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Comment by evan_ | Hacker News Reader

> The “silent majority” was used by President Richard Nixon during his presidency and his campaign against the Vietnam war. He spoke to the people who were not actively voicing their opinions and who were overshadowed by the vocal few who were supporting the war.

This is a shocking misunderstanding of history. The “silent majority” Nixon spoke of were folks opposed to anti-war protests. Nixon intentionally prolonged the war for political gain- killing additional thousands of people.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nixon-prolonged-vi...

If you ever find yourself about to say that Nixon did something that a non-evil person would do, you’d better triple check your facts.

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>If you ever find yourself about to say that Nixon did something that a non-evil person would do, you’d better triple check your facts.

I mean, he did give us the EPA. What the ulterior motive was, I'm unsure.

I believe it was to undercut the numerous state-level organisations that had started appearing, consolidating power with the federal govt (and executive branch, specifically)

But you triple checked it, that's the point. Default evil.

But Nixon said himself [1,2] that “I’m not a crook”! Who would ever doubt the word of a politician?

[1] https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/nixon-insists-th...

[2] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/video/richard-nixon-im-crook...

And most politicians have never said they aren't crooks, so it checks out nicely with the facts.

Huh, that’s funny. Even though the author wrote the opposite, I still read exactly what you said.

>If you ever find yourself about to say that Nixon did something that a non-evil person would do, you’d better triple check your facts.

Actually Nixon did several things "a non-evil person would do", Nixon as evil is a carricature.

Like giving back Native American lands, or green-lighting the first major environmental protection legislation, or to get talking with China. And of course the Vietnam war itself was escalated by the "good" JFK, and even more so Johnson.

Later presidents did things many times worse than Nixon (his Watergate business included) and got off scot-free. But Nixon had an ugly mug, and was an old-style politician, in an era when the boomers were young and "rebellious" and wanted someone more trendy.

I've never been into history, so my perception of the guy was "formed" almost entirely by Futurama. So, in reality I don't know anything about Nixon except I do not want him to get Cambodian on my ass

> It is estimated that between 50,000 and 150,000 people were killed during the bombing of Cambodia between 1970 and 1973.[152]

I guess Wikipedia is all wrong again, huh

He very nearly signed a Basic Income law. I originally read that the Democrats voted against it because it was too low, but more recently read that someone convinced Nixon that a Basic Income would have terrible consequences based on some faulty historical information about the Speenhamland system, which turned Nixon against BI. But it was close; he could have made history in a much more positive way than what we currently remember him for.

The seventies were an odd time - the generation who had come of age during WWII were in power. And WWII had the strangest historical anomoly - wealth was most evenly distributed post WWII than at any time prior. And it was working. It seemed a great idea to experiment with other ways to keep wealth fairly distributed. What a shame power and wealth found it's way back to the few.

We will have to fix that. preferably without a global war

Everyone was equal because they bombed most of the existing capital until there were only smoking craters left and set the poor to killing each other. It should be a great example of why inequality is a good thing - everyone wants to solve inequality by raising the poor up to be billionaires, but the only way we actually know how is to destroy all the capital that the billionaires own so we all have access to nothing.

Someone else being well off doesn't have to make life worse for anyone. People need to live with that truth.

Throughout human history someone being wealthy almost always meant someone else being exploited - from obvious chattel slavery to less obvious trading networks

That these exploitations often created empires that created institutions that themselves promoted higher efficiency in trade (like protecting from piracy and brigands) was a good thing. But trade, whilst always a win win, can be and for empires always was structured to win more towards the centre of the empire

This structural inequality is found everywhere. In strong and weak forms. A weak form is commonly known - wealthy people "cheat" to get their kids into MIT or Harvard, (or even being wealthy is a cheat) and then the networks formed their help with access to resources later (see VC funds two kids from MIT with idea for ...)

Strong examples of structural inequality are found in say the Russian Federations army where the head of the armed forces has multiple houses and yachts and oddly the conscripts are fighting on a dollar a day and often come from rural impoverished areas.

None of this your fault.

But we choose our structures, our institutions in the same way we choose our built environments. If we have Houston-like 20 lane highways with nose to nose traffic when we could have please t walkable cities with electric trams and steeet cafes then yeah, none of that is the fault of the people in the traffic jams.

But it was a choice. A choice made in these cases in a democracy.

And we just assume that if people were given informed choices they would not have gone "hell yeah 20 lane highway".

So the solution to bad structures, bad institutions, bad urban environments is democracy. Is people making their voices heard and choices being made that are the informed choices people want (I assume most people will vote for "more equal")

Yet the next step is a leap of faith. Faith in democracy and human intelligence

The networks will work to keep themselves in power and are a centralising force (gather more power to self)

but human wealth now depends not on control of land but intelligent use of excess energy and political stability

So does someone have wealth today? That's nice. Is the structure of how they got it a fair one? Is it right that someone who has capital today should continue to direct the use of that capital? Is it fair that a founder gets 80% of the shares but the first engineer gets 1%? I know it was a trade but capitalism is structured like the above empires were structured - to benefit the capital city.

Is that the only way to structure the allocation of resources in the planet?

The use of coal and oil has seen an outrageous chnage in human wealth. Fantastic. And the conditions for that industrial revolution are so weird that tinkering with it seems so risky. but the two world wars showed that it is a fairly robust revolution- and if we want to get out from the oil / CO2 trap and into a sustainable future we need to overcome bad resource allocation - it's time to try new options. Private Companies are undemocratic and control about 50% of western wealth, is a hierarchy like that the best way to allocate and motivate resources? Most western nations are highly centralised - does that make for th best local decisions?

There are options

This is why those that benefit from the current status quo are trying to dismantle and destroy education, right? We can't let the people read, know, or think about what you wrote. It's destabilizing and "dangerous" to their way of life.

Err. I think that is quite extreme.

What we are seeing is an increasing number of wealthy people trying to fit into a system designed for a smaller number. I mean Harvard takes on a freshman year of 2,000 out of something like 3 million 18 year olds.

Most Ivy Leagues will have a small airport nearby. Usually Cessnas etc. On graduation day that thing is full of private Lear Jets.

The plain old wealthy, someone who worked hard built a successful company and retires - the American dream kind of thing we imagine here on HN. That person does not get a ducking look in at Harvard.

The system is failing everyone - which is kind of weird.

But nah. I don't think there are back rooms with smoke and cackling bankers working out how to stop the poor from reading.

I mean that was true in slave owning southern states but that's now just toned down to simple racism in the country club.

The problem is that the racists in the country club are only slowly coming aware how much the system is ducking them. None of them are able to say their daughters got into Harvard.

Hence Trumps popularity. He probably won't fix it but he at least says he will and blames the country club racists problems on the people that they hate (as opposed to the actual cause)

Well, mass education was never about learning to read, know, or think. It was about making factory workers, clerks, and (later) office staff.

Elite education, and especially luxury education for the children of the elite, was about learning to read, know, and think - mainly because it was still tied to an earlier humanistic and scholarly tradition where those things were important.

That lasted a short while, say until the 70s.

Now, even elite education is not about that kind of learning anymore, as those in power don't really need or appreciate those skills.

I think this is a re-work of "Chinas Totalitarian Bet". So there is a theory that the reason Middle East armies are basically expensive and crap is that the elites of the Saudis and Kuwaitis and Iraqis have loads of money but are despots and won't trust anyone but the most loyal / ethnically familial close with real power. So the tank battalions are lead not by talented colonels but by a cousin of the royal family. Spend six million training a nobody from nowhere Tom Cruise to be a fighter pilot? Make all the princes pilots. Let a sergeant train with a Anti Tank weapon. No way. They might aim at the cousin in his tank.

This is the opposite of the (more) meritocratic USA. Decision making is pushed downwards and the coherent mission is aligning all.

It is worth noting that a lot of ISIS / al-quida success is attributed to having to let go of this attitude - their central driving mission meant everyone was loyal, this decision making and training could be pushed right down into cells. Anyway I am not an expert here.

The point being that Totalitarian regiemes have a hard time making militaries that are flexible and responsive. And that rolls over to factories and civil servants etc.

Now the guardian writer Jon (?) and up with Chinas Totalitarian Bet - china knows this but thinks software and the surveillance state changes the game enough that either no-one can get out of line enough before their digital footprint catches them (again see al-qeueda) or that they can just give direct orders to be followed like Amazon warehouse packers and that will allow such flexibility and change.

So yeah mass education was about teaching the masses to think. And the people in say Victorian Britain who said this will end their way of life were actually right - fortunately for us.

The question now is can software replace our thinking? Can we all just do as we are told ? Will a society of drones be worth living in or even be productive enough to survive? And will the opposite, a more democratic more meritocratic and more fair and generous society be more productive innovative and worthwhile. I say Yes to the last and no to all others.

>He very nearly signed a Basic Income law.

What such law ever passed Congress during his tenure?

> to get talking with China.

What a waste of time that was.

It was one of the early events in the greatest material bettering of human existence in the history of history.

You have high standards.

It was quite the opposite. It gave the US capitalism a new lease of life in the 90s, and of course it helped China (that's 1.6 billion people and counting) grow.

Yes. The first thing the chinese government did after Nixon ended sanctions and allowed trade, was to order 12 fertiliser plants from R W Kellogs (not the cornflakes one). Giant things that squeeze ammonia out of the atmosphere. That meant climbing out of a starvation cycle.

Nixon going to China probably saved 100s of millions of lives. Chinese lives of course but lives. Sadly for Nixon the lives he saved did not vote in Chicago.

Nixon was not evil. People arent evil. Decisions people make are evil.

People are definitely evil. Just never from their own perspective.

Fixed it. Thank you :) Just took the quote directly from Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_majority#:~:text=The%20...

Just to save time for other people who might be wondering how Wikipedia could get this wrong, bndr seems to have forgotten to read the last part of the admittedly long sentence in Wikipedia. It lists several vocal groups.

I think you completely misread that article...

> If you ever find yourself about to say that Nixon did something that a non-evil person would do, you’d better triple check your facts.

Well naturally. He's a right-wing politician. See also Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Benito Mussolini, and any of the rest.

> folks opposed to anti-war protests

That's a very specific wording; were these people also pro-war, or did they just not like the protests themselves?

I think that's an important distinction to make. In my country we've had farmer's protests (environmental legislation has caused the government to target some farmers, things like forced buy-outs. It's all on paper and wouldn't affect that many people or the food supply since 65% is exported anyway, but still); while a lot of people agree and stand with the farmers, what they don't agree with is the protests they've done where they block the highways, first with just slow moving tractors as they made their way to the government seat, more recently with barricades, manure and burning hay bales. That affects people directly, the upsdie-down flags and slogans on fields along the roadside don't.

>That affects people directly, the upsdie-down flags and slogans on fields along the roadside don't

Those also don't achieve anything. The only form of protesting that the population at large accepts are either illegal or useless

That’s the thing- the war was widely unpopular, but there was a growing reactionary sentiment against the protests, so Nixon gave a speech where he basically said “if you aren’t with me on the war then you’re a dirty hippie” and people feel for it.

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