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Comment by oceanstone | Hacker News Reader

I have so much respect for those protesters.

Agreed. They've been educated about history and understand what's at stake. I wish the rest of democratic societies would already be taking a strong stand with them. The tyrannical powers in control of China at the moment, much like Trump's rise, will be countered at the HK situations wakens us to the behaviour of China's tyrants until now relative limited light being shone on their bad behaviours.

Edit: Especially curious if downvotes in heavily political, democracy vs. tyrant topics are legitimate or suppression; another reason downvote mechanism is terrible: if you have something legitimate to counter, then spend any effort writing something qualitative.

> The tyrannical powers in control of China at the moment

At the moment? Do you mean the past 70 years?

Of course, and still at this moment.

It’s probably mentioning Trump that gets you downvoted. He definitely leans authoritarian on many issues, but so do most of the democrats he’s running against in 2020. Where these two flavors of authoritarian differ is the issues they are authoritarian on. Whether or not someone downvotes you probably has most to do with which issues they are most concerned about with respect to the authoritarian we get. If someone is more worried about Democrat authoritarians than Trump-flavored authoritarianism then it’s likely they’d downvote you.

Having lived in China for several years, my opinion is that Warren and Sanders are probably the two politicians pushing big government ideas that if unchecked are most likely to devolve into something resembling Chinese style authoritarianism. Both are the "I know what's best for you" central planner fallacy. Unfortunately, that that think they know what's best for you are never the ones that pay the price for being wrong. China is a place where big government is never wrong and the population is disarmed just in case they disagree with the government.

Anyways, that’s my theory on the downvoting you’re getting. That said, I wouldn’t worry too much about downvotes on HN these days. It’s become far more ideological on here in the past few years, that it's highly likely that you’re going to encounter downvotes out of disagreement. With tech being mainstream and a major social justice battleground, the HN on yesteryear is long gone. We've had several years of eternal september by now.

This is just not true. Authoritarian governments are kept in check by free speech and openness of government. Sanders and Warren are clearly if favor of citizens being in charge of the government.

"citizens" is a term vague to the point of meaninglessness. Not sure what you're definition you're using, but pretty much all authoritarian communist governments in the 20th and 21st century had citizens in charge of the government. That didn't do a whole lot of good for the citizens that were not in charge. The DPRK is pretty much the only one where the responsibility of who was in charge was passed on from parent to child.

I mean all citizen, not some special citizens or a few citizens. Of course if the power is in the hands of the few it doesn't matter at all which label you put on them.

Basically every form of government that has ever existed at scale has devolved into an oligarchy. I know of none where "all citizen [sic], not some special citizens or a few citizens" are in power. A Sanders or Warren government would just have power in the hands of either Sanders or Warren and their respective cabinet and the other three branches of government. It would still be "some special citizens or a few citizens". I haven't seen a single proposal from them that would have then operating any differently from any previous executive administration this country has seen since 1776.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_law_of_oligarchy

> A Sanders or Warren government would just have power in the hands of either Sanders or Warren and their respective cabinet and the other three branches of government. It would still be "some special citizens or a few citizens"

then what is the alternative that you propose?

I'm not proposing an alternative. I'm happy with our Constitution and our three branches of government with checks and balances enforced. We have the 1st and 2nd amendment as a Plan A and the Plan B, respectively, to prevent tyranny.

No it would not, both Warren and Sanders are strong supporters of transparency and voting rights and want to reign in lobbying and power of big corporations.

People feeling a quick reward by a dopamine hit of clicking the downvote certainly isn't based on someone's political leanings, who they like or dislike, and certainly is due to laziness - regardless of whatever labels you give yourself.

Likewise, Trump's behaviour is in a completely different league than what any other politician in the US has presented - regardless if self-labeling as Democratic or Republican; albeit it is becoming more and more clear who is a disgrace to humanity.

Warren I'm not sure of, with Sanders I agree - at least with the Federal Jobs Guarantee is the wrong solution because it kills the power and efficiency that capitalism allows in a free market, fluid system - that efficiency which requires hierarchy of expertise to lead and teach, and that require making micro and macro decisions quickly for every decision possible; a bureaucratic government agency simply can't incentivize people, leaders, to reward them for what they deserve for who they are and what they know they are leading towards. I agree with your sentiment that "big government knows best for you" is badly implemented in most cases - and why I believe POTUS candidate Andrew Yang (yang2020.com) will win: his Freedom Dividend (UBI, Universal Basic Income) of giving every adult American $1,000 / month is taking the decision making away from the government and giving it to each individual to decide for themselves; the small, simple role of the government here then is simply collecting the VAT tax and distributing the $.

I don't worry about downvotes - however the mechanism generally infuriates me though as it's horrible for learning opportunities, self-development, communication/language and community development. A huge thank you to you for taking the time to respond, even though someone (not me) downvoted you - someone lazy or inarticulate - under developed, unchecked thoughts through critical thinking process nor peer review perhaps fear of ridicule or finding it would be a "waste of time" - so they simply "contribute" by a quick click of the downvote.

P.S. I had to wait initially 1 hour before I last tried replying - as I apparently some mechanism triggered - presumably by the small number of downvotes all of my comments were getting - to say I was "posting too frequently." And it's been 3+ hours now that I try again. If this doesn't work then I've been blocked from commenting - for how long then I wonder, and why.

doesn’t a federal jobs guarantee just mean that if you can’t find a job, there’s at least somewhere you can go to get one, regardless of the state of the economy?

this is just my interpretation but, i’m not sure that would kill capitalism as much as mean that employees wouldn’t be scared as much from being fired, would be less afraid to be entrepreneurial (worst case in failure, you have a job until you can try again or find a better job in the private sector) etc...

same goes for medicare for all and tuition free college... i don’t see the authoritarian part (as your previous post alludes to) but maybe i’m missing something.

The only way I'd be okay with a federal jobs guarantee is if it were a job that truly sucked so much that no one would want to do it and that they'd work hard to qualify for literally any other job but the federally guaranteed one. We'd also have to get rid of welfare. Sucking on the teat of the state should never be an attractive proposition.

Society only functions well if everyone makes a reasonable effort to be useful to one another.

I think we need to understand why the Chinese government "is never wrong" from a cultural context. In traditional east Asian culture the patriarch / Lord / boss is never wrong. The same power dynamics of government exist at every level of society. The superior owes some responsibility to the subordinate but (in practice) ultimately is not accountable, which lends itself to a corruption of power.

Except in practice "all of us" learn through experience that there is a different better way, assuming someone's learning isn't stunted early, along with obedience taught - preventing learning and critical thinking development necessary to contrast different possibilities.

Please don't compare the Chinese government's actions to the Trump administration. They're not even remotely close.

They are absolutely leading toward the same path, outcome. If you're up for reading I've heard the book Maps of Meaning by Jordan Peterson - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maps_of_Meaning - will be a deep dive or good introduction to referencing patterns and tyrannical governments through history.

You are definitely being unfairly downvoted. The China shills are in full force.

They aren't close because they don't need to at the moment. All "western" nations populations have been divided and conquered long time ago so that for every group of righties/lefties protesting down the street there's an opposed lefties/righties countering group somewhere making the news, so that for any 50% of the population the enemy becomes the other 50%, not the rulers, and thanks to well crafted propaganda the reasons for protesting usually reflect that. This is done on purpose of course. The day any western government fails at dividing people and does something that can unite all protesters is the day you will see police and the military shooting at people. In every country or culture the 1st rule for any government officer is protect the status quo at all cost (then picture as traitors whose who refuse to). People start to die when they no longer are lured into fighting against their peers, and both them and police (which now is seen rather as enemy than external player) refuse to back off.

Give people enough important motives to protest united against their government (that is, no food, no house, no jobs) and you will see bullets and corpses pretty soon, no matter their nationality/religion/color/sex/whatever. Maintaining the status quo at all costs against well motivated protesters always escalates into violence and deaths; it happened in 3rd world countries and in one of the most developed places in the world, why should we believe it can't happen to us?

The scenario you paint here would only be true if a society's population truly were "enemies" and holding very different human beliefs, wants - which fortunately isn't the case - because the people of a nation evolve together generally; the problem arises when you mix two different people from different nations with different cultures, where this "50/50" destructive behaviour can exist - say when the native Americans were mostly wiped out, another scenario would be if somehow you dropped 10%+ of China's population into America all of a sudden or vice-versa. Historically this was a common war tactic - and still to this day we can see it in Canada, for example, with student protestors who are pro-China, indoctrinated into pro-China doctrine - the hypocrisy of having the freedom to protest in support of a nation state who disallows free speech and reigns supreme with censorship; we can't judge these people harshly, with compassion we understand they've been indoctrinated - their own safety and that of their friends and family may also rest in the balance - and it makes me feel like an important part of immigration should be education to de-brainwash them to make sure they understand these mechanisms of tyrants, suppression-repression of freedom, of control.

Otherwise you paint an unrealistic, bleak picture which isn't grounded in reality if there's optimism and humanity included.

"Otherwise you paint an unrealistic, bleak picture which isn't grounded in reality if there's optimism and humanity included."

True, still many western countries had examples of episodic police brutality causing tortures [1] and fatalities among protestors, and probably it was other people humanity and optimism, along with public outrage, to keep these events episodic. But the point is: what happens if after the first protestor dies the crowd doesn't disperse and the public is too distracted? I don't see either police or the military saying "oh sorry, we pushed it too much... feel free to continue but please don't smash windows". I also see as a revealing sign of corruption the almost ubiquitous police immunity: keeping them untouchable is what ensures their total alignment to the higher powers.

[1] plenty of examples in the 60s, also search for "genoa 2001 diaz": the Wikipedia article sums up pretty well what happened, and there are some rather graphic videos around showing it. That carnage, whose most explicit videos needed some time before surfacing, didn't make the news globally as it should have probably for happening less than 2 months before 9/11, an event which obviously hit the reset button on just about everything.

The biggest difference between now and "then" is the internet and our connectivity, audio and video + live streaming for real-time evidence gathering; yes, I'm aware bad actors are capable of signal jamming in an area or at scale, or taking down the internet - is why the democratic nations and people that are free must strengthen in case of a future confrontation with these bad actors, and likewise technology like mesh networks are expanding - although a nation could block mesh networks too with enough effort - and really then blocking communications is more a signal to the rest of the world that we're dealing with a tyrannical government.

Police brutality, lack of adequate accountability, is an evolving process that is trickling through society - through different states at different speeds: it's one of the values of giving relative sovereignty to each state so society can compare and contrast the different societal "experiments" based on their policies - allowing people to freedom to move between states and therefore the leadership they're under at the state level-context.

Time to burn some karma again.

Google "gent forum spies" sans quotes, look for cryptome(dot)org. Should be an article from july, 2012ish.

Give it a read. It's a bit of an eye opener for the uninitiated.

Many thanks @salawat, interesting reading indeed.

Wow, this is fascinating.

Some of the topics:

> Techniques for dilution, misdirection and control of a internet forum..

> Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation

I knew this was done, but this is essentially the guide book. Jeez.

I'm curious though - why didn't you directly link to it?

Because the last few threads I did I'd be near instantly downvote bombed and flagged.

Particularly in Hong Kong related threads.

Spread it far and wide. Never let anyone stop the Signal.

"Because the last few threads I did I'd be near instantly downvote bombed and flagged."

Upvoted, just in case...

Anyway, that article comes #1 on DDG by searching that string both with or without quotes.

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