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Comment by phpisthebest | Hacker News Reader

I understand the resistance cynicism, however your statement about democracy seems to be more faith based than any kind of data

What data do you have to support the position that "democracy ultimately is still doing its job. " further what "job" do you believe democracy is doing.

I can point to many data points that show it is not, the for mentioned lack of accountability. The fact that most of the voting population does not even vote. I can point to research studies like that from political scientists Martin Gilens and Benjamin Paige [1] that shows Average citizens have little impact on public policy. I have all kinds of data, and clear examples in history to support my position, I would be interested in seeing a counter offer

[1] https://pnhp.org/news/gilens-and-page-average-citizens-have-...

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Look at the human rights status of democratic vs. non-democratic or faux-democratic countries, that speaks for itself pretty well.

You can point out individual points of data as much as you want, the end result is what matters.

Have you seen journalists attacking a dictatorship while living there, and go unpunished? Have you seen the same, but on democratic countries?

That should answer it.

Nothing bad happened to snowden after all right?

Snowden wasn't a journalist, he was a contractor with a security clearance who leaked classified information to others and didn't go through any legally recognised whistleblowing channels. He broke the law and the conditions of his clearance.

Now you could argue that he still did a good thing, and perhaps that would have been taken into account by the jury in what would have been a proper trial in a civilian court had he not left the country.

None of the journalists who reported on those leaks were imprisoned or harmed. In fact, those on beats that require them to have accreditation to the White House, Pentagon, etc still have that accreditation.

This is fundamentally and vastly different to what happens to journalists in China, Russia, and similarly authoritarian states.

Well this brings up another failure or short coming of our implementation of "democracy". How can the voting public hold the FBI, CIA, NSA, etc accountable as people here seems to claim we do by voting if we are not allowed to know what they are doing, and if anyone that is given access to info about what they are doing releases that we put them in a cage or drive them out the country.

"National Security" is often used to cover up government abuse, the public only knows of a few rare instances of this abuse and based on those I can pretty much assume the abuses are FAR FAR more extensive than has been reveled to the public and there is great incentive by government to classify everything to ensure there is never any accountability. Just look at the actions around these JFK files that multiple administrations have tried to declassify, or the Torture report that clearly the CIA violated the law even during the investigation

You must have immense trust, not backed by any rational data to support that trust, to proclaim Snowden an enemy of the people simply because he violated state secrets laws, laws that IMO should be unconstitutional in the first place, and are completely antithetical to a functional democracy.

If the government can keep secrets from the voters, then the voters can not hold them accountable, it is as simple as that

Perhaps the leaders of the democratic countries realised that journalists attacking them keeps the illusion alive

What you wrote there effectively amounts to:

> perhaps the illusion not actually being an illusion is what keeps it alive

> Have you seen journalists attacking a dictatorship while living there, and go unpunished? Have you seen the same, but on democratic countries?

After Glenn Greenwald reported on the 2013 leaks, the IC and news media started up a bunch of threats of treason and were questioning his status as a journalist (to make him more legally at fault)

This doesn't necessarily contradict your statement, given we state the obvious that the US govt (and executive agencies especially) are not democratic

> Have you seen journalists attacking a dictatorship while living there, and go unpunished?

You mean like Kashoggi, right?

Could you post something other than the Paige study? That one has more than enough question marks to be taking its broadest claims at face value. Example: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-...

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