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Comment by dnomad | Hacker News Reader

Hilarious. I wasn't even done with the comment and it's already being rapidly downvoted. The total lack of intellectual integrity on HN is a sight to behold. It's really funny to watch the advocates of free speech and discussion rapidly downvote anything that contradicts their ideology.

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Praise for a totalitarian system is not acceptable, neither debatable. That's all. End of story.

We kind of learned about that in Europe, the hard way, several times in XXth century (Italy, Germany, Russia, Soviet era invaded countries, Spain); some of us still having forgotten sadly.

A social credit system that is used to expedite what is normally the responsibility of law, debate, judgement - and can then be used to impose arbitrarial rules from the state (don't be fooled about that) _is_ totalitarian per nature. It is even more that because it relies on automation.

Don't use exceptionalism or pride to defend or justify such a system.

This rhetorical maneuver, where you simply declare a system you don't understand to be totalitarian is no different from shouting Nazi at anything you don't agree with. Even a cursory analysis would show that the defining characteristic of totalitarianism, "absolute control over public and private life," doesn't apply to a system where people are completely free to travel anywhere whenever they want and the government invests hundreds of billions to encourage this free travel both within the country and abroad for its citizens.

It's not rhetorics. It's perspective.

* Power structures never favour the weak - it takes a democracy (distribution and separation of powers, education, free speech) to handle that, however imperfect it can be, it's the least imperfect we know as of today. And, there's no prospective new system at play anywhere today.

* Automation favours who controls the machine.

* The state controls the machine.

* No democracy, no control. Failing democracy, no control either.

* That's dangerous.

Free travel? By your own definition China has the defining characteristic of a totalitarian state:

https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/07/13/one-passport-two-syste...

https://eurasianet.org/xinjiang-uighurs-grapple-travel-restr...

I down voted not because I disagree but because your comment is a rant and doesn't offer any justification to your perspective. Hand waving and saying go talk to people doesn't prove your point, it makes you sound silly.

Sure. In a thread absolutely full of baseless rants my comment, which does provide an explanation and a link, was the one that jumped out you.

Though it is aways interesting to see people like you can rationalize your censorious actions. It's too bad HN doesn't require a text explanation for downvoting. It wouldn't decrease the hypocrisy but it would provide some further insight into the hypocrisy.

I also took the time to read the linked article and it isn't substantiating your claim. A few thousand people from an oppressive nation were surveyed about their support (or lack thereof) for a nation sponsored system. Why would anyone be surprised by the outcome of that study.

Furthermore, polls suggested Hillary Clinton was going to win the last election for US and who is the 45th president?

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