[stephen_g]

Wow, crazy seeing the "15 minute city" conspiracy theory on HN! For those who haven't seen it, the idea of 15 minute cities is that a lot of people think it would be great to structure development of cities with the ideal of a person being able to access most of the services they want to (workplaces, schools, supermarkets, doctors) within 15 minutes (whether walking, cycling, using public transit etc.) of where they live. It's basically a target for how easily you should be able to access services without needing to travel far, and a push-back of massive suburbs zoned solely as single-family housing that force you to drive a long way to get to anything.

The more conspiratorial among us have baselessly decided the idea of "hey it would be great to build schools and things near where people live" must actually be a globalist plot to restrict people's movement to within 15 minutes of their home. It's wild!

[agedclock]

If you are going to mock conspiracy theorists can you at least articulate the conspiracy theory correctly.

People are worried that it would be made difficult for you to travel outside 15 minute city via a combination of mandated digital payment system for all transactions that are tied to you identity and removal of personal vehicles (e.g. cars).

e.g. Person A is allowed by authorities to buy a train ticket, while Person B is not due to <arbitrary criteria>.

I've been told this has been done in China to stop people travelling to protests, but I don't actually know if that is true.

Do I think this is the intention behind 15 minute cities? No. I do however think that what they are describing is possible since I've had problems making transactions electronically for legal purchases because my transaction was flagged by the bank for being fraudulent.

Also in the UK the bank can refuse to give you your money.

[xp84]

I have also had a problem before with a transaction being inaccurately flagged as fraudulent. This could either be because an anti-fraud algorithm isn’t perfect 100% of the time, or it could be the result of a vast government conspiracy to limit my travel.

I have my doubts that China, which has many of the densest cities in the world, would get much mileage (pun intended) out of restricting travel to try to quell protests. They have tons of cities that each have millions of residents. If the CPC manages to piss off a significant fraction of the populace to the point where they’re interested in marching down the street demanding regime change, there will be enough of them in those cities that no amount of travel restrictions is going to matter.

Arguably much more important would be that I don’t think most people in China own any significant weapons, and we’ve seen decades ago how shy that government isn’t about just running people over with tanks until protests dissipate.

[agedclock]

> I have also had a problem before with a transaction being inaccurately flagged as fraudulent. This could either be because an anti-fraud algorithm isn’t perfect 100% of the time, or it could be the result of a vast government conspiracy to limit my travel.

I never said it was part of a government conspiracy. What I am saying is that your ability to transact freely is infringed by opaque mechanisms.

If that is added with digital only payments which is tied to your gov id, it isn't difficult to imagine a scenario where your ability to transact freely be taken away to stop you from travelling for political reasons.

[xp84]

Sorry, I didn't interpret your comment correctly.

I admit you have a fair point here. I'm a political independent but started out left-wing. It's hard for me to accept the reality that a government that starts out well-meaning definitely can tilt toward totalitarianism, and that the lack of good chokepoints on the citizens (such as this hypothetical ability to control payments) may well be a key prevention mechanism. I think the left wing in the US likes to frame suspicion of those kinds of things as silly preparations for a future that won't happen, and the right frames roadblocks to government power as being in place to make that bad future harder to bring about.

[agedclock]

> It's hard for me to accept the reality that a government that starts out well-meaning definitely can tilt toward totalitarianism, and that the lack of good chokepoints on the citizens (such as this hypothetical ability to control payments) may well be a key prevention mechanism

You are making the assumption that any politician or government is "well meaning" or started out as such. I am in the UK and I look at the politicians and the state apparatus with absolute contempt.

I suggest you listen to some of Dominic Cummings interviews about his experience with Whitehall (UK) during COVID. There was one situation that he described which really stood out to me. There was particular situation early in the pandemic where the NHS was going to run out of a key medical supplies in about 2 weeks and as a result thousands could die. These supplies were shipped from China and it took about 3/4 weeks (I forget the exact time frame).

For some reason it was written into law that they had to be shipped. He had the Prime Minister sign a legal waiver so they could be air-lifted, explained this to key officials in Whitehall. Everyone agreed what needed to be done and then nothing happened for 3 days. These people had to be threatened with losing their jobs and their pensions otherwise they wouldn't do their job, they fully understood the consequences of not doing the job (thousands of people might die) and still did nothing. It is an apathy of evil.

This behaviour is commonplace in ossified organisations unfortunately and I wasn't surprised one iota when I heard this.

As for mechanisms that reduce state power as prevent totalitarianism. No one thing will prevent it. It would be a combination of things.

It is similar to how running Linux (or any alternative OS) won't by itself stop the strangle hold of large tech players over most of the tech/online space. It will at least help you reduce your dependence on these large companies. Combine that with self hosting and/or using alternatives at least you can be somewhat free from the worst of it.

> I think the left wing in the US likes to frame suspicion of those kinds of things as silly preparations for a future that won't happen, and the right frames roadblocks to government power as being in place to make that bad future harder to bring about.

Silly partisan politics is going to have both sides pretending that the other side doesn't have any merit in their positions. I would just ignore the noise and actually read the facts about things and draw your own conclusions.

I believe that most of the politics you see is really theatre. It keeps people squabbling over things that are ultimately unimportant.

[71bw]

No conspiracy is needed to observe the current world, the state of political affairs and to notice where all of it is headed.