complacency. The west had a golden age from the fall of the Soviet Union, removing their main rival. It also reinforced its reinforced its belief in the inevitably of progress (the "end of history" nonsense, for example). They cannot now cope with threats or danger. That said, comparing the west to Russia, China etc. is a gross exaggeration.
- 999900000999 7mo ago
  China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects. We’re rapidly regressing into prideful ignorance. People are being encouraged to drink raw milk and fear vaccines. 19 century illnesses are making a resurgence. Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.
  - pear01 7mo ago
    China is also an ancient civilization. Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars. Save for Pearl Harbor there were no notable attacks on the American homeland. It's a lot easier to be a superpower when the world destroys itself and you step into the breach. Millions of Soviet civilians died on their own homeland. In their own cities. Millions. Most Americans have no idea and can't really comprehend it. Even today a shocking number of Americans don't have a passport and really know nothing about the world beyond their shores. These people are overrepresented in an American Congress that is anti-democratic. People on the coasts, like in New York City are underrepresented in American government. The entire state of New York gets the same amount of senators as flyover states, many of which are welfare states (take more funds than they contribute). This is because in a modern economy what NYC produces is more valuable than what a state with barely any people in the middle of nowhere produces. Yet the middle of nowhere is represented more. It makes no sense. The current administration is only convincing the world that America is a threat. We live in an age where two oceans offer far less protection than they did when America rose to superpower status. The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example. Watch any congressional hearing about cyber and you might be forgiven for thinking we have already been invaded. Beating up on third world pariah states impresses no one but the current administration. The United States bombs Iran but blinks at Russia. The administration started a trade war with China then backed off, not one meaningful concession was achieved. Unless America reverses course fast the decline will only continue. The world will move on. No country is inevitable.
    - jdkee 7mo ago
mr_toad 7mo ago
> Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? Slowly, and then suddenly. The cracks were obvious when digital records made record keeping more practical, and the first electronic payment systems appeared, but once everyone was doing everything online the damn just burst wide open.
- kitd 7mo ago
  See also "boiling frogs". But then I'm replying to @mr_toad so you probably knew that already.
- abandonliberty 7mo ago
  Democracy had enemies before the founding of the Republic. Our founders warned us that it would require constant maintenance: "a republic, if you can keep it," warned Franklin. Washington cautioned us that political parties would allow unprincipled men to subvert the power of the people. Jefferson highlighted the criticality of public education: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." For Adams, it was the willingness of citizens to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community. He cautioned against purely self-interested rugged individualism, now a fake American ideal. All of these have eroded from a combination of assault and neglect. This problem is asymmetric: those who assault democracy have more to gain than those who defend it (e.g. by looting it, or getting compensated by a foreign power, etc.) In 1971, 2 months after Lewis Powell argued businesses use their political power to aggressively influence the law, Regan brought him on as a Supreme Court Justice. It was much more efficient to buy a justice for life. He helped set the stage for First Amendment protection of corporate speech, and Citizens United; ultimately legalizing the ability to secretly give a political candidate money. The rot is really, really deep.
broDogNRG 7mo ago
Would like to point out GenX is middle management age in the US. It isn't the senile crowd running things anymore. It's 50-60 year old Thiel, Musk, health insurance CEO, crowd. Professional consumer crowd that's taken the baton and never invented anything of their own. Electric cars and rockets, the internet, and society post-WW2 were originally grandpa's ideas.
- conductr 7mo ago
  I think that's the problem, the greatest generation were sort of a moral compass in the US (like it or not, they obv had their own problems - eg. racism). Without them to scold us, it seems we're all too infantile/selfish/greedy and can't even show each other basic respect or do something as simple as stop at a red light. Sure, the internet and social media accelerate it but I think there's also a fundamental loss of parental figures that went out with that generation too. As a Gen X'er myself I know I grew up respecting the hell out of older people, especially 70+ ages. The past couple of decades as that cohort churns, I can't say the same. It's more of a case by case basis now, many of them seem outright evil in their self-righteousness. They all seem angry and ready to fight in any passing interaction (granted, I live in Texas where most of them are amped on FoxNews, too) and that's not how it used to be. They used to be the friendliest cohort alive, hell when I was maybe 10-14 I even used to volunteer at senior living homes just to hang out and chat with them and can't imagine anyone wanting to do that now.
  - cucumber3732842 7mo ago
    The greatest generation and the silent generation spent their entire adult lives vesting power in institutions and they passed this on to the boomers. Now, after the better part of a century of that running it's course with nearly no pressure to not chart a crap course it's falling apart.
    - conductr 7mo ago
      It’s the stewardship that’s the problem not the institutions or existence of.
caconym_ 7mo ago
It's almost as if there's nothing special or unspecial about any of these populations. Just transient cultural factors that (in addition to generally being understood in limited hindsight and through rose-tinted glasses) will inevitably erode and dissolve under sustained attack. > lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper. People just want to live their lives. Maybe you think you would be doing differently in their position, but until you've had a chance to prove it, I don't believe you.
- junofan 7mo ago
  Let’s not get carried away. Real people fought and died for things we have.
  - caconym_ 7mo ago
    Yes, and they did so because of their specific circumstances and beliefs.
NegativeLatency 7mo ago
Everyone was just copying the French
vladms 7mo ago
> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything If that's what you strongly believe then "western countries" are definitely quite bad at communication and the others quite good at propaganda. Having lived in a communist country (years ago) and in the west I know from first hand experience that the difference is huge. No need to believe me, see for yourself if you can, alternatively distrust everybody similarly (Rusia, China and the west) - nobody wants your well-being... Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ones suffering the most from the wars and stupid decisions, it does not matter west/east/south/north. Western countries were a richer which means less poor, but it's not like it's a heaven for everybody either.
- coffe2mug 7mo ago
  Years ago is different to now. Many places in Russia or China, Dubai etc is very livable. Even lots of people are going about their lives normally in Dubai - these days. China is definitely not so shit like portrayed by western media. At the same time London is also not run by Islamic Extremists as portrayed by perhaps the top media station in USA. > Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the on totally true.
- adrian_b 7mo ago
  Having also lived in a communist country, I agree that 35 years ago the difference was huge. Unfortunately, since around 2000 the differences have become less and less every year, so what has remained now is a very small fraction of what was a quarter of century ago. The socialist economies from the past were just the extreme form of capitalist economies, where monopolies controlled every market. The western economies are quickly approaching this stage. Extreme surveillance of everybody was how the communist elites preserved their power, but the surveillance was actually illegal, because the constitution "guaranteed" the secret of communications, e.g. of mail and telephone. While the secret police or equivalent organizations did not care about what is legal or not, they were nonetheless forced to keep appearances and do their work covertly. They also did not have enough resources to process in a centralized form all the data collected by surveillance. Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities. They also now have the means to spy on an unlimited number of people among hundreds of millions or even billions, so surveillance is already worse than it was in the communist countries, even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe (hopefully).
slicktux 7mo ago
Your sardonic comment says a lot but does not address the real freedom we have. Which is to NOT use those platforms that require age verification. The more people that don’t use them the more it will hurt the companies that loose a customer base; then maybe their lobbyists will force a change.
- mschuster91 7mo ago
  > Which is to NOT use those platforms that require age verification. That is getting harder and harder. Platforms that are not susceptible to age verification (yet?) are on their way out - when have you written an email the last time for personal (i.e. non-work, order or customer support related) reasons? A physical letter [1]? The (root) cause is, centralized platforms like Whatsapp are much much more convenient and on top of that network effects apply - when 90% of your social connections use Whatsapp exclusively, it's hard to not use Whatsapp as well. And then you got digitalization of government services and banking. More and more governments push for the removal of paper forms and require a web service. Banking regulations enforce 2FA, which almost always comes in the form of a phone app. The web services require a browser and an OS, which may require age verification sooner than later (see the recent spat about California's law), and the phone apps are only available for the walled gardens of unrooted, Play Store certified Apple and Android phones - that can and will be forced to verify ages as well. Hard cash is out as well, many governments have set hard caps on cash transactions due to "anti money laundering" laws, in other countries you need to have a bank account to pay for mandatory things like taxes or public broadcast fees [2], and an increasing number of vendors refuses to accept cash as well due to the associated handling cost and risk of fraud (i.e. employee theft) and robbery. That last point alone will make it impossible to survive in society without engaging with one or more of the walled gardens. And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3]. [1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postnord-postal-delivery-letters-society https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno... [2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rundfunkbeitrag/rundfunkbeitrag-bar-zahlen-moeglich-ausnahmefaellen https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203
odiroot 7mo ago
Because, at least in Europe, people got hooked on nanny state.
petcat 7mo ago
> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience should tell everyone that USA (and the West) is very different from Russia or China or Dubai. USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can openly (and legally) debate these things, and if we convince enough people, then we can change them.
- 5o1ecist 7mo ago
  [dead]
- brandon272 7mo ago
  Active public discourse seems to have not made even a slight dent in the growth of surveillance in the last 25 years.
  - petcat 7mo ago
    Wild exaggeration. Here's an example just recently: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts-canceled-immigration-survillance-concerns https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts... It's a constant and ongoing public concern.
    - close04 7mo ago
      Public discourse is a speed bump not an immovable barrier. The proof is in the state of things advancing in the same direction for the past few decades at least. Speed bumps are still valuable but not if you want to block the road. So public discourse alone isn’t the silver bullet you make them out to be.
      - petcat 7mo ago
        It's quite a defeatist perspective. You're saying that because we can't fix or prevent everything, then we should choose not to fix or prevent anything? Many US states do not impose government surveillance or have age verification laws. But the point I was mainly making was regarding the comment equating USA and the West to Russia or China. Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain about government surveillance before you end up in jail.
tinfoilhatter 7mo ago
This totalitarian agenda has been in the works for far longer than a quarter century. It's not just rich old people either. We're witnessing the creation of the beast system in real time. The one that is prophesized in the Book of Revelation.
- code4life 7mo ago
  It is both scary to watch and yet fun to be alive to see it come to fruition. It is occurring in every dimension, including the ability to track who buys and sells with crypto currencies along with the ability to punish or reward people based on ai hardware software infrastructure deployments.
  - Scapeghost 7mo ago
    Reddit bans users based on what they upvoted: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditSafety/comments/1j4cd53/warning_users_that_upvote_violent_content/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditSafety/comments/1j4cd53/warni... "We know that the culture of a community is not just what gets posted, but what is engaged with. Voting comes with responsibility."
    - code4life 7mo ago
      Are you talking to someone else? This seems like an unnecessary threat based in your bias. Chatgpt seems to concur.
lapcat 7mo ago
> Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice This is a misunderstanding of American history. From its founding by wealthy white male landowners and slaveowners, the US was by design a plutocracy, enshrined in the Constitution with various anti-democratic (small "d") measures such as separation of powers, the electoral college, the Presidential veto, the unelected Supreme Court with lifetime tenure, and representation of land rather than population in the Senate. Originally, Senators weren't even directly elected. And of course neither women nor Black men had the right to vote. (EDIT: I forgot to mention the extreme difficulty of amending the Constitution, and as a result, the Constitution hasn't been amended much since the Bill of Rights.) The only thing that held the plutocracy in check was "all political is local". The US was an agrarian nation, not yet hit by the industrial revolution. The fastest form of communication and tranportation was the horse. What has changed radically in the 20th and 21st centuries is that modern technology allows the ultra-wealthy to organize and conspire (see Epstein and friends, for example) on a national and even international scale. Political election campaigns have always been privately funded—another essential feature of the plutocracy—and now they're obscenely expensive with TV and internet advertising, which further consolidates the power of the ultra-wealthy campaign contributors. The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years. We're still operating under the ancient rules. Even during the suffering of the Great Depression, it took a "white knight", an ultra-wealthy leader FDR with some sympathy for the lower classes, to provide some relief. And note that the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent history was Ross Perot, a billionaire who self-funded TV informercials to spread his message. The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.
- mullingitover 7mo ago
  > with various anti-democratic (small "d") Yes, because the designers of the system were well-read and understood that raw democracy, like oligarchy and autocracy, is something that republics devolve into. Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable. The Constitution is designed to maximize the advantages while hedging against its inherent instability. > The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged. I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
amarant 7mo ago
What do you mean "the west"? The US is indeed lost, but don't bundle the rest of us in with those lunatics!
- graemep 7mo ago
  We are not really better. Chat control being pushed in the EU. The Online Safety Act already passed in the UK, and now legislation to give politicians the power to decide what websites need age verification. Crony capitalism/technofedualism/whatever all over the place. Hate speech laws that are often politicised and give the police and prosecutors a lot of room to target people they dislike (something the US has constitutional protections against). Extremist parties such as PVV and AfD getting a significant proportion of the vote.
  - amarant 7mo ago
    The UK is lost too. Chat control is scary, but it's actually proof that the EU is not yet lost: that law keeps getting shot down. We do need some kind of mechanism to prevent this kind of "keep trying until it passes" mechanism to lobbying/lawmaking that the people pushing chat control are using. That's a tricky issue though, as revisions on law proposals are an expected part of the process. Some sort of "dismiss with prejudice" would be nice tho
    - graemep 7mo ago
      > but it's actually proof that the EU is not yet lost: that law keeps getting shot down. Good things happen in the UK and US too and some bad laws get rejected. The overall trend is pretty clear though and is the same in the EU, and the rest of the west too. Its not just one country or leader or political party. Its a cultural problem that affects the whole of the west. "We are going to hell slightly slower" is not a great place to claim to be.
- Razengan 7mo ago
  I dunno, the UK seems to be doing its best to outcrazy the US
dheera 7mo ago
This. Every time I point out that I shouldn't have to leak my residential address to private businesses to register to vote or complete KYC, 15 people immediately come out of the woods to point out that addresses are public information. The point is they shouldn't be. That's how people get stalked, harassed, and murdered at their home.
- GJim 7mo ago
  This is HN mate. It's full of people from ad-tech who believe data protection is the enemy and the GDPR is a European conspiracy against growth. You should learn to simply bend over and grab your ankles with both hands whenever they (or anybody else) asks for your personal data. EDIT: and predictable 'drive-by' downvotes from those in the industry too lazy to try and defend their position and write a rebuttle!
- disposition2 7mo ago
  > shouldn't have to leak my residential address to private businesses to register to vote If the 'SAVE America Act' passes, you're going to be open to leaking a heck of a lot more than that, and it'll all go in to a national database.
  - dheera 7mo ago
    TBH I'm not opposed to the government knowing where I live. Having ways to find and lock up actual criminals is not a bad thing. I'm also not opposed to certain private businesses or financial institutions needing to know who I am. Having ways to identify financial criminals is not a bad thing either. What I'm vehemently opposed to is these private businesses needing to know where I live. They are not the ones doing the locking up. That's what the government does. Private businesses can identify individuals without needing to know their residential addresses.
zelphirkalt 7mo ago
Politicians have spent decades eroding our education systems, at least where I am located. Bread and circuses. Coming up next in Germany is how they will slash personal assets in quarter (not merely half), using a reform of support for unemployed people. Instead of working out how to get finances redistributed (oh wait, now I will be called a "communist" or "socialist" as if that were some devilish insult), they are working out how to get to the savings of the simple worker. Congrats Germany, for electing another CDU government. We are digging our own graves here and we are too uninformed and too entertained to see it. Next election will probably be the breaking point, when AfD manages to get many majorities, due to how unhappy CDU, SPD, and other mainstream parties have made the populace. And then we will have these right-wing extremists as our government. Looking to the US, they have hit it even worse now. Full authoritarian guy at the top, who might even prevent the next elections, unless he is sure that he will win or can make it so that he appears to have won.
mobiuscog 7mo ago
Convenient and Cheap. That's all most people care about. Privacy was already lost when everyone adopted mobile phones and gave them everything with constant location tracking, and used the free email accounts. It's interesting that age-verification is the straw that breaks the camels back, but I guess porn has that power.
- HerbManic 7mo ago
  Yeo, convenience is the most powerful "drug" we have ever come up with. We need our next hit... Now!
kevin_thibedeau 7mo ago
US domestic surveillance predates 9/11. It just became more open once an easy excuse was available.
temptemptemp111 7mo ago
[dead]
5o1ecist 7mo ago
[dead]
amatecha 7mo ago
I appreciate you saying this. It gets SO OLD having everything in society dominated by "think of the children" rationales that basically translate to "increasing authority and further-reduced freedom", with a spicy dash of omnipresent surveillance.
- bigyabai 7mo ago
  It was indescribably pathetic watching HN users of all people defend Client Side Scanning and Bitlocker flaws. The only people qualified to logically protest have already drank the Kool-aid.
- rdiddly 7mo ago
  Yeah unfortunately I suspect the authoritarian surveillance is the whole point. Protecting children is obviously not a priority for the Epstein class.
autoexec 7mo ago
> You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice That was a lie we told ourselves. In reality we started with slavery which is about as far from freedom and justice as you can get, and then shifted to mass incarceration (often just slavery with extra steps) locking up more of our own people than Russia or China ever did. These days our prison population is trending down as we're getting better at imprisoning people in their own homes and communities with GPS trackers and parole/probation requirements but it's still laughable to call ourselves the "land of the free"
- armenarmen 7mo ago
  I hear this point of view, that mass incarceration is slavery with extra steps. But a (very quick and not in depth) google search shows that the cost to keep a person in prison for a year is $60-100k. And as far as I can tell in the cases where prisoners are laboring, while for admittedly shit pay, its not in $50k/year let alone one where where a profit would be returned for the "owners/jailers" Now, if you're saying that the slavery comparison is more in that prisoners are legit balance sheet items for private prisoners to collect tax money? Well there is an argument there to be sure. But this seems like a structural problem. The existence of private prisons at all. None of that is arguing in favor of crazy sentences for non-violent crime, however directly comparing it to chattel slavery confuses the argument against mass incarceration.
  - autoexec 7mo ago
    Prisons and more specifically prisoners are massively profitable to their jailers/owners no matter if they're private, state, or federal. Even private corporations are profiting from the US prison system. The federal government runs a corporation called FPI/UNICOR which sells out prisoners for profit. States also have programs or companies that lease their prisoners out to private companies who pay those prisons (or the government) a lot of money to get an endless supply of workers who can't complain about working conditions or being paid pennies a day (almost all of which goes back to the prison anyway). Some prisoners are forced to work for no pay at all. Prisons will let people who are supposedly so dangerous that they need to be locked up and denied parole out of jail long enough to work their shifts at fast food restaurants, retail stores, plants (like Tyson Foods) and warehouses and they'll run their own companies inside the prisons themselves like call centers which get contracted out to private corporations or government agencies for a profit. Some prisons also run farms, modern day plantations, that use slave labor to sell millions of dollars worth of food and crops to corporations whose products show up in our stores. Whole foods, kroger, walmart, and target all sell products made by prison labor. Food and crops raised on prison farms even get exported to other countries. Inside the prisons everything prisoners get they have to buy from the prison which overcharges them for everything. The workers make pennies but the markups on what they need can be 600%. The commissary vendors are for-profit and the prisons get kickbacks from them to get exclusive access to the captive customer base. Private companies partner with prisons for release cards and make profit from that. Phone calls from prisons can cost over $20 for just 15 minutes (https://brilliantmaps.com/jail-call-cost-usa/ https://brilliantmaps.com/jail-call-cost-usa/). The US prison system is designed to make money. Private prisons tend to make more profit on their prisoners, but so do state and federal prisons, the vendors they employ, and private corporations. Of course even while the government and corporations rake in money taxpayers are still on the hook for a lot of unnecessarily expenses, including the costs of policing and the court systems that feed the prison system a steady stream of new and returning prisoners. Everybody knows that we could save billions in tax payer money is we focused more on keeping people out of the system, but there's profit to be made from slaves so no one will fix it.
ErigmolCt 7mo ago
Whether these systems are a good idea is still very much being debated
Eyeland0 7mo ago
Weak? We manufacture mighty strong propaganda.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
Aunche 7mo ago
> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything, This is clearly propaganda manufactured by the evil tech cabal to suppress grassroots efforts to protect children from their brainwashing. /s In all seriousness, populist outrage doesn't help anyone except for the power brokers who can hide their true intentions under all the noise. As much of an overreach I think the Patriot Act was for example, the degree of harm that resulted from it is minuscule compared to the brainrot caused by social media. If you want me to oppose the age verification laws, then you need to convince me that those laws won't actually reduce brainrot or that surveillance harms me more than I think and let me come to my own conclusion.
squibonpig 7mo ago
We never were? Neoliberal freedom never constituted strength nor is companies having the general public by the balls a new thing here.
Henchman21 7mo ago
When you take a high trust society and then endlessly lie to the people, what exactly are you expecting to happen? Serious question here, we are under direct assault from the "elites" here and we are clearly shell-shocked and not yet dealing with it. Many of us are open to suggestion. But if all you're going to do is call us bitches, then shut the fuck up. Wanna help? Cool, I'm willing to accept it. Maybe try that.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

rdevilla 7mo ago

The west is lost.

boothby 7mo ago
It will live on, encoded in the weights of LLMs
rabbitlord 7mo ago
The world is lost, I don't think it is any better in non-western countries.

chii 7mo ago

yep. You are not wrong. Those who trade freedom for security will obtain neither.

graemep 7mo ago

Complacency. The west had a golden age from the fall of the Soviet Union, removing their main rival. It also reinforced its reinforced its belief in the inevitably of progress (the "end of history" nonsense, for example). They cannot now cope with threats or danger. That said, comparing the west to Russia, China etc. is a gross exaggeration.

999900000999 7mo ago
China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects. We’re rapidly regressing into prideful ignorance. People are being encouraged to drink raw milk and fear vaccines. 19 century illnesses are making a resurgence. Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.
- pear01 7mo ago
  China is also an ancient civilization. Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars. Save for Pearl Harbor there were no notable attacks on the American homeland. It's a lot easier to be a superpower when the world destroys itself and you step into the breach. Millions of Soviet civilians died on their own homeland. In their own cities. Millions. Most Americans have no idea and can't really comprehend it. Even today a shocking number of Americans don't have a passport and really know nothing about the world beyond their shores. These people are overrepresented in an American Congress that is anti-democratic. People on the coasts, like in New York City are underrepresented in American government. The entire state of New York gets the same amount of senators as flyover states, many of which are welfare states (take more funds than they contribute). This is because in a modern economy what NYC produces is more valuable than what a state with barely any people in the middle of nowhere produces. Yet the middle of nowhere is represented more. It makes no sense. The current administration is only convincing the world that America is a threat. We live in an age where two oceans offer far less protection than they did when America rose to superpower status. The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example. Watch any congressional hearing about cyber and you might be forgiven for thinking we have already been invaded. Beating up on third world pariah states impresses no one but the current administration. The United States bombs Iran but blinks at Russia. The administration started a trade war with China then backed off, not one meaningful concession was achieved. Unless America reverses course fast the decline will only continue. The world will move on. No country is inevitable.
  - jdkee 7mo ago

mr_toad 7mo ago

> Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? Slowly, and then suddenly. The cracks were obvious when digital records made record keeping more practical, and the first electronic payment systems appeared, but once everyone was doing everything online the damn just burst wide open.

kitd 7mo ago
See also "boiling frogs". But then I'm replying to @mr_toad so you probably knew that already.
abandonliberty 7mo ago
Democracy had enemies before the founding of the Republic. Our founders warned us that it would require constant maintenance: "a republic, if you can keep it," warned Franklin. Washington cautioned us that political parties would allow unprincipled men to subvert the power of the people. Jefferson highlighted the criticality of public education: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." For Adams, it was the willingness of citizens to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community. He cautioned against purely self-interested rugged individualism, now a fake American ideal. All of these have eroded from a combination of assault and neglect. This problem is asymmetric: those who assault democracy have more to gain than those who defend it (e.g. by looting it, or getting compensated by a foreign power, etc.) In 1971, 2 months after Lewis Powell argued businesses use their political power to aggressively influence the law, Regan brought him on as a Supreme Court Justice. It was much more efficient to buy a justice for life. He helped set the stage for First Amendment protection of corporate speech, and Citizens United; ultimately legalizing the ability to secretly give a political candidate money. The rot is really, really deep.

broDogNRG 7mo ago

Would like to point out GenX is middle management age in the US. It isn't the senile crowd running things anymore. It's 50-60 year old Thiel, Musk, health insurance CEO, crowd. Professional consumer crowd that's taken the baton and never invented anything of their own. Electric cars and rockets, the internet, and society post-WW2 were originally grandpa's ideas.

conductr 7mo ago
I think that's the problem, the greatest generation were sort of a moral compass in the US (like it or not, they obv had their own problems - eg. racism). Without them to scold us, it seems we're all too infantile/selfish/greedy and can't even show each other basic respect or do something as simple as stop at a red light. Sure, the internet and social media accelerate it but I think there's also a fundamental loss of parental figures that went out with that generation too. As a Gen X'er myself I know I grew up respecting the hell out of older people, especially 70+ ages. The past couple of decades as that cohort churns, I can't say the same. It's more of a case by case basis now, many of them seem outright evil in their self-righteousness. They all seem angry and ready to fight in any passing interaction (granted, I live in Texas where most of them are amped on FoxNews, too) and that's not how it used to be. They used to be the friendliest cohort alive, hell when I was maybe 10-14 I even used to volunteer at senior living homes just to hang out and chat with them and can't imagine anyone wanting to do that now.
- cucumber3732842 7mo ago
  The greatest generation and the silent generation spent their entire adult lives vesting power in institutions and they passed this on to the boomers. Now, after the better part of a century of that running it's course with nearly no pressure to not chart a crap course it's falling apart.
  - conductr 7mo ago
    It’s the stewardship that’s the problem not the institutions or existence of.

caconym_ 7mo ago

It's almost as if there's nothing special or unspecial about any of these populations. Just transient cultural factors that (in addition to generally being understood in limited hindsight and through rose-tinted glasses) will inevitably erode and dissolve under sustained attack. > lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper. People just want to live their lives. Maybe you think you would be doing differently in their position, but until you've had a chance to prove it, I don't believe you.

junofan 7mo ago
Let’s not get carried away. Real people fought and died for things we have.
- caconym_ 7mo ago
  Yes, and they did so because of their specific circumstances and beliefs.

NegativeLatency 7mo ago

Everyone was just copying the French

vladms 7mo ago

> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything If that's what you strongly believe then "western countries" are definitely quite bad at communication and the others quite good at propaganda. Having lived in a communist country (years ago) and in the west I know from first hand experience that the difference is huge. No need to believe me, see for yourself if you can, alternatively distrust everybody similarly (Rusia, China and the west) - nobody wants your well-being... Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ones suffering the most from the wars and stupid decisions, it does not matter west/east/south/north. Western countries were a richer which means less poor, but it's not like it's a heaven for everybody either.

coffe2mug 7mo ago
Years ago is different to now. Many places in Russia or China, Dubai etc is very livable. Even lots of people are going about their lives normally in Dubai - these days. China is definitely not so shit like portrayed by western media. At the same time London is also not run by Islamic Extremists as portrayed by perhaps the top media station in USA. > Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the on totally true.
adrian_b 7mo ago
Having also lived in a communist country, I agree that 35 years ago the difference was huge. Unfortunately, since around 2000 the differences have become less and less every year, so what has remained now is a very small fraction of what was a quarter of century ago. The socialist economies from the past were just the extreme form of capitalist economies, where monopolies controlled every market. The western economies are quickly approaching this stage. Extreme surveillance of everybody was how the communist elites preserved their power, but the surveillance was actually illegal, because the constitution "guaranteed" the secret of communications, e.g. of mail and telephone. While the secret police or equivalent organizations did not care about what is legal or not, they were nonetheless forced to keep appearances and do their work covertly. They also did not have enough resources to process in a centralized form all the data collected by surveillance. Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities. They also now have the means to spy on an unlimited number of people among hundreds of millions or even billions, so surveillance is already worse than it was in the communist countries, even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe (hopefully).

slicktux 7mo ago

Your sardonic comment says a lot but does not address the real freedom we have. Which is to NOT use those platforms that require age verification. The more people that don’t use them the more it will hurt the companies that loose a customer base; then maybe their lobbyists will force a change.

mschuster91 7mo ago
> Which is to NOT use those platforms that require age verification. That is getting harder and harder. Platforms that are not susceptible to age verification (yet?) are on their way out - when have you written an email the last time for personal (i.e. non-work, order or customer support related) reasons? A physical letter [1]? The (root) cause is, centralized platforms like Whatsapp are much much more convenient and on top of that network effects apply - when 90% of your social connections use Whatsapp exclusively, it's hard to not use Whatsapp as well. And then you got digitalization of government services and banking. More and more governments push for the removal of paper forms and require a web service. Banking regulations enforce 2FA, which almost always comes in the form of a phone app. The web services require a browser and an OS, which may require age verification sooner than later (see the recent spat about California's law), and the phone apps are only available for the walled gardens of unrooted, Play Store certified Apple and Android phones - that can and will be forced to verify ages as well. Hard cash is out as well, many governments have set hard caps on cash transactions due to "anti money laundering" laws, in other countries you need to have a bank account to pay for mandatory things like taxes or public broadcast fees [2], and an increasing number of vendors refuses to accept cash as well due to the associated handling cost and risk of fraud (i.e. employee theft) and robbery. That last point alone will make it impossible to survive in society without engaging with one or more of the walled gardens. And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3]. [1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postnord-postal-delivery-letters-society https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno... [2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rundfunkbeitrag/rundfunkbeitrag-bar-zahlen-moeglich-ausnahmefaellen https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203

odiroot 7mo ago

Because, at least in Europe, people got hooked on nanny state.

petcat 7mo ago

> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience should tell everyone that USA (and the West) is very different from Russia or China or Dubai. USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can openly (and legally) debate these things, and if we convince enough people, then we can change them.

5o1ecist 7mo ago
[dead]
brandon272 7mo ago
Active public discourse seems to have not made even a slight dent in the growth of surveillance in the last 25 years.
- petcat 7mo ago
  Wild exaggeration. Here's an example just recently: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts-canceled-immigration-survillance-concerns https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts... It's a constant and ongoing public concern.
  - close04 7mo ago
    Public discourse is a speed bump not an immovable barrier. The proof is in the state of things advancing in the same direction for the past few decades at least. Speed bumps are still valuable but not if you want to block the road. So public discourse alone isn’t the silver bullet you make them out to be.
    - petcat 7mo ago
      It's quite a defeatist perspective. You're saying that because we can't fix or prevent everything, then we should choose not to fix or prevent anything? Many US states do not impose government surveillance or have age verification laws. But the point I was mainly making was regarding the comment equating USA and the West to Russia or China. Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain about government surveillance before you end up in jail.

tinfoilhatter 7mo ago

This totalitarian agenda has been in the works for far longer than a quarter century. It's not just rich old people either. We're witnessing the creation of the beast system in real time. The one that is prophesized in the Book of Revelation.

code4life 7mo ago
It is both scary to watch and yet fun to be alive to see it come to fruition. It is occurring in every dimension, including the ability to track who buys and sells with crypto currencies along with the ability to punish or reward people based on ai hardware software infrastructure deployments.
- Scapeghost 7mo ago
  Reddit bans users based on what they upvoted: https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditSafety/comments/1j4cd53/warning_users_that_upvote_violent_content/ https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditSafety/comments/1j4cd53/warni... "We know that the culture of a community is not just what gets posted, but what is engaged with. Voting comes with responsibility."
  - code4life 7mo ago
    Are you talking to someone else? This seems like an unnecessary threat based in your bias. Chatgpt seems to concur.

lapcat 7mo ago

> Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice This is a misunderstanding of American history. From its founding by wealthy white male landowners and slaveowners, the US was by design a plutocracy, enshrined in the Constitution with various anti-democratic (small "d") measures such as separation of powers, the electoral college, the Presidential veto, the unelected Supreme Court with lifetime tenure, and representation of land rather than population in the Senate. Originally, Senators weren't even directly elected. And of course neither women nor Black men had the right to vote. (EDIT: I forgot to mention the extreme difficulty of amending the Constitution, and as a result, the Constitution hasn't been amended much since the Bill of Rights.) The only thing that held the plutocracy in check was "all political is local". The US was an agrarian nation, not yet hit by the industrial revolution. The fastest form of communication and tranportation was the horse. What has changed radically in the 20th and 21st centuries is that modern technology allows the ultra-wealthy to organize and conspire (see Epstein and friends, for example) on a national and even international scale. Political election campaigns have always been privately funded—another essential feature of the plutocracy—and now they're obscenely expensive with TV and internet advertising, which further consolidates the power of the ultra-wealthy campaign contributors. The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years. We're still operating under the ancient rules. Even during the suffering of the Great Depression, it took a "white knight", an ultra-wealthy leader FDR with some sympathy for the lower classes, to provide some relief. And note that the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent history was Ross Perot, a billionaire who self-funded TV informercials to spread his message. The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.

mullingitover 7mo ago
> with various anti-democratic (small "d") Yes, because the designers of the system were well-read and understood that raw democracy, like oligarchy and autocracy, is something that republics devolve into. Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable. The Constitution is designed to maximize the advantages while hedging against its inherent instability. > The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged. I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

amarant 7mo ago

What do you mean "the west"? The US is indeed lost, but don't bundle the rest of us in with those lunatics!

graemep 7mo ago
We are not really better. Chat control being pushed in the EU. The Online Safety Act already passed in the UK, and now legislation to give politicians the power to decide what websites need age verification. Crony capitalism/technofedualism/whatever all over the place. Hate speech laws that are often politicised and give the police and prosecutors a lot of room to target people they dislike (something the US has constitutional protections against). Extremist parties such as PVV and AfD getting a significant proportion of the vote.
- amarant 7mo ago
  The UK is lost too. Chat control is scary, but it's actually proof that the EU is not yet lost: that law keeps getting shot down. We do need some kind of mechanism to prevent this kind of "keep trying until it passes" mechanism to lobbying/lawmaking that the people pushing chat control are using. That's a tricky issue though, as revisions on law proposals are an expected part of the process. Some sort of "dismiss with prejudice" would be nice tho
  - graemep 7mo ago
    > but it's actually proof that the EU is not yet lost: that law keeps getting shot down. Good things happen in the UK and US too and some bad laws get rejected. The overall trend is pretty clear though and is the same in the EU, and the rest of the west too. Its not just one country or leader or political party. Its a cultural problem that affects the whole of the west. "We are going to hell slightly slower" is not a great place to claim to be.
Razengan 7mo ago
I dunno, the UK seems to be doing its best to outcrazy the US

dheera 7mo ago

This. Every time I point out that I shouldn't have to leak my residential address to private businesses to register to vote or complete KYC, 15 people immediately come out of the woods to point out that addresses are public information. The point is they shouldn't be. That's how people get stalked, harassed, and murdered at their home.

GJim 7mo ago
This is HN mate. It's full of people from ad-tech who believe data protection is the enemy and the GDPR is a European conspiracy against growth. You should learn to simply bend over and grab your ankles with both hands whenever they (or anybody else) asks for your personal data. EDIT: and predictable 'drive-by' downvotes from those in the industry too lazy to try and defend their position and write a rebuttle!
disposition2 7mo ago
> shouldn't have to leak my residential address to private businesses to register to vote If the 'SAVE America Act' passes, you're going to be open to leaking a heck of a lot more than that, and it'll all go in to a national database.
- dheera 7mo ago
  TBH I'm not opposed to the government knowing where I live. Having ways to find and lock up actual criminals is not a bad thing. I'm also not opposed to certain private businesses or financial institutions needing to know who I am. Having ways to identify financial criminals is not a bad thing either. What I'm vehemently opposed to is these private businesses needing to know where I live. They are not the ones doing the locking up. That's what the government does. Private businesses can identify individuals without needing to know their residential addresses.

zelphirkalt 7mo ago

Politicians have spent decades eroding our education systems, at least where I am located. Bread and circuses. Coming up next in Germany is how they will slash personal assets in quarter (not merely half), using a reform of support for unemployed people. Instead of working out how to get finances redistributed (oh wait, now I will be called a "communist" or "socialist" as if that were some devilish insult), they are working out how to get to the savings of the simple worker. Congrats Germany, for electing another CDU government. We are digging our own graves here and we are too uninformed and too entertained to see it. Next election will probably be the breaking point, when AfD manages to get many majorities, due to how unhappy CDU, SPD, and other mainstream parties have made the populace. And then we will have these right-wing extremists as our government. Looking to the US, they have hit it even worse now. Full authoritarian guy at the top, who might even prevent the next elections, unless he is sure that he will win or can make it so that he appears to have won.

mobiuscog 7mo ago

Convenient and Cheap. That's all most people care about. Privacy was already lost when everyone adopted mobile phones and gave them everything with constant location tracking, and used the free email accounts. It's interesting that age-verification is the straw that breaks the camels back, but I guess porn has that power.

HerbManic 7mo ago
Yeo, convenience is the most powerful "drug" we have ever come up with. We need our next hit... Now!

kevin_thibedeau 7mo ago

US domestic surveillance predates 9/11. It just became more open once an easy excuse was available.

temptemptemp111 7mo ago

[dead]

5o1ecist 7mo ago

[dead]

amatecha 7mo ago

I appreciate you saying this. It gets SO OLD having everything in society dominated by "think of the children" rationales that basically translate to "increasing authority and further-reduced freedom", with a spicy dash of omnipresent surveillance.

bigyabai 7mo ago
It was indescribably pathetic watching HN users of all people defend Client Side Scanning and Bitlocker flaws. The only people qualified to logically protest have already drank the Kool-aid.
rdiddly 7mo ago
Yeah unfortunately I suspect the authoritarian surveillance is the whole point. Protecting children is obviously not a priority for the Epstein class.

autoexec 7mo ago

> You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice That was a lie we told ourselves. In reality we started with slavery which is about as far from freedom and justice as you can get, and then shifted to mass incarceration (often just slavery with extra steps) locking up more of our own people than Russia or China ever did. These days our prison population is trending down as we're getting better at imprisoning people in their own homes and communities with GPS trackers and parole/probation requirements but it's still laughable to call ourselves the "land of the free"

armenarmen 7mo ago
I hear this point of view, that mass incarceration is slavery with extra steps. But a (very quick and not in depth) google search shows that the cost to keep a person in prison for a year is $60-100k. And as far as I can tell in the cases where prisoners are laboring, while for admittedly shit pay, its not in $50k/year let alone one where where a profit would be returned for the "owners/jailers" Now, if you're saying that the slavery comparison is more in that prisoners are legit balance sheet items for private prisoners to collect tax money? Well there is an argument there to be sure. But this seems like a structural problem. The existence of private prisons at all. None of that is arguing in favor of crazy sentences for non-violent crime, however directly comparing it to chattel slavery confuses the argument against mass incarceration.
- autoexec 7mo ago
  Prisons and more specifically prisoners are massively profitable to their jailers/owners no matter if they're private, state, or federal. Even private corporations are profiting from the US prison system. The federal government runs a corporation called FPI/UNICOR which sells out prisoners for profit. States also have programs or companies that lease their prisoners out to private companies who pay those prisons (or the government) a lot of money to get an endless supply of workers who can't complain about working conditions or being paid pennies a day (almost all of which goes back to the prison anyway). Some prisoners are forced to work for no pay at all. Prisons will let people who are supposedly so dangerous that they need to be locked up and denied parole out of jail long enough to work their shifts at fast food restaurants, retail stores, plants (like Tyson Foods) and warehouses and they'll run their own companies inside the prisons themselves like call centers which get contracted out to private corporations or government agencies for a profit. Some prisons also run farms, modern day plantations, that use slave labor to sell millions of dollars worth of food and crops to corporations whose products show up in our stores. Whole foods, kroger, walmart, and target all sell products made by prison labor. Food and crops raised on prison farms even get exported to other countries. Inside the prisons everything prisoners get they have to buy from the prison which overcharges them for everything. The workers make pennies but the markups on what they need can be 600%. The commissary vendors are for-profit and the prisons get kickbacks from them to get exclusive access to the captive customer base. Private companies partner with prisons for release cards and make profit from that. Phone calls from prisons can cost over $20 for just 15 minutes (https://brilliantmaps.com/jail-call-cost-usa/ https://brilliantmaps.com/jail-call-cost-usa/). The US prison system is designed to make money. Private prisons tend to make more profit on their prisoners, but so do state and federal prisons, the vendors they employ, and private corporations. Of course even while the government and corporations rake in money taxpayers are still on the hook for a lot of unnecessarily expenses, including the costs of policing and the court systems that feed the prison system a steady stream of new and returning prisoners. Everybody knows that we could save billions in tax payer money is we focused more on keeping people out of the system, but there's profit to be made from slaves so no one will fix it.

ErigmolCt 7mo ago

Whether these systems are a good idea is still very much being debated

Eyeland0 7mo ago

Weak? We manufacture mighty strong propaganda.

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

Aunche 7mo ago

> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything, This is clearly propaganda manufactured by the evil tech cabal to suppress grassroots efforts to protect children from their brainwashing. /s In all seriousness, populist outrage doesn't help anyone except for the power brokers who can hide their true intentions under all the noise. As much of an overreach I think the Patriot Act was for example, the degree of harm that resulted from it is minuscule compared to the brainrot caused by social media. If you want me to oppose the age verification laws, then you need to convince me that those laws won't actually reduce brainrot or that surveillance harms me more than I think and let me come to my own conclusion.

squibonpig 7mo ago

We never were? Neoliberal freedom never constituted strength nor is companies having the general public by the balls a new thing here.

Henchman21 7mo ago

When you take a high trust society and then endlessly lie to the people, what exactly are you expecting to happen? Serious question here, we are under direct assault from the "elites" here and we are clearly shell-shocked and not yet dealing with it. Many of us are open to suggestion. But if all you're going to do is call us bitches, then shut the fuck up. Wanna help? Cool, I'm willing to accept it. Maybe try that.