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Comment by 7bit | Hacker News Reader

And yet, they voted for the governments that killed privacy and established surveillance in public, because they love privacy so much.

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Per another comment here: "Generally speaking the more important an issue is, the less it is allowed to be affected by democratic processes."

The trick is to have a two party system and agree on all the important points.

There aren't any major parties willing to reduce espionage or ease up on Gaza.

If elections are coming up, they stick to gender theory, school sports or Lake Ontario.

"Vote blue no matter what" doesn't give you privacy, nor does abstaining or voting red.

> The trick is to have a two party system and agree on all the important points.

This is the exact characteristic about US politics that Americans wish were removed so their government was better for them. It favors a two party system, so no one is actually represented and have to choose between two parties they likely only agree with on few points, unless they are subscribed to that party's propogandic kool-aid.

The UK has the same system with the same problems.

It always converges to a two-party system eventually, the US just speedran the process.

Plurality ("first past the post") voting systems always converge to a two-party system. There's even a theorem saying so, though of course the real world isn't always so polite as to behave the way the mathematics tells it to. Countries with better electoral systems don't so consistently seem to converge to a two-party system.

Caveat: it's per seat. Each seat gets two parties to pick from. There can be more than two parties in the government - some other force caused the US to agree on the same two parties in every seat.

When one party is secure in a seat and the second is weak, other parties can challenge each other for second place. For example libertarians could try to beat republicans in a place where republicans do poorly.

You can have the same issues with more than two parties. Only big-enough parties matter and as long as they have the same opinion it's going to be that way. I mean that is not bad in the general sense. Imagine if there were disagreement about whether money should exist in every election. Society can only function if some basics are simply accepted by everyone.

TBF, people tend to vote for other things - but yes, get 'that' bundled in the small print 'for free'.

As other people have said, when all parties agree on the same thing around digital privacy, what choice do the voters have?

No they didn't. They voted for several different parties who brought in the same policies and did not discuss them prior to elections.

It's a country of moderation in most things.

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