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Comment by Silhouette | Hacker News Reader

Any UK resident have insight on why the UK is so backwards on these issues?

The UK isn't. Some of our politicians are. Please understand the difference.

If the people cared about individual liberty they'd vote outside the big two parties (Tories and Labour) and take a look at the Lib Dems who have promised to repeal the Investigatory Powers Act rather than enhance it. The fact that the electrate doesn't care about these issues (and that the Lib Dems are on track to lose vote share) means they'll end up with the politicians they deserve.

I appreciate the issues FPTP presents and that people need to assess party platforms as a whole but the truth is most people don't care enough about privacy to make it a priority and so the UK will continue to get a bit more authoritarian every election.

The trouble is that we only get one vote at each general election, and those normally only happen once every few years. That isn't even close to enough to express any sort of nuanced view on important issues like civil liberties. It's not even enough to express a clear view on headline issues like economic policy or the NHS. And yet politicians produce these gazillion-page manifesto documents and the winners then claim a public mandate to implement the policy mentioned vaguely in the footnote on page 87.

Our political system is fundamentally broken, and it's not (only) because of FPTP. In many cases, there may not be any potential representative you can vote for who is even close to your own position on even most issues.

Saying that people "don't care" about an issue because they don't vote for a party that opposes the problem on that one issue makes no sense. For example, in the case you mentioned, the Lib Dems have essentially made themselves a single-issue party this election. By your own reasoning, should someone who supports their stance on civil liberties but disagrees with their headline position on Brexit vote for them?

I was hoping to capture your last point when I said people need to assess party platforms as a whole. I understand that most people who voted Leave cannot really vote Lib Dem in good conscience. I hate to see parties lock up single issue voters into electoral blocks like that but that's what happens under our current (broken) system.

Having said that, I don't think any of that detracts from my point - the electorate don't care enough about privacy to make it their hot-button issue. The people have chosen to prioritise the NHS, Brexit, Immigration and the War on Terror over privacy. All of those are important and the politicians up for election respond accordingly to their priorities. If a UKIP-like party that focused on civil liberties started hoovering up votes then the main parties would also respond; unfortunately I don't see that happening due to voter apathy on the topic.

>The fact that the electrate doesn't care about these issues..

Might have something to do with the absurd level of right wing control of the popular media. The Daily Mail preaches it's daily diet of,'jail em, hang em, deport em' for everything it doesn't care for. The snoopers charter achieved almost zero coverage during its final stages. All the papers were discussing was Brexit.

Believe me that I would vote lib dem, if they had stances I agreed on outside the issues of personal freedoms, and even some of those they aren't willing to stick up for. I am much more sympathetic to more of Labour's policies.

Believe me, I do. I didn't vote for Donald Trump or GWB. But I have to accept that their actions constitute a big part of what the US is, especially as seen from the outside.

To simplify a little, in a democracy, if 51% of voters are "backwards" in some way, I see it as an acceptable shorthand to say that the country as a whole is (in that particuar way). Because that group will be making the decisions for 100% of residents.

To simplify a little, in a democracy, if 51% of voters are "backwards" in some way ... that group will be making the decisions for 100% of residents.

This is the big problem with a "pure" direct democracy: you automatically get tyranny of the majority.

Most of our real world democracies suffer worse problems than this, though. The leadership elected to make the decisions may not even enjoy a majority of popular support. Even having had popular support at an election, there may be no mechanism to compel a government to actually act as it promised to win those votes, other than voting for someone else several years later. The nature of the electoral system may lead to very short-term, populist thinking, particularly towards the end of each electoral cycle.

My own view is that in light of these kinds of weaknesses, many of our political systems in the West are simply not fit for purpose, and that once-pragmatic reasons for accepting those limitations mostly expired with the rise of modern transportation and communication infrastructure. Sadly, I have not yet been made supreme ruler of the universe, so I have limited ability to do anything about this unless a lot of other people start to agree...

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