Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

That can be maintained because it's still extraordinarily isolated and small in occasion. America remains among the freest nations on earth in nearly every measure - even if it's not the best at every measure. Your premise though is very flawed in my opinion, I don't know very many people that are unaware of the erosion of liberty that has occurred - both sides of the voting aisle are extremely aware of it, it's constantly discussed at a national level (eg the Washington Post has run countless articles on it), and every side of the US politically have their opinions on its nature and what should be done about it.

You're acting like this is affecting every American and is very common. It's not. Eritrea? That's laughable, you're intentionally dramatizing to try to insult the US. It is in fact a very, very small problem, that is very serious and needs to be put down before it gets any larger. Steps have already begun to put an end to it. Why pretend it's not an understood problem that almost everyone agrees needs to be dealt with? The only reason to pretend that, is to levy a cheap shot at the US.

Sorry, but even when I can to a degree see your point it sounds like you feel overly insulted by someone stating basic facts.

The US has been pretty bad off when it comes to civil liberties compared to many other other countries for quite a while now.

Next to civil forfeiture the US unlike most other countries still has death penalty, still has a rather big amount of the population rotting in one of the worst prison systems of the western world, still doesn't legalize things like most drugs or prostitution, still doesn't do anything against the decline of education, making it only possible for wealthy to get one, has even when compared with development countries a pretty bad health care system, many archaic laws, has things like the DMCA killing off freedom of speech, has that NSA scandal going on that made KGB and Stasi look like nothing, presidents that are dynasties of families, barely any protection against discrimination of minorities, etc.

I really don't want to talk bad about the US, but your statement of "America remains among the freest nations on earth in nearly every measure" really doesn't seem anywhere close to true. What are you basing that statement on? Or are you purely talking about so called "economical freedoms"?

Oh and not saying country X is better. I just think that statement you made is wrong.

> I really don't want to talk bad about the US,

> has that NSA scandal going on that made KGB and Stasi look like nothing

Yeah, I'm going to say you only want to talk bad about the US.

Patriotism: you're doing it wrong. Real patriots don't strain to find reasons for taking offense. Rather, we're pissed off that "offensive" statements happen to be objectively true. Only USA people can change USA. If you don't want to change it, then get comfortable with seeing many more rational assessments of our problems.

I have no problem calling out America for its faults. I just misinterpreted the comment and thought they were saying America was worse than Nazi Germany. I didn't realize they were talking just about data collection.

Huh? Why? It's true. If you look about the possibilities then they were way more limited. In in a more general sense. The Stasi was limited to a handful individuals that they wanted to surveil. If their limit was reached they had to choose which other person to give up. That means that there still was nothing even close to mass surveillance. That's an established fact that one can read up in a random history book.

Civil Liberties are not big in the US anymore. I think that's also kind of established. Or do you have something that disproves that?

Also hint hint, I've got no reason to talk bad about the US. I actually often talk good about the US. There is a bunch of stuff that everyone should copy. Like the Freedom of Information Act that still seems to be pretty much unique to the US. Have I confused you now? ;)

And yeah, I am sorry. I didn't write that sentence in the nicest way. I am however not even denying the fact that there is many countries doing worse and fewer and fewer that could be doing better.

But if you think I only wanna talk bad about the US it's your right to do so. Just saying it's not true as I actually think that a change in US politics regarding these things is one of the few chances for pretty much the whole world to stop being in a downward spiral when it comes to civil liberties. Right now everyone is pointing at each other being like "It's okay that we take those liberties away, because country X is doing it too".

It's like history and long thought for rights are getting reversed. And the intention is not to talk bad about the US, but to talk bad about all those things, kind of hoping that the US starts a trend for civil liberties (again), because I think that's maybe the most likely country others will copycat from.

Sorry, having no national pride, so I'm usually a bit blunt about those things and how I word them. Will try to find a better wording next time. :)

I wasn't responding out of national pride.

I just thought you were making a knee jerk, America is worse than Nazi Germany, comment. I didn't realize you were talking about data collection alone. My bad.

Stasi was the East German secret police during the cold war. Nothing to do with Nazis (but if you read it quick, it does look like "Nazi").

That line about how it's "only possible for the wealthy" to get an education is demonstrably false, even though I wouldn't discount some of your other points. Have you ever heard of federally-guaranteed student loans? The USA has them. Almost everybody in the US who wants to go to college does.

I do. I am not saying that you cannot go to college, but that it's still not exactly easy to go get good education on varying levels.

First off even though I know about the loans I also know that for many people (people I know) it means decades of debt. I also know that this still doesn't mean you will have good access to good education (Ivory League colleges).

The thing that I wanted to point out is that it's still a decision that one cannot just make or if you do it might be one that one might really regret.

The problem with that is that it's not efficient in many ways. The US compared to other countries appears to end high school education at a slightly lower level. Therefor college becomes way more important. At the end of college the difference is evened out (sometimes/often better, sometimes worse than other countries, also depends on many factors). So that's good.

However the problem is that it's a loan. Yeah, it's better than not federally-guaranteed, but then for a country that claims to be the best in this sector it's kind of bad. The amount of money one needs for college, both for paying back and for just "living" are on the rise.

I'd consider the US democracy being designed in a really good way, but like founding fathers, various presidents and thinkers pointed out education is very important for a democracy.

The state with the loans is sadly kind of ridiculous. It's actually bizarre when one has to start out their live with ten thousands of USD of debt for going to college and that even after a successful college time there is still a big chance for the debt growing because of the interest.

And yeah, in many cases one can say "your own fault" and I even agree on that one, but as a CS person one is on the extremely "lucky" end of the spectrum.

I am not saying that it is realistic to just be perfect or just be like Scandinavia, but education is important and might to a degree even influence the other topics when it comes to civil liberties.

I hope I won't be called a communist, but I once knew a person from East Germany and at least he said something like "the Berlin Wall and Communism fell because they educated their people too well" and hey I think that should be a reason for the US to invest into good education.

I know that's just a random anecdote, but hope it gets my point across. The US could really benefit from some reform in certain areas and probably with that even reduce the costs of inefficient systems. Someone (not sure if that's true, don't know the exactly details) once told me that if the US would copy the welfare system of - I think - Sweden regarding healthcare and education they'd have way more money, better education and better healthcare and they could lower the taxes. Also said something about the system being largely based upon "making it not look socialist, even though it means more tax money and government control".

Not sure about my last statement. All I know about the US regarding education I know from a bunch of US citizens I am close to and a documentary called Ivory Tower. The documentary being a bit scary, but it also shows some really cool stuff that should be used more.

Like I sometimes don't get what's hindering to make the US way closer to how "the US" likes to depict itself. Is it just that nobody picks up those topics? Or is it that the parties just can't agree? Maybe someone knows more? What's the reason that the US seems a bit stuck with status quo on some issues.

What is your yardstick? Third world banana republics?

People in the United States are less free than most advanced European countries. In those countries, governments tend to respect people AND limit the power of corporations so people can be free from coercive economic activity.

How are you measuring this? We have the world's largest prison population for God's sake. What on Earth could you be talking about?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com