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Comment by theCrowing | Hacker News Reader

He is right but I hate people talking about the government like it's some random entity. You are able to vote, you can decide who is the government AND here comes to the kicker you can even be IN the government. You just prefer to not be, you prefer to build artificial stuff to circumvent what your elected government does. It's so counterintuitive.

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I don't really like this idea that voting will fix all problems and dangers in government. In fact, voting could be a cause of the danger. It is called tyranny of the majority.

And that's why governments are more complex than straight democracy. I love how people bring up the tyranny of the majority as some counter to modern democratic government, all the while providing no viable alternative.

What, do you want the tyranny of the minority? Are you proposing some sort of fascism?

What about a majority of people agreeing that adults should leave each other alone?

They don't. So what now?

Use signal.

I am proposing that people have certain rights even if you don't want them to.

I think it's idealist to think any of these things will help even one bit with the problems Parent is talking about.

And it's not idealist to believe the opposite?

No because that's not ideal. But it is realistic.

agree to disagree.

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2014/08/12/study-you-have...

> the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy

What Signal is doing is infinitely more effective than voting for this year's media-approved career politician.

And one simple bug or a bad actor could bring it all down.

Counter: https://www.vox.com/2016/5/9/11502464/gilens-page-oligarchy-... (and it isn’t a left vs right thing, Vox is replying to a whole bunch of coverage from all angles; I’ve mostly seen Gilens&Page posted from the left).

If only you hadn't used Breitbart, funded by the very people who seek to ensure most people have a near-zero impact on public policy.

The world seems to have a number of governments that don't respond kindly to criticism from their own citizens, so that leaves other governments the job of restraining them.

   > you can decide who is the government

Not really, not in any meaningful way. We can vote for a handful of people every couple of years, but we get no say in the many thousands of people actually running the government from administration to administration, and with no oversight from the people.

I have the ability to participate in a handful of governments by voting. There are countless government officials around the world who might like access to my signal conversations. I don’t have any say for most of them. That’s why I’m glad I can use a service like Signal offers.

By that logic one shouldn't ever criticise let's say, Google (a separate entity), because in theory one could get a job there, work their way up to be CEO and then change how the company works. In fact, why ever criticise anything or express any opinion when instead you could be 'doing something about it'?

I think it's okay for people to express their opinion on the internet, and it's not a moral failing that they are doing that instead of, as you suggest elsewhere, running for office, getting elected, writing a bill and finding allies.

> AND here comes to the kicker you can even be IN the government

This is (in many cases) a lie. The system is set up in a way that only the political class can realistically run for political office.

proof it. the last election cycle tells a different story.

How do I vote out the FBI/CIA/NSA/ATF? The politicians change and they all stay the same or get more powerful

Well, get elected write a bill and find allies. That's how.

Who would have thought it could be so simple?

Nobody said it is easy and that's why you don't do it and prefer to write sarcastic comments on the internet.

Your self-righteous indignation is really no better, posting to others that their solution is obviously a task so grand that most who endeavor to attempt it fail (aka every candidate who doesn't get elected.) It reads like a very shallow attempt at pragmatism.

Act and the whole world will move.

we have a working solution to the problem of the cia snooping on political dissidents and for some reason you want us to abandon it and switch to a solution that won't work

why is that

No, you believe you have a working solution, but you can't verify it. You know how you could verify it?

a critical press free of official censorship and intimidation which can protect its sources with free software and strong encryption (verified by free academic inquiry into its security) and funded anonymously by strongly anonymous cryptocurrency

and how could one make sure that the press is free?

do you mean to verify that it is free or to cause it to be free

I don't think that poster is saying to ban Signal. A minority of people want to ban Signal. As it is Signal is legal and that's good. Democracy is also good. And yes people should participate in democracy rather than simply posting angry internet comments. Participating in democracy is also good.

well, democracy is better than dictatorship or monarchy, but that's damning it with faint praise

democracy didn't save the cherokees or the melians because they weren't voters

Using government is an effective solution. It's slow, but it's a dedicated political campaign that overturned roe v wade.

Cryptography isnt a solution to this because wrench attacks will continue to exist

i used to believe that too

>It's slow, but it's a dedicated political campaign that overturned roe v wade.

A President elected by a minority of voters under a system designed to disenfranchise the majority, who selected a panel of Supreme Court judges for life terms, themselves selected by a right-wing think tank specifically for their willingness to overturn Roe V. Wade, which had the support of the majority of the population and was settled law for nearly half a century.

That demonstrates the solution of government is only effective for a specific demographic... ironically the demographic that's been claiming everything is rigged against them for the last decade. For everyone else participating in the system seems like a fool's errand. One side was willing to risk sedition to get what it wanted, and suffered no real consequences, while the other side seems incapable of opposing the status quo, almost as if it's just there to provide the illusion of a choice between two sides.

I can see why people want to opt out. I vote, and I'm still going to vote on principle, just because I want to go down fighting, but I'm under no illusions that my vote is anything but a farce.

The senate had their computers compromised by the CIA. When caught they apologized and no one went to jail.

Tell me again about how voting is an “effective solution”.

Wow, it's so simple and easy, how has no one thought of that before and tried it?

Nobody said it is easy and that's why you don't do it and prefer to write sarcastic comments on the internet.

Why aren't you doing it, then?

Oh, right, because it's impossible.

But I am, we fought a lot of battles and won over the last years with the previous German government, got the new one to adopt most of our (CCC) proposals and are now fighting again because of some proposals are again overreaching.

We aren’t talking about Germany, we are talking about the US (the article that sparked the discussion was in the New York Times). The US has an entirely different (and much less fair or representative) political system to Germany.

Simplistic "but hard" proposals beget sarcastic replies. I could enumerate some reasons why what you said is overly simplistic and ignores some harsh realities but I expect the response to be another variant of "no one said it would be easy". I guess no one is allowed to have an opinion on a topic without being prepared to martyr themselves for it?

So as with the topic at hand you assume a certain outcome even in discussions you try to derail with low effort jibs, got it.

This is a classic problem. You have political and institutional elements in every system. (In the old days, the institutional elements were the clerics of various religions.)

A solution is to indoctrinate bureaucratic elements of government to follow political leadership, but this trick only works in authoritarian systems, like USSR, and requires periodic show trials and executions, or in the military (thus: bootcamp).

This is one of the areas where machine intelligence could end up saving the day for humanity. Bureaucracies can potentially be replaced in toto by informational systems at some point. I think only then will we get to try actual democracy democracy.

Your vote is one vote among many. You need to convince everyone else to vote with you too, including the politicians that get elected.

Otherwise, you need to run for yourself.

You won't get what you want done if you don't participate, and voting is the bare minimum of participation you can do

Voting does fuck all and everybody knows it. The only beneficiaries of the ability to vote are the tyrants who get to blame the result of their depravity on the people they oppress: the "voters."

Maybe federally (or even state-wide). Locally you can have a MASSIVE impact, and local politics in many ways trickles up to the national level.

edit: ymmv, hard work & organizational skills still required

My neighborhood council is not the one doing mass wiretapping. That’s the federal government (and, presumably, the central governments of other countries too).

Local politics is a sham. My local AT&T fiber node is not being tapped by my local government. Traitorous elements within the NSA conspired to defraud the United States by violating our constitutional rights and tap my local fiber grid.

If you make $150k/year half your paycheck goes towards funding traitors to the United States of America, funding people actively seek to undermine the constitution.

How? If I live in a town/city/state/whatever where 70% support party X unquestionably what good is voting in the elections going to be if I support the Y candidate? I’ll always be outvoted unless the local majority absolutely fails to show up.

I met a guy running for congress a couple years back and had some discussion. We didn’t align politically but he seemed like a genuine guy who cared about helping people in his district more than reciting the party line and joining in on culture wars, and ultimately that screwed him out of the election.

The only time I can’t understand voting is in swing places where a small margin can make a difference, but even then I wouldn’t vote given some of the people on both sides running.

No one voted for the bay of pigs. No one voted for MKULTRA.

Stop pretending these organizations represent democratic interests, or are beholden to democratic forces.

We pay for them, but they do not serve us.

You don't, because most voters do want FBI and CIA and NSA and ATF to do their jobs and want the government to assign sufficient resources to stay the same or get more powerful. Politicians explicitly argue for such policies, and gain votes because of them, not despite them; this direction isn't one of those where politicians verbally support one thing and act otherwise, they put this stuff in their speeches and ads.

You should convince other voters to agree with your policy first, and if you can't, then you should concede that FBI/CIA/NSA/ATF shouldn't get voted out even if you want them to.

>because most voters do want FBI and CIA and NSA and ATF to do their jobs

The primary means through which said voters learn about these institutions are controlled by said institutions.

The FBI/ATF murdered hundreds of people at Waco, the CIA murdered the elected president of the United States.

These are not passive institutions that serve the people, they are hostile mafias hell bent on our subjugation, and inherently incompatible with the concept of democracy.

Correct in theory but completely wrong in practice

Voting is least worst system. Majority have no clue about who exactly they are voting in and will fall for same lies every election

More so to circumvent the dim-witted will of my neighbors.

And he thinks you are the dim-witted neighbor so to get an actual idea if you or he is dim-witted you need outside data.

The idea that dim-witted neighbors get to have a say in how you live your life is kinda gross.

Why would I want to be in the government unless I wanted to impose my will on someone else? People like that are the people I least want to be governed by.

Your government is torturing and killing people on your behalf.

Are you cool with that? Or is voting ineffective at stopping them?

Ah...yes, the everyone on the internet is American approach. If you live in a country that's fucked up in your own views without doing the bare minimum (ie. vote) against it the one who is fucked up is, YOU.

Which country do you live in where you think they aren’t doing this?

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