The UK is an authoritarian, privacy-less, censorship-rife hellhole.
Edit: To be fair that’s done by a UK-based company but I don’t think they would have much reason to be biased
I mean were it a non-western country with this level of surveillance, in the open corruption, expectation to conform, number of unelected PMs, orchestrated suppression of political opposition, regulation of the press etc. we would have no trouble calling it worse things.
Source: lived there.
All PMs are "unelected", or at least not elected via a general election, beyond their election as an MP. There's a reason they're called a Prime Minister, not a president or similar. The UK doesn't directly elect the head of the UK government, and it never has. The PM is elected is the leader of the party that gains enough seats in parliament to form a government. Enough seats is determined by the simple question of "would the formed government have a reasonable ability to pass legislation in parliament, as is needed to conduct the business of government", nothing else.
This is the UK chosen form of democracy, the US may prefer a more direct form of democracy, but that's not without its issues either.
Many would argue that the recent trend of PMs trying to appear presidential, and running general election campaigns based on their personal brand, as problematic. As the PM isn’t meant to be an important part of a persons vote. They’re voting for their local MP not the national PM.
Also every PM had to campaign in a general election. They need to be an MP to become PM, that requires them to run in a general election and win their seat.
Just because a system doesn't require something doesn't mean it is legitimate or democratic. It's a personal opinion for sure, but I would call that undemocratic. Many of the systems we in the West consider autocratic do have some sort of 'representation' after all.
> As the PM isn’t meant to be an important part of a persons vote. They’re voting for their local MP not the national PM.
The PM does have a fairly huge impact on how the country is being run, where it is headed, its foreign policy etc. do you want to argue otherwise?
My point is the UK has had multiple PMs in a row who didn't have to make a case for their agenda in front of the people. I call that undemocratic despite what its system says, no system would consider itself authoritarian, that's a judgment passed onto them by 3rd parties.
I think the general expectation in the UK was that this is tolerated because when a new PM comes in, they're expected to win a mandate for their agenda in a general election ASAP.
> Also every PM had to campaign in a general election. They need to be an MP to become PM, that requires them to run in a general election and win their seat.
A MP running for a local seat is something quite different from being a PM, but anyway this is just one aspect of why I think the UK isn't quite as democratic as it presents itself.
I think you risk arguing using a “No true Scotsman” fallacy. There are many forms of democracy, and many countries generally considered democratic don’t require the direct election of their governments leader.
For example the German chancellor is not directly elected. The Dutch prime minister is also not directly elected, neither is the Spanish Prime Minster, or the Prime Minister of Norway. Are they undemocratic as well?
If you look around most long established “democracies”, you’ll find that directly electing the head of government isn’t actual the default.
Indeed the most powerful directly elected politician in the world happens to be the Major of London. They have a surprisingly broad set of powers of a single directly elected politician.
> The PM does have a fairly huge impact on how the country is being run, where it is headed, its foreign policy etc. do you want to argue otherwise?
I most certainly would, as has been quite clearly demonstrated by the long succession of PM the UK has recently had. If the PM is so all powerful, why do they keep failing to get anything done, and keep getting replaced?
> My point is the UK has had multiple PMs in a row who didn't have to make a case for their agenda in front of the people. I call that undemocratic despite what its system says, no system would consider itself authoritarian, that's a judgment passed onto them by 3rd parties.
As a direct consequence of not having to put their agenda in front of the entire UK public, they’ve all failed to achieve anything of note. The only recent PM who could be argued to have achieved anything is Boris Johnson with his signing of the EU Brexit agreement, but he did that after winning a general election!
Every PM since then has been struggling to keep their party together, and struggling to pass anything in parliament, because they lack a strong mandate from the people, and parliament is punishing them for that.
> I think the general expectation in the UK was that this is tolerated because when a new PM comes in, they're expected to win a mandate for their agenda in a general election ASAP.
Until recently this was explicitly illegal. The fixed term parliament act prevented governments from ending their term early and calling an election. Explicitly to prevent the type of abuse that Boris Johnson engaged in, by calling elections when it’s most politically convenient for the government, and thus most likely to result in another win, and an extension to their time in power.
Allowing governments to call elections when it suites them is terrible idea for a democracy. It’s so trivial for the ruling party to abuse.
> A MP running for a local seat is something quite different from being a PM, but anyway this is just one aspect of why I think the UK isn't quite as democratic as it presents itself.
The UK electoral system could certainly use some work. But direct democracies aren’t inherently better. The US uses direct democracy for electing their president, but I’m not sure I would hold up the US as the pinnacle of democracy, not with the endless gerrymandering, political devision, and drive by parties to win at all costs.
It seemed to me like Johnson had quite the effect on how the pandemic was handled for another example.
Yet you keep arguing they have no influence.
Yes, they're not Saudi kings, nobody's arguing that. Yet you're underselling their power.
Also, it seems to me that you may be confusing democracy with tradition. Anyway, agree to disagree.
If so many important things are not up for the vote, is it really a democracy?
>>If so many important things are not up for the vote, is it really a democracy?
And, assuming they have an overall majority in parliament, this then means that every decision they subsequently make over the next 4 years is legitimised in advance because "you voted for this".
The only true democracy would involve regular referenda, whenever major new policies were proposed. This should be technically feasible with current technology. But, given the last time we had a referendum in UK the people didn't vote for the option they were meant to, I'm doubtful we'd ever see such a thing implemented.
You mean "the people believed false promises and voted for something they inevitably regretted".
https://qz.com/brexit-polls-support-popularity-eu-uk-1849952...
But i agree the unelected nature of it is undemocratic. It should be replaced with a second elected house that can perform the same role of putting a check on the HOC.
Full HOL reform would be a good way to start the move towards a proportional representation electoral system in the UK. Make the reformed second chamber a PR elected house and give them a slightly longer/fixed period between elections to shield them from the chaos of a general election and party politics.
This is the best suggestion I've seen on HoL reform, ever. I mean, it'll never happen, but that really is a great idea, and would mean that the chamber would be clearly different from the Commons, which I've not seen another proposal making sense on this area.
Mostly abolished.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/By-elections_to_the_House_of_L...
Ah, another one of those “if I were a dictator” comments…
UK citizens have democratically decided they don’t want proportional representation. But I guess you don’t care
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_United_Kingdom_Alternativ...
When was that?
In fact had the AV referendum vote gone the other way it is likely that the composition of our Parliament after the following general election would have been less proportional to the overall share of the national vote won by each party.
AV has certain desirable characteristics if you want to elect a single representative fairly. It makes little sense as a way to elect a group of representatives fairly. It sure is a great strawman if you're trying to kill off interest in real and appropriate electoral reform and fixing the systemic democratic deficits clearly evident in the current system we use to elect our MPs though.
Yes the rules are silly, but in practice all the House of Lords can do is debate, suggest changes，and delay a little.
Personally I think that the US, Canada, UK, Germany, etc should all fall into a general "Western Democracy" category. Roughly speaking we all have the same rights, though details differ and depending on where you stand in politics you may place one above the other, but at that point it becomes completely subjective.
Bills like these erode our democracy and we have to be vigilant, we also need to realize that in any western democratic country, we are light years away from true authoritarianism.
Democracy can and often does result in the most authoritarian systems of government, aka Mob Rule...
Just because 51% agree to strip 49% of freedom does not make to good, proper, or ethical.
Modern society fetishes democracy as the best thing ever, it is not
A dictatorship can be less authoritarian than a democracy.
While it is theoretically possible, I have a hard time coming up with an example where that is the case. What dictatorship is less authoritarian than democracies?
There is a well known phrase, the "tyranny of the majority." It is in fact extremely common for a majority to oppress a minority within a democratic system -- often with severely authoritarian methods.
When you define a large mass of people as property and deny them the franchise, that's not oppression through democracy, because its not democracy at all.
In any event it's not necessary to argue this point because there are no shortage of further examples which include authoritarianism exerted over non-disenfranchised demographics. Here are some further examples of authoritarianism within the USA:
* Japanese internment of 1940s
* Every historic invocation of martial law (more than a dozen)
* Every historic invocation of conscription
* Historic oppression of women, which continued well after the suffrage movement in a variety of ways
There are of course countless other examples throughout the history of democracies. Even a cursory reading can uncover countless examples, from contemporary democracies all the way back to its origins in ancient Greece. It is not uncommon for a majority rule system to impose authoritarian controls -- in fact, it is the norm. This is why we have concepts such as constitutional rights, which are specifically designed to balance against the authoritarian tendencies of majority rule.
Its obviously aristocratic republican with a quite open hostility to democracy at the beginning of that period, evolving over time in a rather unequal way in different parts of the union toward democracy (in both ideals and substance, though not in lockstep between the two.)
Also, Calvin's dad faces an unprecedented decline in the polls after grounding Calvin for flushing the entire household inventory of toilet paper.
Democracy and lack of authoritarianism don't correlate perfectly. I may be understating this, actually.
It keeps its populus under educated and feeds them hate and tales of past glory.
Its an embarrasment.
The democracy is just another element of that fantasy world they project. With first past the post democracy cannot be a goal.
The U.K. has a wide-reaching internet censorship scheme too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_blocking_in_the_United_Kin...
The class system has led to a society where the middle classes consider themselves the moral guardians of the working class, while looking up at the upper classes with a mixture of contempt and envy. Middle-class right wing readers of the Daily Mail and left wing readers of the Guardian are more similar in that regard than either would like to admit.
So (while coming from a different political place) both want to crack down on the evils of the internet to Protect the Children and, of course, to save the working classes from themselves (and protect their neighbourhoods: think of the property prices!).
As both Conservatives and Labour need their votes, authoritarian cracking-down on issue du jour is always a good vote winner. Today it's the internet, back in the 80s it was MDMA and rave parties, back in the 1800s it was gin palaces and gambling. Same thing though: Britain's self-appointed moral guardians and their representatives in the media and parliament wagging their finger at everyone else.
I was telling a coworker recently that I always use a VPN while browsing the internet. He was genuinely confused, and was asking why I would care about privacy unless I have something to hide. And this isn't just one person. I've had similar reactions when I've told people I only use signal, or refuse to use cloud storage, or won't list employment history on LinkedIn for privacy reasons. I get that I have an extreme preference for privacy, but people in the UK don't even understand why someone like myself value privacy.
This attitude is also adopted by our leaders and businesses, who by various means, mass surveil the public, typically citing "safety".
The issue with the UK isn't just that our government don't value privacy, it's that as a people we don't even understand the value of privacy.
That's also the situation in the US if you go through any kind of self checkout. Maybe not in your face but just slightly above it.
Self-checkout has more obvious cctv because you're giving more power to the shopper; self-checkout is just one step away from allowing someone to just walk out with the product a la Amazon Fresh (which has a literal FIELD of cameras).
Businesses have CCTV for the same reason that people have cameras fitted to their houses. 99.99999% of the time things will be fine, but the time something isn't, it's sure nice to have the evidence.
Which supermarket is that? I've never seen anything overt like that where I usually shop and doing it covertly would be risky in multiple ways.
I remember Xi or an official even praising London about that though I cant find a citation.
The government has no real ability to gain access to those cameras beyond asking nicely, or getting an actual search warrant. Even then the police still have to visit the site with the CCTV camera, and mostly capture the footage by filming the screen of the CCTV system with their phone (I've talked to Met police officers about this, and seen the footage). Most of those cameras barely work, point in the wrong direction, aren't recording, are so fuzzy you can't see anything. So comparing it to China is an apples to orange comparison.
The idea that these CCTV cameras could be used by the state for surveillance is laughable. The police struggle to get hold of the footage for actual in-progress investigations where they have real leads, and pretty much know what the footage is gonna show them already. So there's not a chance in hell the state could ever hope to get some sort of live feed of this data.
I don't think so, they had extensive CCTV capabilities 30 years ago and your comical suggestion that none of it really works is not plausible.
Besides which, the cameras themselves are a form of social signaling to remind people they're being watched - essentially the modern version of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon.
> https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-30978995.amp
Article on how much useless CCTV exists in the UK.
> https://clarionuk.com/resources/how-many-cctv-cameras-are-in...
Estimates 4.4 million cameras in London, only 20k run by councils.
> they had extensive CCTV capabilities 30 years ago and your comical suggestion that none of it really works is not plausible.
Perhaps you can provide some sources for your assertions?
> Besides which, the cameras themselves are a form of social signaling to remind people they're being watched - essentially the modern version of Jeremy Bentham's panopticon.
That’s an entirely separate discussion.
That’s an entirely separate discussion.
It's well within the scope of the surveillance society the UK is flirting with, just as CCTV is relevant to a discussion about encrypted messaging software.
Your source seems to support my position more than yours. Perhaps you could explain how research showing that CCTV is frequently of low quality, and doesn’t seem to improve crime solve rates, demonstrates the UK governments extensive CCTV capabilities?
> It's well within the scope of the surveillance society the UK is flirting with, just as CCTV is relevant to a discussion about encrypted messaging software.
Your original point, which I refuted, is that London has a surveillance system which would make china proud. I think I’ve shown that no such surveillance system exists in reality. You’re free to move the goal posts, that’s your prerogative, but I’m not interested in chasing them.
But the police didn't have any footage of the event. Not even a business had a camera pointed in the right direction.
>Doesn’t London have one of the most extensive surveillance systems in the world sans china?
</sarcasm>
Similarly a friend that runs a bike shop near a Tesco can't get Tesco to share high resolution video of burgalars breaking into his shop. They have it but it's their corporate policy not to share it.
On the one hand I guess right now all this surveilence is siloed to some degree and so less likely to be abused. On the other these seem like perfectly ligitimate uses of video to fight crime.
When you do have such a conversation, what would you typically give as reason?
>He was genuinely confused, and was asking why I would care about privacy unless I have something to hide...
Of course, the ultimate irony was when David Cameron was PM and the Panama pepers came to light, exposing all his dad's shady dealings and secret offshore bank accounts [1]. Cameron's spokeswoman told the press "A family's finances are their own private affair" This kind of sums up what life in the UK is like. A priveleged ruling class, with utter contempt for the electorate; "Do as we say. Not as we do!".
[0] Daily Fail = The Daily Mail. A right-wing tabloid newspaper which is a by-word for the kind of zzz-elebrity gossip mixed with anti-immigrant "hanging's too good for them" ranting that [unfortunately] appeals to a large enough percentage of the British population, to keep the Tories in power, seemingly for the foreseeable future.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/04/panama-papers-d...
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/07/david-cameron-a...
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/david-camero...
Put another way: the question of whether or not you have "something to hide" isn't yours to answer. Your user name is German; you should understand this better than anyone.
>I think that's a little harsh. Do you live in the UK?
Not helped by the fact there seems to be nothing we can do about it. We're so much a vassal state to the USA that we don't even get to decide our own policies. So maybe better to say "It feels like living in a country which is being ordered to commit national suicide".
Boris Johnson wasn't our doing. Brexit wasn't our doing. Neither was the cavalcade of morons to follow.
We do plenty of dumb and awful things, but this is self-imposed.
>Respectfully, I don't think you can blame the US for electing Tories who are swerving towards the cliff...
That more the result of stupidity and Napoleon syndrome than some magic hold the US has over the UK. The UK, in particular our government, still wants to believe we're a geopolitically important country capable of projecting power and influencing the world. While there's some small element of truth in that belief, our actual relevance on the world stage is far small than our government wishes it was, and is only getting smaller thanks to wonderful incompetence of past 10 years of government.
>Either way, it’s not the fault of the US if the UK acts as a vassal state...
It's only in the US and amongst a self-deluding swathe of British society that this "relationship" is seen as one of equals. The reality is that we're sucking up to the playground bully because we've seen what he does to the kids who won't hand over their dinner money. And we're trying to kid ourselves we're best buddies.
To be fair, most voters in the UK didn't vote for the current government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_United_Kingdom_general_el...
What is a good example?
>> UK just immediately follows whatever the US does, even if it is economically suicidal.
>>What is a good example?
But there are plenty of others, including needlessly antagonising China and sabotaging our previously beneficial economic relations, because the US is spoiling for a fight with China. Ergo UK must do likewise.
EDIT: thanks for all the replies! That means something to me, I'll see if I can't get this sorted out. It's just weird that even the NatWest Twitter customer support account ignores my DMs.
Telling the client "I'm sorry, your account is frozen pending an investigation" might land you in jail. You literally MUST lie to them and feed them a bunch of bullshit.
It's a shitty system, but interestingly, one that was developed by the EU, not specifically the UK.
Your options are; wait until some nameless government agency realises they've made a mistake, and releases your funds, or start a lawsuit and spend lots of time and money fighting to get your money back.
*This word is sadly misused to mean "any unjust system of government". E.g. it is perfectly possible to have a constitutional monarchy, the antithesis of democracy, that respects the right to a fair trial and to face your accuser. Conversely, things people vote for are routinely dismissed as "undemocratic" - in that case, it gets called "populism". As far as I can tell, the words, as (ab)used, have nothing to do with the method of government, and everything to do with the outcome.
>It's a shitty system, but interestingly, one that was developed by the EU...
The first country to propose anti-money laundering (AML) rules is difficult to pinpoint with certainty as different countries developed their AML laws at different times and for different reasons. However, one of the earliest examples of an AML law is the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) of 1970...
The "Know Your Customer" (KYC) rules originated in the United States in the 1970s, along with the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) of 1970....
Other countries began developing their own AML laws in the 1980s and 1990s, with the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) established in 1989 to coordinate international efforts to combat money laundering...
The Financial Action Task Force (FATF) is the global standard-setting body for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing (CFT) policies. It was established in 1989 by the G7 countries, and its recommendations have been widely adopted by countries around the world....
As much as, for the dismay of the average hacker news Joe, don't pray to the holy EU altar, I suspect sure those guidelines were sketched by FATF, an American institution at heart, ironically where such measures are not applied.
The AML framework is xenophobic and goes against things we consider basic rights like being innocent until proven guilty. However, it is not only ignored but applauded by the most progressive crowds that think its defending their countries from barbaric $place_from_the_east_or_south.
>Well it's possible someone tried to make me look suspicious.
After about 5 years I was out of work and needed to cash it in. But, when I tried to withdraw the money, I got hit with an "Unexplained Wealth Order" [or somesuch term], telling me that under AML I needed to fill in some disgustingly intrusive form explaining where I'd got this sum of money from [it was only a few thousand £££, not a fortune]. And, as I said, this was from the savings company which already knew exactly where the money had come from. As they'd watched it build up in small amounts over the previous 5 years or so.
I refused to comply with their AML/KYC. It then took me at least a few months and several letters, threatening them with legal action before they finally agreed to just close my account and return my money.
I also closed my eBay account when they started asking for people to upload scans of their passports to verify their identity.
These companies can fuck right off, as far as I'm concerned. AML/KYC is disgusting and I just wish more people would make a stand and refuse to comply with it.
[0] https://www.moneyhelper.org.uk/en/savings/investing/stocks-a...
I worked as a consultant (permanent position) and had expenses that frequently needed to be refunded by the company. Perhaps they thought this was money laundering??
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investigatory_Powers_Act_2016#...
If you take your democracy and rights seriously.
That should raise even greater alarm bells for you then.
Perhaps it's both absolute and relative.
Either way, as a nation, I'm quite sure we've jumped off at the deep end compared to where we were.
And that's not just a feeling. Take one look at the idiots in charge, peel one layer back, and you'll see for yourself.
We know a little too well what "would somebody think of the childen" did to the internet in Russia.
Most Americans misunderstand what their freedom of speech actually entitles them to. What your freedom of speech actually covers is represented via other legislations over here. And much as I think our government is a farce, we do have access to tell our politicians that. Frankly, if recent politics have taught us anything, it’s that freedom of speech doesn’t protect us from a shitty government being formed.
- right to bear arms
I’m glad we don’t. It’s a fucking stupid right in our modern age. How many shootings do you guys need before you wake up and join the rest of the civilised world with tighter gun control. And for what it’s worth, you can own guns legally in the UK. We just don’t allow unhinged people to roam the streets with guns.
- protection from unreasonable search and seizure
We have that in the U.K.
Given all the problems the US police force suffer from, you’re really not in a position to be gloating about protections from crooked cops.
Don’t get me wrong, the US does get a lot of things right too. But I wouldn’t say it’s ahead of the U.K. (nor most of Europe) in terms of rights. Roughly equivalent perhaps, but not so far ahead that we should all be modelling ourselves after you.
Let’s say americans don’t understand what their rights to speech mean. It doesn’t matter since you didn’t repudiate the fact that they may have stronger speech rights.
You are glad that you don’t have the right to bear arms. But that does not seem to me to refute that a constitution is important to prevent erosion of rights or that the US is ahead in terms of rights. Just that you personally don’t care about that right.
Finally, you state that in the U.K there is also a protection from unreasonable search. Fair enough. But is it stronger than what is in the US? Is it protected in form of a constitutional right or just a law that can be repealed at any time?
The strongest argument is that despite these apparent constitutional guarantees, it has not prevented police from infringing on these rights. I would agree. But that seems to me to be an issue of enforcement. Not having these would mean there would be no legal basis to change police behavior, only a social impetus. That may be enough but I would like to have both options.
The scale of Civil Asset Forfeiture in the US suggests to me that large sections of US society are at risk and have no practical recourse.
Does the US having a written constitution actually help its society to retain their rights, or is it a fig leaf covering the rights you've already lost in practice, and an entitlement preventing society from changing rules that benefit those with power who exercise "rights" that ought not be so set in stone?
In practice, the state may compel speech from the powerless: https://thehill.com/homenews/3256719-47-states-require-the-p...
In practice, only some groups have the unalienable right to bear arms: https://www.history.com/news/black-panthers-gun-control-nra-...
In practice, qualified immunity means there's no way to hold agents of the state accountable for violating your rights: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/20/george...
In the UK, Parliament has stated its intent to abide by the European Convention on Human Rights. It's true that one parliament cannot bind the next -- at any time, the UK parliament may decide to repeal everything and change even the foundations upon which our country's laws are built. The checks and balances in the system (including the House of Lords) protect us from the over-reach of a poor choice of government. Even with a large majority, and a stated aim of repealing the Human Rights Act, the current government has found itself unable to dismantle the our protections to the degree it would like.
I don't think you can argue that the US constitution gives you an inherent advantage in maintaining your rights.
Remember Brexit? It took them almost four years to achieve after the referendum, in part due to decisions by the constitutional court.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_Secretary_of_Stat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_(Miller)_v_The_Prime_Ministe...
For example the POTUS gets to appoint judges which has lead to the courts becoming increasingly partisan. And Trump did a pretty good job of abusing his power left right and centre without any repercussions.
Whereas on the flip side, UK politicians have been taken to court over the lawfulness of various decisions (such as “brexit”) and PMs forced to step down over incidents far less serious than anything that has resulted in POTUS impeachments.
And as much as the US constitution guarantees rights, the constitution can be changed. In fact 2 of the rights described here are amendments themselves.
We can all argue about which political system offers greater safeguards but ultimately it’s all just theoretical debate. A bad actor with sufficient support in either political system could do serious damage to the rights of their citizens.
So I think it’s a erroneous to distil the argument down to such a simplistic model and then argue that America is somehow more free than the U.K. because of it. A more valid argument would be that we are roughly equivalent in a subject that is clearly very complex.
I don’t know how it works in the UK.
Having rights is all well and good, but in the US we’ve see. countless cases of government infringing on those rights requiring government to resolve them (via legal proceedings).
>rights to freedom of speech, right to bear arms, and protection from unreasonable search and seizure...
The people who enshrined the "Right to bear arms" into your constitution envisioned it as a way to keep govenrment in check. If "The Man" has a musket he can oppress me. If I have a musket too, he can't.
Unfortunately, in the 21st century, "The Man" is always going to have a shitload of bigger, more lethal "muskets" than you and could swat you like a fly if he felt like it.
All the right to bear arms does is lead to a situation where your streets are full of guns, violent crime is rampant and your police force is armed to the teeth and more akin to a paramilitary army than your friendly neighbourhood bobby. So that every encounter --even for the likes of a trivial motoring offence, which would be a 5 minute telling off, a bit of grovelling and possibly a fine, anywhere else in Europe or UK-- has the potential to escalate into an armed stand-off or a shooting.
It's just amazing that so many Americans can simply not see this and still have that almost evangelical belief that the microscopically small chance that they could overthrow some future government if it got out of hand [spoiler alert: you couldn't!] is worth the trade-off of living day to day in a society awash with guns, violent crime and mass shootings.
I think you should study how it went down in Afghanistan. This argument simply doesn't hold up to reality.
And we're talking about a civil war where using mass destruction weapons like bombardment is much more likely to be out of the question. Additionally it is much harder to differentiate friend from foe.
Some kid in a bunker in Utah would take his hand off his dick long enough to pilot the drone right down your chimney, and blow you, your family, your gun, your dog, your truck, and about 100m radius worth of your neighbours into snotters, jam, and gravel.
Just like it played out in Afghanistan.
>I think you should study how it went down in Afghanistan. This argument simply doesn't hold up to reality...
You've only got to look at all the unpopular laws that get passed year after year [and not just in the US]. When the possibility of <unpopular law> is first broached, there are dark mutterings that "People won't stand for it!". Then <unpopular law> comes into force, a couple of isolated people resist and get fined or imprisoned and, before you know it, <unpopular law> is an accepted part of "the system" --even if many people don't agree with it.
You've also got to bear in mind that, when <unpopular law> is implemented by your own government, they will sell it as being for the national good. No government is ever going to say 'We're doing this coz we're bastards and want to oppress you!'. It'll be for "national security" or "anti-terrorism" or "to protect the children". And it will fool enough of the people, so that the ones who do "make a stand" won't only be doing so against "The Man" but against most of the rest of the general populace too. They'll see you as being "unpatriotic", a "terrorist sympathiser" or a "defender of paedos" for taking a stand against said law.
Also, oppression is incremental. It's very rare that a country's government moves from [perceived] democracy to [perceived] tyranny over night. And, there again, even amongst the people who would conceivably rise up, everyone will have their own individual "red line" beyond which they'll feel aggrieved enough to act. And who wants to be the first to stick their head above the parapet?
But still, having guns puts a good guard against extreme situations where the boiling frog tactic doesn't work so much - e.g. forceful installation of a communist dictatorship. It won't guard us against slow deterioration but it can serve as a safe guard against hostile takeovers.
Again, how exactly do you see that playing out in reality?
You absolutely could if the country had any significant portion of the population against the government. The military will quickly go into a state of disarray if half of the members are being told to kill their own families.
> to day in a society awash with guns, violent crime and mass shootings.
But it’s not “awash”. I’ve been in the US for >50 years now and have never seen any gun-related crime and only know one person who was robbed in the 80s in New York by a guy who just said he had a gun. I’ve have however seen violent crime involving fists, bats, clubs, brass knuckles, and knives.
This is why when it comes down to it, Americans don’t want to give up their guns. The mass shootings are tragic, but the probability of being impacted by one is so small that people don’t think it’s worth giving them up.
But this would still be true if the families are fighting with pots and pans. And if your enemy is a drone flying at 10000m it really makes no difference if you're fighting with an AR-15 or a pan.
There are people alive who remember being herded into boxcars in Germany, in 2023 a well-run social-democratic beacon of progress and industry in Europe.
I don't like our government. I don't think owning guns would improve the situation, though.
What good do you think you owning a gun will do you?
The worry is twofold: first, not having an armed populace now might allow things to get really bad in the future, whereas in the case where everyone's reasonably well-armed, or has the option to be, it wouldn't have gotten that bad in the first place. Second, if things are really bad at present, bad to the point that fighting seems reasonable, you want to be able to fight. Disarming now means you'll likely be disarmed in an uncertain future, too.
Our modern social democracies seem really stable, but from the perspective of a historian there is no reason to believe they are. They're infants. There's a war in Europe right now, and there are people alive who remember the Holocaust.
330,000,000 potentially armed people (or about 260,000,000 armed adults) is something to be reckoned with. A bunch of goat-herding peasants in Afghanistan fended off not one but both superpowers, and at that mostly with small arms. The fact that the U.S. chooses to arm its population is definitely relevant for the direction its politics goes. Whether that's good or bad, net...well, we never get to know because we never see the counterfactual situation.
And that's going to protect you from a drone strike how, exactly?
>>it's nothing like being a Jew under the Third Reich or, perhaps, living in eastern Ukraine right now...
>>not having an armed populace now might allow things to get really bad in the future, whereas in the case where everyone's reasonably well-armed, or has the option to be, it wouldn't have gotten that bad in the first place...
It's also convenient to forget that, in those times, hatred of the Jews wasn't an exclusively Nazi, or even German, sentiment. In many other parts of the world, Hitler was initially seen as being a "good thing" and giving the Jews what they richly deserved.
Of course, with history being written by the winners, these facts tend to be glossed over now. So Hitler seized power and plunged an oppressed and terrified people into a war they didn't want And the rest of the world was always horrified by the Nazis' treatment of the Jews.
This is what I meant, when I said above that "Oppression is incremental". By the time you realise that you're living under fascism, it's too late to do anything. And you'll be in for a shock if you're depending on your fellow citizens to rally to your "Let's throw off our oppressors!" flag. Most of them will be quite happy to see you dragged off in the night, instead --you stinking Jew-Lover!
[replace "Jew" with "Commie", "Terrorist", "Paedo"... etc. as required by zeitgeist]
And re your point about Ukraine:
The irony is that Russia's justification for seizing areas such as the Donbass in the East is precisely because they say ethnic Russians there were being oppressed by the Ukrainian government. And that was in spite of those ethnic Russians having well-armed militias already in existence. So having an armed population didn't really help there, did it?
And, in the wider context, the Ukrainian resistance to the Russian invasion is being fought by the existing Ukrainian well-trained, professional armed forces, who are being supplied with billions of £££s worth of advanced weaponry.
And they're still taking a pounding.
So the idea that a handful of untrained civilians with their Wal-Mart rifles could have prevented any of this is delusional fantasy.
The thing about the U.S. is it's not a handful. They have more guns in civilian hands than people. It would be very easy for U.S. civilians to arm literally everyone.
And, I should note, the quality of the rifles people own privately is as good as or better than what the military gets. The military does, however, get full-auto.
I take your point about the Nazis. I suppose if I had to point out a difference with respect to the U.S. today, it would be that the right to keep and bear arms is for everyone. Americans really don't discriminate (at least overtly), and that's a core tenet. The Jews in Nazi Germany obviously were or had to be disarmed before terrible things happened to them.
>The thing about the U.S. is it's not a handful. They have more guns in civilian hands than people. It would be very easy for U.S. civilians to arm literally everyone...
And there would also be a sizeable chunk of the population who would just keep their heads down and hope that, if they didn't draw attention to themselves, they'd survive it all.
I mean that is pretty much what the current policing system depends on. Enough people who might be tempted to step out of line are just frightened enough of the possible consequences of getting caught, that the numbers who actually do transgress stay just about manageable.
How much more so would that be true if, instead of a "civilised" interrogation, followed by a fair trial and a justified prison term, the consequences of raising your head above the parapet were being dragged out of bed at night, whisked away somewhere to be beaten into confessing and then put up against a wall and shot?
I think you're massively under-estimating the number of people who would either support an oppressive regime, or would just knuckle under and wait for things to improve.
That stat goes from 0-19 years of age, and the vast majority of deaths are in the older segment. Like everywhere in the United states, it's young Black men killing other young Black men as part of organized crime or over matters of honor.
If you're a parent and not participating in that world, you and your children have nothing to fear.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_school_shootings_in_th...
There are ~74 million people 0-18 years of age in the U.S. right now, meaning about 0.016 deaths per 100,000 children per year.
And these won't be similar across the age spectrum: most of the kids killed in school shootings are older, some school shootings don't involve kids (either the shooter or the victims), some don't involve any intent to shoot anyone (firing a gun in the air), some involve justified shootings (i.e., in self-defense), and the wikipedia data includes universities so they would fall outside of 0-18. The basic point being the 0.016 number is inflated.
For comparison, drowning is about 1.0 per 100,000 or 64x as likely. Being struck and killed by lightning is about half as likely.
>most of the kids killed in school shootings are older, some school shootings don't involve kids...
In almost every other "Western" country, one solitary school shooting... ever... would be a catastrophe etched into the national consciousness. And would almost certainly have resulted in laws being changed to ensure it could never happen again.
1) The U.S. population is really big. 333M or so. New Zealand is 5M? So, inflate the base rate by 66x. When doing "intuitive statistics" about this sort of thing, people think at the country level and don't adjust for population. That will remove some of the effect, but even doing that there's going to be more school shootings in the U.S. per capita, of course.
2) Gun laws don't work. The best available work on this suggests a modest decrease in murder rates at best. People who want to murder will just use alternative means. There are plenty of ways to kill schoolchildren if someone decides to do it. Easy availability of guns probably does increase the rate and deadliness, but not by all that much. Something else is going on in the U.S. Media contagion is part of it, imho.
3) The extent to which people pay attention to astronomically unlikely things like school shootings really doesn't make any sense. As I estimate somewhere else in these comments, the likelihood of a child in the U.S. being shot and killed at school is about double that of being struck and killed by lightning. Though it's a tragic spectacle when it happens, it's not something worth worrying about. The irony is nobody gives a shit about stuff that might actually kill your kids, like drowning, car crashes, etc. People are so, so very nonchalant about things that are actually risky...
Feel free to share a link to the best available work. Please also read this, though:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-is-cl...
I am sorry to say it, but Scientific American has become politicized trash under current leadership. It pains me because I remember it fondly from my childhood. The article you linked to doesn't even try to meet basic scientific standards.
Here is a good overview: https://www.rand.org/research/gun-policy/key-findings/what-s...
TL;DR: evidence coming from academia (which is extremely anti-gun) only weakly supports a very small subset of gun laws as working. Taken in the light of publication bias and the file drawer problem, this is a nothing.
The RAND analysis doesn't appear to be as equivocal as you suggest though. It says that there are 3 types of laws which have the strongest level of scientific support for their success, but other laws have weaker support, which doesn't mean they aren't effective. Let me highlight two quotes:
"Importantly, however, where we conclude that evidence for a policy is weak, that does not mean that the policy is ineffective; the policy itself might well be quite effective."
"Still, even relatively small effects of gun policies are important to the people and communities affected."
So while it's possible that there are a lot of ineffective laws being proposed, that's far from being evidence that no laws are effective, and it might even be evidence that the problem lies with the Constitution itself (which is another type of law which could be changed).
I wonder, though, what it would take for me to convince you of anything, since you could just dismiss all scientific research as "coming from academia" and therefore tainted by political views that you don't like. Perhaps if the gun lobby commissioned their own researchers to produce a report, you would find that sufficiently neutral, but I won't go looking for such a report.
One area where we might agree, though, is in disapproving of immature ad hominem arguments, so perhaps we just need to make sure that we're both extending that disapproval to mature ad hominem arguments as well. ;-)
>so you didn't have to trust the writer or editor of the article
They're linking to a lot of their other stuff, iirc, and selectively citing things that support the position they want to disseminate.
> It says that there are 3 types of laws which have the strongest level of scientific support for their success
We have to differentiate between effect size and statistical "significance" (poorly named). The effect sizes (how much of a difference you would expect to see) are small iirc. For instance, the "assault weapons" one, which gets the strongest level coloring, is I believe a 0.9% decrease in murders if it's the study I'm thinking of. The "statistical significance" is, roughly, how much you can believe the effect size you're measuring is real, NOT how important it is. So you can have a 0.9% reduction in murders that is very "significant". I don't know what their coloring is, but my guess is they're using statistical significance, maybe with blending in some effect size.
>I wonder, though, what it would take for me to convince you of anything, since you could just dismiss all scientific research as "coming from academia" and therefore tainted by political views that you don't like.
I am from academia! I actually don't have a guns axe to grind specifically, it's a "we're going to poison the social sciences via publication bias and p-hacking" axe. Basically, people produce evidence for what's politically palatable (not even what they actually want to believe), and it's a huge problem. Another one is sex and behavior. It's abundantly clear that there are huge differences in behavior between the sexes, and that this is driven by genetics, and we've known this on the basis of good scientific evidence for 100+ years. It's not ~~socially determined~~.
>"Importantly, however, where we conclude that evidence for a policy is weak, that does not mean that the policy is ineffective; the policy itself might well be quite effective."
> "Still, even relatively small effects of gun policies are important to the people and communities affected."
Let me translate: "Guys, we know this doesn't look good, but we promise...there's a way you can talk about it such that we can still keep claiming the things we want to believe are true in spite of the avalanche of evidence coming from researchers that also want to claim the things. Also, jk jk, don't punish us we want to keep our jobs :-) :-D "
One of the key problems here (and the reason for my axe) is that it's tough or impossible to do real research on important stuff like this right now.
> extending that disapproval to mature ad hominem arguments as well. ;-) I've enjoyed this :-)
Thanks for discussing respectfully, and for the work it sounds like you are doing to improve standards in academia.
In the US, there's a mass shooting on average every 22.5 hours.
You have a mass shooting more often than most people have a massive shit.
You have a problem, whether you see it or not.
What's more, most of these shootings are among people who are participating in organized crime in bad parts of cities. It's not random, innocent people getting shot. The random, innocent people getting shot ones are the ones that are profitable to put on news streams, though. They are exceedingly rare.
Using reasonable definitions of "mass shooting", the number so far in 2023 is 1-3.
That's an interesting claim. Perhaps you didn't know that "Firearms now exceed motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of injury-related death for people ages one to 24" according to [1].
I suppose that statistic might include gun suicides and gun accidents, which (under an extremely contrived definition) don't count as "shootings", but that still misses the point that sensible governments have successfully reduced car accident deaths by tightening regulations related to vehicle ownership and licensing, whereas America is notably bad at doing so for guns, and is paying the price for that failure with the blood of its children.
If you could provide a statistic for the number of annual US deaths due to TikTok, I'd be interested to compare that to shooting deaths too.
[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/guns-now-kill-mor...
Here's an example: Imagine you hear that the U.S. is 43rd in the world on math test scores among highschoolers, and China is 4th. ZOMG, A BIG DEAL!?!? Right? Well, that's what you'll hear in the media anyway.
Now, imagine if I told you that the mean U.S. score was 87, and the mean Chinese score was 89 out of 100. Does it still seem like a big deal?
Here's another point from another comment: This is a bit disingenuous I think. I worry people will infer that young children are at risk from random violence. That's not true.
That stat goes from 0-19 years of age, and the vast majority of deaths are in the older segment. Like everywhere in the United states, it's young Black men killing other young Black men as part of organized crime or over matters of honor.
If you're a parent and not participating in that world, you and your children have nothing to fear.
But you weren't talking about the absolute size, you said "a very small problem compared to things like" (my emphasis). Please at least admit you were wrong about that.
In any case, as an absolute number, even one school shooting is too many, and if the US government can devote resources and legislation to reducing traffic accidents and drug overdoses harming children, then there's no reason why it can't do the same to reduce gun deaths, like every other civilized country does.
> Like everywhere in the United states, it's young Black men killing other young Black men
You may be surprised to learn[0] that "Black men and boys ages 15 to 34 ... were among 37% of gun homicides" in 2019, so most killings are not like what you describe at all.
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2021/02/23/young-...
> The absolute size of the risk is what's relevant.
If you look at the whole sentence "...compared to things like...", I'm talking (or at least meant to be clear about talking) about the risk from shootings in general, not shootings of children in particular or school shootings:
> Shootings, especially mass shootings, are a very small problem compared to things like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, car crashes, and tiktok. If you're taking a vaguely utilitarian approach to public health policy it makes the most sense to do things like try to make Americans less fat, by a wide margin.
When I say "shootings", I mean the thing people intuitively understand it to be (Person A shoots Person B), and not suicides. If we include suicides, car crashes and "shootings" in the U.S. are ~ the same size. Suicides don't respond much to "no guns" as I recall...you get a couple percent reduction, but people mostly substitute (tall buildings, etc.). I happen to think it's cruel to prevent all suicides, and that some people who want to die should be allowed to do so with dignity, instead of alone and sad, but that's a digression.
Anyway: for adults, the relative risk is important since we're making decisions about allocating public health resources. There are on the order of a few hundred thousand "unscheduled" (preventable) deaths in the U.S. in a given year, and 12,000 gun murders. Get rid of guns, and charitably that number goes from 12,000 murders to 9,600 murders. But you could've saved a lot more lives working on the boring stuff, not to mention the astronomical amount of political capital you burned to get that done.
For kids, the the absolute risk is what's important since they basically don't die. If you're thinking about where to invest resources, invest not in making them die less but rather in making them into better, healthier people. Not to say investment in preventing childhood death should be exactly zero, I'm talking on the margin here (what do we do with the next dollar/minute/effort).
>even one school shooting is too many
...yeah, but it's not! Would you pay $100B to prevent the next one? Could've saved a lot of people from diabetes / heart disease with that money, instead of 8 kids. It's tragic, sure, and we're all tempted to say stuff like that for social reasons, but when you're really deciding how to allocate resources it's so, so rare that hedging doesn't make much sense. Remember, about double the risk of being struck and killed by lightning (a lot more people are struck and survive).
I don't have time right now to go in to the race thing, but I will point out that "Black" is ~14% of the U.S. population. Black people (90% men) commit more than 50% of homicides in the U.S., so they murder at ~7x the rate of non-Black Americans before correcting for things like which crimes get solved (correcting moves it to ~10x, they're better at getting away with murder since organized crime). If you're curious, this is where you should start (the UCR): https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
In the US you can be shot and killed by the police at any time, for any reason. You don't have any rights to retaliate.
Yeah, I don't think I'll trade places.
I also insult people online, sometimes.
I’m pretty much worse than Billy the Kid to modern day UK.
The available evidence suggests that magically removing guns from the U.S. overnight would make a dent in homicide rates, but not by all that much (I would estimate ~20%, charitably). Americans murder much more than average not because they have access to guns, but access to guns does make them a little more effective at murdering.
An aside, but it's always interesting to me that people are specifically interested in instances where a lot of people die together. I mean, who cares?
The friends and families of those victims probably care.
I can’t say I’d be too happy if my daughter died at school from a completely preventable school shooting.
Yeah we agree about that, the interesting question is why?
>the victims of mass shootings (children at schools, attendees at festivals, etc) are the definition of innocent. That’s part of the reason.
This is an explanation in the specific case of shootings
The US made Mexico what it is and is entirely responsible for that.
If the US didn't want Mexico to turn into a 'half-ruled-by-gangs developing country' they shouldn't have let the CIA go full hog there and in Latin/Central America.
And that's the thing, so much of the violence and shit that America is facing today is a direct result of blowback from things the US did.
Imagine how much gun crime America wouldn't have if it didn't blow trillions of dollars on some dumb wars in the middle east.
Imagine how much gun crime America wouldn't have if it toss a bunch of their young men into an agent orange meat grinder in South East Asia.
You seem concerned with blame (normative statement), but I'm just making a descriptive statement (how it actually is right now).
As for foreign wars increasing violence domestically in the U.S., I don't buy that. Most of the murdering in the U.S. is some cultural thing to do with young black and brown men that we haven't figured out yet (because it's essentially impossible to talk about it, much less do research on it).
Yes, that's entirely legal in the UK.
I can cross the road anywhere I like, without waiting for a light. The US is good with that? Oh wait, no, you can be thrown in jail for "jaywalking".
It's also worth noting that that is just for posession.
Anything used as an offensive weapon, be it a < 3" friction folding knife or a ballpoint pen or can of hairspray, is covered by a different law.
Here's a good run down by a barister:
How does that make sense? Why shouldn't a sushi chef be able to go straight from work to meet up at bar with friends without being being guilty, until proven innocent (this is the UK not eh US) of being a potential murderer?
In that scenario you'd be guilty of carrying a fixed bladed knife without a good reason.
You don't have a good reason to have a sushi knife on you in a pub because you could have just gone straight home or left it at work. That it might be inconvenient or take extra time isn't going to be seen as an excuse.
You might be the nicest person in the world but by incompetently bringing a big sharp knife into a pub someone else with less scruples might be able to make use of it.
Anything you do with that knife, that you just happened to have on you and definitely didn't bring to intimidate people, in a pub where you're clearly not at work as a sushi chef, would be covered by completely different laws.
You can get unpleasant smelling / badly staining / hard to remove spray which acts as a deterrent by making an attacker easily identifiable, but that’s about it I believe.
(*) Obscure Sweeny reference, if you get it, you're too old to be here Grandad
If so, just stop speeding if you don't want a ticket. Go to a track day if you want to race.
If you mean ANPR for tax and insurance, well again just pay the tax and insurance. It's not that hard.
The mere presence of a potential harm does not justify all means to correct the harm.
Where do we draw the line?