[colordrops]

Except China has a well defined culture and millenia of experience with this and has learned how to have an autocratic society that still somewhat serves its people (until it doesn't). The US has been captured by a foreign power that has no interest in the welfare of the people so the expectation is that an autocratic society would be much worse in the US.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

They don’t have millennia of experience with a surveillance state. But so far people are accepting it because their economic situation is generally improving. And crime is low. It may change once they have reached the same level of prosperity as the West and growth slows.

[6stringmerc]

Uh, are you sure about that claim regarding surveillance over human history? Just because the technology has advanced does not entail the methods or concepts are novel. Quite the contrary in my view: the modern versions are natural evolutions of long traditions and customs. Having “rats” and “moles” reporting on behavior is, I mean, it predates written records of I’m not mistaken.

[vjvjvjvjghv]

Today is a totally different scale. The German stasi needed a huge amount of people to handle all the incoming data and a lot of it fell through anyways l. Today you just throw a lot of compute at it and nothing can escape.

Yes you always had people snitching on each other but it was inefficient and hard to centralize. Today is different.

[jr3592]

> The US has been captured by a foreign power that has no interest in the welfare of the people

Huh?