Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

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> I don't think your comments about moving to China are at all productive to the dialog though.

I want to address this. Why is it not productive? One great thing about the world is that we have different jurisdictions that value different things, so they can compete and like minded people can potentially get together somewhere and live as they want. Many people are moving to Florida e.g. because of its approach to covid. If you want the opposite, and your initial comment I understood to basically be support for China's approach, there are jurisdictions you can go to that provide that. It's better for you because your priorities are supported, and it's better for people in other places with different priorities. What's not productive is trying to lobby the government to force everyone around you to behave the way you want them to.

Seriously, if you support China's approach, and value it more than what you're getting in Canada, move to China, don't try and make Canada any more authoritarian

Oh, mostly because I'm a Canadian and the Canadian response to everything is dictated by its citizens determining what the government does in reaction to various stimuli. I'm not going to execute a violent coup to overthrow the Canadian government to force my personal ideals on everyone else but me expressing my ideals and trying, within the system, to tilt the responses to what works for me is, in fact, the Canadian government working as designed.

Canada is an abstract concept - just like Florida - it isn't authoritarian or freedom loving as an inherent property, it is responding to the will of its populace. I personally think my ideals would help Canada be a safer and more prosperous country, so why should I say "screw all these guys" and jump ship... I'd prefer to stay and try and make my neighbors safer. That said, I'm actually a US-Canadian dualie so it is an adopted home.

Fair enough, I'm canadian and the same reason I haven't moved to Florida is because I'd rather stay and try to fight people like you than just give up and move somewhere else. I think the difference is that all I want is to be left alone, while a you want is for the government to force people to do what you want (because anything else would somehow harm you and your fellow citizens), but that's a pretty classic struggle between libertarian and authoritarian.

And I guess I should add that our constitution and history make liberty and minimal government power the default here, so all of the authoritarianism that's come with covid is an attack on what was once a free country. Which is why I think it's better if you leave if you don't like it.

I think there's a problem with assuming that basic libretarian thinking is about freedom though. I personally value my and others' freedom to not be murdered over the freedom to murder people. There are an awful lot of unjust laws that can color people's view on acting as a society - but there are also quite necessary forces in there to make sure that people have the ability to live good lives.

My central philosophy in life is basically to strive to have a positive net impact on those around me - and it's why I find that old Franklin quote "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." so problematic - it comes from a good place (basically it can, IMO be read as a scathing indictment of America's response to 9/11) but it gets taken so far overboard so often. Everyone just wants to live, when we're threatened with an existential (for some of us) threat like a pandemic, we need to coordinate an appropriate group response to sanely respond to it. When the threat is minor we can delegate that to the individual and let folks do as they will - but when we're talking about a pandemic group action is required to overcome the issue.

I'm fine seeing wide ranging debates on the political stage over national drug care and the like - but this pandemic is a very serious threat that has killed a lot of Canadians. I don't think it's fair to paint pretty reasonable quarantine restrictions as authoritarian when that word, to so many people, draws up the image of Stalin or Hitler.

> I personally value my and others' freedom to not be murdered over the freedom to murder people.

I personally think that the rule should be "don't impose on others".

The murder example you used is an imposition on another person. Telling someone that they can't impose on someone else is not an imposition, it is preventing an imposition.

There can be problems if we allow the majority to impose whatever they want on the minority. It seems that many people seem are ok with that, as long as they are in the majority.

I mostly agree with that take. I just think the discussion is more complex when we're talking about a pandemic - acting personally in a reckless manner is imposing your risks on others. Base jumping off a bridge with no expectation of medical care is a personal risk - taking the subway without a mask on when you're feeling ill in the middle of a pandemic is a shared risk.

I agree that the discussion about pandemic lockdowns is more complex. Good and honest people can look at the same data and disagree on how to handle something like this, even individuals who share the same age and health related covid risks. Some mitigation measures work better than others. Lockdowns have a negative impact, and this needs to be taken into account also.

I think a lot has to do with quantifying the risk. We don't mandate masks during flu season. Covid has killed 10 times as many people per year in the U.S. than a bad flu season. Somewhere in between is where we as a society have drawn the line, at least on short notice for a scary new virus. And that line is in a state of flux, given better treatments, vaccines, less deadly variants, and lockdown fatigue, etc. It seems that the numbers matter when it comes to these issues, which is why we don't lock down or mandate masks every year for the flu and other diseases.

If the numbers matter then it is a shame that the media didn't do a better job of informing people. It seems that the headlines were focused on worst case scenarios, anecdotes, and controversy at the expense of probabilities, perspective, and measurements.

Personally I wish that we could have given N95 masks, which effectively protect the wearer, to everyone who felt vulnerable and was unable to isolate.

"our constitution and history make liberty and minimal government power the default here, so all of the authoritarianism that's come with covid is an attack on what was once a free country"

I usually see Canada being described the other way around, and to be honest if someone asked me for the most free countries Canada would not be the first in my list.

>Canada is an abstract concept - just like Florida

Ah, the same mindset that caused Justin Trudeau to say

>There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada ... the first postnational state.

in a New York Times interview (<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/magazine/trudeaus-canada-...>). If he hadn't been explicitly quoted, his supporters would say that attributing such words to Trudeau is actually an alt-right white-nationalist Trumptard conspiracy theory to make him look bad.

Nah, I'd just say it was historically ignorant, because lots of superstates without a strong uniting identity have been formed, especially as part of decolonialization, but most of them have at some point (not always immediately after independence) viewed the lack of uniting identity as a problem to solve.

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