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Comment by alliao | Hacker News Reader

CCP is literally cancer on all citizens living in currently free democracy. They show that it's possible to keep a huge population under control with current tools and technology. Our politicians show public disdain, but fuck are they being seduced. And Australia is just stepping into it step by step while asking it's citizens to trust the government because they seem to be at odds with CCP publicly.

As someone who lives in New Zealand, this isn't the democracy we want our closest neighbour turn into.

Please wake up and do something Aussies, take no bullshit, you can do it. Can laugh about it later, but this shit is serious.

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Hey mate. Aussie here.

I'm sorry to say that it seems to me no one around here gives a flying fuck about politics let alone anyrhing to do with digital rights. This is a war we've already lost.

I blame Murdoch but quite frankly most of the people I talk to are too wrapped up in working to pay their bills and care for their families to care about anything else.

Tasmanian here.

I’m still going to blame Murdoch and the LNP.

We could have had an amazingly well educated, liberal, progressive, and wealthy nation, but the Murdoch media and the LNP usurped the national agenda for their own personal gains and ideology.

We are an apathetic bunch, but that doesn’t give malicious actors the right to take advantage. They’re still responsible to a large degree.

There's still a few of us, but I think you hit the nail on the head with regards to being too busy.

Political reporting tends to either oversimplify things to the point it is not useful, or be so verbose that only the most committed citizens will read it.

I have started working on the idea of using knowledge graphs to fix this problem. The idea is basically representing political values/ beleifs/policies as nodes that are connected by edges representing reason (e.g. "cut income taxes" -> because -> "low taxes are good" -> because -> "high taxation makes the economy less efficent" ). This way, voters can fill out a survey of their values/beleifs and this can be compared to the graph that represents the beleifs of all candidates. Thus, instead of spending tens of hours just trying to understand the political landscape (and likely failing), voters can spend less time and have a greater certainty that they are making a good choice.

Also, evidence could be added to the graph, so that 2 people who disagree on basic ideology could easily see the basis for their differences (by diffing their graphs)

this is a really cool idea!!

Isn't Australia showing the exact opposite, that you don't need CCP-style top down control to enact powerful surveillance laws? That's always been possible in a "free democracy".

The Australian government has explicitly aligned itself with the US and against China in the current tensions, as a member of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. In my view Australia (and New Zealand) are being seduced by US power above all else.

For example, in 2020 a Strategic Dialogue took place between the US and NZ, which was barely reported on. Items for discussion included "the strategic and economic architecture of the Indo-Pacific" and " the U.S.-NZ strategic partnership, including security cooperation"[1]. I bet you less than 1% of Kiwis know that this high level military dialogue took place - an impressive level of control over a population of a kind that the CCP could only dream of.

[1] https://2017-2021.state.gov/joint-statement-on-united-states...

yes, amazingly enough anything can be achieved in a free democracy. I heard Nazi was elected too. Just takes good people's indifference.

To be honest, any military dialogue isn't of major interest to New Zealand because um look at our military? We have at most 2 planes that are usable. And maybe 5 sea faring vessels that probably can't even attack anything.

The difference is the CCP is more aligned with the best interests of the country (not so much as individuals but as a whole) while Australian politicians are only interested in their own profits and those of their friends.

*the CCP ~thinks it is~ is more aligned with the best interests of the country

but central planners always think that. Doesn't mean it's true.

Living quality, wealth, technology and infrastructure has all improved dramatically in China. While we all disagree with the CCP in some ways, it is undeniable that they are not doing a bad job in general. The average person in China has faith that the future is going to be better than the present/past which is not something much of the west can claim.

Why did things improve so dramatically in China?

I would argue because they gave up on trying to centrally plan everything.

The same can be said of any political party in a democracy

This is simply because the CCP has a lower time preference and Australian politicians are out of the government in a few years

CCP recently published a list of demands of the US which shows what they care about.. and getting travel visas and lifting financial bans for their elite was like number 1. So I'd hardly argue that's the best interest of their country really...

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3142757/ch...

In short tech surveillance are both working and attractive. Regardless of CCP, Australia, US, FB, GOOGL, etc.

I don't know if you're being intentional, but one of these isn't like the rest. The reach and ambition of CCP though without much elegance is overwhelmingly overshadowing any efforts shown by others.

The machinery is already put in place in the US. All it takes is a switch to flip.

The name that fits best imo is digital panopticon. It is a virtual prison for entire societies.

You can always find a reason for this, alternatively in the US you could thank Osamma bin Laden, because the patriot act with it's Section 215 was legislated as a result of 9/11.

Delusional blaming CCP for AU surveillance state that is fundementally driven by FVEY interests. Turnbull literally admitted the reason why Huawei was banned from AU networks was because Huawei hardware made it harder to surveil on AU/FVEY citizens. He was worried about denial of access to network that would undermine FVEY capability to spy on each other's citizens vs CCP interception. FVEY's been undermining Kiwi/member populations long before CCP entered the picture.

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