Comment by jsrozner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsrozner | Hacker News Reader

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No system of governance can deal with immense concentration of power. The US Constitution was about separation of powers. Democracy is about (in theory at least) giving each person a meaningful say in their own governance, which in turn implies not allowing any single person to become too powerful.

Political leaders become a problem when they amass too much power. Corporations become a problem when they amass too much power. It doesn't matter what Sam and Dario's purported values are. They aspire to power and absolutely power always corrupts absolutely.

Technologies which are infinitely powerful or whose power grows too quickly outrun any reasonable attempt at regulation. If you imagine that tomorrow everyone were given a tank, we might think, "alright, everyone has a tank so it's not too bad." But humans are squishy, and our houses are (relatively) squishy compared to tanks. Substantial collateral damage would result from everyone having a tank, and it seems likely that substantial collateral damage will result from everyone having a cyberterrorism-capable slop machine.

> Democracy is about (in theory at least) giving each person a meaningful say in their own governance, which in turn implies not allowing any single person to become too powerful.

this is "direct democracy" and it's not even close to exist in USA... even with that a society can allow powerful people to exist if they don't create any law forbidding that

Democracy includes a broader array of governmental organization than just pure direct democracy. If you do believe that individuals should have some ability dictate the terms of their own social organization, then you believe in some amount of democratic principles.

Economic power eventually manifests in the political realm. The wealthy effectively get more votes, which means that society moves away from being democratic. Thus substantial wealth inequality is incompatible with democracy in the long run. We have been witnessing that corruption for a while now.

how the wealthy would get more votes in a direct democratic system? they are literally the minority, thus fewer votes

It's interesting the cyberpunk-esque future we're sliding into. Things like cognito-hazards and information-hazards are legitimately discussed and researched problems we're experiencing.

It's going to be interesting on how humanity deals with this problem (well, or if we turn it over to AI and make it their problem and suffer whatever consequences falls out). Being able to gather further information and power by acting on the information you already have causing massive power imbalances that is very hard to deal with, it's a natural outcome.

Nearly everyone in the US has a giant car that is basically a tank.

They are dangerous. But it’s managed.

Centralized power never works. We have the worst times in history to look at.

Nationalization just centralizes to a different set of people. It’s personal ownership or oppression.

We all need open weight R2D2s.

Cars are decidedly less dangerous than tanks, which are less dangerous than nuclear weapons. I am certain that giving a nuclear weapon to every person in the world would not go well.

I don't see tanks killing pedestrians every week or so in NYC

I can't properly read the tank/car comment, the comparison is bizarre to me. But I think this misses the point a bit. The reality of these new risks is literally being learned in front of us in real time, and in my opinion, anyone who claims to understand these risks is speculating at best, and actively manipulating the situation for whatever reasons.

While I am a (mostly) capitalist and generally disagree with nationalization (including, for the time being, this situation), I also don't think we can say that "centralized power never works". Maybe we scope that a bit. I know plenty of business owners who centralize power in their businesses and they are effective, ethical and it works perfectly fine. In theory, in the US, nationalizing some unit of the economy _decentralizes_ power; the US is, after all, a representative democracy. Trustworthiness of the electorate is a different problem. But I don't think we can generalize much about centralization beyond sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. There is a difference between centralizing all power in a given administrative unit, and centralizing certain powers, but that's more analogous to non-democratic units.

Funny, I'm sure I would have noticed when I visited if US cars came with tracks, a 105 mm main cannon, and massed around 55 metric tons.

We may all like our own personal R2 units, but if you insist on scifi, instead of tanks, consider everyone getting an X-wing for their commute. Oops, safety on the blaster was off, there goes the neighbourhood.

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