[ajb]

Statistically, you can't rely on having a non-repressive government for your entire lifetime. The US has been fortunate in missing out on it for quite a while, but even then there has been HUAC and J Edgar Hoover, even if they didn't take over the whole government.

[coldtea]

Not just those, the goverment has been historically repressive of many minorities, using the police to do this, from blacks to native americans, labour advocates, activists, and other categories, that's not confined to the HUAC and Hoover era.

[pbhjpbhj]

Isn't that just showing that repression is orthogonal to ability to track people? A database of movements easily clears many people who might be falsely accused and also highlights crimes of false accusation allowing removal of perversions of justice. Of course it needn't be used that way, if you put {or don't prevent} the immoral/criminal in power then they'll do immoral/criminal things whether they have access to citizens movements or not.

Elect trustworthy people first.

If you don't start there we're all screwed... but a large number seem to elect 'people who'd sell their grandma to make a nickel'.

[coldtea]

>Isn't that just showing that repression is orthogonal to ability to track people?

No, it just shows that you can repress even with less ability to track people (a fact nobody doubted. The Romans could repress people too and they didn't have mass surveillance).

It, however, absolutely doesn't refute the point that with more ability to track people you can repress more, more effectively, and in novel ways.

>Elect trustworthy people first.

Popular pressure (and even ocassional popular revolt), separation of powers, and various established checks and balances are there precisely so you don't have to depend on electing trustworthy people.

Of course if we could somehow magically only be electing trustworthy people, we wouldn't need to have this discussion (or have these problems).

[ajb]

Absolutely. Wasn't trying to make an exhaustive list.

[willcipriano]

Oppression of minorities is really just the outcome of democracy on long enough time scales. Run a democracy long enough and you'll have the boot of 51% of the population on the other 49.

[coldtea]

>Run a democracy long enough and you'll have the boot of 51% of the population on the other 49.

Why is there a 49% of people with widely different ideas about what's to be done and what's good than the rest 51% of them? What kind of fucked up society would that be?

Democracy pressuposses a shared base consensus about reality and what's good, and then arguing about the specifics and the approaches.

[UncleEntity]

Which, ironically, is a very good argument in favor of the 2nd Amendment...

[pbhjpbhj]

This is 'drunk-driving kills so we should ban vehicles' level thinking.

If you don't want fascists then vote/act against that. You can't avoid fascists by making it harder to catch criminals for non-fascists. Then you get "well at least the fascists keep crime rates down".

[UncleEntity]

If the ruling party has the ability to suppress dissenting views and the means to target people doing something completely lawful like attending a political rally then how, exactly, does one "vote/act against that"?

Maybe it's easier to just not give them the power in the first place?