Comment by playpause | Hacker News Reader

Comment by playpause | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

> “how small a dent it seems to make in the discourse, and in the world as a result”

I used to think this. But now I think: maybe the ‘dent’ I’ve been looking for is essentially just excitement and hype, which isn’t change. The narrative that change happens through the mass public getting angry, forcing politicians to respond, is overblown at best. I think the boring truth is that nearly all progress in this area (and there is progress) happens through countless bureaucrats diligently working for years on court cases and regulation changes to make it harder for people to get away with this stuff. For such bureaucrats, a leak like this is going to be relevant and valuable for years, long after the media has moved on. The people implicated in the leak didn’t want the leak to happen, and there’s a reason. Sure, most are probably too powerful to get prosecuted and put in jail, but it does curb their options for future shenanigans, and they will probably lose some money. Sanctions do work. I think it’s probably always been this way too – the exciting, romantic parts of history (marches, revolutions) are the exception, we just pay more attention to them.

I like this in outline -- the notion that what you could call the "acute" effects (e.g. its impact on the news cycle) of a story like this may be more visible and less important than its "chronic" effects inside institutions, where people take more serious notice. (That's if I'm reading you right.)

I guess what I'm less sure about is the inevitability that you're painting it with. Seems a bit "whiggish" [1], in my reading, if for no other reason than seeing brighter days on this front in the past than in the present and immediate future.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history

Yes, that’s a fair reading. I would add that it’s vitally important for the journalists to get the ‘acute’ part right, being mindful of media cycles etc, to properly establish the the leak in the public record and in the minds of relevant parties such as investigators and other journalists. But yes, the real work gets done in the years following. It’s lots of work by lots of people on lots of boring things. It won’t be cinematic. There won’t be a catharsis.

Wikipedia has an article on outcomes from the 2016 Panama Papers [1]. Lots of boring things.

I see what you mean about whiggish (good word). But well, I do think it is more or less inevitable that there will be outcomes that certain people don’t want, otherwise they wouldn’t have been trying to hide their finances from regulators. And I would speculate those outcomes will probably be pretty positive, if added up together, such that the journalists and whistleblowers involved in the leak should feel immensely proud. But my main point is that the extent of general public outrage over the original data leak is irrelevant to how positive the eventual outcomes will turn out to be.

In which ways do you think it was brighter on this front in the past?

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_the_Panama_Pape...

> The narrative that change happens through the mass public getting angry, forcing politicians to respond, is overblown at best.

It used to work. As recent as a couple decades ago at least. The Arab spring that swept Middle East and parts of North Africa in 2010s comes to mind.

Protesting and going to the streets, depending on where you are in this world, feels more like a dying art today rather than the stuff of revolution we've associated them with in the past. Feels wrong just typing that.

Maybe we've just become insensitive to it all and do not have the will to fight governments.

Maybe our collective thoughts and ideas are more homogenous than ever before.

As someone born in the eighties I'd mention that it has actually gotten less unthinkable that mass riots happen in the western world as I've grown up. If everyone's reaction to January 6th surprised you it's because when most of the middle-aged working folks (including the folks in the media) were growing up this was unthinkable. The Arab Spring happened "over there" and ditto for North Africa - it's only recently that we've had substantive protests domestically.

The WTO always brings a decent sized chunk of protest when it comes - but the biggest protest in my memory is Occupy Wall Street which ended up being incredibly peaceful and polite and thus absolutely ignored by the media. The largest one before that was probably the '92 LA Riots which I was born just late enough to not notice.

Most of the more media grabbing protests of my life time have actually been sports related - the Red Sox winning and the Stanley Cup Riot. I don't know how true your statement really is.

It's very simple - we are well fed.

This is my thought as well. We've reached a plateau where the average individual's circumstances are so comfortable that violent political action just doesn't make sense psychologically. The pie is so large that, even though we are getting a smaller and smaller slice compared to the elites, it doesn't trigger the type of primal response it did in the past.

Should we hope this continues? Probably. If the situation deteriorates to the point that revolution becomes palatable the result would be mass human suffering.

As the Romans said, "panem et circenses"; nowadays in the first world, even the relatively poor classes have access to a plenty of cheap entertainment and food; it's perhaps not good but it's enough to take off enough of the edge that people are merely angry but not so desperate (for the masses - individual exceptions of course happen, but they don't matter) to actually go ahead and risk their lives trying to change everything.

Actually it is even simpler than that - we increasingly hate our neighbor and therefore feel compelled to turn to the state for help, and view crusty rich old politicians (who work for the wealthy elites) as their saviors.

It is not dying art. Protests are now part of establishment, and are protected by police!

The revolution will be sponsored.

Up to 10 million people took to the streets on 15-Feb 2003 to protest against the Iraq war[0], including 3 million in Rome alone (the largest anti-war protest in history). It changed nothing.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot...

Honestly it's always been an implicit "threat of violence". I.e. it's an olive branch being extended to the powers that be, telling them that "we're willing to remain civil, for the time being, but we're giving you a stark warning that we're also willing to organize into large groups (demonstrated by the protesters mobilizing at all), and become violent if things don't change.

The thing that's changed is that the people in power are no longer taking the implicit threat seriously. The dog is snarling at them, yet somehow, it's unthinkable that they're about to be bitten.

> Maybe we've just become insensitive to it all and do not have the will to fight governments.

I don't think we have - the outrage machine seems to be growing. Wasn't there widespread violent protests for most of the year leading up to the election last year?

The problem is for the most part people's outrage and hatred has been redirected toward their fellow citizen and away from the ruling class, which is clearly not a coincidence.

Protesting in the streets, the way it's commonly understood today, is basically just a show. Why would the powers that be actually care about it?

A nation-wide strike, now that would get attention.

> Protesting in the streets, the way it's commonly understood today, is basically just a show. Why would the powers that be actually care about it?

Because that kind of show is how the ideas it promotes are normalized, which is the foundation on which other action is built.

Is it, though, in this day and age? It seems that, in the developed world at least, ideas are promoted and normalized via mass media and/or the Internet, and protests are rather the outcome of than than the cause.

> Is it, though, in this day and age?

Yes.

> It seems that, in the developed world at least, ideas are promoted and normalized via mass media and/or the Internet

Sure, and mass protests are how marginalized groups leverage the selection biases of the mass media for their message.

> As recent as a couple decades ago at least. The Arab spring that swept Middle East and parts of North Africa in 2010s comes to mind.

Which country has been better off after Arab spring?

In a way, it reminds me of the aviation industry, where regulations are put in place because something happened in the past.

At the same time, as regulation gets more complex, it creates new ways to be exploited. The same way more source code means more possibilities for bugs. The bureaucrats play a catch-up game and they are always at a disadvantage.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com