> History does provide a great deal of guidance, however, about the use and misuse of government power. It tells us that the state is in fact likely the worst possible custodian for the most powerful publication and data analysis technologies.

Like, no. The worst custodian is someone like Thiel or Musk or Altman.

> In foreign countries, particularly the United Kingdom and Europe, where national governments have fewer constitutional guardrails on their power

Somehow their democracies hold longer and better then American one. For example, you don't get murders that get defended by top ranks, at least yet. They are also less likely to start random wars - that is structural it is not like those countries dont have government players who would like them too.

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BariumBlue 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The US governmental system does have it's issues (first past the post and it's effects being the most glaring), but isn't it the longest continuous democracy alive right now?

> They are also less likely to start random wars EU lack of aggression, to defend themselves physically, economically, or otherwise, has been criticized constantly - slow and late to react to the Russian invasion, slow and late to react to new technologies like AI, electric cars.

Thy're not immune to deadlock either - sometimes going months or even a year or two to form a valid governing coalition.

The grass definitely looks greener though, especially if you've been in one pasture a long time.

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graemep 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> The US governmental system does have it's issues (first past the post and it's effects being the most glaring), but isn't it the longest continuous democracy alive right now?

Depends how you define it and what you count.

Do you take the union of the English and Scottish parliaments as breaking continuity or not? What do you define as democracy? If some of the population (women, slaves, etc.) are excluded from the electorate is it a true democracy?

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BirAdam 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The US government is only the longest continuous democracy only if one believes that the US is still a democracy. I've read some decent arguments that the US stopped being a democracy with the McKinley administration, and others that the US ceased to be a functional democracy during the Second World War. In both cases, the claim was that the USA became an imperial oligarchy.

It is questionable whether any democracy truly exists at this point as I've seen no nation where the will of the people is typically manifested in the actions of the state.

	▲	weberer 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Switzerland is a true democracy. I'm not sure if any others exist.
	▲	win311fwg 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> I've seen no nation where the will of the people is typically manifested in the actions of the state. To be fair, I've seen no nation where the people make their will known. Does a democracy depend on actual action or only theoretical possibility? It seems from my observance that most people consider democratic nations to be democratic not because they practice as such but because it is believed that the people have the opportunity to exercise democracy if they ever choose to.

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watwut 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> isn't it the longest continuous democracy alive right now?

It is the one the most at risk of ending right now.

> Thy're not immune to deadlock either - sometimes going months or even a year or two to form a valid governing coalition.

It is unrelated claim, but they do have better solution for that particular problem. The governmental shutdown seem to be about the most easy to abuse way to do it.

I think they do have large problems too. And they may fall too, AfD won local elections after all. It is dubious whether Orban run Hungary was really democracy and electoral system was not reformed yet. But in this very moment, the one crumbling and dismantling itself the fastest is not UK nor in Europe.

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ecshafer 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And they also send people to jail for twitter posts. Ill take good ole USA where at least I know I am free, over the tyranny of a parliament. Look at how France and Germany are responding to democratically elected parties who are vaguely right wing, they pull out all of the stops of suppressing them.

	▲	Cthulhu_ an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I think you're less free than you think you are. Do you have the freedom to lose your job? Because millions don't due to e.g. losing access to health care (to name a popular / populist talking point). Do you have the freedom to vote for a representative that aligns with your points, or are you forced to vote for the lesser evil or abstain? I don't believe all political parties have a right to exist, because some parties are anti-democratic, yet abuse democratic systems to gain power. The current president of the US and the organization that planned the current administration's steps are anti-democratic and want to, for example run for a third term.
	▲	loopies 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		>Ill take good ole USA where at least I know I am free At personal level that sounds like a better idea, but at group level it doesn't seem to be, that's what I think is OP's argument. If a society puts more value on personal freedoms than it does on group well-being that becomes an anarchy. They didn't work out well historically speaking, proof is no such society made it to today.
	▲	watwut 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Ah yeah, two popular right wing lies - AfD is "vaguelly right" and UK is horrible tyrrany.

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cmrdporcupine 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yep, it's getting tiresome seeing some Americans point fingers about the superiority of American constitutional and (small r) republican structures while that state form is showing absolutely remarkable degradation of basic real democratic health and quality of life. The US constitution and its legal frameworks have done almost nothing to stop the most egregious abuses of power domestically recently but most awful is that it has never done anything to stop its most terrible foreign involvements and that is only accelerating.

And further what's not being discussed really is that there is no real boundary line between the state and corporations and people like Thiel/Altman/Amodei etc in the real world. The US state is its largest corporations and money funds. So all the libertarian hand wringing about not giving the government extraordinary powers is off target. The state in western countries right now is mostly an outcropping of its most powerful corporate actors, and the complicated PR moves happening in the AI sector right now reflect exactly all of this.

Even when the US state institutions are constitutionally curtailed, the powers of its private entities to absolutely dominate and coerce the lives not only of US citizens but populations abroad is staggering.