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Comment by preaching5271 | Hacker News Reader

Totally fair point, but what can you do? This is how the world works. Fighting such beasts is pointless. You might tame them with lobby money, but no billionaire is interested. And we're now talking about the human spirit that cannot be chained, as also seen in Pirate Bay or Snowden. Sure, people do need heroes and hope from time to time. But I have become less romantic over the years, and more careful.

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You can adapt and fit in to the establishment, and I wouldn't suggest any moral problem with it. We definitely need stability - the raising of children requires it, trappings like clubs and societies and clean streets are great, but I think the spirit of mavericks like Kim is much more 'right' about something that institutions will always miss.

I can't celebrate this at all, and I am never sympathising with legal thuggery. It is just naked power exerting itself and it will always be ugly.

While it's true the copyright lobby tried to make an example out of kim, it is completely useless in stopping piracy nor any form of copyright infringement that will inevitably continue to happen.

> It is just naked power exerting itself

and it's a relatively minor showing of it. Compare it to direct assasination of foreign nationals (of which both the US as well as russia has done). The chinese stationing covert forces to try to police their migrant nationals overseas (spy stuff basically), or if what snowden leaked is as widespread is it is alleged, the amount of hoovering of information and surveillance that exists!

The maverick spirit is definitely more right that wrong, especially in the long run.

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It wasn't a crime against the crown last time?

I think they were being sarcastic.

Only if you loose.

Right, of course

    Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
    Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason.

> Fighting such beasts is pointless.

You realize that if everyone thought that, the world would be a worse place?

Fight in the shade

Educate the next generations.

Maybe we'll have a generation of people with a backbone again who will be able to free us from government oppression.

The trend is going the other way, so I think we're heading to socialism-ville for a repetition of last century's lessons.

A lot of the best things we have in the modern world are "socialism". Libraries and parks are socialist. Socialism isn't a dirty word, nor is it an argument or a criticism.

> Socialism isn't a dirty word,

It is, for people like me, who have actually experienced living under a socialist regime.

Was it the socialism or the autocracy, behind thr veil, which made it so unpleasant?

The socialism, of course. Unlike socialism, autocracy can be prosperous.

Is there somewhere I can read more about it? Because there are democratic socialist countries doing quite well (especially in Scandinavia), and autocracies of all kinds doing poorly (like Venezuela).

Contrary to popular myth, the model socialist Scandinavian country, Sweden, is not socialist. [0]

They were more socialist in the 1970s, when the country suffered greatly under the socialist government. Popular writer Astrid Lindgren was taxed 102% of her income at one point. [1]

[0]: https://scandinaviafacts.com/is-sweden-socialist/

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomperipossa_in_Monismania

This is why definition of terms is so important in discussions of this type. The word socialism/socialist has been bastardized and propagandized beyond comprehension now. Socialism covers a broad range of potential policies and structures, but in modern discourse the average person seems to slot it in almost exclusively to mean government tyranny and communism. Meanwhile communism now seems to mean evil beyond any consideration.

Do you mean back to FDR-era policies, or are you using socialism as a stand in for the tyrannical communist governments of USSR et al?

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