6 ms·

This is bad. But before judging China, people need to ask themselves if the hold their own government to the same standard of criticism. As an American, I fee

by osazuwa 11y ago

This is bad. But before judging China, people need to ask themselves if the hold their own government to the same standard of criticism. As an American, I feel if the US government had similar plans and someone had leaked them on Wikileaks, there would be more conversation about the leaker's girlfriend than outrage about the plans themselves.

adventured 11y ago
I don't know a single person that doesn't have a very low, highly critical opinion of the US Government already. That includes essentially universal skepticism of Congress. So yes, I think Americans criticize their government almost as a professional sport. Non-stop 24/7, everywhere. Even for things the government isn't responsible for. I'd argue the only thing Americans are guilty of is too much complaining and criticizing of their government, and not enough doing to change it as a follow-through.
- sqeaky 11y ago
  This comment is horrible and wrong. Thanks Obama!
  - sqeaky 11y ago
    :( It saddens me that such an obvious joke gets downvoted. It would be nice if people could reply when they downvote. Was the joke not received as such, what is not funny or does the community hate jokes?
- nitrogen 11y ago
  Most Americans do criticize the government, but only on a few party-aligned talking points. Few agree on what is worthy of criticism, and many miss the important issues because they are preoccupied by relatively inconsequential hot button issues.
- ArkyBeagle 11y ago
  Now you know (of) a single person. Our public servants are largely fine people. We get stuff that's weird because of people being dancing monkeys for campaign finance. This is actually, in my opinion, overt, specific and designed entertainment product. It's very rarely an attachment to principle or thought out - one reason Reagan did so well is that he pretty much believed a lot of what he said ( not all - you have to be tactical too ) . He said, not what people around him, said. Clinton wasn't as much of rigid principles, but you got the feeling he was, outside of being very charismatic, genuine. Even Dubya, I more or less trusted. Use your anthropic principle - there would not be people saying things like what, say Ted Cruz says unless there was positive feedback for it. I don't think nationalizing campaigns works, either. Huge public choice problem and a slightly different set of incentives. I've worked a bit with actual government employees, and they were uniformly great except for one clot of them. Total observer bias, though. All in all, I think the shear between what we actually want and what we say we want is the cause, and is an excellent example of revealed preferences. Why else would there have ever been some policies we've seen, like racial laws in the post-Reconstruction South? How does that ever make any sense at all, yet so much energy and time went into it? To misquote Walt Kelly ( of the Pogo cartoons ) - "we has met the enemy, and it is us." I have many fairly right-wing friends, and most of them, when pressed a bit, will clarify what they are afraid of. It's not nothing. They have their bias, I have mine. I'm able to talk to them about these things without much ugliness.
  - shit_parade2 11y ago
    Our public servants are not fine people. They kill unarmed civilians in their custody, they kill Americans without cause nor due process, they torture innocents, admit they torture innocents, and then do nothing. Our public officials state on record that financial institutions are too big to jail then proceed to use the law to terrify and ruin the lives of those who dare defy their agenda.
    - xnull6guest 11y ago
      Our public servants are not good or evil. They are merely people responding to the incentives that they are faced with. This means that they are incentivised to behave by fear of losing their jobs, by financial contributions and kickbacks, by legacy, by moral sentiment, by haste and convenience, by duty. There are very few to no public servants who feel that what they are doing is wrong - and you might agree with some of their actions even when it blurs lines (assassinating Osama Bin Laden without due process of law). What's happening now is that America's post WWII order is fracturing and weakening. There are new players on the stage. The theater of global politics and finance is shifting from Europe to the Asian Pacific. The borders fixed to prevent another great European war had also been fixed to provide energy security from the Middle East - but this freezing has prevented those people living there from having a great or fully modern society of their own. The technology backing nuclear weapons has exceeded the defense capabilities of all nations at a time non-proliferation treaties expired (the Bush administration did not renew them). Russia and China are rushing to create a Eurasia that can compete with Europe and Europe is trying to create a United States of Europe to ween away from NATO and to achieve a regional hegemony that provides it security and an opportunity to be a global player. Frought with both politicization, financial warfare, general gamifiedness, and brittleness global finance has brought financial redistribution, bubbles and busts to both hemispheres. In response the US is building oil pipelines across the Americas, coup'ing Venezuela to open up its oil to US investment, settling new bases and rigs into the now contested (for geostrategic military reasons) the artic north. The internet through all of this was supposed to allow a marketplace of ideas to exist across the world - but instead has been used by nations to propagandize, spy and sabotage one another. In this turbulant time of America losing its grips, huge changes and bets will be made and American leadership will kill, torture, surveil and censor to ensure its own survival. That is to say we can't think of this as good versus evil but dog eat dog. The world has never been about good and evil, though men are compelled by it before they stand in trenches and need to survive. The sad part is that during a time on Earth where there is more of everything for more of everyone that changes and fluxuations and opportunity mean the prospect of violence.
- CodeCube 11y ago
  You must not know a lot of people ;) That was a mostly joking jab ... but seriously, have you looked at a demographics map of the US? In between just about every blue city/urban center, there are broad swaths of rural red. Many of these folks are of the opinion that what the government does is right, and we shouldn't question cause they know best. Which is ironic given their love of "small government" ... but when the police, military, or otherwise "security" related organization is concerned, it's all yes all day.
  - shit_parade2 11y ago
    If you view us politics through a red blue lens you've already been brainwashed.
  - adventured 11y ago
    In my 34 years I've never met someone that had an overwhelmingly positive view of the US Government. Not a single person. The only thing I've seen is very selective, mostly partisan focused cheering, on the rare occasions when a party does something its partisans like. The next minute they're back to griping about government, for one reason or another. Tune into the news, and you're all but guaranteed to see non-stop anger, criticism, and rejection of government actions, policies, and politicians in general from the population of the US. That is true whether you're talking about Jon Stewart spending half his show mocking the government for something, or the right wing at Fox News. Every poll that gets done comes back with Congress having epic low ratings. That has been the case for a long time. This goes back before the time of Mark Twain mocking the US Government, it was a very popular sport even then. For 200 years, there has been a consistent bashing of Congress and its actions in the press and popular culture.
- yc1010 11y ago
  Ah "change"... yes... http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/ http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/ "Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process." I am surprised the page is still up! disclaimer: I am not American but like a lot of Americans I know I am disappointed with Obama too, mind you the politicians here in Ireland are also lying and power-grabbing scumbags :( like the saying goes “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”
rhino369 11y ago
The reason why people are not interested in the alleged US government over reaches is because we still fundamentally trust our government to do the right thing. Americans just don't give a shit if the government has access to your data, because so far it doesn't use it. This is why the John Oliver segment a few weeks back showed that when people thought their sexts were actually able to be viewed, they were outraged. Our government already has the power to literally end humanity. Right now, all the NSA stuff and other spying is just has the potential to be abused. No harm, no foul writ large. You can believe that is wrong or shortsighted, but it doesn't mean the American people don't care about anything.
- rmxt 11y ago
  Please speak for yourself, instead of relying on what "we" or "the people" want for apparent authority. Sexts are actually able to be viewed, and have been in the past: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-nsa-abuses-are-self-reported-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/most-nsa-abuses-are-self-repo... You are right that people generally do take offense only when presented with gross and abject violations of their privacy, but to say that people shouldn't care about what the government is doing because the government doesn't (currently) do anything with it, is passing the buck along to future generations. Why even allow for such a massive potential for abuse to arise in the future? And again, documented abuses have already occurred, to say nothing of ones swept under the rug. Why collect the data in the first place if the government "doesn't use it" as you put it?
  - smtddr 11y ago
    No, OP is right. It's a collective "we". http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014 http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014 Most people trust USgov; apparently just last year we were only 2 points behind Japan. My impression of Japan is that most people there are very trusting of their society/rules/system/etc, so for USA to be just 2 points behind Japan is a significant(and disappointing) bit of info.
    - rmxt 11y ago
      I take no issue with making it a sourced statement of fact, e.g., "75% of Americans approve of the X, Y, Z programs in a 2014 Gallup poll." But to vaguely reference the current state of public opinion and use that as a basis for a normative statement that approves of the government's actions is frustrating. It dodges a discussion of the merits of the programs in favor of a "the public approves it, and no harm is being done, so no one should take issue" sort of stance.
vorg 11y ago
Countries such as the US and Australia already implement much of what the article describes: credit rating, criminal record, financial assets, standarized test scores, educational and employment records, residential history, searchable online presence, with the greatest weighting given to financial assets of course because how much money someone has trumps all. The main differences with the announced Chinese plan are: * it will aggregate many various ratings and makes them available publicly on all citizens, something that's done only privately for some residents in the US * it extends the system to social criteria, something only done privately through sports clubs, religious groups, etc in the US, and dilutes the importance of a person's financial assets in calculating a person's "worth" * it's using technology from the ground up, intead of slowly automating a paper-based system that's already been developed over the years So the main differences are those of degree.
- xnull6guest 11y ago
  The social criteria is questionable. If the Federal Government cares, do you not think they can dredge your social media interactions? Do you not think that they do this for presidential candidates and those applying for top brass positions? Do you think they don't have numerical indicators to prioritize and sort the hundreds of millions of profiles they have on American citizens? They very near most certainly do.
  - superuser2 11y ago
    Where do you imagine that this system is applied? What China is working on is more akin to credit ratings in that it is openly part of decision making processes for non-shadowy actors. The NSA might have such a system internally but there's not evidence to suggest it would affect your life in any way (if you are a US citizen inside the US).
    - xnull6guest 11y ago
      Definitely the flags and scoring systems the US has in place are not part of a public conversation in the United States, are not used by US employers (for example) during job applications, etc. I agree that this makes the system very different in kind despite similarities in form. I imagine that the US currently uses this to prioritize domestic investigations for the FBI and law enforcement. I imagine that the US currently uses this during the process of vetting membership to the intelligence community, other sensitive positions, political leadership (I forget which NSA whistleblower mentioned the targeted surveillance of then president-prospect Obama), and for security clearances. I imagine that the US currently uses this to find and disrupt politically minded groups and to deal with narrative challenges inside the United States.
balabaster 11y ago
Or if the leaker was a traitor or a patriot before issuing ad hominem attacks against him in order to bolster popular opinion when he or she is whisked away to Gitmo in the name of "national security."
joe_the_user 11y ago
* But before judging China, people need to ask themselves if the hold their own government to the same standard of criticism.* Not really. We should judge China immediately as bad and then go on to look at our own states (which aren't terribly good). The "let's get perspective on this repression" argument is always a sham, whether it is made by China, by the US or whoever. We need to look at all governments but never to say "the badness here makes this other action OK".
- xnull6guest 11y ago
  I want to go further with this idea. What we need to do is understand why both nations are doing this. What reasons do they have? Why does it seem like a good idea? Are they the same reasons? Are they somehow fundamental? How much choice is there in how these behaviors are implemented? Are there alternatives with other tradeoffs that appeal to the underlying reasons and if so why was this solution chosen? Sometimes this leads us, especially if we feel the urge to repeat standard bylines, to conclude that "The People's Party are just evil, and that's why they do it." But if the reason for doing it were merely evilness, then we might also conclude the US does it for evilness - something that isn't as much of a goto by-line. I don't really fully understand why all major governments surveil, censor, propagandize and profile their (and other) citizens - but comparing history with 21st century challenges give us pretty good hints. First, it seems fairly natural for countries to exercise some forms of control of their populations, both to provide a common security and stability (something citizens for the most part benefit from) and to preserve its own institutions (something every government is compelled by). Specifically in the 21st century it is common practice to utilize international propaganda to disrupt and destabilize opponent populations, foment revolutions by exporting dissent, and to misinform foreign citizens during diplomacy and geostrategy efforts. Indeed, both democracies and countries that mimic the machinations of democracies, need to gain of appear to gain public support for initiatives based on complicated, centralized or even secret initiatives do actually benefit countries as a whole. In many ways autocratic institutions need to control their people less than semi-democratic institutions since ultimately some king or body of diplomats make decisions without the input of citizens. Digressing further it is doing this sort of analysis that can show why a state engages with the practices that it does. If there is a large desire to reform practices it is these end reasons that must be challenged if the behavior is to alter.

by osazuwa 11y ago

adventured 11y ago

I don't know a single person that doesn't have a very low, highly critical opinion of the US Government already. That includes essentially universal skepticism of Congress. So yes, I think Americans criticize their government almost as a professional sport. Non-stop 24/7, everywhere. Even for things the government isn't responsible for. I'd argue the only thing Americans are guilty of is too much complaining and criticizing of their government, and not enough doing to change it as a follow-through.

sqeaky 11y ago
This comment is horrible and wrong. Thanks Obama!
- sqeaky 11y ago
  :( It saddens me that such an obvious joke gets downvoted. It would be nice if people could reply when they downvote. Was the joke not received as such, what is not funny or does the community hate jokes?
nitrogen 11y ago
Most Americans do criticize the government, but only on a few party-aligned talking points. Few agree on what is worthy of criticism, and many miss the important issues because they are preoccupied by relatively inconsequential hot button issues.
ArkyBeagle 11y ago
Now you know (of) a single person. Our public servants are largely fine people. We get stuff that's weird because of people being dancing monkeys for campaign finance. This is actually, in my opinion, overt, specific and designed entertainment product. It's very rarely an attachment to principle or thought out - one reason Reagan did so well is that he pretty much believed a lot of what he said ( not all - you have to be tactical too ) . He said, not what people around him, said. Clinton wasn't as much of rigid principles, but you got the feeling he was, outside of being very charismatic, genuine. Even Dubya, I more or less trusted. Use your anthropic principle - there would not be people saying things like what, say Ted Cruz says unless there was positive feedback for it. I don't think nationalizing campaigns works, either. Huge public choice problem and a slightly different set of incentives. I've worked a bit with actual government employees, and they were uniformly great except for one clot of them. Total observer bias, though. All in all, I think the shear between what we actually want and what we say we want is the cause, and is an excellent example of revealed preferences. Why else would there have ever been some policies we've seen, like racial laws in the post-Reconstruction South? How does that ever make any sense at all, yet so much energy and time went into it? To misquote Walt Kelly ( of the Pogo cartoons ) - "we has met the enemy, and it is us." I have many fairly right-wing friends, and most of them, when pressed a bit, will clarify what they are afraid of. It's not nothing. They have their bias, I have mine. I'm able to talk to them about these things without much ugliness.
- shit_parade2 11y ago
  Our public servants are not fine people. They kill unarmed civilians in their custody, they kill Americans without cause nor due process, they torture innocents, admit they torture innocents, and then do nothing. Our public officials state on record that financial institutions are too big to jail then proceed to use the law to terrify and ruin the lives of those who dare defy their agenda.
  - xnull6guest 11y ago
    Our public servants are not good or evil. They are merely people responding to the incentives that they are faced with. This means that they are incentivised to behave by fear of losing their jobs, by financial contributions and kickbacks, by legacy, by moral sentiment, by haste and convenience, by duty. There are very few to no public servants who feel that what they are doing is wrong - and you might agree with some of their actions even when it blurs lines (assassinating Osama Bin Laden without due process of law). What's happening now is that America's post WWII order is fracturing and weakening. There are new players on the stage. The theater of global politics and finance is shifting from Europe to the Asian Pacific. The borders fixed to prevent another great European war had also been fixed to provide energy security from the Middle East - but this freezing has prevented those people living there from having a great or fully modern society of their own. The technology backing nuclear weapons has exceeded the defense capabilities of all nations at a time non-proliferation treaties expired (the Bush administration did not renew them). Russia and China are rushing to create a Eurasia that can compete with Europe and Europe is trying to create a United States of Europe to ween away from NATO and to achieve a regional hegemony that provides it security and an opportunity to be a global player. Frought with both politicization, financial warfare, general gamifiedness, and brittleness global finance has brought financial redistribution, bubbles and busts to both hemispheres. In response the US is building oil pipelines across the Americas, coup'ing Venezuela to open up its oil to US investment, settling new bases and rigs into the now contested (for geostrategic military reasons) the artic north. The internet through all of this was supposed to allow a marketplace of ideas to exist across the world - but instead has been used by nations to propagandize, spy and sabotage one another. In this turbulant time of America losing its grips, huge changes and bets will be made and American leadership will kill, torture, surveil and censor to ensure its own survival. That is to say we can't think of this as good versus evil but dog eat dog. The world has never been about good and evil, though men are compelled by it before they stand in trenches and need to survive. The sad part is that during a time on Earth where there is more of everything for more of everyone that changes and fluxuations and opportunity mean the prospect of violence.
CodeCube 11y ago
You must not know a lot of people ;) That was a mostly joking jab ... but seriously, have you looked at a demographics map of the US? In between just about every blue city/urban center, there are broad swaths of rural red. Many of these folks are of the opinion that what the government does is right, and we shouldn't question cause they know best. Which is ironic given their love of "small government" ... but when the police, military, or otherwise "security" related organization is concerned, it's all yes all day.
- shit_parade2 11y ago
  If you view us politics through a red blue lens you've already been brainwashed.
- adventured 11y ago
  In my 34 years I've never met someone that had an overwhelmingly positive view of the US Government. Not a single person. The only thing I've seen is very selective, mostly partisan focused cheering, on the rare occasions when a party does something its partisans like. The next minute they're back to griping about government, for one reason or another. Tune into the news, and you're all but guaranteed to see non-stop anger, criticism, and rejection of government actions, policies, and politicians in general from the population of the US. That is true whether you're talking about Jon Stewart spending half his show mocking the government for something, or the right wing at Fox News. Every poll that gets done comes back with Congress having epic low ratings. That has been the case for a long time. This goes back before the time of Mark Twain mocking the US Government, it was a very popular sport even then. For 200 years, there has been a consistent bashing of Congress and its actions in the press and popular culture.
yc1010 11y ago
Ah "change"... yes... http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/ http://change.gov/agenda/ethics_agenda/ "Protect Whistleblowers: Often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government is an existing government employee committed to public integrity and willing to speak out. Such acts of courage and patriotism, which can sometimes save lives and often save taxpayer dollars, should be encouraged rather than stifled. We need to empower federal employees as watchdogs of wrongdoing and partners in performance. Barack Obama will strengthen whistleblower laws to protect federal workers who expose waste, fraud, and abuse of authority in government. Obama will ensure that federal agencies expedite the process for reviewing whistleblower claims and whistleblowers have full access to courts and due process." I am surprised the page is still up! disclaimer: I am not American but like a lot of Americans I know I am disappointed with Obama too, mind you the politicians here in Ireland are also lying and power-grabbing scumbags :( like the saying goes “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others”

rhino369 11y ago

The reason why people are not interested in the alleged US government over reaches is because we still fundamentally trust our government to do the right thing. Americans just don't give a shit if the government has access to your data, because so far it doesn't use it. This is why the John Oliver segment a few weeks back showed that when people thought their sexts were actually able to be viewed, they were outraged. Our government already has the power to literally end humanity. Right now, all the NSA stuff and other spying is just has the potential to be abused. No harm, no foul writ large. You can believe that is wrong or shortsighted, but it doesn't mean the American people don't care about anything.

rmxt 11y ago
Please speak for yourself, instead of relying on what "we" or "the people" want for apparent authority. Sexts are actually able to be viewed, and have been in the past: http://www.businessinsider.com/most-nsa-abuses-are-self-reported-2013-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/most-nsa-abuses-are-self-repo... You are right that people generally do take offense only when presented with gross and abject violations of their privacy, but to say that people shouldn't care about what the government is doing because the government doesn't (currently) do anything with it, is passing the buck along to future generations. Why even allow for such a massive potential for abuse to arise in the future? And again, documented abuses have already occurred, to say nothing of ones swept under the rug. Why collect the data in the first place if the government "doesn't use it" as you put it?
- smtddr 11y ago
  No, OP is right. It's a collective "we". http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014 http://www.transparency.org/cpi2014 Most people trust USgov; apparently just last year we were only 2 points behind Japan. My impression of Japan is that most people there are very trusting of their society/rules/system/etc, so for USA to be just 2 points behind Japan is a significant(and disappointing) bit of info.
  - rmxt 11y ago
    I take no issue with making it a sourced statement of fact, e.g., "75% of Americans approve of the X, Y, Z programs in a 2014 Gallup poll." But to vaguely reference the current state of public opinion and use that as a basis for a normative statement that approves of the government's actions is frustrating. It dodges a discussion of the merits of the programs in favor of a "the public approves it, and no harm is being done, so no one should take issue" sort of stance.

vorg 11y ago

Countries such as the US and Australia already implement much of what the article describes: credit rating, criminal record, financial assets, standarized test scores, educational and employment records, residential history, searchable online presence, with the greatest weighting given to financial assets of course because how much money someone has trumps all. The main differences with the announced Chinese plan are: * it will aggregate many various ratings and makes them available publicly on all citizens, something that's done only privately for some residents in the US * it extends the system to social criteria, something only done privately through sports clubs, religious groups, etc in the US, and dilutes the importance of a person's financial assets in calculating a person's "worth" * it's using technology from the ground up, intead of slowly automating a paper-based system that's already been developed over the years So the main differences are those of degree.

xnull6guest 11y ago
The social criteria is questionable. If the Federal Government cares, do you not think they can dredge your social media interactions? Do you not think that they do this for presidential candidates and those applying for top brass positions? Do you think they don't have numerical indicators to prioritize and sort the hundreds of millions of profiles they have on American citizens? They very near most certainly do.
- superuser2 11y ago
  Where do you imagine that this system is applied? What China is working on is more akin to credit ratings in that it is openly part of decision making processes for non-shadowy actors. The NSA might have such a system internally but there's not evidence to suggest it would affect your life in any way (if you are a US citizen inside the US).
  - xnull6guest 11y ago
    Definitely the flags and scoring systems the US has in place are not part of a public conversation in the United States, are not used by US employers (for example) during job applications, etc. I agree that this makes the system very different in kind despite similarities in form. I imagine that the US currently uses this to prioritize domestic investigations for the FBI and law enforcement. I imagine that the US currently uses this during the process of vetting membership to the intelligence community, other sensitive positions, political leadership (I forget which NSA whistleblower mentioned the targeted surveillance of then president-prospect Obama), and for security clearances. I imagine that the US currently uses this to find and disrupt politically minded groups and to deal with narrative challenges inside the United States.

balabaster 11y ago

Or if the leaker was a traitor or a patriot before issuing ad hominem attacks against him in order to bolster popular opinion when he or she is whisked away to Gitmo in the name of "national security."

joe_the_user 11y ago

* But before judging China, people need to ask themselves if the hold their own government to the same standard of criticism.* Not really. We should judge China immediately as bad and then go on to look at our own states (which aren't terribly good). The "let's get perspective on this repression" argument is always a sham, whether it is made by China, by the US or whoever. We need to look at all governments but never to say "the badness here makes this other action OK".

xnull6guest 11y ago
I want to go further with this idea. What we need to do is understand why both nations are doing this. What reasons do they have? Why does it seem like a good idea? Are they the same reasons? Are they somehow fundamental? How much choice is there in how these behaviors are implemented? Are there alternatives with other tradeoffs that appeal to the underlying reasons and if so why was this solution chosen? Sometimes this leads us, especially if we feel the urge to repeat standard bylines, to conclude that "The People's Party are just evil, and that's why they do it." But if the reason for doing it were merely evilness, then we might also conclude the US does it for evilness - something that isn't as much of a goto by-line. I don't really fully understand why all major governments surveil, censor, propagandize and profile their (and other) citizens - but comparing history with 21st century challenges give us pretty good hints. First, it seems fairly natural for countries to exercise some forms of control of their populations, both to provide a common security and stability (something citizens for the most part benefit from) and to preserve its own institutions (something every government is compelled by). Specifically in the 21st century it is common practice to utilize international propaganda to disrupt and destabilize opponent populations, foment revolutions by exporting dissent, and to misinform foreign citizens during diplomacy and geostrategy efforts. Indeed, both democracies and countries that mimic the machinations of democracies, need to gain of appear to gain public support for initiatives based on complicated, centralized or even secret initiatives do actually benefit countries as a whole. In many ways autocratic institutions need to control their people less than semi-democratic institutions since ultimately some king or body of diplomats make decisions without the input of citizens. Digressing further it is doing this sort of analysis that can show why a state engages with the practices that it does. If there is a large desire to reform practices it is these end reasons that must be challenged if the behavior is to alter.