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Comment by ipnon | Hacker News Reader

UK and PRC need a censorship apparatus because they are one party states. UK is a monarchy based on a religious aristocracy. PRC is a socialist state with Chinese characteristics. Memes can destroy these countries because they can delegitimize the despot. But in America memes benefit the polity, because parties lose power all the time. We’re constantly switching who rules, and the baton passes frequently enough that we tacitly agree it’s better to just come back next election with better memes. A meme like “Trump shouldn’t be President” is not an existential threat to America, whereas “Charles shouldn’t be King” and “Xi shouldn’t be Chairman” are direct threats to the continuation of their respective systems of government.

It’s the definitive strength of the United States.

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Having an overseas social media platform widely used in your country is basically giving foreign intelligence direct access to the brainstem of your citizens.

It's not even about speech necessarily, it's about what speech is amplified and what suppressed, and whether those perspectives are organic or manipulated. Also, who can read all the messages and analyse the trends.

If the US was as memetically robust as you say, foreign owned TikTok wouldn't be a problem. But even free speech cannot hold up under manipulation.

I think a lot of ppl in the US don't notice that this is the position that every other country is in with respect to US social media.

I disagree with your conclusion, but my argument is rather about why a strong censorship and surveillance apparatus exists in UK and PRC and why USA merely has mass surveillance apparatus without concomitant mass censorship. Another feature of American memetic ecosystem is some immunization against manipulation, in that memes such as “Russia is manipulating elections” or “university professors are indoctrinating students” are widespread if not universal. You will note that in nature the most effective rate of immunity in a population is never 100%.

I am a humble HN poster, and this is simply food for thought, and I appreciate your attention.

Likewise, thanks for the perspectives.

> Having an overseas social media platform widely used in your country is basically giving foreign intelligence direct access to the brainstem of your citizens.

Hot take: it works both ways, and could pressure feed brainrot contents straight into brainstems of intelligence agency officials at work with full attention to re-educate them up to your own standards, which can be nice.

> UK is a monarchy based on a religious aristocracy

Not really. The Monarch has no real power, only "influence", but they don't step in even in the face of disaster (Brexit).

It's pretty weird to have a developed country with a state religion, but in reality, it has no bearing on anything.

But the US has shown us that "tradition" and principles aren't enough to stop a hostile takeover of power. A Trump-like future monarch could do a lot of damage if they decided; so indeed the UK could do with lots of reforms to enforce proper separations and encode the purely ceremonial role of the monarch.

British tradition does have more teeth though. For example whilst the Monarch may not use that power normally they still have it. With support of the Privy council the King absolutely could remove a malicious but democratic government. They are perfectly placed to unify the people, politicians, civic society, judiciary, police and military. And they can do so legally. And this position is defended by the perfectly reasonable response that they would never do that or have any real power. But then who does? The PM can be replaced in an afternoon by a vote. Parliament would need substantial changes of law to do anything.

> With support of the Privy council the King absolutely could remove a malicious but democratic government.

The power of the Privy Council lies in it's executive committee, known as the "The Cabinet" that thing chaired by the Prime Minister we call the democratic government. The rest of the privy council membership is mostly a bauble for past cabinet ministers with some royal flunkies and bishops and the like. It's mostly vestigial, like knightly orders, but with weird exceptions like it includes the supreme court for overseas territories.

This isn't to say such things can't happen but it would not be through a recognised legitimate procedure "with teeth" but as a constitutional crisis where precedence, tradition and law has gone out of the window and whatever side wins is through primitive power/confidence dynamics. There might be rulings of lawfulness in one direction or another but as a postfacto figleaf downstream of victory rather than as a real judgement.

But in that primitive power/confidence dynamics could a monarch be useful?

Sure but it's far from the exercise of an accepted power the OP refers to.

In a constitutional crisis, titles of the elected and inherited ultimately become a matter of opinion... but opinion is the path to victory up to the point it descends to military force. Any form of legitimacy becomes currency.

Back in the day we had constitutional crises that deposed the "rightful" monarch despite somewhat believing in the divine right of kings, the magic oils of coronation and weird blood theories around patrilinial descent. These days they have none of that magic and they are just some weirdos that appear in the papers now and again but still, in a moment of crisis, that whiff of history is a poker chip.

Parliament is ultimately where the power is. If there's a struggle for power, it would be between parliament and the monarch. I think the only situation where the monarch wins that is if parliament has clearly lost their democratic mandate somehow (like truly massive widespread protests from the population).

That constitutional debate is long settled. The king rules by the consent of parliament and they are ultimately the highest authority in the land. In parliament, the commons has far more authority then the lords. While parliament delegates almost all their authority to the government and civil service it would take a lot to fundamentally change that. They still excercise their authority on occasion as several recent prime ministers found out. Their power also doesn't necessarily stem from the fact that they are voted in, but it's a key reason why they have all the power. I don't see any situation where the king wins. The only pathway to a constitutional crisis is between the government and parliament.

Ultimate power lies with people who can use violence. Its the military and police. Without continued compliance from those groups the status of politicians or royalty could become very tenuous.

And we are specifically talking about an emergency here.

Eh, Trump is able to do what he does because he’s a populist and a bully in a society that hopes it can either get rich, or not be destroyed, if they just go along.

The odds of a monarch pushing those buttons is quite low - monarchs by definition don’t need to be populists, and are rarely able to pretend to make the rest of the population rich either.

Much more likely to the UK would end up with a PM doing it, and they’d nuke the last vestiges of the Monarchy in the process. The UK monarchy long ago lost the balls to survive a fight like that.

The monarchy holds no executive power.

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