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Comment by yongjik | Hacker News Reader

As a South Korean, I'm not sure covid has much to do with acceptance of "big government." Unlike most of the West, many Asians have lived under real dictators - some still do. We know what a dictatorship looks like, and we know how terrible your life can be when the government abandons its duty to protect people.

To put it other way, "Your government shouldn't have enough power to fight an epidemic, because that's too much power" has never been an actual argument in Korea, and (I believe) most of Asia as well. We don't want a small, underpowered government. We want a properly supervised government that uses its power to protect people.

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> "Your government shouldn't have enough power to fight an epidemic, because that's too much power"

What’s enough power? A government-mandated lockdown is legally impossible in Japan but they have managed to keep COVID cases within a number that can be handled by their medical system.

I feel that if you're an island like Japan, Singapore, or New Zealand, or effectively isolated like Korea (3 sea borders + 1 land border which is permanently closed, and land-mined) then maybe the amount of power your government has isn't the key factor in keeping your country safe from a pandemic.

The procedures used in NYC aren't drastically different from Singapores', but the key difference is that Manhattan cannot close its borders to the rest of the 50 US States.

When people ask for a strong government in the US, its' within that context. They want a government that could enforce quarantines between different states, locking people into one state or another till the virus burns itself out. That's the way it worked in China, but is legally impossible to do in the US.

The US can have minor quarantines (an apartment, a city block, etc.) but we can't legally quarantine a whole city, much less states.

>The procedures used in NYC aren't drastically different from Singapores'

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/nyregion/nursing-homes-de...

'A state directive sent thousands of Covid-19 patients into nursing homes'

yep, no difference at all

The other issue with a lockdown like that is even if it were legally possible it would be a nightmare to administer.

Centuries of free travel between states has made the borders very porous and mostly just a legal concept. There are so many minor road crossings between, say, New York and Pennsylvania that it would be impossible to secure.

> The procedures used in NYC aren't drastically different from Singapores'

Participating in an underground rave in Singapore would result in lashes.

I agree 100%. As an Asian American it is baffling how throughout years of propaganda, so many Americans firmly believe that personal freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with a competent and effective government that has all the tools and resources to do its job.

I think it comes from shallow interpretation of sayings such as "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I mean it's a catchy saying, but in reality it's just a result of terrible system engineering (in this case the government system) in many places.

It is totally possible to have a powerful government and have that government supervise. In the end there is a clear distinction between "big government" and "authoritarian dictatorship". If your big government devolves into individual dictatorship it just mean the single executive position likely had too much power to begin with.

In fact, similar to companies, it's very well possible to avoid a single dictator CEO even as your company grows large and end up with a large management hierarchy.

> It is totally possible to have a powerful government and have that government supervise.

Are you sure that holds for periods > 100 years?

> If your big government devolves into individual dictatorship it just mean the single executive position likely had too much power to begin with.

And it is.

There were nobody to put brakes on Obama's "point, and click" signature strikes, and him signing on, for all intents, and reasons, an extrajudicial assasination orders of US citizens.

> I agree 100%. As an Asian American it is baffling how throughout years of propaganda, so many Americans firmly believe that personal freedom and democracy cannot co-exist with a competent and effective government that has all the tools and resources to do its job.

Propaganda? What?

> I think it comes from shallow interpretation of sayings such as "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely". I mean it's a catchy saying, but in reality it's just a result of terrible system engineering (in this case the government system) in many places.

I'm pretty sure it comes from the enlightenment era and especially the American Revolutionary War. American colonists were never been big fans of the powerful churches and monarchs of Europe they were trying to escape.

> If your big government devolves into individual dictatorship it just mean the single executive position likely had too much power to begin with.

Would you believe me if I told you this very thing was happening across the world in the 1930s and 1940s? And pretty close to home too? Maybe all it takes is enough people to forget history.

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

Yet American colonists hanged witches all the same, and slavery persisted for much longer than in European kingdoms those colonists had fled from.

Seems like the correct lesson to draw is that the size or power of government doesn't necessarily tell you how much systematic misery and injustice you will find there.

I worry about responses like yours because they are based on an impressionistic and ultimately incorrect understanding of western history. This way of approaching our history is frequently used in what is effectively woke propaganda, as well as propaganda in support of Chinese authoritarian style government.

Regarding your claims specifically:

Americans did not hang witches "all the time". Prosecutions for sorcery and witchcraft occurred in the USA in the late 1600s, that's true -- but they all occurred all over Europe into the late 1600s.

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

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_Netherland... (ended trials exceptionally early)

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

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

In England, the last person prosecuted for witchcraft (thankfully not executed) was Helen Duncan in 1944:

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

Most European kingdoms did not have slavery in Europe; it's in the colonies where all of them established slavery. The US was such a colony. It's perhaps unusual in being a place where slavery was abolished as a result of a war between the ruling inhabitants, as opposed to a slave revolt or something like that. The British followed a more orderly process, though, abolishing slavery in the colonies and then compensating the slave owners out of the treasury.

Slavery was abolished in the English colonies in 1833. That's 32 years before it's abolition in the United States. That might not be the "much longer" that you had in mind.

According to Matthew Arnold, the last hanging of witches in the United Kingdom occurred in 1716. As for slavery, it was a much smaller economic interest to the European colonies. Also, "much longer" is an exaggeration: twenty-seven years longer than the English colonies, seventeen than the French colonies count for only so much over a history that began 300-odd years before that.

When did I say anything about the power of governments relative to misery/injustice? It seems you've picked a strawman to attack with little relation to what I said.

At the same time, Prescott Bush (HW's Dad) was alleged to be involved in a Fascist backed "Business Plot" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Bush#Business_Plot

Altough marketed differently, America was founded by wealthy landowners who wanted to pay fewer taxes to uphold some empire.

If you look at who's funding today's misinformation outfits, you'll find characters from a similar background: libertarian corporatists who implicitly believe a dollar is one vote.

It's not hard to see the continuity and how the marketing works: worship of the entrepreneur, hard work, superstarism. Leading naturally into calls for small government, temporarily embarrassed millionaire syndrome, defining fairness along lines of economic success, etc.

It's a shame we're so unaware of the marketing. It's actually not very difficult to poke through. I think the fact that so many early settlers came for religious reasons (their home states in Europe didn't look kindly on their fundamentalism and fanaticism) set the tone in terms of a people that so easily believes in stories.

I think you are inferring too much from too short a period of history. Rhee's semi-monarchial military government ended only in 1960.

East Asians have long operated a comparatively strong state apparatus, a system borrowed from the Qin that goes back about 2200 years, which many scholars will argue is the first truly bureaucratic state. This is one of the central components of a developed country, and certainly of big government, but is no protection against dictators. It certainly never was for China or Japan (or Korea under Japanese rule).

Even the recent history of Korea puts your point about what happens when "...the government abandons its duty to protect people." in doubt, because Rhee was the government. What has tended to balance out the power of the state historically is (a) a sense of law as something independent of the government and binding on it and (b) mechanisms of accountability, like elections, that require large portions of the state apparatus to consider what they are doing in light of public approval.

I think we might be talking past each other, so let me elaborate a bit:

That Rhee's dictatorship ended only in 1960 is precisely my point - he was soon followed by Park Chung-Hee (killed by his own aide on 1979), who was followed by Chun Doo-Hwan (stepped down on 1988). In other words, the memory of dictatorship is still fresh in many South Koreans alive now - unlike America's revolutionary war, this is too recent (and, not too mention, too inglorious) to be painted over by some kind of PG-13 foundational myth.

So the suggestion that the size of the government has something to do with dictatorship would make many Koreans politely roll their eyes. Right or wrong, our world view is shaped by our experience - and my Korean experience says having a weak government has nothing to do with avoiding tyranny, and in fact is a pretty good predictor for an incoming shitstorm (be it a foreign aggression or a domestic coup). What we need is a reasonably strong government, led by the right people. (Well of course it's not foolproof - but then again, nothing is.)

How did the size of the government contribute to the problematic transitions you mention; or how did a strong government contribute to their solution?

The idea that a strong government, led by the right people, is a concept that actually leads to a robust system of government would make many Americans politely roll their eyes. We had a long experience with such a system. After we extricated ourselves from it, we had a long experience extricating other countries from such systems.

I hope you'll excuse me for saying so, but there is something profoundly solipsistic and unreasonable about asking me to accept your Korean experience as a basis for a claim as broad as you are making. If that is really the end and the beginning of your chain of reasoning, I urge you to reconsider your approach: we can't, unfortunately, base our understanding of political development on our experience: it's a topic with a long history and a long, long cycle time. A comparative approach, and a willingness to consider like problems and like situations in other countries, nets greater understanding in this area.

> We had a long experience with such a system.

No, your ancestors had experience with such a system. They are long dead, and the struggles they faced and lessons they learned have been abstracted and bowdlerized until all we're left with is a parable against the abstract idea of a dictator.

George Washington wasn't fighting an abstract dictator. He was fighting the British Empire, an actual existing enemy with an actual ruler, with millions of people on every sides who either supported or fought against it for their own reasons. I can't even pretend to understand the issues they faced, but I do know that you cannot summarize them into a single factor.

Consider a much simpler event, like 9/11. If anyone says, "There's one reason why 9/11 happened, which is X - this is why we must never do X ever again," how much would you trust such an analysis?

That's all I'm saying. My Korean experience tells me that anyone who says it can be reduced to a single factor, or even a major factor (the size of the government), is selling snake oil. Of course, that doesn't mean I know a universal solution to avoid tyranny. If there was such a solution, mankind didn't discover it yet.

But to come back to the points you made about Korea, what does government size have to do with any of the transitions that you mentioned?

It is not reasonable to draw only on recent, lived experience when discussing political development. There is continuity of institutions from generation to generation. In the USA we have the benefit of long experience with democratic institutions, though of course this is no substitute for offering justification for our ideas. We do, however, have to look at history fairly broadly to see how these principles come into play.

To consider this all in light of your original comment and subsequent ones, you seem very confident about the application of Korean experience to American and Americans but seem to have little interest or understanding of the application of the American experience to America or Americans. It doesn't make much sense, unless the subtext is that you do not believe in the worth of applying history or the comparative method in this area at all, and rather regard Korea as a kind of model or blueprint, applicable to any nation at any time. The way you are referencing your Korean experience, as a source for statements about the most general topics, it's just a roundabout way of saying "My opinion is...".

> we had a long experience extricating other countries from such systems

Imperialistically rolling into some country that you want to exploit for financial gain is not something to boast about.

It's not really relevant, either. Much of US involvement with Europe following the revolution and particularly during the World Wars was involuntary, and it was one long process of helping them devolve strong, authoritarian states.

I don't understand why you say it's not relevant and then give examples for why it is.

These are examples of what's relevant.

Throughout worldwide modern history we have seen that authoritarian governments are by far the greatest risk to human life. It's just too dangerous to allow governments a large amount of control over people's daily lives. I'd rather take my chances with the virus.

Yeah everyone talks about the technology and nobody talks about the Confucian foundation that many Asian countries are built on.

For anyone who wants a summary the Confucius episode of Genius of the Ancient World on Netflix has a good overview.

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