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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

To all the people pissed about the "Lake America" stuff: why in the actual fuck do you want Google of all organizations to be arbiter of geographical info, instead of federal institutions that are (at least nominally) operated under democratic principles?

Don't you understand the horror of what you're suggesting: "I want Google to impose it's own personal value judgments over the government's."

Yes, I think it's incredibly stupid, 3rd grader childlike to call this "Lake America". But the problem is not Google, the problem is the ass hats we (collectively, even if not you/me personally) voted for. The problem is especially with our Congressional reps who have just neutered themselves in service to this stupidity. And I get it, our federal institutions have definitely showed their frailty lately, but I can't fathom then why people think the proper solution is to give more decision-making authority to Google.

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I do wonder how many people that criticize the renaming, were criticizing Obama when he rename Mt McKinley. What are the principles here? Or is it just names I like vs names I don't like.

Tons of people complained about the renaming of Mt McKinley for the same reason people complain about "Lake America" now. It has nothing to do with the names and everything to do with the reasons for the renaming.

That was reverting a rename. Denali was the original name.

The principal is it's OK if a democrat does it. For example: It's OK to rename something named after a Republican president who was shot (Mt Mckinley). It's not OK to rename or change something about a Democratic president who was shot (ie. The Kennedy Center).

Man, give me an effing break, do you honestly believe that is the correct analogy?

As another commenter said, Obama was reverting a previous name change - he didn't change the name to "Mt. Obama and McKinley" and paint the whole thing gold.

I think "avoid naming things after people without a deep personal connection to the thing being named" and "prefer established names used by locals" are pretty good principles to follow.

> The Koyukon people who inhabit the area around the mountain have referred to the peak as "Denali" for centuries. In 1896, a gold prospector named it "Mount McKinley" in support of then presidential candidate William McKinley, who later became the 25th president.

Just because folks always conveniently leave out the facts on this one, the Alaskan state legislature had been requesting the name change back to Denali since 1975.

I'm waiting to hear when anyone remotely close to Lake Ontario requested the name change to Lake America, as opposed to the big orange baby throwing a temper tantrum.

Democracy works best as a diffuse institution and is more than just voting. People are supposed to have rights and power themselves and I want them to try to make things better (whether I agree with them or not) and "corporations" are just groups of people. Needing to just go with the government, especially on something so clearly within their rights, is counter to the ideals of the system.

I can understand Google somewhat here (if I was running a business I wouldn't be happy wading into a political issue like this) but the idea that they are above criticism for just falling in line still doesn't resonate with me.

Corporations being only "groups of people" is kind of wishful thinking. They are one cog in a large machinery that is steered by a few very rich people.

Corporations should not be absolved of criticism. But at the same time it makes little sense to put a hamster in hamster wheel and then blame him for running.

>Democracy works best as a diffuse institution and is more than just voting. People are supposed to have rights and power themselves

People holding power themselves is called self-governance (in the Jeffersonian way).

People voting for representation is called a republic.

People voting away their own power to another is called democracy.

Corporatism works best when people as citizens and civic agents are preoccupied and sort of diffuse, not organized for anything substantial, just busy with their work, hobbies, and local councils. Then the workers go to work every day, some of the lobbying the government, to undermine democracy.

Just a group of people. And some of them are paid to influence the government. But the citizens? They are just diffuse. Sometimes they vote...

Why should the USA override every other country about the names of things outside the USA?

Uh, does it? And with regards to Google Maps, when you use it in a different country you see different things... Not just names, but even the borders.

Yeah it's meaningless to fight. Except not really. If the powers that be are corrupt we can simply keep calling it Lake Ontario across the board, and use the difference to find who is or isn't on my side on that issue.

The only people calling it Gulf of America or Lake America are hardcore MAGATs in my social circle. Even former Trump voters in my social circle are annoyed and not using the new names. So it's an effective way to figure out who is or isn't going along with the Administration today.

> If the powers that be are corrupt we can simply keep calling it Lake Ontario

This is the same logic that the right wing used when they disagreed with Obama on some issues, so they blocked his Supreme Court nominations just because anything Obama does must be bad.

Sounds like your social circle is in denial. There are certainly plenty of things Trump, buffoon and graft-a-holic he is, has done that are corrupt. Renaming bodies of water doesn't look like one of them. (Obviously, because he would have renamed it after a donor, or at least after himself.)

I mean, sure, we can all call anything whatever. I can call New Mexico "Best Mexico" or call Washington, DC "Bad Washington" and that's my right. But pretending that there aren't official names for things because we don't like the current guy seems immature. It's clearly within the authority of the government. Talk like this makes me think that people want to just live in a reality defined exclusively by party politics where we just pretend every law or policy made by The Bad Party doesn't exist, rather than try to win elections so we can shape the one actual reality.

The President doesn't have an ability to officially change the names of these locations.

They have the ability to change name services in some database somewhere. But it's not actually an official name change.

So all this hand wringing about official names or whatever ignores the reality of the situation. This is just another temper tantrum by Trump that we reasonable people can ignore.

The easiest way to do that is to just say Gulf of Mexico.

> They have the ability to change name services in some database somewhere. But it's not actually an official name change.

Is it Congress who officially holds that power, then? And are you saying that if Congressional Republicans passed a bill renaming whatever, and Trump signed it, you'd then acknowlege it? Given how vanishingly little they accomplish in Congress already, I'm not sure we'd be better off distracting them from their semiannual debt ceiling/budget hostage situation in order to debate these inconsequential things.

Nobody officially holds that power. Names of geographic places are established by popular usage, not government fiat.

I’m not sure either is “how names are established”.

This is a pretty mushy area, philosophically. Is a name what you think something is called (I think our planet is called “Bloop”, but nobody cares) what a lot of people think something is called (“Indian” in reference to indigenous Americans is a famous example of that going poorly, as are many racist epithets), or what an official body says it should be called (“Palestine”, “New Zealand”, and “Taiwan” have entered the chat)?

I don’t think popular usage is any more “truly authoritative” for a name than other sources.

No, they didn't use any logic and they aren't now. They simply said whatever would let them win and it worked.

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