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Comment by abledon | Hacker News Reader

was it only the 10% fringe farmers protesting? or the 90% majority of farmers?

> was it only the 10% fringe farmers protesting? or the 90% majority of farmers?

Short of the hong-kong protests, I don't think there were any recent protests that has double-digit percent attendance numbers. For instance, wikipedia says that for the BLM protests, "between 15 million and 26 million people had participated at some point in the demonstrations in the United States, making the protests the largest in U.S. history". That means, the largest protest in the US only has between 4.6%-7.9% attendance.

edit: whoops forgot link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Floyd_protests

Protests are only legitimate if they have more than 10% percent of the population?

So, for instance, no gay pride demonstration was ever a legitimate protest?

Some revolutions were carried out by less than that percentage.

Just remember, a self-selected 10% of the population imposing unwanted hardship on the remaining 90% is less of a revolution and more of a tyranny.

The 90% imposing unwanted hardship on the 10% is also easily described as tyranny, unless you're arguing that the interests of minorities don't matter?

I should clarify that I don't mean to say that this makes the protest valid, just that the argument that protest is only acceptable if an arbitrary number of people are involved is not all that good.

Ultimately you must ask if you would prefer tyranny of the majority or tyranny of the minority.

>The 90% imposing unwanted hardship on the 10% is also easily described as tyranny

10% of people oppose nearly everything and it isn't tyranny so, unless you're an anarchist, your point is ridiculous.

The tyranny of the majority is not an anarchistic idea and yet is exactly what is being invoked when the argument is made that it's acceptable to ignore the concerns of a minority population because doing otherwise would be unfair to the majority.

I think this quote from Tocqueville explains it well: "So what is a majority taken as a whole, if not an individual who has opinions and, most often, interests contrary to another individual called the minority. Now, if you admit that an individual vested with omnipotence can abuse it against his adversaries, why would you not admit the same thing for the majority? Have men, by gathering together, changed character? By becoming stronger, have they become more patient in the face of obstacles?"

What matters is not how many supporters each side has but what the merits and demerits of each side are.

> but what the merits and demerits of each side are.

And who decides that? It's either going to be a tyrannical minority, a tyrannical majority or a literal tyrant according to those who oppose the decision.

It critically depends on what you mean by "impose", I think it's a well known lesson by now (and actually very low-status and cliché to bring up) that masses can be convinced of anything, so the deciding factor is often who has the most efficient consent-manufacturing machines.

You could argue that consent, as traditionally understood, doesn't even meaningfully exist in a population above a certain threshold (say 10^6). Consent implies knowledge and understanding, in a population of 10^6 and up, in even a moderately complex environment, there is no way even 1/10 of the population understand more than their own very narrow slice of what their environment and society are doing.

You're aware of the imposition of the government upon the before-they-were-protesting protesters, right?

Congratulations, you have discovered democracy.

It was certainly less than 10% of Indian farmers. It was rooted in Punjab, and had weak support in Eastern UP and Haryana. That's it.

Also, unlike Trudeau's mandates which had questionable backing from the constitution, the Farm Bill was passed by a Democratic Govt. with the necessary popular mandate.

The current government of Canada was very recently elected in an election that was mostly about the pandemic response and mandates in particular, the notion that this represents some undermining of the democratic process is a bit of a stretch.

Yes but...

The Federal Governme t has almost no control over, well, anything related to health, or covid related mandates.

The provinces rule here.

The truckers had issues with border crossings, and that's federal, one rare area the feds handle here.

So in reality, the last federal election had very little to do with mandates, or validation of mandate response.

More about fiscal response.

That said, I find this protest a bit loopy. Only provinces can revoke mandates, which they created, about closed businesses, masks, vaccines, etc. They're literally protesting the wrong government.

Only two out of ten registered voters voted for his party. Vaccine passports and mandatory vaccination weren't in the campaign.

We're literally in a post about Trudeau invoking powers that allow him to suspend even civil rights (EDIT: I misread, that was the previous version of the act, he cannot suspend civil rights) (even if he probably won't do that) over a protest that has gone on for a month without any attempts made at reconciliation, it's hard to argue that this isn't an undermining of democracy in Canada.

The protests in India lasted over a year with several rounds of talks despite being in the midst of a worse wave of covid than now, yet they didn't resort to using their equivalent of these powers.

It really does make India's democracy look stronger than Canada's.

The Act does not in fact allow him to suspend civil rights, that is not what this law does, its predecessor did but it is no longer law. You can read about it in many places, its invokation has inspired a lot of explainers!

I am familiar with the protests in India but I did not see any that occupied the downtown of a major city for weeks on end or choked off the most important transport link in the country for over a week. I welcome more information on that front. My view is that if the parade on 26 January 2021 had remained in the city for weeks then it might be somewhat similar, but as it stands that is not my impression.

Ah looks like I misread the wikipedia article on the topic, you're right about him not being able to suspend civil rights. I'll correct that.

I didn't keep up with the farmer's protests too closely, but I do recall that at the time there were reports that the govt was having trouble distributing aid in the midst of a big wave of the delta variant in part due to the blocking of roads and trains by the protests (although of course it wouldn't be surprising if that was just blame shifting), going off of Wikipedia however, it does look like several routes to the capital were blocked for a while, along with some news outlets reporting up to ~$7B in economic loss due to associated supply chain disruptions: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/indicators...

I personally just find it disappointing that Trudeau seemingly hasn't even tried to talk things out, so invoking this act feels pretty excessive considering how egregious the circumstances were in previous uses. Regardless of whether or not he's willing to compromise (or if the truckers can even be reasoned with), I feel that this act should have been a measure of absolute last resort.

I think that Trudeau and everyone except the bumbling mayor of Ottawa have correctly concluded that the protest leadership is unreliable and not to be negotiated with. The mayor of Ottawa did negotiate with them and was immediately betrayed.

The Act has never been invoked before, the predessessor was scrapped because it was considered excessive. Even under these powers the Feds cannot directly order police to do anything.. it is pretty weak in terms of action on the ground unless the military shows up.

The federal government has been begging the OPS and the province to act, IMO they have run out of options precisely because the folks that should be dealing with this want the federal government to "own" it and now they got their wish. There didn't seem to be many resorts left!

Liberals didn’t get the majority mandate. They are a minority govt that lost seats in the election.

Rather weak mandate.

Ask NDP voters what they think! Bloc too! It is a minority parliament, if the position of the government was not well supported the government would have fallen..

This is not some pre-covid majority exploiting an old mandate like the Ford or Kenney provincial governments, yours is a very weak argument.

Depends on who you ask. There are people who would strongly vouch for either sides...

That said, it was predominantly farmers from 1 state. may be 3-4 states max. India has like 28 states.

Phew. For a moment there I was unsure of how to qualify a legitimate protest. I feel calmer now that abledon has defined a threshold.

It was not even the farmers. It was mostly the government pimps of agricultural products and the rice smugglers of Punjab who got rich selling inedible rice to the government are a high minimum support price by smuggling it from other states. This raises a lot of questions but sadly there is no other way that figuring it out. One simple question western audience should ask is why only two states in the entire country give a damn about the new 'reforms' (the new law was about removing an old law meant to mimic soviet styled collectivist farming with Indian twist).

The protests were seen by Pakistan's ISI and other Indian separatists group as an opportunity to show Indian government was some kind of tyrant, when in reality the government showed exceptional patience with absolutely vile protestors who raped women and chopped off arms of people with no consequence.

As an Indian I am glad with whatever is happening to Trudeau. If you are going to shelter and support people trying to hurt other countries, those societies will hurt you back.

Majority of farmers. India’s govt has backed and supported small farmers for decades. Also agriculture is like 80% of jobs for ppl in India, unlike the US. Farmers protested for ~1 year and prime minister Modi heard their concerns and repealed the new laws. This vox report is a summary https://youtu.be/iHpZV7ro7lU

>Majority of farmers

Statistically people from 1-3 states can't represent the majority of farmers.

>supported small farmers for decades

I guess they therefore can't ever stop subsidizing them, homerun for the economy.

>agriculture is like 80% of jobs for ppl in India

What? (Also, it produces almost no value in exchange for the subsidies, it's barely 15% of the GDP IIRC)

It was farmers from mostly two states only.. nowhere close to 90%, thats ridiculous

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