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Comment by kennykartman | Hacker News Reader

Playing a bit the devil's advocate here, but

> This is why all of those "national great firewalls" shouldn't exist in the first place

This is a kind of colonialist thinking that is, IMO, a problem in the western society. There are indeed drawbacks in a lack of freedom, but assuming that a government should not be able to filter the content diffused to the population is wrong in principle. You don't get to choose what is right or wrong in every part of the world: that is a very USA-centric way to view the society and easily leads to "export freedom and democracy" acts. It's a very USA-friendly way to frame things. Not necessarily the right way to frame things.

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But wouldn't the position of a strong government be to trust it's people, and allow them to see the whole spectrum of information available in the world, and give them essentially the right to decide what's "right or wrong"? I don't see how being free from any information filtering on behalf of some benevolent leader is USA-centric?

Speaking as an American - clearly the general population is unable to determine what's right or wrong.

The USA centric view I was referring to is the one where lack of freedom is wrong, since it benefits the USA ideology of maximal freedom. Which is not in generally shared by all western countries (in Europe socialism and state ownership is much more present, for instance), and it's not necessary the most accurate view of real USA (there might be more "free" countries, like Switzerland), it's just that it benefits the perceived image of USA.

With this in mind, no, I don't share the view that a strong government should trust the people: people can easily be steered by foreign parties that want to gain soft power (example: Russia and recent anti-EU propaganda in Poland, Romania and Georgia). It's very hard to draw a line between what is "right" and what is "too much", but I don't think that excessive freedom is an obvious route to an healthy society (that is, a society that has peace and people are happy).

> where lack of freedom is wrong

Straw man.

Nobody is arguing for maximal freedoms for Iranians. This is literally whether some Iranians are able to get their hands on Starlink terminals if they want to.

I don’t think it can be disputed that there is a lot of propaganda and misinformation in the internet.

One logical conclusion to this would be to protect people from that via censorship.

Many recent examples of the US doing this as well (Covid, Russia, etc.). Of course, the US delegates this to its cooperations, so it can publicly say its hands are clean.

People do remember the Twitter files though, and the US government has massive spying and monitoring capabilities, so its hands are not actually all that clean.

> colonialist thinking that is, IMO, a problem in the western society

Iran has commanded empires for millennia. Longer than continental Europe.

Iranians getting their hands on Starlink terminals is as “colonial” as revolutionary France helping the American colonists usurp the British.

Obviously I and most westerners are on the side of the angels for this incident but we also hear lots of calls in the West to ban "Russian and Chinese bots", or "pro terrorist views" or whatever. Principled views shouldn't do a 180 based on the subjects involved.

Again, just for the sake of the discussion: Iran banned starlink, people are getting terminals (BTW, I'm happy they managed to). Starlink is still providing the service in the area although they are aware it's illegal and people can be behaded for owning a starlink terminal. But hey, Iran and USA are enemies. The fact that Iran is the only country where Starlink is active even if it's NOT approved is food for thought. There are other countries, where there are regimes that control communications, where Starlink is not active.

It takes an incredible stretch of the imagination to conflate colonialism with freedom, when the two couldn't be more at odds, definitionally.

I'm not conflating them.

Yes, as an American I think that all forms of government that are not liberal democracy basically are illegitimate. We can have relationships of convenience with other governments, but it should be known by such governments somewhere in the back of their minds that we would prefer to see them replaced by a liberal democracy.

The Iranian state has not shown itself to be one that is very convenient for us to temporarily overlook its flaws, and the people it governs frequently show that they would prefer a different form of government (otherwise, why not let them vote in fair elections?). It should be a no brainer that Americans and their government should be on the side of the people, not the theocracy.

But USA can't even be on the side of their own people. I can see the recent ICE shooting, health care issues, clearly corrupt government officials. Why should anybody trust them with another country?

Also the US has massive protests aswell, would it be okay for china to liberate the USA, since china itself is lead by a "democratic party"? They could argue the USA isn't a real liberal democracy.

> why not let them vote in fair elections? Elections can be faked, people can be mislead, oppositions and media can be bought.

USA has many different people and most try hard allow everyone to speak their mind. That is what is being preserved for others- the ability to escape oppression (that seems to just be a built-in human thing), no matter where you are.

There's a big gap between "national firewalls shouldn't exist" and "country should invade/"liberate" another country to prevent national firewall (or insert other disliked policy)".

So to respond directly:

> Why should anybody trust them with another country?

They should not and should not need to trust them with another country

> would it be okay for china to liberate the USA

no, it wouldn't. But if China felt that the USA gov't was like, not cool, they could impose sanctions or not trade with USA.

The US democracy is quite weird, though, because it's IMHO quite far from the people: billionaires can influence the outcomes of elections by steering the votes where the most paying candidate (or the most knowledgeable, or someone else with other skills) desires. This is not something that people can influence easily, so I find hard to believe that a government is legitimate just by the label on the packaging.

I won't go down the path of "fair elections", since I don't think it applies to USA.

There's a number of people who try and influence elections, money is not nearly as effective as you think it is. Or else a few people that have a few billion in their coffers would run and have won elections in places and other things far more than what they currently do/have done.

The wealthiest entity in the USA is the government itself. It's not even close.

Further, if currency was not able to influence things then that eliminates the main purpose of fiat currency, there is obviously a place for it in any case. Just because you don't like the direction it's being used doesn't mean you have a reasonable position either. Fiat is a benefit to the government in all ways and its in it's best interest to uphold the strength of their currency, not just for the locals to the land in the borders, but if they want to influence the rest of the world.

You should go down the path of "fair elections" because you otherwise lose all points for being vague and imprecise that no one can contest you on because you don't think we are worth the argument.

If tomorrow I owned 1 zillion dollar, that wouldn't make me able to change the course of next US (presidential) elections. It's not the only factor, ofc, but it is a very relevant one. Let's consider other factors that might be relevant: influence, visibility, arguments, fame, political weight, political knowledge, time, will. There are others. Someone with no influence on these factors and no money can hardly influence the outcomes of a nation election. If that someone was made a billionaire overnight, it can gain control over some factors, improving the likelihood of their impact over the next elections. Will they succeed? Not necessarily, but that their impact can become perceivable is undeniable.

Fair elections: in the US there are a bunch of practices related to vote that I don't consider fair. First and foremost, how votes are counted. Then, how money can be used to finance parties and campaigns. Gerrymandering is another one.

Billionaires can do this in any country. In US, the difference is other billionaires than the rulers of the country are allowed to exist.

I think this is not true. Russia and China come to mind: billionaires are there, but they are not allowed to subvert the regime.

Edit just to clarify: presence of billionaires that are not hostile to the regime does not mean they are allies either.

Billionaires there are subjects to the regime, and only remain billionaires while they are absolutely loyal to the regime. And threat of disagreement not only would cause them stop being billionaires, but also stop breathing altogether. I mean, running away could be an option, but then one stops being Russian or Chinese billionaire. And also this may not preclude "stop breathing" option, as some examples show.

You're right! Still they are billionaires in their countries with many benefits for being billionaires! Except, steering the government where they want - which typically means getting even richer. In the USA this happened, though.

My point is that, even in self-proclamed democracies, it's quite hard to actually give power to the people, precisely as in regimes. It's not a "it's all the same" position, of course: I mean to say that taking some values as absolute is not great if we don't clearly define what we are optimizing for. The USA model of democracy doesn't optimize for individual freedom nor for general population happiness.

> Russia and China come to mind: billionaires are there, but they are not allowed to subvert the regime

Putin and Xi are billionaires. So are their cronies. They get richer faster than the rest of their population because they’re literally billionaires in control of the regime with no peaceful path to removing them.

I'm aware of that and I agree. So what? My comment was that they are not the only billionaires.

> There are indeed drawbacks in a lack of freedom, but assuming that a government should not be able to filter the content diffused to the population is wrong in principle.

Why?

It boils down to what one considers to be relevant for humans: I think that well being is more important than freedom. Historically, freedom was not a predominant part in human societies. On the contrary: slavery, kingdoms, empires, took part in human history more than freedom. Authoritarian government is not wrong per se, as long as people are well. In the same way, freedom of knowledge anything at any time is not necessary good. Actually, the ability to immediately access any content, beneficial or not, is something that humans acquired very recently in their history, and it's absolutely not clear that this is in fact something good in the long term. I think it is, but it's just speculation. Being conservative and NOT giving free communication is, I think, a more sensible default for a government. Also, there are cases where we already know that freedom doesn't help: CSAM, revenge porn, and other nasty stuff. ()

() edit: no, I was partly mistaken with these examples. I provided example of things that are known and widely accepted to be damaging of other liberties, while I meant to provide something more subtle, like fake news.

I'm genuinely a bit confused — it seems like you're arguing that people should be able to have freedom to choose what to do, but not?

People can do whatever they think is right, of course (: so there is no "should". My point was that saying that a government should not impose communication restrictions is not necessary right. So, no, people should be happy: if they are happy without freedom, then let them be. If they are unhappy without freedom, let them make a revolution.

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