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Comment by hackersnooze1 | Hacker News Reader

I am not convinced they do, they keep voting to give away their privacy every year.

That’s the weakness of most modern “democracies”: people vote once every few years for one or other party who then do largely whatever they want, outside of some immutable manifesto commitments (which are often flexible anyway).

So no, people don’t vote for such things - they vote for parties who turn out to do such things at some point.

Dictatorship of the bourgeoisie seems like a salient concept right now.

But that's Marxist.

Yeah good point, I better direct my frustration at the “upper class” that earns more than $125,000/year.

As a Brit I've never been asked to vote on that. If you are talking about the general election it's not a main issue compared to other things on the ballot.

For whom have you voted? We have almost no referenda sure, but sometimes there are strong hints in the manifestos, or things to learn from past behaviour of each party

I think Labour on the last one but the Tories had anti privacy stuff too and none of the minor parties had any hope of getting in in my area.

Maybe consider voting Reform the next time around?

I can't imagine this is at top of mind for many voters, or even in mind at all. People are more concerned with things like the cost of living, immigration and things like local planning law.

Every political party in the UK supports things like the Digital Rights Act. So what is a person to do?

Revolt and dump tea

With what? Plastic butter knives?

Too expensive, there’s a tax on single-use plastic utensils now.

At least 3 parties don't that stand members almost everywhere in the country.

Care to name them?

[redacted for anti-state sentiment]

If these policies were deeply unpopular then political parties wouldn't support them because they'd be giving an easy win to their opponents.

Truth is no one really cares.

Truth is these things are being pushed by heads of department behind the politicians, the ones who have lifetime jobs and dont get voted in. These people and lobbying business owners are pushing very hard on all politicians and lawmakers to force this through, which is why there are more and more politicians in favour of it who dont even understand it.

Not the reform party, Vote Reform UK

No thanks - I’ll keep my human rights, thank you.

If they were otherwise reasonable that might be a solution but their obsession with immigration is getting worse. In get the feeling they are turning into into Restore. Maybe next time they will accept a donation from Musk.

What Digital Rights Act are you referring to?

They just don’t read past the headline and the headline usually involves paedophiles.

I mean, at what point do we say that wilfully refusing to absorb relevant information and then knowingly and willingly making a decision based on that lack of information is, indeed, their will?

This is called rational irrationality

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_irrationality

That wikipedia article reads weird. It sounds like a formalized collection of obvious facts.

I think this ignores the fact that there are very converted efforts to use well-researched methods to manipulate and mislead people at the ballotbox in favor of the vested interests.

The same interests also conspire to keep people preoccupied with basic needs and distractions that leave them with little time to properly research issues.

At the end of the day, does it actually matter?

Assuming ‘it’s not their fault’ also removes consequences and/or accountability, which also encourages the behavior.

The general populace potentially not willing to make informed choices is the reason why we kept monarchy for so long.

No, they don't. Turnout in the UK has dropped significantly because it doesn't matter who you vote for, the outcome is the same.

Yes, completely giving up is definitely the better option.

I mean, i go through the motions of voting. but i'm voting against an overwhelming amount of feelings-voters that are easily manipulated. i don't think it makes much difference anymore.

If i wasn't busy, local politics is where one could make a difference. Nation politics seems completely captured by now.

Local politics is broadly objecting to planning permission and decide what potholes to spend the tiny amount of discretionary budget on, as the vast majority of council tax goes to paying for care for elderly home owners

Exactly! It's not like we have decades of evidence that the demographic which has consistent high turnout is consistently and significantly politically pandered to in many, many regards. No sir

I've seen a lot of changes going through since 2024, and I saw a lot of difference between the 2010-15 coalition and the 2015-24 conservative administration, or the 1997-2010 labour administration.

Is there really a good party with only the "right" things in their manifesto?

Democracy usually does not come with À la carte options.

It gets easier with an electoral system other than FPTP (e.g., ranked choice, instant runoff), whereby more than 2 parties appear. You can then mix and match multiple parties that support policies you want in a way that you're aiming for particular policies to become the majority rather than any party.

For example, for issues taxing the rich (TR), taxing the poor (TP), spending on military (SM), spending on infrastructure (SI), privacy protection (PP), and privacy intrusion (PI) and parties A, C, and D, which support TR/SM/PP, TP/SI/PP, and TR/SI/PI, the coalitions the three parties must form to pass individual bills may get you what you really wanted: TR/SI/PP, even though none of the three parties individually support all three.

First past the post isn't a genuine democracy.

What is?

I favour random selection. You end up with a perfectly representative parliament.

That's not universally true. It will, eventually, produce a comically unrepresentative group and the time it takes for that to happen will depend on the size of the pool of representatives compared to the population.

Fifty representatives randomly selected from a pool of a 300 million has a high chance of being supermajority non-representative.

Ideally, sortition or direct democracy.

That just means it's not their top priority.

Yeah I’m inclined to agree. Even with choices of services and their choices on the internet… it’s just not a priority for most users in a way that matters.

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