Comment by jaredklewis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jaredklewis | Hacker News Reader

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This is silly. I think the differnce between you and most of the population is the ability to perform basic cost benefit analysis.

Gun control. Cost: lessens ability of people to wage a violent revolution, the possibility of which puts a check on the government. As you point out, this argument is pretty shaky given the revolutionaries are using guns to fight a government with nukes, chemical weapons, drones, fighter jets, missiles, tanks, etc...Good luck lol.

Benefit: Likely reduces the some 30k+ firearm deaths every year to levels more inline with other countries that have gun control.

Strong encryption. Cost: lessens the governments ability to spy on everone, purportedly to catch criminals and terrorists. The government has provided scant evidence of the fruit of such efforts, but I think we can assume they catch relatively few terrorists by these means.

Benefit: privacy and anonymity for citizens. Protects citizens from their own government as well bad actors and malicious foreign governments.

Honestly, these two issues seem like night and day to me. I find this kind of comparison typical amongst the hard core libertarian types, who for some reason find it contradictory that I support regulating sale of cocaine (i.e it shouldn’t be sold to minors), but not that of apples or breakfast cereal. Sometimes, different things are different.

This comment personally served as a sharp, jab-in-the-ribs reminder of how two people can approach a problem completely differently and still be convinced of their own rationality based off of their worldview. I was trying to imagine the incredulous look my Republican father would have on his face reading your curt, matter-of-fact moralizing and it made me chuckle.

Anyways, that's besides the point. I think the GP was more trying to compare the debate around encryption with the debate around gun control. People who argue for more regulation and centralized control do so with the same tactics over and over again - they use scare-tactics to portray people on the other side as dangerous, selfish, and anti-social, and they layer this on top of other propaganda techniques like constant repetition. The people on the individualist sides can't compete because they can't cohesively agree on one message and form a group that can counter-shill for it, because, well, that's just not the culture of libertarianism, so most of what they say sounds like inconsistent rambling to outsiders. Very generously interpreting the GP comment, we need to consider the underrepresented ideas just as fairly as we do ideas pushed by the mainstream and accept or reject them based on merit, not popularity or backing. The problem with American democracy is that most people aren't mindful enough of the complexities and gray-areas surrounding current issues to do this. Eg, we (the HN crowd) see the problems with mass surveillance and weakened encryption but we're too busy shouting amongst ourselves to understand why the mainstream doesn't care. Gun control and encryption may be "different things" but the political debate is the same.

I recognize the existence of a cost benefit difference downthread, so maybe you're picking on my comment and not me.

You are assuming that "most of the population" has an ability to perform this. Judging by the irrational "shape" that gun regulation takes in the US, I highly doubt this.

Furthermore (as I've also said elsewhere), I'm not trying to stoke an argument about firearms. But the political contours are pretty similar - individual autonomy mostly used morally/lawfully, versus controlling rare but horrific sensationalized crimes. Even if one is strongly opposed to individual ownership of firearms, they'd be wise to study what the second amendment battle looks like from the other side - to better understand the long game of the attack on computing.

> Benefit: Likely reduces the some 30k+ firearm deaths every year to levels more inline with other countries that have gun control. . I wouldn't be so optimistic. There are counter examples, like Brazil.

So the problem here is one of framing. Without the polemic slant, here's what you've effectively said:

Gun control. Cost: lessens ability of one societal subgroup to wage a violent revolution, the possibility of which puts a check on society at large, when that subgroup's grievances are legitimate. Benefit: lessens ability of one societal subgroup to wage a violent revolution, the possibility of which puts a check on society at large, when that subgroup's grievances aren't legitimate.

Strong encryption (and other anonymizing technologies). Benefit: lessens society's ability to curtail the activities of people the society doesn't like (who just happen to have different points of view). Cost: lessens society's ability to curtail the activities of people the society doesn't like (from people that are actually bad).

See, the thing about both of these things (from the point of view of an individual) is that they both form direct checks against society. In the case of encryption+anonymity, society can't know who to target, and in the case of firearms law, society will think twice about attacking others physically. So you're not going to need to deal with, say, parts of society that actually have the power to get you fired because you have a political opinion that contradicts theirs- maybe it's something completely ridiculous (like you're an actual 1945 Nazi), or maybe it's something more subtle (maybe you're Brendan Eich or James Damore). Or maybe you're an environmental or civil rights leader with some dirty laundry that would hurt you if aired.

And reality bears this out. Ever wonder why Germans are highly protective of their privacy? The Stasi, that's why- the dominant group in the geographical area of East Germany wreaked absolute havoc because society trusted them to do the right thing (just like they trusted the Nazis). Ever wonder why the Czechs are highly protective of their firearms? Same deal- their people could not advance and prosper because a certain other nation kept killing them (also the secret police thing).

These people know the evil that society does when it runs amok, and know why it can't be trusted with these tools. They favor strong protections that individuals can use to escape society's fickle desires (like banning whatever boogeyman's in the news this week). And society is notoriously bad at determining good from the bad and right from wrong; when it gets it really wrong, lots of people die. Germany, China, USSR; all societies that have very little in the way of stopping the majority from abusing its power, and all who have killed tens of millions of their own people.

Now sure, individuals in a given society may vary in how comfortable they are with trusting said society (there are some good things that can come of it; environmental regulations and affordable healthcare being two notable examples)- but to say that there are some liberties that are fundamentally incomparable is disingenuous. Unless the society you trust tells you otherwise, of course.

One crazy idea that's crossed mind is to trade guns for strong encryption protection.

Both are useful tools that individuals can use to protect themselves against an oppressive government.

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