So how do we get out of this mess? | Hacker News Reader

So how do we get out of this mess?

17 pointslarry_hagel22 comments

So we just found out, our government has been lying straight to our faces all this time. And all the big tech giants too (Mark Zuckerberg, Sergej Brin, etc.).

And so now, we're all thinking: "Ok, let's just have them promise us or 'commit' to the dismantling of this huge surveillance apparatus. And we're good."

But then we understand that we will never ever again be able to trust them (neither the government nor the tech giants). Why?

1. They all have no problem continuously lying straight to our faces, this is now proven. 2. The blueprints for such surveillance systems are now there, the tech is now there, the know-how is now there, and even experience is now there. How can you get rid of all this so there won't be any more abuse? You just can't.

So what's the solution to prevent our "representatives" from destroying democracy?

I don't know if there IS one, but I'm asking myself these days if all this not "simply" tells us that a central government in this form is logically just not responsible anymore. That it will allways become corrupted, sooner or later.

I remember one political analyst suggesting quite some time ago that the US will subdivide itself into several smaller zones. What do you think?

The populace responds to fear. Shift the fear of terrorists to fear of the government by making use of propaganda.

Fear, I believe, is a core component why American (and generally any) people want to shut their doors and not hear any of this scary stuff. More often than not, myself included.

History has shown us repeatedly that concentration of power and resources is the root of all evil. Let the world be a collection of thousands of small states with maximum autonomy to each to govern itself. We used to have this exact configuration in past but that resulted in frequent battles between states. That was again an attempt to grow big and concentrate power. Part of the reason was that the arangement was not created rather it grew out of the natural evolution. So as we re-create such an arangement, we can take measures like creating loose federations of multiple levels with UN-like institution at each level. With autonomous small states, the true democracy can be realized quite easily.

However, this decentralization has to be done not only for government but also for economy, because concentration of power by any means – be it money or military will ultimately force concentration of other powers.

"My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest… No country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak… Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism… True democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village." - MK. Gandhi

> That it will allways become corrupted, sooner or later.

Systems of governance will always fail. This is just the way things are.

The very best one can do is what was done in Philadelphia in 1787: design a flexible system of checks and balances.

It will not last forever. It will last for a good while. Such a system may allow for a peaceful revolution into whatever sucessor form of governance happens.

I suggest one valid successor to American representative democracy is anarcho-capitalism.

Consider: if government is going to fail us in novel and horrid ways perhaps the solution is to remove the concept of government.

You suggest anarcho-capitalism, but consider this: Currently, we have a state-capitalist society.I say state capitalist because every company that was 'bailed out' is effectively a state institution. There's an important distinction between the free market and capitalism. Free market socialism can exist as well as state capitalism.

The only entity in our current system powerful enough to, say, prevent corporations from overfishing any fishery to destruction is the government. Similarly, government issued and enforced carbon credits are the only thing preventing (or attempting to prevent) even more drastic pollution. The list goes on.

The main reason we need government right now is to put a check on corporate power (although sometimes it doesn't seem that way, I admit). And the main reason we need a check on corporate power is because of the profit motive and the concentration of wealth towards the upper ranks of any corporation.

Instead of anarcho-capitalism, how about anarcho-syndicalism or anarcho-socialism? In a socialist society, the capital (ie the means of production) is owned by the workers rather than the rich boss sitting in his office.

Even more so, in a capitalist society, you need some entity in place to protect your capital (land, factories, slaves, etc) from being used by someone else, even if you're not using them (and even if you 'own' so much that you're limiting others' very ability to survive). There are 2 ways to do this: 1) Look to legislation enforcing capital ownership and a state-run police force. And 2) establish a police force / military of your own, under your own control.

The first is what we have now, and the second would quickly collapse into a military ictatorship or oligarchy.

The way I see it (from the above reasoning), there's plenty of reason to think that "anarcho-capitalism" is an inherently contradictory statement.

tl;dr: I agree with the anarcho- half of your suggestion, but not capitalism.

- start using encryption, download and use gnupg. - set up your own servers on your own computers. - start up your own (with neighbors) ISP, not connected to a central ISP, but to other neighbors' and other town's ISPs.

You have the technology, and you have the freedom to use it, then use it! In some countries, we don't have the freedom to establish long distance (or even cross the road) communications without going the a government approved telco or ISP...

Stop relying on their technology. Start from scratch with a DYI hardware movement. While the kids all learn to code, they don't have the resources, time, patience, or energy to become electrical engineers. We do.

Could you expand on this? I'm an EE but I don't see the practicality of building all your own hardware. As it is it is difficult enough to build economical hardware to sell to others, let alone build one off personal hardware. What power am I holding here?...

Encrypt everything.

But that's only a short-term solution.

Because decription is only a matter of the amount of resources you through behind, and:

1) Those resources become cheaper by the day

2) Technology, by definition, improves with exponential progression

3) A big central government has all the money it takes (from us, obviously)

It's not a short term solution if you scale the strength of the encryption against the 'cost' of decrypting it and the speed of the technology available.

But keep in mind that the NSA stores everything, just to be able to go "back in time", whenever it pleases them.

So, when you encrypt with today's algos, and it gets stored by the NSA, it will become cheaper for them to decrypt it with every month that passes, because they will be able to decrypt today's encryption with tomorrow's technology and financial means.

So in my eyes, that means we're pretty much f*cked without fundamental change.

That's very true/a good point. Stale information would be a lot less useful to them though. i.e. Encrypted conversation between two terrorists happens today, attack happens tomorrow, NSA learn about their conversation 5 years later when it's economical to decrypt.

I know this is beside the point though. What I mean to say, is what can be done other than encryption and using tor-like networks for anonymity?

Nobody can be sure that they are/n't being watched, period. Heck, if it wasn't for Edward Snowden we'd still be none the wiser.

Whose to say there aren't dozens of other programs in place that aren't in the public eye?

It's not like you can even opt-out of holding accounts with large tech companies targeted by PRISM since it's easy for them to just tap your network traffic through ISPs.

As long as there is a government, nobody can be sure whether we are or aren't being watched. What 'fundamental change' could be made that would stop this?

Lots of small governments with small budgets.

Instead of that 1 point-of-failure-and-corruption that we have today.

That way, "government" really belongs to those who it is supposed to serve: the People.

PS: "Decentralization" is the word I was looking for. Just like the Internet is supposed to be used, in order to remain sane.

This. No government should be allowed to become so large in power that its people cannot rise against it. The government is for the people by the people. With all the greed and fear mongering, it just feels like it's not going to happen this way though...

There are encryption levels, practical to use, which require quantities like "all the energy in the universe" to brute force decrypt. Unless the NSA rewrites number theory (which is not impossible, I am forced to say, but it would be orders of magnitude more astonishing than anything we've ever seen them do) that should be pretty safe from brute-force decryption, leaving us only to worry about rubber hoses and leaving the password written on the fridge.

> Unless the NSA rewrites number theory (which is not impossible, I am forced to say, but it would be orders of magnitude more astonishing than anything we've ever seen them do)

Not to minimize the magnitude of the acheivement here, but I do think the NSA exerts considerable effort to avoid being seen doing most of the things -- including the most astonishing things -- they do. Its a pretty key part of their mission.

I am not so sure: First Technology, doesn't improve with exponential progression by definition. This is just an empirical observation. Processors' frequency has stalled already. You can still increase the number of cores/processors/machines, but the amount of computation you can process surely doesn't scale linearly with the number of processing units (because of various overheads).

Secondly, because the number of people and the data they have to store also increase exponentially. Maybe they can decrypt someone's data but they cannot decrypt everyone's data. So if we all use encryption, they are pretty much lost because they won't know what to decrypt.

So I would say that encryption is pretty safe, but very impractical.

edit: To kimlelly, ok if AI is "short term" then I cannot disagree :) But, then is there a solution at all?

What I mean by "exponential progression by definition" is this:

We use technology to produce better technology.

That's the cycle that will go on as long as we exist.

It's by definition of exponential acceleration. In a few years, we will be creating technology based on real artificial intelligence.

Peer-to-peer software, rather than server based software.

if you knew the truth you'd shit yourself...

Own the physical medium.

Study systems, including how they segregate and specialize. Realize this generalizes across all sorts of different environments, from biology to information to technology.

Compartmentalize.

P.S.

I mean this from the individual's perspective, per the original question.

After posting, I realize these terms can also and do also apply to the "other side". Pick up any espionage thriller novel, and you're likely to quickly encounter them.

So... They are universal. They work for both sides.

As an individual interested in having an accountable government, I'd argue for their limitation for "that side". Transparency, audit trails, accountability.

That however does not obviate the need to cope with the status quo.

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