Pavel Durov: Most studies show humanity is now less free than several years ago | Hacker News Reader

Pavel Durov: Most studies show humanity is now less free than several years ago

t.me

124 pointsduceum133 comments

Something that has always been true: there is less freedom in bigger cities, because there are more people affected by whatever any one person does. Things that are fine in a rural area because there’s nobody around simply are tolerated by nearby neighbors.

As the Internet connects everybody together, I wonder if it is unavoidable that individual liberties will be restrained. Whether true or only perception, when we are all connected more people feel affected by stuff that, thirty years ago, nobody would have noticed or known about.

I find the opposite to be true. Small town parochialism is cliche for no reason. Small towns have historically relied on a high degree of trust rarely given to so-called outsiders and engage in subtlety coercive acts that prevents "insider" from adopting the ways of the greater world. In a small town, an old lady whose hobby involves spying on their neighbors has a lot more power over other people's lives than most landlords in New York City.

The best way to attack this subject is to first define "freedom".

But if you want my opinion, the internet has created a greater expression of liberty than anything else ever invented. The issue regarding the restraint of individual liberties isn't the medium but the people and what they value.

interesting point. I wonder if we need to separate the dichotomy within freedom. I definitely agree on the point of "anonymity" if it's part of the freedom. In the sense that I would have zero anonymity in the rural area on my activities or myself in general than in urban area.

On the other hand, we also have "personal activity/behaviour" that we could call a part of our greater freedom as well. In rural area, you are free to do "whatever" i.e having fun in your barn, whereas in urban area, you time and space and having fun definition is more constrained.

I think we’re actually making the same point but you offer a very helpful angle. I suppose it’s not so much the population size but the closeness of connection.

Go back 40 years, and it was possible for you to be anonymous living both far out in the woods, or amongst the crowd of a huge city. In a small town, though, everyone knows everyone.

The internet is bringing everyone closer together and stripping us of our anonymity and privacy. There are tremendous benefits of this, but there are also costs.

The close connection means that people now know about all kinds of things they simply couldn’t have in past generations. Culture clashes spanning the planet happen every day now, but 40 years ago that was just not something most people would ever experience.

I think the close connection creates conflict, and as conflict escalates more and more people reach their tipping point where they would rather the state come in and suppress the conflict via law and regulation. It’s hard to live and let live when the people who offend you are in your face.

It’s a big challenge for our era, and I imagine the history books will have a lot to say about how world civilization changed as a result.

I hope this is obvious to everyone.

Russia, India, and the US are all more authoritarian than they were a few years ago. Russia and China aren't even democracies.

Given the extreme aggressive voting restrictions, gerrymandering, etc, I'm not really comfortable calling the US a democracy either.

There are systematic measures political scientists use.

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

It's a shame that Durov can start off with "there are many studies" and not cite any of them. What?

Freedom House is funded in part by the State Department, USNED and USAID and have participated in multiple covert operations and openly biased campaigns. Check the Criticism section of the article you linked and then look into their funding.

Yes, and political scientists are aware of that. Note that much of the criticism is political: China, Russia, Iran.

It definitely favors the west but despite the bogeyman a lot of academics just want good data. It also is not rating the US especially high.

And what would happen if the rated them mich lower? They'd lose their funding and cease to exist is what.

Its still democracy. The so called "Madisonian" strain of democracy [0].

[0]: https://youtu.be/AbFlYLHOSKU

The relentless sabotaging of majoritarian rule is entirely unrelated to the separation of powers.

And despite all that, most of the choices are just "red team or blue team?" anyway.

What's wrong with just red team or blue team? As long as they're both competing for your vote and not colluding, it sounds like a pretty good way of establishing what popular opinion is. They're not static. When public opinion changes, they have to adapt to maintain their competitiveness.

Even people who unthinkingly vote for the same party no matter what are just cancelled out by their counterparts and are effectively abstaining. That's helpful because they didn't vote intelligently anyway.

> and not colluding

Are we sure? they are both funded by the same corporate lobbyists...

From where I'm standing, it sure looks like buying off both sides is a pretty easy/predictable way to protect the status quo.

What's wrong with it is that I can't vote for anyone that I share some views that are important to me with, unlike in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Spain, France, Portugal, Germany, etc. I'm forced into choosing between two parties which both propose many of the same things that I oppose. Whether they are colluding or not, they're identical on many policies that many people oppose and there is no alternative.

On your second point, you assume there are an equal number of tribalists without any data on that. It's beside the point anyway.

> What's wrong with just red team or blue team?

Because people care about different things and don't always align neatly with party policies.

Suppose I care deeply about both gun rights and abortion rights. Who do I vote for? Pluralistic systems with proportional representation are better at reflecting the values of the electorate.

> As long as they're both competing for your vote and not colluding...

Now say I want to tax the rich. That's got strong bipartisan opposition. Who do I vote for?

"What's wrong with only having the choice between a hamburger and a cheeseburger if both aren't actively poisoning you."

The obvious answer is, what if I want neither?

Rather than rehash all the obvious fairness and consent of the governed talking points, which you are certainly already aware of, I'll speak to election integrity.

FPTP form of elections are both brittle and very high stakes. Begetting our insane polarization.

Switching from FPTP to approval voting would greatly improve the robustness.

Switching to proportional representation would greatly reduce the stakes.

Try expressing yourself with answering n questions with a single yes/no answer that has to apply to all at once. You can't even order a family pizza that way; no matter how you align yes/no boundaries there is huge compression loss, and a massive dependence on whoever picks the questions and the boundaries.

Some refer to the U.S. as a managed democracy and view the U.S. in totalitarian terms.

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

Canada, UK, France, Germany are not more authoritarian than before?

If anything, these countries (^) have had a bigger growth in authoritarianism than US,Russia,China in the past ~decade.You just don't hear about it because the press in W.E is so biased you probably get more reporting in some parts of China(HK) and Russia.(due to the US press there) Frankly, EU(28*),Canada, AUS and NZ derailed the most when it comes to tyrannical laws, privacy, transparency of leadership, etc. US,Russia & China have been like this for a while now, if not ~ever (in modern history at least). If anything, China has been de facto becoming more and more fascist(incorporating into its government and state body the rapid-growing companies that rose due to capitalism, ironically)

Formally Russia is. Of course the reality is a bit different but they still do a lot of things that would not fly in China.

And yes every country gets worse over the time.

> every country gets worse over the time.

How did we get democracy in the first place?

After long centuries of tyranny. Unfortunately many decades of democracy has made everything think it is the natural order of things and nothing more needs to be done. But actually non-democratic forces and democracy are always in a dynamic balance that can swing to either side if we don't keep giving active counter-force.

A lot of death, in most cases.

Don't know about other countries, but even if Putin did not rig presidential elections (which he does), he'd still be winning overwhelming majorities. He enjoys strong popular support. So we can quibble about whether rigging an election you'd win anyway is a departure from "democracy" (whatever that means), but he's still a democratically elected leader, as well as the best leader Russia had in the last hundred years.

PS. I always vote against him every time he runs. I think there should be term limits, and I didn't "get" him early on. His results are hard to argue against. At a very minimum (and unlike in the US) the oligarchs don't overtly own the parliament (duma) anymore, and the standard of living has improved massively.

He enjoys popular support partially because people feel like there's no point and because he poisons his political opponents.

> He enjoys strong popular support.

He us working hard to make you believe that.

I actually have quite a few friends and family there. They all support him, some begrudgingly (as in "we know he's a crook and a thief, but comparatively speaking, he's doing a pretty good job"), some enthusiastically. So between first hand knowledge and Western propaganda, I think it's prudent to choose first hand knowledge, at least for me, who has it.

I have friends and family in Russia and their attitude to Putin ranges from active ignorance to hatred.

Everyone agrees that he serves as a bad example to follow.

So yes, first hand knowledge may fail you.

They're probably in Moscow or something. The vast majority of my folks aren't. Moscow and Saint Petersburg are only 10% of Russia's population - they don't matter much when it comes to electing the president.

I think you're probably right, but you chose some strange examples. I would have said Canada, New Zealand, Australia, UK, Italy, France. US authoritarianism is largely limited to blue states.

Edit: to put a finer point on it, Canada, NZ and Australia all seem to be post-democratic, post-constitutional medical police states. If you disagree with that description, please respond with what exactly they lack to be properly described that way.

Don't forget our lovely Australia, it's quickly becoming the totalitarian madness in the making https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLTGXblgUoc

Are you Australian?

Nope, I'm glad that I am not

One disconcerting possibility is that we'll be remembered as the pioneers of a new way of life, and the first generations to give up on outdated notions such as "privacy" and the right to make bad choices.

Privacy seems stronger now than when I grew up. We had phone books with our name and address in them. Our name was written inside the cover of every library book we borrowed. Neighbors were more static and knew each other and their families for decades and gossiped about each other. You could obtain a car owner's address from their number-plate by paying a $2.50 fee. After somebody got worried by that, they started also requiring ID as well as the fee. Computer hacking wasn't a crime. Phone calls weren't encrypted - in earlier generations, a lady at the exchange could easily listen in.

Most studies? Citation needed

Do you think that people in the country where you live got more liberties over the last 5 years? I don't need any citations to clearly see that we (Canadians) didn't.

You might be right, though just note that these are also emotionally loaded words. Freedom, for instance, falls into the category of "glittering generality": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glittering_generality

More clarification might help.

> Freedom, for instance, falls into the category of "glittering generality"

This is just someone's opinion.

People are actually very bad about judging the past to the present in a unbiased way. That's why we think we are better at predictions than we really are. It's also why one of the most common essays since written word has existed is complaining about how everything is going downhill. This is why unbiased, scientific studies are important to inform our intuition.

Meanwhile, states and corporations can spy on everything you do without a warrent or even informing you and you can be censored for pretty much anything without recourse.

I'll second that (as a Canadian). This is an instance where going with your gut is what matters. Someone telling me that a study showed I have more freedoms while simultaneously I see the increased burden on what I need to show, what I'm prohibited from or need permission before doing, what I'm comfortable discussing in public... what would a study do?

Freest country I've ever seen was Russia in the 90s. When Americans talk about "freedom" they have not a foggiest clue what it is. The US is a borderline police state in comparison. In fact, all in all, I think it currently has about as much "freedom" as Putin's Russia, which is to say almost none. There's quite a bit of hypocrisy and hectoring towards the rest of the world emanating from here, that's for sure, but it's starting to sound increasingly tone deaf, and sometimes downright laughable. OTOH we certainly could do much worse, like Australia for example.

What do we do about this? Like Durov, I don't know. My country of birth has been through several massive upheavals that left tens of millions of people dead, so I'm not into that. But I do not see a peaceful, rational way out of this.

I'm not american but the sense I get is that they have jurisdictional competition in a sense, so you have places that are very un-free but you also can move to freer places- or vice versa, if you value x over liberty, you can find a state or city that does too. But the competition keeps everyone honest in some sense. Contrast that with more centralized countries, whoever has the majority or balance of power (and it's often some big urban centre) gets to enforce their will one everyone else.

That's why the federal government is trying to centralize power here. Federal voting bills and abolition of electoral college are just two recent examples. It sure would be more comfortable _to them_ if a few moustache twirling lobbyists in DC decided who wins elections. No trillion dollar gravy trains would ever be upset again in that case. It's almost like that already (purely accidental win of Trump notwithstanding), but they'd like the remainder of control. For our own "good" of course, and no other reason. Additionally, over the past few years, trillion dollar megacorporations and the federal government have become essentially one and the same.

> trillion dollar megacorporations and the federal government have become essentially one and the same.

Aren't you getting carried away? How is Apple one with the US gov?

Apple is only starting to play these games (with "CSAM", which is fundamentally designed to circumvent E2E encryption and will be inevitably expanded over time), but Google, Facebook and Amazon are fully onboard. Jen Psaki admitted a couple of months back that WH now tells Facebook what to take down on their site. Zuckerberg spent $300M of his money to elect Biden. How that's legal, I have no idea, but here we are with a senile president who can't remember the name of his Secretary of Defense. Google censors its search results to the point where I had to switch to Brave Search (the only independent search engine with its own index). Both Google and FB run one-sided "fact checks" which gaslight the public in favor of the current official narratives. Google, Facebook, and Twitter rather crudely and obviously manipulate their various rankings and trends for the same purpose, and have thousands of staff that do nothing all day but suppress dissent. And so on and so forth. US Big Tech is increasingly perceived today as a menace and the propaganda arm of the US government (or to be more exact, the non-replaceable part of it known as the "deep state"), and rightly so. Putin had no idea he could do any of such things, US corporations are teaching him many valuable lessons.

Maybe not "one and the same" but give it time, that's the way it'll be.

You have a convincing case, thanks for spelling it out. I'm not sure if I'm ready to be convinced yet, but there is something in it.

It's no secret that the freedom of the 90s (gangsters running amok) led to the oligarchs and Putin.

I mean Putin's chef, (owns Wagner) was in Soviet prison for pimping out minors.

> What do we do about this? Like Durov, I don't know. My country of birth has been through several massive upheavals that left tens of millions of people dead, so I'm not into that. But I do not see a peaceful, rational way out of this.

I do not see a peaceful, rational way out of this too, but I am not discouraged at all to see the regime's end, whatever are the means needed.

Moreover, if the "massive upheaval leaving millions of people dead" is increasingly becoming the only way out of this, it becomes an even more important matter.

We know, the regime will end, sooner, or later. People die, and tyrants are people too.

Would you like the end of it becoming an all out civil war with millions dead, or will you do your effort to end this regime in some more graceful manner?

Freedom waxes and wanes, and freedom in some ways doesn't necessarily coincide with freedom in others.

In the US, in the 50s and 60s and even 70s, you could build your house how you wanted, grow what you wanted in your yard, but you got drafted. I'd say we've come a long way on getting drafted.

Since the 90s across the US gun laws have been relaxing. You couldn't get a handgun carry permit in Texas in 1995 unless you were law enforcement, as of yesterday you can carry a gun open without a license. That's one example, similar is happening nationwide. But you can't get on an airplane without potentially letting someone look in your butthole or rummage through your text messages.

Overall I'd say that the US at least has gotten more free progressively throughout it's history. This trend feels like it is turning around right about now, but we will only know in the future. As far as the rest of the world, it does seem more and more countries are getting less free, at least the more developed and fast developing places.

Looking for data to support this claim... One obvious source is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_in_the_World Quickly glancing the past few years of data for the US: 86 points (2018-2020), 83 (2021). :shrug:

i knew globalism was coming and for whatever people it lifted, more ways of life would be disrupted & lowered, that the thicker diverse rife companies would winniw down into narrower more sinewey structures.

i kept thinking tech could be a point of resistance to the consolidationing, the stratification. tech still soeaks to me as radically personally empowering, as something that enables choice & self direction, that has low gatekeepers, many ambient potentials, expanding our options. it hasnt been. more and more we are under the sway of giant tech powers, whonhave served us well, who are now being increasingly pressured by endless world governments & constant media pressure, who fuck up & only get narrower, smaller, less ennobling for their citizens, in a cycle of ongoing reducing & narrowing.

tech can totally break out we can break out and our only optimistic good upsides frel like tech driven break outs. but some new shit has got to get started. because the cycles of control, the reduction in options/capabilities, the rising of power out of the loccal & into higger & higger less & less accessible tiers... it needs a response.

I think you’re way off base. For whatever you think of tech, programming and automation are the harbingers of control and consolidation.

why not both? this cynical scared uncertain fearful viewpoint is slamming Pandora's Box closed, trapping hope inside.

tech can empower & ennoble. i'm not going to present arguments. open source is amazing & incredible & can help lift us up & keep the door open to the future, to always be adapting. we can rejuvenate ourselves & build new ways of doing things. if we have the will. i do. i think each of us need to assess what we wish to deploy our wills towards, and tech especially open source tech is here to make you super powerful & to reinforce your ability to structure & determine how you want to do things.

oh gee, i missed an opportunity to cite Ursala Franklin's holistic vs prescriptive tech dichotomy! well, let me backfill that a little: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin#Holistic_and_p...

yes the big powers of the world are clutching at tech to control & mechanize. to prescriptize technology, by which they can process human beings. but the flipside is that tech has enormously large heart, of holistic technologies, that humankind leverages rather than is-leveraged-by to expand their potential & power. and i think we have never been better enabled, but that we are struggling to tell the tale, amid so many other losses of control/immediacy/locality.

and when we do begin to wade into technogenesis, more often than not we are bombarded by too much choice, too many options, too much responsibility. we are too free, too unable to understand how to steer, where to go. so again technology does not feel like a win, does not feel enobling, even when we are engaging in holistic technology endeavours.

but i continue to think the place to focus, the place to think of, the place to move to is 100% in advance. is 100% about focusing on general systems research that is pro-user, pro-observable systems for everyone, pro-malleability. the word user itself needs replacing, needs to be supplanted by more ennobled forms, by software & systems that respect the humans working with them more broadly, by a sense of ownership & control over the everyday technology about us. i ride with hope.

Interesting that he takes a jab on the institute of free enterprise. What would be a replacement for that, planned economy and state mandated ventures? I don't think that implies any more liberty.

Unfortunately, I don't see any proposed solutions.

I think he was using it sarcastically. The historical notion of free enterprise is not really the same as oligopolistic corporatocracy or whatever we have. Where we are, with a few large players in some weird symbiotic relationship with the government where they are either writing laws or enforcing the governments will, or acting like state actors themselves is not free enterprise. Enforcing anti-monopoly laws, and updating them to deal with platforms would go a long way, but it's not really in anyone but the people's interests.

Isnt it strange that the opinion itself is a a bunch of bits that are keeping yet another sub-population of people glued to their screens, unlikely to take action anyway?

Bread and games. As long as they're fed and distracted, there's no reason to take up arms. If the global (or even regional) food supply dries up, then you will see action.

I would like to see some kind of evidence or source for these claims:

* Most studies show humanity is now less free than several years ago.

* more countries become authoritarian [because] China overtook the US as the largest economy in the world by purchasing power

The things he complains about seem like things worth complaining about, but the broad, sweeping claims need sources/evidence. Especially that dubious second one

I don't find the second one dubious. It's almost a truism, though perhaps it seems that way to because I have an Economist subscription and they've been saying that sort of thing for a decade (ie that economic success isn't necessarily correlated to individual freedom).

Truisms are some of the things you should test the most, because it you don't, people just keep making the wrong assumptions. Think bleeding with medicine.

It's almost a truism by now because the observation has been made, with evidence, so many times.

Ok, so maybe something that is almost a truism because it was repeated many times by one newspaper should also be validated...?

Not because it was repeated, because it was supported with evidence. Don't be in such a rush to reply that you skip parts of the comment.

I'm sure that the economist would state only things they believe they have some sort of evidence for. But, once again, saying a newspaper published some sort of causative relationship "with evidence" does not prove it should be taken at face value.

I would love to learn more about this topic. Would you care to provide a compelling example of this observation being made with evidence?

I think the insinuation that other countries are leaning authoritarian because China overtook the US in purchasing power is making some dubious assumptions about the way that world politics work.

That economic success isn't necessarily correlated to individual freedom seems like a weaker claim (although equally dubious in my mind, as freedom index and, say, income per capita look very strongly correlated to me)

After living in a few other countries for the last decade, I've come to realize that America is quite less free than how we might think.

Let me explain.

I'm not talking about the constitution, elections, or anything official like that.

I'm talking just about what you are free to do with your life every day in your home, in your business and in your neighborhood.

Most people in the USA, Canada, Australia and Europe don't realize how NOT free they are in terms of personal agency. It's actually mind-blowing.

And yes, you can argue it's that freedom that bought peace and security to the west. But slowly and surely, every day, from the mayor in your town, to the school board, to the local authorities, our freedoms in the west are almost gone.

And the interesting thing about it, we tend to spend a lot of time talking about the federal government, but the ones who are taking the freedoms are your local town counsel who refuses to give the permit for something, or neighborhood group who prohibits you from cutting your grass, or painting your home a different color, or parking your car on the street, or having a party past 10pm.

We have become a country of Karen's. And it's not going back.

Brilliant, the HOAs in America are one of the most insane forms of government

To me, the way local police works factors into this too. And not just the highly newsworthy brutality. But simple stuff. Like driving an old beater car in a wealthy neighborhood. Your chances of getting pulled over are high. And when you are, you get questions about where you are coming from, going to, etc, as if there's a wrong answer for that. Or some reason you would have to answer.

Having lived in an area without a HOA, I've witnessed people fly confederate flags, park RVs, boats, broken down trucks, etc. all over their driveways, yards, and the streets, etc. etc... I became a believer in HOAs. At this point in my life, I'd rather live in a HOAed neighborhood than not. This is my opinion I've formed from my personal experiences so not all may agree.

Indeed some HOAs are ridiculously overbearing and limit things you'd think aren't even possible to limit. There's a nice middle ground somewhere but not all HOAs are there.

I don't understand your complaint. They park RVs and boats in their driveways and yards? Who cares? It's their property. Why do you care what they put on their own property? Who even has time to worry about their neighbor's lawn?

They park on the streets? Unless you live on a private road, that's a municipal matter. Parking rules should be up to the city, not your HOA.

Honestly it sounds like you are exactly who the top-level comment was talking about. You care more about restricting your neighbors than your own personal freedoms.

Those things tend to run down the value of the entire neighborhood.

And here we are, at the fundamental reason people want to control their neighbors.

I never understood this. I bought my house to live in it, for decades, why would I care about value not rising as fast as it could?

>They park RVs and boats in their driveways and yards? Who cares?

Indeed, I don't want broken down RVs and trucks that leak oils and fluids all over the place on the street, or on their lawn where it eventually ends up in the water table.

It also makes the area look like an industrial area, not residential.

>Why do you care what they put on their own property?

I don't want symbols of oppression and racism flying around anywhere, and especially not in my neighborhood.

>They park on the streets? Unless you live on a private road, that's a municipal matter.

HOAs can also enforce this it's not simply a municipal matter. It makes the roads cluttered and more dangerous for pedestrians, bikes, etc.

>Honestly it sounds like you are exactly who the top-level comment was talking about. You care more about restricting your neighbors than your own personal freedoms.

Not at all, I just want some simple standards so where we live doesn't look like the city dump.

It's just the worst when people park their broken trucks on their driveways, glad you made it to somewhere where we can fine them for it.

>It's just the worst when people park their broken trucks on their driveways

It's not the worst, but I don't want my neighbor to look like the city dump.

>glad you made it to somewhere where we can fine them for it.

You agree to the HOA when you purchase your home. Don't like it? Don't move there.

You're complaining as if you moved to Germany and you're upset you can't fly the Nazi flag. Isn't that just the worst? Not at all, you made a conscious effort and agreed to the laws when you to move to Germany. You should follow them. Same logic applies here.

The thing is, HOAs tend to have little to no power over people like that. They simply don't give a shit. They will ignore every letter the HOA sends and are will refuse to comply with court orders. And those court orders take years to and a not inconsiderable amount of expense to obtain in the first place.

IMHO, the only reason to have a HOA is to pool money for common area maintenance. Anything beyond that tends to do more harm than good.

>The thing is, HOAs tend to have little to no power over people like that.

Not entirely true as you outlined, since HOAs can put liens on your property and they can end up foreclosing. The HOA will absolutely get it's money and enforcement, either through a foreclosure or court order.

Back when I lived in a townhome the unit attached to mine had a very nice single mother and her son living there. Sadly, they moved out and some house flippers moved in, shortly afterward the housing market imploded. They started letting their friends crash at the house and wreck it, eventually it go so bad one of the windows fell out (dormer window mounted in a wooden frame left open to the elements). Right into the front yard.

Anyway I tried going to the HOA about it, and they explained that a lien would be a waste of time. Even in an egregious case like this nobody wants to take responsibility for a property like that. It's a lot of work to get the lien, foreclosure from a HOA basically never happens, and even then all they inherit is a huge problem that nobody wants to deal with. So instead I get to sell my house attached to one that literally has siding falling off, missing shingles, and a goddamn window in the front yard.

This is the same HOA that wrote me up for refilling the windshield washing fluid in my car parked in front of my house and hassled my neighbour because he replaced the shitty wooden windows with vinyl that you couldn't even tell the difference without tapping on them.

Basically, they only have power over people who are already trying to be good neighbours.

As an epilogue, the bank eventually foreclosed on the property and presumably sold it as distressed. A coworker of mine toured it, but apparently the basement was black mold city. A lien on the property wouldn't have helped the situation.

There has to be a middle ground between you can have your car up on blocks till the weeds cover it, a storm fence in disrepair, loud barking dogs and the other where the kinds of plants you put in your garden are up for discussion, nevermind hanging a tire from a branch as a swing and needing permission to change the shade of the color of the house.

>Most people in the USA, Canada, Australia and Europe don't realize how NOT free they are in terms of personal agency. It's actually mind-blowing.

What countires do you think are free? Like those in South (East) Asia, South America or Africa?

Yup. Poorer, but more free.

No. If you can afford a house in the US you can for sure afford to live in any of these places and enjoy whatever good they offer. The opposite is much more complicated. This makes you more free than people over there.

Also, in general terms, more money == more freedom.

Freedom can mean stuff like being able to pollute and nobody having authority to stop you for example. Or the freedom to abuse another person as you see fit. That's the flipside to freedom, it enables assholes.

It would be so freeing to live in a world of no rules. But in practice that is just barbarism. It's a terrible way to run a society.

In some of those places, there is less government interference with everyday life.

Street vendors don't need permits, or if they do, it's only in the books but not in practice.

You might not have to have a health department license to sell food for example.

Buying beer or alcohol may not have strict age requirements. Parents have more dominion over their kids and the state interferes with that less.

There are of course disadvantages such as more abuse because, you know, you can't have nice things because the few spoil it for the majority of people who behave.

It's also much less free if you consider the income to living expense ratio being the worst it's been in decades. People have to work more for less. Housing and food are less affordable than they've ever been in decades. We're chained to our crappy jobs to not starve in the streets.

Really starve in the streets? Even America gives free food to poor people via food stamps, doesn't it?

In fact, I don’t think that a single person in US has died in last decade because he was too poor to afford food.

Probably true, however it is possible that in a system where money is everything, not being able to afford food, although it's being given for free anyway, cold be enough to turn someone suicidal.

It's really sad to see someone assuming that just because you don't literally die of starvation that limited access to food doesn't have extremely profound, inter-generational effects to millions of people in this country. People in 2021 deserve to have access to food regardless of circumstances.

Starvation by definition doesn't mean death by lack of food. It means you are deficient and unhealthy because of it. Which absolutely happens a LOT in this country.

If you're an adult without dependents then food stamps last for three months. After that you're required to work or be in a work training program for 20 hours a week. There are some areas that provide some small concessions to this three month limit but most places do not. You also don't qualify if you're an unauthorized immigrants, or a certain type of lawfully present immigrant. Also don't qualify if you're on strike but their unions should be covering them if it's that drastic.

It is literally: work in our system or starve. There is no free food unless you're doing something 20 hours a week that has government oversight (i.e. tax forms).

One thing I've realized about the constitution and the bill of rights is that they are a mechanism that allows the good guys to spot the bad guys quickly. Without constitution, the bad guys could gaslight everyone and chew their freedoms in the meantime. They would debate that chewing that or this wooden pillar is ok because it doesn't really support the construction and so on. But if theres a codex that starts with "rule 1. chewing wood in the house is prohibited" then the good guys will instantly agree that those guys chewing wood must be bad, no debates necessary. It's a sort of distributed consensus for large societies. The good guys may be lazy and choose to not enforce the rules, but that's not the Constitution's problem.

> Without constitution, the bad guys could gaslight everyone and chew their freedoms in the meantime.

The problem is that this in fact exactly what happened in this country over last few decades, and the parchment has been only mildly helpful in slowing that down.

>or having a party past 10pm

Unfortunately, sometimes, freedom is a zero-sum game. I'd rather be free to sleep comfortably at night, than being "freee tooo parrtyyyy, broooo". And those who complain about this are usually the kind of people I wouldn't want near my house.

I love to have the freedom to live in a regulated neighborhood with like-minded people and those who don't like it are free as well to go buy a house literally anywhere else in the world.

There really isn't a whole lot of agency in house buying or house building though. At least not at a mere mortals price point.

Real estate is costly, you have permitting, ordinances at city and county level, building codes... Doing anything nonstandard is hard and requires a lot of time, knowledge, and/or money

That really depends on the area. There are still rural counties where land is cheap and you can easily get a building permit as long as the plans are up to code.

There is a saying in French, "La liberté des uns s'arrête là où commencent celle des autres". I'm not sure if it's known in English, I never read it online that's for sure, so I just roughly translated word by word :

The freedom of someone ends where the freedom of others begins.

Basically saying that living in a stable society is like signing a contract to restrain your liberty of doing anything when it's proved harmful for the others.

A common English equivalent is "your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins": https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/15/liberty-fist-nose/

Thanks, today I learnt the equivalent !

I've been saying that verbatim in English for years. I didn't know it originated as a French saying.

Besides, it’s not even true. You’re allowed to have a party as late as you want. Just keep the music indoors

Kind of related is how much time is spent on private property in modern cities/suburbs. Old-style business districts would have a row of businesses on both sides of a street, with a public sidewalk and maybe a row of parking spots. New, car-friendly businesses have a huge parking lot that's private land (even though it's mostly treated as public land by the people using it). The public sidewalk is a hundred yards or so from the business, and rarely used.

HOAs are a similar situation: you might have a house attached to a private street, whereas in a non-HOA neighborhood it would be a public street.

In most cases the differences between public and private right-of-ways is subtle, but I suppose if a person wanted to make a point of defending their private property it might be more obvious. For instance, a business might be able to exclude a political protest from their property but not from a public sidewalk or street. (I'm not a lawyer and I don't know what the exact legal rights of people versus property owners in this situation is.) And I imagine it's easier for prejudiced people to make an ethnic minority feel like they're unwelcome if they're on private property.

I don't know how much of the world is like this, but something weird you see some places outside the U.S. is the idea that rural land is a sort of public right-of-way. It's not seen as weird to cross through someone's land while going on a walk or whatever. If you trample on their crops they might get mad at you I suppose, but sticking to the paths is seen as acceptable.

I’ve lived in or visited over 20 countries and one striking thing about the U.S. is how little we walk. In almost every city in the U.S. relatively few people are out and about outside. In some sense we have criminalized walking. It is so rare that in suburban white neighborhoods 4 black kids outside walking will be stopped by cops. We are not a free people.

https://www.illinoislawreview.org/print/vol-2017-no-3/the-cr...

This is the most remarkable thing about the US as an outsider.

Americans are completely dependent on their cars. Which means that children in the US have no freedom at all.

> Americans are completely dependent on their cars.

America is a big place with a lot of different situations.

> Which means that children in the US have no freedom at all.

This does not follow, and is not true. In America we tend to think of freedom as freedom from various kinds of persecution.

Consider the possibility that life in the U.S is abnormal by the standards of the rest of the world and that our view of what it means to be free is distorted.

Do people from elsewhere continue to want to immigrate to the US? Do you find yourself wanting to immigrate elsewhere?

Yes to both questions. Neither question is really relevant though. In the hierarchy of needs it’s easier to fill the lower level ones in the U.S. than in El Salvador. People move to the U.S. for ease of meeting needs, to experience the U.S., etc. This doesn’t mean than in comparison to Japan, UK, or Germany that life is freer here.

Eight percent of European migrants live in the U.S. and five percent in Kazakhstan. Is this evidence that Kazakhstan is comparable to the U.S?

https://www.migrationpolicy.org/article/european-immigrants-...

That's something that strikes me every time I come home from Europe and wake up in the (Pacific Northwest) suburbs. The streets are wide, the sidewalks are clean, there are trees all over the place, and not a soul in sight.

I think that there’s a question not being addressed here.

The things you’ve pointed out to be “taking away” your individual freedom are things that you have to put up with when you’re choosing to live in a society or a civilization, i.e. in togetherness with other people who do not have the same preferences as you. This scenario is inherently rooted in conflict, and everyone has to make compromises if everyone wants to live peacefully. If you don’t want to have to put up with other people then your only choice is really to just live alone in a forest where you can exercise your near-total individual freedom.

So since there seems to be a genuine binary between living a life of compromises in a society and living freely but like an hermit, aren’t we actually advocating for the dissolution of society when we’re talking about exercising our individual freedoms? Government and laws are, after all, just manifestations of how people in a (democratic) society want to run their society, but it’s not like we can draw a clear line on where government control and regulation should end, no? Because not even all democratic societies are the same.

This sounds like the same point that people bring up about privacy, i.e. "if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be afraid". While the point is valid the issues are more based in the principal of the matter.

But that’s the point—there will always be people who do want to live in a state where something is being done about CSAM down to their personal devices, while there will always be people who don’t. So which of the two groups are objectively right to have things done their way? It’s neither, and whoever wins on the policy level is a matter of politics, not of objective moral correctness.

So then since you can’t always have it your way when you’re living in a society, isn’t it that the only other option to have things your way is for you to live alone, all consequences entailing? Therefore, isn’t the argument for the full exercise of individual freedom an argument for the dissolution of society and ergo government? Because this topic seems to me about the full realization of individual freedoms and not making any compromises at all.

> "if you have nothing to hide you shouldn't be afraid". While the point is valid the issues are more based in the principal of the matter.

An important detail here. Technically you are kind of correct, but sadly there are plenty of examples of people who should have nothing to hide who have rightly had reasons to fear.

I.e. many people have reasons to fear without having anything to be ashamed of.

Your examples are quite strange.

I’m not sure about the permit, but for the most part, permits are needed in many non western countries as well. In fact, in most of those countries the laws are even more egregious. The difference is that they usually have corrupt or inadequate enforcement mechanisms which allow you to do things illegally or by paying a bribe.

The neighborhood group stuff is ridiculous but it’s something people have voluntarily agreed to as a group. And the individuals have voluntarily chosen to live there.

You are absolutely allowed to have parties past 10pm. What you’re not allowed to do is play loud music that infringes on the persons of others after a certain time.

That’s one of the reasons I’m staying in my poor corrupted country. I feel free, and I’m afraid to lose that feeling moving to rich lawful country.

I guess it’s good to have a choice.

The risk with your argument is that it’s rife with counter examples. Local conditions are not homogeneous.

I bought a house this year. I bought it in a neighborhood without an HoA, I will admit. The houses on my street are older, smaller, ‘50s houses. I like my neighbors, we stay out of each other’s business. A lot of them like cars, and they work on them. I don’t care much, I do my own things. I had a dozen friends over to my place last week, they parked all along the street. My neighbors didn’t say anything.

Perhaps someone places in America are rules oriented, where rules are rigorously enforced. It certainly makes the news when someone can’t paint their house the color they want or a veteran can’t fly the flag. What I’m saying isn’t ground breaking, it won’t make the news, but there are places in America where you won’t be bothered for minor infractions. There are places where you do have freedom to do what you want and you can find these places.

I think a lot of it comes from the increased insecurity, both socially and economically, of the age. It seems like the general sentiment of the future isn't one of hope or optimism, but anxiety and pessimism instead.

It makes sense that in a period of increased insecurity the incentives to either hold onto that security or fight for increased security holds enough value that people are willing to give up freedoms whose importance has almost become esoteric among those who have never experienced what they are meant to protect us from.

This is probably why there has been little concern expressed about the slow erosion of freedoms in western societies, or the fact that many actively advocate for them to be eroded for short term securities.

You know, I haven't even really noticed a ramp down in freedom due to any kind of government action in the last few years.

Now, if you compare modern times to the freedom we enjoyed 50 years ago, the difference is absolutely phenomenal. Absolutely no comparison. I mean it's crazy.

Will you expand on the comparison to half a century ago?

You must be joking here or I missed the sarcasm tag somewhere.

Numerous lockdowns, curfews, mask mandates, vaccination mandates, societal segregation based on medical records, enormous tracking - this is far from exhaustive list of measures governments imposed within last 2 years.

We can certainly discuss whether those things were justified or needed in separate thread, but bottomline is the governments used covid as justification for ramping down freedoms at enormous scale, I'd go ahead and say at the scale never seen before.

You just can't avoid seeing that unless you're lucky enough not to live in place where all those things are observed.

By "we" I assume you mean white heterosexual males?

The article focuses mostly on ‘freedom to’ freedoms, but like most casual analysis doesn’t talk much about ‘freedom from’. Perhaps you can talk about privacy in terms of either freedom from surveillance, or freedom to say/do what you like in historically private settings. But most freedoms to have a cost of a freedom from. The more specific points the author makes about the unrelenting growth of corporate power feel true, but couching that in terms of a global freedom shrinkage seems overwrought.

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