Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostromo | Hacker News Reader

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I'm glad there's growing pushback to these programs.

Here in the US we tend to irrevocably lose a bit of independence and freedom in every crisis -- and it's often lost forever.

Wars tends to be the best fig leaf for eroding our civil liberties. Things like the Patriot Act get passed after 9/11 and are still with us today. The authorization for war given to Bush in 2001 is still active today, several presidents later, and has been used to kill and torture people in a whole host of countries. Figurative "wars" have resulted in erosion of rights - like the war on drugs - which gave us expanded civil asset forfeiture.

Covid-19 has given the governors a pass to do anything they like with little to no oversight. Banning any gathering of people is totally fine apparently. It's also seemingly fine to only use it against gatherings that are opposed to your political objectives, while those that you support are given a pass. Banning the expression of one's religion is also ok. (In my state all places of worship were forced closed, no matter what precautions they took, but vape stores were deemed essential businesses. I'm an atheist but this even bothered me.)

Maybe this is all perfect reasonable given the crisis -- but once these newfound powers are let out of the bag, we often find that they're hard to pull back.

> Things like the Patriot Act get passed after 9/11 and are still with us today.

I just wanted to point out that some of the worst parts of the Patriot Act are no longer legal. Just this year many sections were not renewed, including parts specific to surveillance.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/yes-section-215-expire...

Isn't the correct response to that ensuring rollback of the measures once the crisis has passed, rather than resisting commonsense measures during a crisis, though?

The nature of principles, like the ones enumerated in the US Constitution, is that they do not change with changing circumstances.

Like the 10th amendment? The 10th amendment seems to give a lot of leeway to States, assuming their respective Constitutions allow governors to take on emergency powers during a public health crisis which seems to be the case in most states.

What about the 9 amendments before that one?

Restricting religious practice or the right to assembly are not principles we should cede.

To my mind exchanging liberty for safety is never common sense.

I'm having trouble thinking of any safety measure that does not involve giving up some liberty.

If you’re going to use words like “never”, are you fine with the right to punch whoever you like?

I have noticed in the last ~20 years (?) that some laws have had expiration dates.

I'm uncertain if this is a good thing or a bad thing.

On one hand it could try new things and revert them if they don't work, and prevent temporary necessities from lingering.

On the other hand, it could also be used to pass truly terrible laws under the guise of impermanence.

Yes, exactly why there's a Bureau of Overreach Rollbacks.

I wonder what case fatality ratio / infectivity combo it would take for people with this take on liberty to agree that sometimes societies should give up liberty. I am not sure there is one, I feel like we have a death cult in charge of our country. I wonder how many are dead because you have to die on a mask/gathering hill?

I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain it but when people take risks, like that large wedding that infected dozens of people, it later kills people who didn’t even attend.

doesn’t personal freedom end when the effects aren’t personal?

If we could ensure that restrictions would be no greater and no longer than reasonably proportional to the risk, I think people would be more willing to give the government temporary power beyond what the Constitution protects.

Given that the government has such a terrible track record on giving up power and a decidedly mixed track record of delivery of promised/hoped for benefits, plenty of people could reasonably prefer to protect a century of liberty.

I feel like I shouldn’t have to explain it, like the people who didn’t attend that wedding but got it from someone who did also decided to interact with the person who did.

There is a chance you could hit and kill someone in a car accident next time you go out. Should you have stayed home to avoid that risk? In any situation with risk involved there will always be stories like the wedding mentioned. The point is that people should be free to take on as much or as little amount of risk as they want. If you have compromised health or a very low tolerance for risk maybe you should make the decision to avoid people as much as possible, wear a mask, work from home, etc.

I see, so you should be free to go out spewing virus on people for whatever reason you like. Because you want to get a beer in a bar or eat out.

Meanwhile I should have to potentially quit my job, or not get groceries, live apart from parents, or wife, so I can avoid coming into contact with your selfish choices, indirectly.

allrighty then.

Wow what an unhinged reply.

1. If I did get it I would self quarantine. Not go out and ‘spew’ it. I wear my mask when appropriate, I socially distance, and I only go out when I need to.

2. I never said I want to go out to a bar. I want to visit my family and let them see my newborn daughter. I want my niece and nephew to have social interactions and a real education. I want to be able to conduct my business so I can feed my family.

3. Lockdowns and quarantines have already cost many, many people their jobs, time with family, time we’ll never get back, and it has even killed people. With current approaches everyone suffers instead regardless of their situation.

Just because you believe that there is some benevolent authority that we can just "give up liberty" to an everything will be ok doesn't make it the only opinion, even if it's easier to think about.

It's easy to see how if there is attention and power that comes with a big enough crisis, everything suddenly gets framed as such a crisis (see rights violations, climate crisis, war on drugs, bullying, etc.) So you better hope that whoever gets to exercise absolute power in the case of a crisis is on your side and shares your values.

Those who trade liberty for security get neither as the saying goes. But I think the above is well understood, and I guess rejected by some, because I see so many positions that think giving away our freedom is ok.

What we really need are stronger politicians who can unite people and find compromises between freedom and public health measures, that help us collectively move forward. This crisis has shown how weak politicians have become (and how horribly technocrats and corporates have been at filling that void). Leadership is not forcing people to do stuff, that only makes society more divided and undermines attempts to solve problems. We need leadership and we don't have it.

These measures are common sense during a pandemic and should be limited in time. In many countries (at least France and UK) all these measures are bound in time and the time mandate is regularly renewed by parliament.

If locking everyone in their homes and pressuring them to wear surgical masks everywhere were “common sense,” they would be common practices already. They make no sense from a health perspective. The idea that healers should wield total power over the economy is similarly new.

The people of Melbourne/Victoria in Australia would like a word...

They went from a "second wave" of over 700 new cases a day, to just having hit 16 consecutive days of zero new cases - all due to lockdown restrictions and mask wearing.

It was tough on people. But it worked.

Looking at numbers like 160,000 new cases a day is horrifying. Death rates seem to be globally hovering right around 0.5% - that's a lot of dead people...

What you’re claiming to make “no sense” is working right now in France and Germany, among others. Your convenience is not more important than other people’s lives.

100% and most people don't even notice.

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