[Scapeghost]

Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world?

You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice, and the rest of the world begrudgingly admired you for that and were slowly improving to become like you, but ever since 9/11/2001 the rich old people that rule you have been feeding you boogeymen to make you their complacent b*tches and you lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper.

Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything, and it's not some third world backhole that was suffering already anyway, but you yourself that are the worst victims of all their laws and wars.

[petcat]

> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai

The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience should tell everyone that USA (and the West) is very different from Russia or China or Dubai.

USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can openly (and legally) debate these things, and if we convince enough people, then we can change them.

[miroljub]

> The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience should tell everyone that USA (and the West) is very different from Russia or China or Dubai.

So, the only benefit of the USA is that some media can still complain. And the regime just ignores and does what they want. Regardless dems or reps, they criticize the reduction of freedoms when they are in opposition, but as soon as they grab power, they keep reducing freedoms. It's like they are all just puppets of someone you can't even name without being called names.

> USA is not perfect, but at least is has active public discourse. We can openly (and legally) debate these things, and if we convince enough people, then we can change them.

Yep, they convinced you you are free because you can argue while keeping more and more freedoms and rights from you.

Today, the only difference between Western and Eastern regimes is that one side chooses the "Brave New World" way and the other the "1984" way. But eventually, they'll all converge into Zamyatin's "We" kind of dystopia that inspired both of these.

[galangalalgol]

I think pointing to a single puppet master is reductive. Demography and geography predict essentially all of these changes. Protesting and civil disobedience can obviously tip matters, but the authoritarianism taking the us has been a long time coming just based on the centralization of federal power that started almost as soon as the ink was dry. The tendencies of landlocked resource heavy states are going to be authoritarian. Coastal trade based states will tend to go pluralist. Giant continent spanning states need coordination and continuity, so they go authoritarian. The federated nature of the original US, the EU and countries like Switzerland let those differing tendencies coexist. So once the US began centralizing power it was only a matter of time.

The fix is only barely in the realm of the possible. US states have to be given back their power, and the federal government must be limited to its original remit. This will let coastal states tend to pluralism, and resource heavy and or landlocked states tend to authoritarianism and as long as money and feet are free to cross state borders. It will all work out. Ditching first past the poles and mitigating gerrymandering would also obviously help.

[AnthonyMouse]

> Ditching first past the poles and mitigating gerrymandering would also obviously help.

Mitigating gerrymandering is a lost cause with first past the post because someone has to draw the lines and whoever is in the majority at the time is going to find a way to benefit themselves. It's especially hard because in a state which is e.g. 60% for one party, drawing the lines in a "normal" way can pretty easily result in a bunch of districts that are each 60% for that party (i.e. they get 100% of the seats with 60% of the votes), and getting it to not do that is the thing that could require a bunch of strange looking lines.

Whereas if you switch from first past the post to score voting, gerrymandering is basically irrelevant.

First past the post de facto disenfranchises the majority of the district including members of both parties whenever the split isn't almost exactly 50:50, because then the outcome is effectively a certainty even if significant numbers of voters change their minds. Everyone who supports the losing major party or any third party fails to benefit them, and everyone who supports the victorious major party in excess of what they needed to secure the district is also not moving the needle even a hair.

Whereas with score voting, you can have more than two viable candidates, and then hyper-partisans can't win in a district where 40% of the voters hate them because they'd lose to a member of their own party, or a now-viable third party candidate, who can appeal to voters on both sides. Changing the composition of the district changes which candidate wins even when the change doesn't put a different party in the majority, and with more than two viable parties there may not even be a "majority" party anymore.

The problem is someone got the Democrats to start promoting IRV, which is barely better than first past the post in many cases and actually worse (i.e. more partisan) in some pretty common ones. Which in turn got a lot of Republicans to start opposing all voting system reforms because they didn't like the results. Meanwhile they would both benefit from using score voting instead of FPTP or IRV. I mean seriously, does either party actually like this partisan hellscape?

[galangalalgol]

With scoring isn't the logical play to score your favorite the highest and zero out everyone else? Then it just devolves to fptp.

[ClayShentrup]

a common fallacy of basic logic.

with FPTP, strategic voting means NOT voting for your favorite. so at the very least, you'd "vote for the person you'd normally support under FPTP, _plus_ everyone you like better".

but in real life, a lot of people will use intermediate scores.

https://www.rangevoting.org/RVstrat6

[AnthonyMouse]

No, to begin with the people who want to play stupid games would give the highest score to every candidate they approve of and the lowest score to everyone else, and then it devolves to approval voting, which is significantly better than FPTP -- and IRV.

And even doing that is people being too clever by half.

Imagine there are three candidates. The one you prefer is polling at a score of 6/10, another that you like almost as much is also polling at 6/10 and a third that you very much don't like is polling at 4/10. If you were voting honestly you'd give the first candidate 10/10, the second 8/10 and the third 1/10. So what should you do if you're voting strategically?

If you do the one that devolves to approval voting you give the first two candidates 10/10. But that's pretty dumb, the third candidate was just barely in the race and all you're doing then is screwing yourself by giving your second choice a better chance against your first choice.

If you do the one that devolves to FPTP you're really screwing yourself, because then you're putting the third candidate, which you hate, back in the running by tanking the chances of the second candidate that you were pretty okay with. You're making it so if your first choice doesn't win you get your third choice, which is bad for you, because the amount you wanted the first to win over the second is much smaller than the amount you wanted the second to win over the third but then you foolishly failed to express that even though the voting system allowed you to.

You can find some "proofs" that giving every candidate either a 1/10 or 10/10 is the optimal strategy, but the thing those proofs take as an assumption is that you know exactly how everyone else is going to vote, i.e. you have perfectly 100% accurate infallible polls. Which, of course, you don't.

And then think about what you have to do with that second candidate you'd like to give 8/10: Under that logic you're "required" to either give them 10/10 or 1/10. But you can't be sure if giving the second candidate a 1/10 will cause the first candidate to win or the third. Without knowing that, you can't know which one is actually better for you.

At which point the optimal strategy is to hedge by picking a number in the middle, and choose which one in proportion to how strongly you feel about each risk. But that's the same as voting according to your actual preferences! You end up giving the second candidate 8/10 because that's the measure of how much more you prefer that they defeat the third candidate than that they don't defeat the first.

The only real strategic choice here is to put some consideration of the polling into the weighting. If Hitler is on the ballot then you're definitely giving him the lowest score, but if he's only polling at 2/10 and you're pretty sure he's not going to win, you might want to give someone else you only moderately disfavor a 3/10 rather than 5/10 because you're not that worried about the probability of Hitler defeating them even if you're very worried about the consequences if it happened. But you still don't want to give them the same score as you give Hitler because you still want to hedge at least a little bit against even a small chance of something that bad.

[matheusmoreira]

> Demography and geography predict essentially all of these changes.

> The tendencies of landlocked resource heavy states are going to be authoritarian.

What are you basing this on? Where can I read more about this?

[galangalalgol]

Montesquieu, Wittfogel, and Sachs are the old ones. Modern writers acknowledge geography isn't destiny, but it would definitely be fighting uphill for Russia to maintain democracy. Mobile middle class seems to be the real driver of democracy, and coastal trade is what created that in most modern democracies. Seems like maybe technology could change that. But big regions make mobility harder. If you have to move half a world away to reach different laws the pressure to retain you is less. Where a doctor in Hungary can pack up and take a train to find a government more to their liking. The shrinking of the middle class drives authoritarianism fairly reliably according to these sources. Sometimes the older ones call it the merchant class.

[matheusmoreira]

Interesting.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

What are you even talking about?

Like,I don't like what I see in the US (I am not a US citizen), but in Russia or China you get KILLED for talking against the current government.

How can you even compare that

[Rohansi]

Sure, it's not that bad now, but it seems to be headed in that direction.

[lostlogin]

> in Russia or China you get KILLED for talking against the current government.

This has started happening in the US. ICE protests.

[brandon272]

Active public discourse seems to have not made even a slight dent in the growth of surveillance in the last 25 years.

[petcat]

Wild exaggeration.

Here's an example just recently:

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/17/nx-s1-5612825/flock-contracts...

It's a constant and ongoing public concern.

[close04]

Public discourse is a speed bump not an immovable barrier. The proof is in the state of things advancing in the same direction for the past few decades at least. Speed bumps are still valuable but not if you want to block the road. So public discourse alone isn’t the silver bullet you make them out to be.

[petcat]

It's quite a defeatist perspective. You're saying that because we can't fix or prevent everything, then we should choose not to fix or prevent anything?

Many US states do not impose government surveillance or have age verification laws.

But the point I was mainly making was regarding the comment equating USA and the West to Russia or China. Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain about government surveillance before you end up in jail.

[close04]

I'm not telling you what can or cannot be done. I'm telling you that the example you chose to counter GP's "wild exaggeration" statement, was in itself an exaggeration. It doesn't make the point you think it makes. I'm telling you that if you want to change something, continuing to only do the thing that proved ineffective in the past won't cut it.

> Go to one of those countries and we'll see how long you can openly complain about government surveillance before you end up in jail.

Those people never had it any other way so their complaints are either "the usual", or come from people who can cause real trouble. Those people get silenced almost everywhere in the world. Want to know what Germany does if you "insult" a politician?

In Russia people openly complain about the government all the time, as long as this doesn't cause real trouble no one bats an eye. Russia has nowhere near the capability of the US and China to surveil people anyway. And in China most people don't openly complain because their lives are orders of magnitude better than just a few decades ago, many see it as the price for the better life.

"I'm not that bad yet" is never a strong argument. 50 years ago the press was "impeaching" presidents. Today presidents are "impeaching" the press. See the progress? It accelerates.

[miroljub]

They all go in the same direction. Russia and China are closer to the end-goal, but the USA and the West now run faster, so there's a good chance they all reach the end goal at the same time.

[qsera]

> You're saying that because we can't fix or prevent everything, then we should choose not to fix or prevent anything?

No, it is just being realist.

Public discourse is like wind. It comes and goes. But incentive based motivators are like gravity. It is a constant force, and sooner or later, it will win.

To make change, incentives should change.

[johnnyanmac]

Main point is that the public discourse doesn't matter. These lawmakers are jamming what they want because they know Twitter is a rant box with no action.. If we want change we need proper coalitions at the worst and a working government at best. Yelling on social media is useless.

[pessimizer]

Over some Democratic party campaign wedge issue like illegal immigrants (who I guess are the only people who should be protected from constant surveillance, so special.) They will immediately not care about this at all when they are in charge of ICE, or whatever they rename it. Democrats love Flock (i.e. get paid by Flock.)

[rabbitlord]

So you can imagine how much surveillance has expanded in countries without such discourse.

[a456463]

In the US. There is no discourse and active criminalization of the people protesting pipelines, neutral markets and internet, right to own, etc. Even right to protest is under attack. What discourse? Private equity and monopolies is what everybody is willing to give away their comfort to. The effort of raising your own kids? Nah. I want govt to nanny me and everybody else. Better policing? Nah. We need the quick solution and surveill the neighborhoods. Better get back on your feet programs and social safety net for people needing it? Nah get off my backyard and take those homeless with you.

It is constantly people wanting convenience and vertical integration in favor of homegrown human solutions and then complaining that their rights are not met because of course they aren't. Corporations never cared for people.

Idk I feel like I writing a documentary. And not a response now

[wrs]

Somehow we have more public “discourse” than ever with less public “debate” than ever. People just yelling rude names at each other and repeating nonsense talking points, while the trajectory of what’s actually happening continues to worsen. I include Congress and the executive branch in this characterization.

[xp84]

I regret that I have but one vote to give to this comment.

It seems like at least half of what everyone consumes in all of 'social media' is 'politicized' but no one is interested in debating. Debating would have to mean we're talking to those gross people from the opposite 'team,' asking them to justify the policy they are advocating for, listening to them, and trying to convince them of our own positions.

When was the last time we witnessed any politicians or activists trying to change minds? Right-wingers scream dumb slogans like "They're sending the rapists over here!" and left-wingers scream back their own dumb lines like "Racist! America was built by immigrants!" And both sides dismiss the other side's arguments as the nonsensical ravings of the evil and/or stupid.

[matheusmoreira]

It's pointless. Very few people will be convinced by arguments. Refuting someone's entire belief system will not lead them to reevaluate their lives and follow us as though we were Jesus. This just doesn't happen.

The reason for this is people believe things without actually thinking about them. People manage to believe in things that are mutually exclusive. Debating them will just make them hate you for your air of superiority.

Discourse is useful for validating one's own beliefs. Throw ideas out there and if others can't refute them then they are probably good ideas. I don't think there is any other use.

[wrs]

What a depressing take. The whole reason we put 435 people in the same room (well, plus 100 people in another room) to run the lawmaking process was for them to convince each other with arguments. If we're going to make decisions based exclusively on who can yell generalized slurs the loudest, we're completely doomed.

[matheusmoreira]

Politicians don't convince each other via logical arguments, they convince each other with leverage, favors and all sorts of secret underhanded backroom deals. That's how power works.

I know it's a depressing take. It's a depressing world. And it's only getting worse. We're in an age where truth is essentially irrelevant if not actively detrimental to whatever cause any given person believes in.

[calmworm]

And half or more depending on the platform are foreign agents and/or bots to continue stirring shit up. It’s sadly too easy and the platforms themselves promote that engagement.

[gljiva]

Imagine how far we are from allowing our own stances to change for the purpose of finding out the truth that would benefit us all

[johnnyanmac]

Turns out open debate doesn't matter in a post truth society. They don't stop CNBC because they know it doesn't matter how they report anymore. The propaganda is so ingrained that facts won't deter the masses anymore.

[curt15]

>The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience should tell everyone that USA (and the West) is very different from Russia or China or Dubai.

For how much longer will they stay independent? Media empires love to consolidate; most of the largest video services will soon be owned by a fan of govt surveillance.

[anigbrowl]

A circus performer kept a troupe of monkeys and fed them 10 nuts each day. He fell on hard times and told the monkeys: 'from now on I can only give you seven nuts a day. I will give you three in the morning and four in the afternoon.' The monkey s were furious and raised a great clamor. 'Very well,' said the man, 'I will give you 4 nuts in the morning and 3 in the afternoon.' The monkeys were delighted.

[thomastjeffery]

Engagement is not discourse.

This is the core strategy of the alt-right playbook. By replacing discourse with engagement, the logical structure of politics becomes meaningless, and victory becomes automatic.

The playbook worked. The alt-right is in power now. We won't get the power back by playing the very game they destroyed.

So yes, this started as a different situation, but in the end, power is power.

[nxor2]

> the very game they destroyed

I am a minority who disagrees with liberals. Is it conservatives fault I get attacked by liberals for attempting to question them? No. Enough of this distortion.

[thomastjeffery]

Enough of what distortion? Could you be more specific?

Is it conservatives' success that liberals fail to represent your interests? Probably. Is that success a result of conservatives actually succeeding to represent your interests? Unlikely.

If politics were structured by reason, then liberals might stand a chance at losing that game. Wouldn't that be nice? Of course, that would imply a deserving winner, which is sorely missing from our post-reason situation.

[anjel]

Limbaugh > Fox media broke public discourse decades ago

[Scapeghost]

In Russia, China, the people are under threat of literal torture and murder.

You gave up way before that

[throw-the-towel]

> The fact that many independent national newspapers (including this article from CNBC) are openly calling-out the surveillance state and entering the debate into the public conscience...

LMAO! Bro/sis/secret third thing, you won't even start to believe how brave our press was when Putin had not consolidated his power yet. Ever heard of NTV? Or maybe Sobesednik, which lasted until 2023 I think? TV 6 or TV2 perhaps?

Seriously, this better-than-thou attitude will be your downfall one day. I know it was ours.

[mr_toad]

> Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world?

Slowly, and then suddenly.

The cracks were obvious when digital records made record keeping more practical, and the first electronic payment systems appeared, but once everyone was doing everything online the damn just burst wide open.

[abandonliberty]

Democracy had enemies before the founding of the Republic. Our founders warned us that it would require constant maintenance: "a republic, if you can keep it," warned Franklin.

Washington cautioned us that political parties would allow unprincipled men to subvert the power of the people.

Jefferson highlighted the criticality of public education: "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

For Adams, it was the willingness of citizens to sacrifice their private interests for the sake of the community. He cautioned against purely self-interested rugged individualism, now a fake American ideal.

All of these have eroded from a combination of assault and neglect. This problem is asymmetric: those who assault democracy have more to gain than those who defend it (e.g. by looting it, or getting compensated by a foreign power, etc.)

In 1971, 2 months after Lewis Powell argued businesses use their political power to aggressively influence the law, Regan brought him on as a Supreme Court Justice. It was much more efficient to buy a justice for life. He helped set the stage for First Amendment protection of corporate speech, and Citizens United; ultimately legalizing the ability to secretly give a political candidate money.

The rot is really, really deep.

[kitd]

See also "boiling frogs".

But then I'm replying to @mr_toad so you probably knew that already.

[slicktux]

Your sardonic comment says a lot but does not address the real freedom we have. Which is to NOT use those platforms that require age verification. The more people that don’t use them the more it will hurt the companies that loose a customer base; then maybe their lobbyists will force a change.

[minton]

So you’ll just not use Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, or Android? In other words, you’ll just not use any computers? Seems nonsensical.

[hamburglar]

Did I miss a memo on Linux somehow requiring age verification now? How would that even work?

[psadauskas]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47270784 "System76 on Age Verification Laws"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47239736 "Ubuntu Planning Mandatory Age Verification"

I thought I saw one about Redhat too, but can't find it.

[a456463]

Laws and lawmakers just concern themselves with making broad "laws" with little regard to specificity and applicability. California, Colorado and Illinois mandate OS "providers" to generate a signal. It is a copy pasted bill with little grounding in reality but a lawmaker is not going to say no "protecting children".

Pushed by AVPA - a group of companies standing to profit from this: LexisNexis, some Thiel corp, etc.

[crooked-v]

California's law explicitly requires the system and apps to take the user's word for it and not use other information to determine age, which more and more feels to me like kind of a brilliant move to cut the legs out from under other attempts to use the same for surveillance while still satisfying all the surface-level "protect children" sound bites.

[Tuna-Fish]

You missed US states competing on setting up age verification legislation that lets anyone sue any developer who produces systems that don't do age verification for life-destroying amounts of money.

[hamburglar]

So, Linus? Patrick Volkerding? I mean, I can build a Linux system from basically nothing.

[teekert]

Hé man I thought us Europeans were kings of dreadful regulations!

[jimz]

Eh private prosecutions and third party standing are generally disfavored to such an extent that sure, attention-whoring legislators will propose it, but whether it even passes constitutional muster on the state level is an open question, and open in every state.

[dana-s]

There was some proposal from California or something to require OSs to enforce age verification, it was discussed in some other thread.

[crooked-v]

For what it's worth, the "verification" in the California law (not a bill, it's already passed and takes effect 2027) is basically the Steam birthdate popup interstitial. There's explicitly no actual link to any outside information, just requiring that the system save a value the user sets and then that apps use that value for any age gating.

[throwway120385]

There was a California bill that would basically require it.

[mschuster91]

> Which is to NOT use those platforms that require age verification.

That is getting harder and harder. Platforms that are not susceptible to age verification (yet?) are on their way out - when have you written an email the last time for personal (i.e. non-work, order or customer support related) reasons? A physical letter [1]? The (root) cause is, centralized platforms like Whatsapp are much much more convenient and on top of that network effects apply - when 90% of your social connections use Whatsapp exclusively, it's hard to not use Whatsapp as well.

And then you got digitalization of government services and banking. More and more governments push for the removal of paper forms and require a web service. Banking regulations enforce 2FA, which almost always comes in the form of a phone app. The web services require a browser and an OS, which may require age verification sooner than later (see the recent spat about California's law), and the phone apps are only available for the walled gardens of unrooted, Play Store certified Apple and Android phones - that can and will be forced to verify ages as well.

Hard cash is out as well, many governments have set hard caps on cash transactions due to "anti money laundering" laws, in other countries you need to have a bank account to pay for mandatory things like taxes or public broadcast fees [2], and an increasing number of vendors refuses to accept cash as well due to the associated handling cost and risk of fraud (i.e. employee theft) and robbery.

That last point alone will make it impossible to survive in society without engaging with one or more of the walled gardens.

And mercy be upon you if the US Government decides to put you on one of their black lists. No more banking, even as an European, because everything touches VISA/MC/SWIFT, your cloud accounts (and with it your phone and app stores), all gone, you are now an unperson [3].

[1] Some countries are already shutting down postal services over that, e.g. Denmark: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/21/denmark-postno...

[2] https://www.verbraucherzentrale-niedersachsen.de/themen/rund...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14203

[graemep]

Complacency.

The west had a golden age from the fall of the Soviet Union, removing their main rival. It also reinforced its reinforced its belief in the inevitably of progress (the "end of history" nonsense, for example). They cannot now cope with threats or danger.

That said, comparing the west to Russia, China etc. is a gross exaggeration.

[999900000999]

China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects.

We’re rapidly regressing into prideful ignorance. People are being encouraged to drink raw milk and fear vaccines.

19 century illnesses are making a resurgence.

Citizens are being indefinitely detained for “looking” like immigrants.

[petcat]

> China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects.

China is also a horrifying place to live unless you are content just to participate quietly in society and never put a political sign in your yard or even just talk about the wrong thing with your friend in a private WeChat.

https://reclaimthenet.org/china-man-chair-interrogation-soci...

[vablings]

I mean such is life for anyone who is not a full-blown citizen of the United States. If you speak bad of the current administration or its allies expect to be punished extrajudicially

[petcat]

> If you speak bad of the current administration or its allies expect to be punished extrajudicially

I have no fear of calling the current US president a pedo, or saying "Fuck the Police" on my Twitter.

Let's not equate the USA to places like China or Russia.

[vablings]

My first part of the statement presupposed you are not a US Citizen but a US persons

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visa_and_deportation_controver...

The constitution applies to all people in the United States, one of the reasons I found it infuriating that in Trumps state of the union explicitly stated, "American government is to protect American citizens". If you are in the US illegally or not you are a US person and you have legal rights afforded to you by the founding fathers

[johnnyanmac]

I don't see much difference these days. Substitute wechat for X and that's the US for anyone non-white.

[armenarmen]

I'm hallucinating whenever I see an election sign in non-white's yard I guess

[johnnyanmac]

If you think China is some mass surveillance state where every single yard of dissent is carpet bombed: yes, I can see why you think that way.

Just like the US, it can take a whike for thr CCP to get around to every individual. It's a large country. Your mistake is thinking that that's the line it has to get to before we can compare a country to China/Russia.

[dwroberts]

> China has much lower crime, cheaper healthcare and is making progress in other aspects.

It is also a totalitarian regime where criticising the state can get you, and possibly your family, ‘disappeared’

[999900000999]

Sure it is, luckily we’re catching up!

> For Indigenous Americans it’s unthinkable, but true. ICE is arresting, detaining Native Americans.

https://idahocapitalsun.com/2026/02/10/for-indigenous-americ...

Detain first , ask pesky questions about citizenship and civil rights later.

[dwroberts]

I’m not in the US but yeah the country has always had a strange relationship with law and order, at least from an outside PoV. The Kent State massacre is always one that sticks with me as particularly messed up.

I don’t think the USA is necessarily changing at all, this is what it has always been the whole time

[jimz]

It used to want to keep up appearances, it no longer does.

[pear01]

China is also an ancient civilization. Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars. Save for Pearl Harbor there were no notable attacks on the American homeland. It's a lot easier to be a superpower when the world destroys itself and you step into the breach. Millions of Soviet civilians died on their own homeland. In their own cities. Millions. Most Americans have no idea and can't really comprehend it. Even today a shocking number of Americans don't have a passport and really know nothing about the world beyond their shores. These people are overrepresented in an American Congress that is anti-democratic. People on the coasts, like in New York City are underrepresented in American government. The entire state of New York gets the same amount of senators as flyover states, many of which are welfare states (take more funds than they contribute). This is because in a modern economy what NYC produces is more valuable than what a state with barely any people in the middle of nowhere produces. Yet the middle of nowhere is represented more. It makes no sense.

The current administration is only convincing the world that America is a threat. We live in an age where two oceans offer far less protection than they did when America rose to superpower status. The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example. Watch any congressional hearing about cyber and you might be forgiven for thinking we have already been invaded. Beating up on third world pariah states impresses no one but the current administration. The United States bombs Iran but blinks at Russia. The administration started a trade war with China then backed off, not one meaningful concession was achieved.

Unless America reverses course fast the decline will only continue. The world will move on. No country is inevitable.

[graemep]

> China is also an ancient civilization.

So is Europe, and we are talking about the west in general, not just the US.

> Americans view of themselves is highly inflated by the sheer luck of being two oceans away from everyone during both world wars.

Again, most of Europe suffered during the world wars.

> The fact Russian intelligence operatives can so easily infiltrate American political discourse is just one example

They also infiltrate European politics, as do the Chinese.

[pear01]

Europe is not an ancient civilization. It is a continent and politically, an amalgamation.

Most of the "Western" civilizations old enough to attempt comparison with China were not European in the modern sense at all. The classic example is usually Rome, which treated most of Europe as barbarians to colonize and enslave. The engine and wealth of the empire was along the Mediterranean. Ancient Rome was thus really a Mediterranean power not a "European" one. I think you could successfully argue Romans had more in common with other ancient Mediterranean powers or even ancient Mesopotamians than modern Europeans.

As to the rest of your points true enough. It is well known that today's Europeans find themselves in between a rock and a hard place given the current split between American and Chinese hegemony.

[graemep]

The power of Rome and the influence of Greece means that modern Europe's culture was shaped by Greece and Rome, and by Christianity.

The Roman Empire covered much of Europe about 2000 years ago, and those places have had a great deal of cultural continuity since then.

[jimz]

Except Chinese hegemony is illusory beyond what it considers its immediate sphere of influence which also means it really cannot project force in any way but economically. It can barely take care of business at home. It's puzzling to many as to why America sees China as somehow equal in threat and in capability since in reality neither is remotely true. China doesn't even have a policy that is truly expansionary since Taiwan is an irredentist claim. Its armed forces have not seen combat since 1979 and that was largely a ground war. Without connections or having acquired one previously it's becoming difficult to obtain a passport to leave, although, it's also not all that easy to find a place for you to settle as a Chinese citizen without some sort of skills that allow you to pretend like society under you is unstable.

[jdkee]

"Save for Pearl Harbor there were no notable attacks on the American homeland."

September 11, 2001 is why Iran is being attacked a quarter century later.

[pear01]

I meant during the two world wars, which should have been obvious. The idea you think I know what NYC is but forgot about 9/11 says more about you than I.

Iran had nothing to do with 9/11. If that was the point you were attempting it is incorrect. Not even the current administration is attempting that line of reasoning.

[jimz]

HAHAHAHAHA my goodness. You actually believe that?

Everyone in China is constantly violating laws, the difference is that black letter law is essentially meaningless and the country is run by an administrative state that is controlled by the party.

You can't really get things done without breaking the law. China doesn't properly tabulate, and therefore cannot release, anything like accurate crime data. But the crime rate is certainly higher since it's pretty much impossible to even go online and do just about anything without breaking some law. What is written is so vague and nearly any conduct can fall under it.

The ambiguity doesn't make the country safer, they just have a media hegemony and active censorship. Healthcare is woeful and "cheap" comes with "quotas on patients seen" meaning that doctors frequently have 1-2 minutes to see patients and one can become an MD much earlier than one can in the US. And since the perception is that no food is really 100% safe, it's more acquiescence, and not confidence, that people show.

Hell, you having the option of choosing to opt into vaccines is even an improvement. In China you are stuck with the state prescribed schedule and that's it. Unless you're extremely wealthy, but then again, where is that not an exception?

[mobiuscog]

Convenient and Cheap. That's all most people care about.

Privacy was already lost when everyone adopted mobile phones and gave them everything with constant location tracking, and used the free email accounts.

It's interesting that age-verification is the straw that breaks the camels back, but I guess porn has that power.

[HerbManic]

Yeo, convenience is the most powerful "drug" we have ever come up with. We need our next hit... Now!

[dheera]

This. Every time I point out that I shouldn't have to leak my residential address to private businesses to register to vote or complete KYC, 15 people immediately come out of the woods to point out that addresses are public information.

The point is they shouldn't be. That's how people get stalked, harassed, and murdered at their home.

[disposition2]

> shouldn't have to leak my residential address to private businesses to register to vote

If the 'SAVE America Act' passes, you're going to be open to leaking a heck of a lot more than that, and it'll all go in to a national database.

[dheera]

TBH I'm not opposed to the government knowing where I live. Having ways to find and lock up actual criminals is not a bad thing.

I'm also not opposed to certain private businesses or financial institutions needing to know who I am. Having ways to identify financial criminals is not a bad thing either.

What I'm vehemently opposed to is these private businesses needing to know where I live. They are not the ones doing the locking up. That's what the government does. Private businesses can identify individuals without needing to know their residential addresses.

[GJim]

This is HN mate.

It's full of people from ad-tech who believe data protection is the enemy and the GDPR is a European conspiracy against growth.

You should learn to simply bend over and grab your ankles with both hands whenever they (or anybody else) asks for your personal data.

EDIT: and predictable 'drive-by' downvotes from those in the industry too lazy to try and defend their position and write a rebuttle!

[tinfoilhatter]

This totalitarian agenda has been in the works for far longer than a quarter century. It's not just rich old people either.

We're witnessing the creation of the beast system in real time. The one that is prophesized in the Book of Revelation.

[code4life]

It is both scary to watch and yet fun to be alive to see it come to fruition.

It is occurring in every dimension, including the ability to track who buys and sells with crypto currencies along with the ability to punish or reward people based on ai hardware software infrastructure deployments.

[Scapeghost]

Reddit bans users based on what they upvoted:

https://www.reddit.com/r/RedditSafety/comments/1j4cd53/warni...

"We know that the culture of a community is not just what gets posted, but what is engaged with. Voting comes with responsibility."

[code4life]

Are you talking to someone else?

This seems like an unnecessary threat based in your bias.

Chatgpt seems to concur.

[rdevilla]

The west is lost.

[boothby]

It will live on, encoded in the weights of LLMs

[rabbitlord]

The world is lost, I don't think it is any better in non-western countries.

[amatecha]

I appreciate you saying this. It gets SO OLD having everything in society dominated by "think of the children" rationales that basically translate to "increasing authority and further-reduced freedom", with a spicy dash of omnipresent surveillance.

[rdiddly]

Yeah unfortunately I suspect the authoritarian surveillance is the whole point. Protecting children is obviously not a priority for the Epstein class.

[bigyabai]

It was indescribably pathetic watching HN users of all people defend Client Side Scanning and Bitlocker flaws. The only people qualified to logically protest have already drank the Kool-aid.

[chii]

yep. You are not wrong.

Those who trade freedom for security will obtain neither.

[odiroot]

Because, at least in Europe, people got hooked on nanny state.

[kevin_thibedeau]

US domestic surveillance predates 9/11. It just became more open once an easy excuse was available.

[Henchman21]

When you take a high trust society and then endlessly lie to the people, what exactly are you expecting to happen? Serious question here, we are under direct assault from the "elites" here and we are clearly shell-shocked and not yet dealing with it.

Many of us are open to suggestion. But if all you're going to do is call us bitches, then shut the fuck up. Wanna help? Cool, I'm willing to accept it. Maybe try that.

[ErigmolCt]

Whether these systems are a good idea is still very much being debated

[Eyeland0]

Weak? We manufacture mighty strong propaganda.

[autoexec]

> You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice

That was a lie we told ourselves. In reality we started with slavery which is about as far from freedom and justice as you can get, and then shifted to mass incarceration (often just slavery with extra steps) locking up more of our own people than Russia or China ever did. These days our prison population is trending down as we're getting better at imprisoning people in their own homes and communities with GPS trackers and parole/probation requirements but it's still laughable to call ourselves the "land of the free"

[armenarmen]

I hear this point of view, that mass incarceration is slavery with extra steps. But a (very quick and not in depth) google search shows that the cost to keep a person in prison for a year is $60-100k. And as far as I can tell in the cases where prisoners are laboring, while for admittedly shit pay, its not in $50k/year let alone one where where a profit would be returned for the "owners/jailers"

Now, if you're saying that the slavery comparison is more in that prisoners are legit balance sheet items for private prisoners to collect tax money? Well there is an argument there to be sure. But this seems like a structural problem. The existence of private prisons at all.

None of that is arguing in favor of crazy sentences for non-violent crime, however directly comparing it to chattel slavery confuses the argument against mass incarceration.

[autoexec]

Prisons and more specifically prisoners are massively profitable to their jailers/owners no matter if they're private, state, or federal. Even private corporations are profiting from the US prison system. The federal government runs a corporation called FPI/UNICOR which sells out prisoners for profit. States also have programs or companies that lease their prisoners out to private companies who pay those prisons (or the government) a lot of money to get an endless supply of workers who can't complain about working conditions or being paid pennies a day (almost all of which goes back to the prison anyway). Some prisoners are forced to work for no pay at all.

Prisons will let people who are supposedly so dangerous that they need to be locked up and denied parole out of jail long enough to work their shifts at fast food restaurants, retail stores, plants (like Tyson Foods) and warehouses and they'll run their own companies inside the prisons themselves like call centers which get contracted out to private corporations or government agencies for a profit.

Some prisons also run farms, modern day plantations, that use slave labor to sell millions of dollars worth of food and crops to corporations whose products show up in our stores. Whole foods, kroger, walmart, and target all sell products made by prison labor. Food and crops raised on prison farms even get exported to other countries.

Inside the prisons everything prisoners get they have to buy from the prison which overcharges them for everything. The workers make pennies but the markups on what they need can be 600%. The commissary vendors are for-profit and the prisons get kickbacks from them to get exclusive access to the captive customer base. Private companies partner with prisons for release cards and make profit from that. Phone calls from prisons can cost over $20 for just 15 minutes (https://brilliantmaps.com/jail-call-cost-usa/). The US prison system is designed to make money. Private prisons tend to make more profit on their prisoners, but so do state and federal prisons, the vendors they employ, and private corporations. Of course even while the government and corporations rake in money taxpayers are still on the hook for a lot of unnecessarily expenses, including the costs of policing and the court systems that feed the prison system a steady stream of new and returning prisoners. Everybody knows that we could save billions in tax payer money is we focused more on keeping people out of the system, but there's profit to be made from slaves so no one will fix it.

[NegativeLatency]

Everyone was just copying the French

[caconym_]

It's almost as if there's nothing special or unspecial about any of these populations. Just transient cultural factors that (in addition to generally being understood in limited hindsight and through rose-tinted glasses) will inevitably erode and dissolve under sustained attack.

> lay down and crawl along and accept everything without even a whimper.

People just want to live their lives. Maybe you think you would be doing differently in their position, but until you've had a chance to prove it, I don't believe you.

[peyton]

Let’s not get carried away. Real people fought and died for things we have.

[caconym_]

Yes, and they did so because of their specific circumstances and beliefs.

[vladms]

> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything

If that's what you strongly believe then "western countries" are definitely quite bad at communication and the others quite good at propaganda.

Having lived in a communist country (years ago) and in the west I know from first hand experience that the difference is huge. No need to believe me, see for yourself if you can, alternatively distrust everybody similarly (Rusia, China and the west) - nobody wants your well-being...

Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the ones suffering the most from the wars and stupid decisions, it does not matter west/east/south/north. Western countries were a richer which means less poor, but it's not like it's a heaven for everybody either.

[coffe2mug]

Years ago is different to now. Many places in Russia or China, Dubai etc is very livable. Even lots of people are going about their lives normally in Dubai - these days.

China is definitely not so shit like portrayed by western media. At the same time London is also not run by Islamic Extremists as portrayed by perhaps the top media station in USA.

> Sad part is that probably the poor (everywhere) are the on

totally true.

[adrian_b]

Having also lived in a communist country, I agree that 35 years ago the difference was huge.

Unfortunately, since around 2000 the differences have become less and less every year, so what has remained now is a very small fraction of what was a quarter of century ago.

The socialist economies from the past were just the extreme form of capitalist economies, where monopolies controlled every market. The western economies are quickly approaching this stage.

Extreme surveillance of everybody was how the communist elites preserved their power, but the surveillance was actually illegal, because the constitution "guaranteed" the secret of communications, e.g. of mail and telephone. While the secret police or equivalent organizations did not care about what is legal or not, they were nonetheless forced to keep appearances and do their work covertly. They also did not have enough resources to process in a centralized form all the data collected by surveillance.

Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities. They also now have the means to spy on an unlimited number of people among hundreds of millions or even billions, so surveillance is already worse than it was in the communist countries, even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe (hopefully).

[vladms]

> Now, in the western countries surveillance has been legalized, so the governmental agencies no longer bother to hide their activities.

Hiding or not 20 years ago the west was trying to surveil it's population as much as they could as well, see the Snowden/NSA scandal.

> even if the consequences of being spied are not yet so severe

Spot on. I would go even further and argue that "communist countries" used to rule through "fear of the state", while west ruled through (among others) "fear of others" (used to be communist, now becomes migrants or other religious groups).

For me the surveillance is not ideal, but the worst is the average education level of a population. Without any surveillance, if my neighbor will suddenly believe I am a witch and burn me at stake (it did happen in the west!) I will not feel good because I was not surveilled.

[squibonpig]

We never were? Neoliberal freedom never constituted strength nor is companies having the general public by the balls a new thing here.

[lapcat]

> Man... How did yall white Westerners turn out to be the weakest people in the world? You were supposed to be the bastions of freedom and justice

This is a misunderstanding of American history. From its founding by wealthy white male landowners and slaveowners, the US was by design a plutocracy, enshrined in the Constitution with various anti-democratic (small "d") measures such as separation of powers, the electoral college, the Presidential veto, the unelected Supreme Court with lifetime tenure, and representation of land rather than population in the Senate. Originally, Senators weren't even directly elected. And of course neither women nor Black men had the right to vote. (EDIT: I forgot to mention the extreme difficulty of amending the Constitution, and as a result, the Constitution hasn't been amended much since the Bill of Rights.)

The only thing that held the plutocracy in check was "all political is local". The US was an agrarian nation, not yet hit by the industrial revolution. The fastest form of communication and tranportation was the horse. What has changed radically in the 20th and 21st centuries is that modern technology allows the ultra-wealthy to organize and conspire (see Epstein and friends, for example) on a national and even international scale. Political election campaigns have always been privately funded—another essential feature of the plutocracy—and now they're obscenely expensive with TV and internet advertising, which further consolidates the power of the ultra-wealthy campaign contributors.

The biggest problem with the US is that we haven't had a political revolution in 250 years. We're still operating under the ancient rules.

Even during the suffering of the Great Depression, it took a "white knight", an ultra-wealthy leader FDR with some sympathy for the lower classes, to provide some relief. And note that the most successful third-party Presidential candidate in recent history was Ross Perot, a billionaire who self-funded TV informercials to spread his message. The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.

[specialist]

Agree with all. Especially about nationalization.

The origins of each colony (a la Albion's Seed) continue to shape our politics. Spoiler: The Virginians won.

> it took a "white knight"

Yes and: each progressive reform, however modest, barely squeaked thru, overcoming huge opposition. The Farmstead Act (et al), New Deal, Great Society, ACA, IRA, etc.

Followed by an outsized reactionary backlash. Every single time. Just like the current cycle of revanchism.

--

Albion's Seed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed

[mullingitover]

> with various anti-democratic (small "d")

Yes, because the designers of the system were well-read and understood that raw democracy, like oligarchy and autocracy, is something that republics devolve into.

Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable. The Constitution is designed to maximize the advantages while hedging against its inherent instability.

> The game is rigged in favor of big money and has always been so rigged.

I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.

[lapcat]

> Yes, because the designers of the system were well-read

Well-read in the 18th century. And they borrowed heavily from 17th century philosopher John Locke. Imagine relying on 17th or 18th century medicine now.

The founders weren't nearly as wise as they're alleged to be. For example, they thought their system would suppress political parties, and then political parties arose almost immediately.

> Rule by the many is great, but the historical evidence shows it's clearly unstable.

Which historical evidence are you referring to? Most of history is nondemocratic.

In any case, the US broke out into an extremely bloody civil war less than 75 years after the Constitution was ratified, so it hasn't been "stable", not that stability is even desirable under a plutocracy.

> I would say the game is rigged in favor of production, of which capital is a big part, because those who don't produce end up being governed by those who do.

Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.

[mullingitover]

> Let's see a rich dude produce anything all by himself. We like the pretend that the one rich dude is producing everything and his thousands of employees are basically superfluous.

We're certainly in agreement here, but I would say that most modern wealth is fictional: based on equity, which is based on credit, which is based on confidence, which at the end of the day is just vibes. So most of the 'wealthy' people exist as such with social permission because they're employed in production, and if they fail at that job the wealth rapidly evaporates. However, they're definitely wildly overpaid in the US. That, imho, is because culturally this country still wants to cosplay at having an aristocracy.

[lapcat]

> So most of the 'wealthy' people exist as such with social permission because they're employed in production, and if they fail at that job the wealth rapidly evaporates.

It's misleading to say "they're employed in production", using the present tense. Many were engaged in production, and some choose to remain engaged, but others don't. It doesn't seem to matter much. Bill Gates quit his job 20 years ago, claims to be trying to give most of his money away, yet he's still one of the wealthiest people in the world. The dude was already ultra-wealthy by age 30. Sure, he engaged in production for a number of years, but most ordinary workers have no choice but to engage in production for 40 or 50 years or their life at least.

The ultra-wealthy are not wage earners, paid by their labor. They are capital owners, and capital continues to earn returns regardless. If you're smart with your wealth and diversify, and by smart I mean not dumb—safe long-term investment doesn't take a genius—it's extremely hard to lose it all. That would happen only if you put all of your eggs in one basket. I'm not aware of too many riches to rags stories, except among professional athletes for example. But those athletes were wage earners rather than capital owners. They don't own the sports teams.

[peyton]

A lot of complaints about the way the world works—what alternative do you propose?

[zelphirkalt]

Politicians have spent decades eroding our education systems, at least where I am located. Bread and circuses. Coming up next in Germany is how they will slash personal assets in quarter (not merely half), using a reform of support for unemployed people. Instead of working out how to get finances redistributed (oh wait, now I will be called a "communist" or "socialist" as if that were some devilish insult), they are working out how to get to the savings of the simple worker.

Congrats Germany, for electing another CDU government. We are digging our own graves here and we are too uninformed and too entertained to see it. Next election will probably be the breaking point, when AfD manages to get many majorities, due to how unhappy CDU, SPD, and other mainstream parties have made the populace. And then we will have these right-wing extremists as our government.

Looking to the US, they have hit it even worse now. Full authoritarian guy at the top, who might even prevent the next elections, unless he is sure that he will win or can make it so that he appears to have won.

[Aunche]

> Now your countries are little different from Russia or China or Dubai etc where the old money cabals run everything,

This is clearly propaganda manufactured by the evil tech cabal to suppress grassroots efforts to protect children from their brainwashing. /s

In all seriousness, populist outrage doesn't help anyone except for the power brokers who can hide their true intentions under all the noise. As much of an overreach I think the Patriot Act was for example, the degree of harm that resulted from it is minuscule compared to the brainrot caused by social media. If you want me to oppose the age verification laws, then you need to convince me that those laws won't actually reduce brainrot or that surveillance harms me more than I think and let me come to my own conclusion.

[broDogNRG]

Would like to point out GenX is middle management age in the US.

It isn't the senile crowd running things anymore. It's 50-60 year old Thiel, Musk, health insurance CEO, crowd.

Professional consumer crowd that's taken the baton and never invented anything of their own. Electric cars and rockets, the internet, and society post-WW2 were originally grandpa's ideas.

[conductr]

I think that's the problem, the greatest generation were sort of a moral compass in the US (like it or not, they obv had their own problems - eg. racism). Without them to scold us, it seems we're all too infantile/selfish/greedy and can't even show each other basic respect or do something as simple as stop at a red light. Sure, the internet and social media accelerate it but I think there's also a fundamental loss of parental figures that went out with that generation too.

As a Gen X'er myself I know I grew up respecting the hell out of older people, especially 70+ ages. The past couple of decades as that cohort churns, I can't say the same. It's more of a case by case basis now, many of them seem outright evil in their self-righteousness. They all seem angry and ready to fight in any passing interaction (granted, I live in Texas where most of them are amped on FoxNews, too) and that's not how it used to be. They used to be the friendliest cohort alive, hell when I was maybe 10-14 I even used to volunteer at senior living homes just to hang out and chat with them and can't imagine anyone wanting to do that now.

[cucumber3732842]

The greatest generation and the silent generation spent their entire adult lives vesting power in institutions and they passed this on to the boomers.

Now, after the better part of a century of that running it's course with nearly no pressure to not chart a crap course it's falling apart.

[conductr]

It’s the stewardship that’s the problem not the institutions or existence of.

[NegativeLatency]

Deregulation of financial markets and glorification of monetary wealth above all else was also their doing? Gen X were kids when Carter and Regan sent us down the path we’re on now.

[broDogNRG]

They're not kids now

They were not kids a decade ago

Two decades ago

Why is it 20-30 somethings of 40-50 years ago put the world on an immutable path but 20-30 somethings now are stuck with?

If prior 20-30 somethings that "put us on a path" had free agency we do too

Especially when those old 20-30 somethings are now 70-90 somethings

Kids in the 1980s who rolled over in their 20-30s

Who speaks old English and writes like Shakespeare? Social truths die off. So why do we still speak 1970?

[amarant]

What do you mean "the west"? The US is indeed lost, but don't bundle the rest of us in with those lunatics!

[graemep]

We are not really better. Chat control being pushed in the EU. The Online Safety Act already passed in the UK, and now legislation to give politicians the power to decide what websites need age verification. Crony capitalism/technofedualism/whatever all over the place. Hate speech laws that are often politicised and give the police and prosecutors a lot of room to target people they dislike (something the US has constitutional protections against). Extremist parties such as PVV and AfD getting a significant proportion of the vote.

[amarant]

The UK is lost too. Chat control is scary, but it's actually proof that the EU is not yet lost: that law keeps getting shot down.

We do need some kind of mechanism to prevent this kind of "keep trying until it passes" mechanism to lobbying/lawmaking that the people pushing chat control are using. That's a tricky issue though, as revisions on law proposals are an expected part of the process. Some sort of "dismiss with prejudice" would be nice tho

[graemep]

> but it's actually proof that the EU is not yet lost: that law keeps getting shot down.

Good things happen in the UK and US too and some bad laws get rejected. The overall trend is pretty clear though and is the same in the EU, and the rest of the west too.

Its not just one country or leader or political party. Its a cultural problem that affects the whole of the west. "We are going to hell slightly slower" is not a great place to claim to be.

[Razengan]

I dunno, the UK seems to be doing its best to outcrazy the US