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| ▲ | thisisnotauser 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | There's a famous saying about Mussolini making the trains run on time. The joke was that anyone who complained about the trains running late, which was an endemic issue emblematic of the financial failures of fascism (his government system), was killed. But if you didn't complain about the trains, maybe because you didn't take them, you didn't get killed. It was fine. Maybe things are actually kinda bad, but you're just not willing to admit it to yourself because you aren't complaining about the trains. In the US, we complain about the trains. And if the gov't is spying on us with facial recognition, we're going to stop them. | | |
| ▲ | LtWorf 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > And if the gov't is spying on us with facial recognition, we're going to stop them. I wish I still had this childish optimism. | |
| ▲ | redserk 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | No, in the US we just stick fingers in our ears while we let the private sector do it while screaming “la-la-la” and closing our eyes. |
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| ▲ | casenmgreen 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | The problem is that by this it becomes ever more difficult to get rid of an oppressive, dictatorial, unelected and violent Government. | | |
| ▲ | godelski 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | For people unfamiliar with this topic, it is commonly referred to as "Turnkey Tyranny". It is about the belief that you "don't give Mr Rogers any power you wouldn't give to Hitler." Basically no matter how great you think your current leader is, you recognize that they will not be in power forever (or that they may not be good forever). Democracy, autocracy, oligarchy, whatever your system of government, there is a singular truth: all men die. All things change. Obviously this policy can go too far, but personally I think it is worth considering not just how good a policy or power can be, but how much harm it can do if abused or misused. It is easy to ignore this part because we want to believe people are good and have good intentions. Because we see the advantages and get excited about them. Because it is harder to think about abstract scenarios. But it is an important thing to think. You need not think your government is evil or nefarious to still be concerned with turnkey tyranny. In fact, the more faith you have in your government, the more you should be concerned. Because it is at that time that people are less likely to keep their guards up, and it is that same time that hostile actors look to take over. There is no absolute defense against malicious leaders, so it takes constant care. | | |
| ▲ | namaria a day ago | parent | next [-] | | I am pretty sure this is the loophole Gödel found with the American constitution. It is pretty easy to turn the US government authoritarian, if you elect an authoritarian president. | |
| ▲ | refurb 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is basically the intent of the structure of the US government. High degree of separation of powers (unlike most other democracies, the executive is separate from the legislative and there are two independent legislative bodies). High level of agreement across multiple bodies before a law can be passed (House, Senate and President). I thought Scalia's explanation was a good one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggz_gd--UO0 | | |
| ▲ | smolder 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That's the intent, but evidently, (and sadly,) it doesn't work how it should. There's too much influence from moneyed interests and just too much bad faith participation and gaming of the various processes. It was bad when I was born and it's gotten ever more corrupt and dysfunctional since. | | |
| ▲ | spacemanspiff01 3 days ago | parent [-] | | I think that the biggest issue is that congress is underfunded and has ceded too much control to the executive. By that I mean that the modern world is incredibly complex, yet in the house, each house member only gets 1.25 million per year for staff. Yet despite that they are supposed to create and manage the rules and regulations for a 30 trillion dollar economy. It's impossible, even if you have good faith of all actors. This leads to lobbying groups providing texts for laws, because they have the resources to provide people to write and review them. It also leads to shifting the bureaucracy of the regulations to the executive branch, because that is where there is the money to hire staff/expertise/ and regulate something as large and complicated. My pet peeve is that each congressional rep should be receiving ~25 million for staff, then use that to build up in house expertise, vs having everything under the executive. Congress has ceded too much power. | | |
| ▲ | avmich 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Doesn't Congress have all the access they want to the governmental services? |
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| ▲ | godelski 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I agree, that its the intent. The downside of the US is that it moves slow. But the upside is that it’s the oldest country in the world if you measure by (codified) constitution. You might think European countries are older but Germany didn’t exist till the late 1940’s. If you really want to stretch it you can argue early 1800’s but that’s facetious. The point is to be highly distributed. Many keys to power. It makes it hard to get shit done when people are unwilling to work together (read partisan hacks). Which is what makes it strong against takeover, even getting half the keys will still grind your takeover to a slow roll. That’s petty robust to adversaries. I have a hot take. My faith in the system strengthened with Trump and especially the stupid coup. Because I saw a man try very hard to take over and despite having a coalition that was practicing party over country, he still couldn’t. Though how many keys does he have now and did he do the legwork to make it work a second time? That we’ll see. But even then, I think it tells a successful story of robustness. That it took a few hundred years of growing power and extreme partisanship to break it. Clearly it can be and needs to be improved but clearly it’s got something of value. Something to learn from and iterate from rather than rework from scratch. I’m not aware of any country that’s survived under such extreme circumstances, but I’m not knowledgeable enough here. Please correct me but cite so I can learn more. Defining what is a country, let alone a continuous empire is very messy business with a lot of national narrative tied in (we can even argue the US’s fragmentation would disqualify, but the constitution stayed ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) | | |
| ▲ | shiroiushi 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | >it’s the oldest country in the world if you measure by (codified) constitution I think a better way of phrasing it might be "a continuous system of government". Germany certainly existed before the late 1940s, but the system of government was obviously very, very different. | | |
| ▲ | godelski 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > Defining what is a country, let alone a continuous empire is very messy business with a lot of national narrative tied in
Definitely gets fuzzy with definitions when we have things like Prussia, German unification, the German Empire, and all that. Especially, again, with the national narrative. It is messy business and I think we often pretned it is a lot cleaner than it actually is. | | |
| ▲ | shiroiushi 3 days ago | parent [-] | | It's not that messy, it's just a disagreement about what a "country" is. You're thinking with the European mindset of "nation", where a country is defined by its borders, history, etc. The OP is thinking with the American mindset where the country is defined by its founding documents and legal principles. They're entirely different. In the latter mindset, Prussia, the German Empire, etc., really have nothing to do with modern Germany, because Germany is not a kingdom or empire, it's a country that was founded in 1945/6 by Allied occupiers. The only messy thing about it is the reunification in the early 1990s, because two formerly separate countries (DDR and BRD), with extremely different systems of government, were stuck together, but under the same system of government as the western side, which really makes it an annexation. |
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| ▲ | bilekas 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > But the upside is that it’s the oldest country in the world if you measure by (codified) constitution. Iceland would very much like a word about this. But your point in fair, maybe phrased a bit wrong. | | |
| ▲ | godelski 3 days ago | parent [-] | | >> Please correct me but cite so I can learn more
Wiki says > The current constitution was first instituted on 17 June 1944 when Iceland became a republic; since then, it has been amended seven times.
The earliest date I even see in the wiki is 1849 which isn't even really on topic.The official document also says 1944[0] CONSTITUTION OF THE REPUBLIC OF ICELAND
(No. 33, 17 June 1944, as amended 30 May 1984, 31 May 1991, 28 June 1995 and 24 June 1999)
So I'm going to need that citation because I'm having a hard time verifying what you're saying.[0] https://www.government.is/library/01-Ministries/Prime-Minist... | | |
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| ▲ | rightbyte 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > "Turnkey Tyranny" Thanks this is a really great concept. I'm going to use this for the slippery slope fallacy fallacy. |
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| ▲ | bayindirh 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | For an insider's perspective about "The Social Credit System", and the biometrics which underpin it, you can watch https://media.ccc.de/v/35c3-9904-the_social_credit_system It's a long, but interesting talk. | | | |
| ▲ | tehjoker 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | tbqh, first if the insinuation is that China is not democratic, that is only true in the sense it is not a liberal democracy with a conservative wing represented (a good thing), but it is still a democracy with elections. secondly, if people surviving a literal genocide in Palestine can resist the most technologically sophisticated, surveilled, and completely enclosed death camp ever constructed by the U.S. and Israel, you can figure out how to deal with cameras. | | |
| ▲ | kelnos 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Insinuation? It's a fact that China is not a democracy. | |
| ▲ | BriggyDwiggs42 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | China is a one party state is it not? > you can deal with cameras Still rather not. | | |
| ▲ | tehjoker 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Is it more democratic to let the majority be oppressed by a tiny property holding parasitic class or is it more democratic to repress them and express the interests of the majority? Bear in mind when you answer that scientific surveys show American "democracy" is an oligarchy with popular opinion being almost entirely disconnected from policy. | | |
| ▲ | BriggyDwiggs42 a day ago | parent [-] | | I wouldn’t argue that China is a representation of the latter, the CCP fails to represent the interests of the majority. Furthermore, I think the ideology of herding and repressing the confused masses is a despicable and blatantly invalid one, which is why I despise its use in America. Yes, the US is an oligarchy of rich people with enormous influence over our sham system. That’s why I don’t want the system pointing cameras at me; I know the person behind the screen doesn’t represent my interests. |
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| ▲ | southernplaces7 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | It's sometimes hard to credit that there are people who think in such a contorted way as you apparently do. China isn't a democracy. The word doesn't apply when your choices for candidates can only come from one political party that pre-approved them. Don't be absurd. It's a one-party state in which variations of style among different senior figures are still forced together under the rubric of a general monolithic dogma that's only marginally beholden to public opinion, and very much subject to the whims of dominant figures. Also, many elements of the Chinese state are at least as conservative as the worst you could see in the U.S, just without the religious overtones. Truly, go study the subject and it's history a bit better. What's happening in Palestine, or more specifically in the Gaza Strip, is not a genocide. It's a tragedy of destructive military strategies by Israel, but calling it a genocide is demeaning to the definition of real genocides, which you should also study a bit better. >the most technologically sophisticated, surveilled, and completely enclosed death camp ever constructed by the U.S. and Israel Death camp, really? Also, if you're disgusted by technologically sophisticated, heavily surveilled, enclosed camps, then you really might want to find out what the Chinese "democracy" is doing in the Xinjiang Uyghur Region... | | |
| ▲ | throw3828374 3 days ago | parent [-] | | OP brings up a good point. The news likes to allude to China's "genocide" in Xinjiang, but no one is dying. At most they can stretch it to a "cultural genocide" but even that's not true as the native culture is not being repressed, only religious extremism. However it is true that thousands of Palestinian civilians are being killed and those same media are afraid to call it out. | | |
| ▲ | southernplaces7 3 days ago | parent [-] | | Your point is a good one actually, and it's why I didn't mention anything about genocide in Xinjiang. It's a grotesque political atrocity of social repression and culture eradication, but as far as any sources I've looked at go, the Chinese state isn't literally killing the Uyghers en masse as an ethnic or religious group. Nonetheless, the deaths of civilians in the Gaza Strip also aren't a genocide. They could be defined as a war crime, or if you want to be really generous to Israel, as unfair collateral damage (a phrase I mostly detest in this context) but the Israeli state isn't deliberately targeting the Strip's ethnic Palestinian population for eradication. | | |
| ▲ | aguaviva 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The Israeli state isn't deliberately targeting the Strip's ethnic Palestinian population for eradication. Total eradication, no. It just wants to see it the resident population vastly reduced. And what it is deliberately doing is creating conditions favorable to this outcome, which it refers to as "voluntary transfer": https://www.972mag.com/intelligence-ministry-gaza-population... |
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