Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lettergram | Hacker News Reader

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The current administration in the U.S. was / is considering a tax per mile driven --

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/pete-buttigieg-sugge...

The same administration (and media) is suggesting making life as hard as possible to not inject yourself with an experimental drug (which never even completed animal testing).

> CNN medical contributor Leana Wen says that life needs to be "hard" for unvaccinated Americans, with "twice weekly testings."

https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1414272338800033797

> “Now we need to go to community-by-community, neighborhood-by-neighborhood, and oftentimes, door-to-door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people" who need to be vaccinated, Biden said Tuesday.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/white-house-calling-...

Now, imagine -- they can turn off our finances if you don't comply with exactly what's being suggested. You cannot travel, you must inject yourself with w.e. they want, etc. etc. You must NOT have an abortion if you have X characteristics and you Must have an abortion if you aren't married, etc. Crazy stuff can happen.

In LA they were already shutting off people's water which didn't comply with state orders on the number of people in a home:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/los-angeles-shut-off-water-powe...

I cannot imagine what would happen to all those people if they attended the party that wasn't state sanctioned. This is super dangerous territory. It's why everyone should be opposed to cryptocurrencies that are centrally controlled and not anonymous.

Even Bitcoin has much of the same issues, imagine if the U.S. gov blacklisted your wallet and anyone doing business with a given address would be arrested... the end results would be the same.

You actually do not need go far to answer most of the questions you are thinking through.

Australia (and to lesser degree Sweden ) are considered to be forerunners, the test-environments for the policies advocated by EU, Left politicians, and global tycoons.

>"... Within days of the COVID-19 outbreak in Australia, most shops began eschewing cash, with a preference for cards. And here’s the thing – most of us quickly complied. Recently, banking experts have said that over the 12 weeks or so that the pandemic was at a crisis point across the nation, the digital banking revolution sped up rapidly, by about five years. ..." [1]

Anonymity brings a way to evade authorities. If authorities are 'bad', anonymity is 'good'.

If authorities are 'good', anonymity is 'bad'.

So for the part of the population that believes in individual rights and ability of an individual to decide what to put into their bodies, how to defense themselves/etc -- the authority is bad.

For the part of the population that trusts pundits, government intelligence agencies, government's health organizations -- the authority is good, therefore anonymity is bad.

Perhaps these two opposite mindsets can not live peacefully in one country forever.

So periodically, they get into a fight, and decides who will claim the victory. The victorious then, will try to erase part of the history that makes them look bad.

And then, the whole cycle will start again. It takes about 5-8 generations. So around 200-300 years years.

It is panful to watch, unnecessary and really bad for humanity -- but it seems like we are not destined to get out of that cycle

There are solution to it, I believe. But neither in western countries, nor globally -- we are going, in the directions of those solutions...

[1] https://www.thebigsmoke.com.au/2020/07/13/the-dark-side-of-a...

I definitely agree with this. IMO that's how the democrats and republicans are also realigning themselves in the US.

Although, I'd argue this cycles every 4 generations (see WWII, civil war, revolution, etc -- they're all fights against a autocracy vs populace), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strauss%E2%80%93Howe_generatio...

> If authorities are 'good', anonymity is 'bad'.

> So for the part of the population that believes in individual rights and ability of an individual to decide what to put into their bodies, how to defense themselves/etc -- the authority is bad.

> For the part of the population that trusts pundits, government intelligence agencies, government's health organizations -- the authority is good, therefore anonymity is bad.

Most things are pretty grey - not black & white. So there's not a clear good/bad side. Which is the reason people want personal freedoms and you could want anonymity regardless of how "good" you think your government is.

>"... Most things are pretty grey - not black & white. So there's not a clear good/bad side. Which is the reason people want personal freedoms and you could want anonymity regardless of how "good" you think your government is. .."

I agree with you.

1) complexity of science grows every year. It takes a life-time to become infection disease specialist, immunologist, financial guru, constitutional lawyer, environmental scientist.

2) sophistication of deceit also grows with time, if nothing is done (because the reward for the successful deceit grows with time).

3) myself, there is no way I can make my own decisions about complex things. I need pundits, that I can *trust*.

4) but with the growing sophistication of deceit -- how can figure out who to trust?

That's where the division between the two mind sets shows up. Because what's relatively stable throughout the time -- are human character traits...

That division, in turn, later on creates the conflicts every so often -- as I mentioned.

> 3) myself, there is no way I can make my own decisions about complex things. I need pundits, that I can trust.

> 4) but with the growing sophistication of deceit -- how can figure out

I agree with you, but it seems like you're again thinking that everything can be known / black and white. The experts disagree on some very important things quite often. So it's not only who to trust - but is that trustable person even correct in their analysis?

This is where personal choice and freedoms and democracy shine.

I think I am driving towards 2 keys:

a) people that do live in a structured society, have to trust somebody. Because one cannot be an expert in everything.

In the sea of deceit, figuring out the 'right pundits, rights representatives' to trust is very very difficult.

Certainly, once a person figures out the 'members-to-trust', then dealing with discrepancies, mistakes, and differences of opinion within that circle -- is somewhat a different matter.

Those differences, in my view, will not result in ideological separation that I am mentioning in my original comment. The error delta is always built in in how we deal with 'honest mistakes'.

b) With regards to: >"... but it seems like you're again thinking that everything can be known / black and white .."

As I mentioned above, I do not particularly think that I was creating a false dichotomy. If I did, I am sorry, I hope my explanation above made sense.

But I do want to reveal something:

following through to a yes/no state, a binary end -- is something that I tend to think as a 'feature' of my thinking process :-).

I tend to see that my thought 'resolves' into a 'black/white' (binary) end state. While many steps to that might be very much 'gray' (non-binary).

As a personal guide, when I engage in this type of thinking -- I make it an 'axiom', that 'gray areas', eventually have to collapse into binary choices.

This 'eventual-binarity', in my view, is caused by simply the fact that we either alive or we are not alive.

or,

We either have a partner to create a family with or we do not.

or,

We either have biological progeny, or we do not.. and so on.

So that binary eventuality is built into basics of our existence.

Therefore when thinking about future state, I want it to represent those results.

To reiterate, certainly, there are many 'gray areas' in the steps to that finality of a cycle.

Wars (civil wars) might have many many reason, and they start as 'grey' reasons -- but at the end the brutality of those events revolve around very binary actions.

In my initial comment I suggested that there is a cycle that ends and starts with some sort of serious struggle and tragedy -- between representatives/followers of the 2 mind sets.

The binary choice there -- is that our society gets into that cycle or not.

I have not mentioned what may be ways for us to get out of the cycle, so I hope I did not leave the impression that those can be easily assumed from my comments.

And for some people, both authority and anonymity are tools. Neither is an unqualified good in itself, both have places where they should be affirmed and places where they should be limited.

> Perhaps these two opposite mindsets can not live peacefully in one country forever.

Um, those two mindsets are not a genetic or ethnic heritage; they are personal preferences and temperamental differences that might well distinguish me from other members of my own family. Are you suggesting that if I have a different mindset from my son, one of us would have to emigrate?

Perhaps not.

WRT, > ".. Um, those two mindsets are not a genetic or ethnic heritage; ..."

Yes, agreed. I do not know if these behaviors are completely 'learned via indoctrination', 'learned via experience', 'enabled by particular character traits' -- or a combination of all those.

Also, even genetic traits can skip generations...

WRT, >"... Are you suggesting that if I have a different mindset from my son, one of us would have to emigrate?..."

Certainly not, I am not suggesting that. I did not even mention a potential solution. One you are suggesting, has not been on my mind at all..

WRT your particular question (parent/son) differences and how dramatic they might be in regards to the 2 mindsets I mentioned above... History tells us -- they can be very very dramatic.

Exhibit [1]:

>"... In the official narrative Pavlik openly challenged his father and grandfather who hid their wheat from the state at a time when control over the wheat supply was crucial for Soviet Russia. The boy testified in court and filed a complaint against his father. The latter was found guilty on corruption charges and sent to prison. In an act of vengeance, the kulaks from his own family and their sympathizers decided to

..."

Exhibit [2]: >"... Son tips off FBI about father attending Capitol riot ..."

[1] https://www.rbth.com/history/329601-demon-or-hero-morozov

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/01/23/teen-jackson-re...

> The current administration in the U.S. was / is considering a tax per mile driven

That's one solution to the problem of carbon/petrol taxes not being viable when cars run on batteries, but still use roads. You either maintain roads usning other tax revenue (meaning non-drivers are subsidizing drivers and there is no incentive to limit road use) or you find another way to fund road maintenance. This isn't exactly an authoritarian surprise nightmare, it's expected and natural.

> [Antivax rambling]

I'll just ignore that part

>Even Bitcoin has much of the same issues, imagine if the U.S. gov blacklisted your wallet and anyone doing business with a given address would be arrested... the end results would be the same.

This is a widely held view, yet deeply misguided. A bitcoin is a bitcoin. A single account to account transfer means a disconnect & plausible deniability for the recipient.

This claim does not hold up legally.

Just as you earn & are free to use USD that was illegally used at one point.

You can't freely use money that is, on the preponderance of evidence, proceeds of crime. If you ask me that's true of all bitcoin (or rather, all USD that's the proceeds of selling bitcoin), since while there are plenty of speculators moving money around, most of the money coming into the system (i.e. the part that makes the bitcoin price higher than 1/50000 pizzas) is from scams, drug deals, or scam drug deals.

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