Comment by nakedrobot2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nakedrobot2 | Hacker News Reader

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This is something real, tangible, and valuable that we can all actually do. All of this month I have felt powerless. This is something within everyone's power to do, and it can definitely help start the ball rolling back the way it came.

It is pretty unfortunate that there is such a short window of time in which this information can be disseminated. I can imagine if there were a bit more time, this could really spread over the whole Web, as the SOPA outroar did. Anyway, we have to do the best we can, with the time we have.

I disagree, it is not something real or tangible. I'm all for defunding NSA, but it's not like a regular business which you can boycott by not giving them money. You have to go and ask permission from the government to not give the money (which they previously extracted from you by force for the "good of society") to some of the government agencies. It's pretty much like going to NSA itself and ask them to defund themselves. Voting is just a suggestion, it's not binding. Presidential candidates promise stuff, get votes and then are not obliged to deliver what was promised. It works the same way in every country today.

Real and tangible way to defund NSA is this:

1. Withhold your taxes.

2. Protect yourself against the police and the military who will try to extract them by force (possibly by having crowdfunded guards).

3. Switch from using US Dollar as most of the money government generates comes from inflation (gov sells "bonds" that it will never repay in exchange for new money). Since all national currencies are inflationary and controlled by similar institutions all over the world, only Bitcoin is a good alternative. Or gold, if we can protect the vaults properly and build trust in a company that keeps it (but history shows it doesn't work).

4. Pay only what you think is fair and where you think it's fair. E.g. if you like social security, pay there directly as much as you want.

Only voluntary payments will guarantee that people who you don't like get as much money as someone is willing to give them explicitly and voluntarily. You should not ask for permission to not participate in what you don't approve.

> 1. Withhold your taxes.

> 2. Protect yourself against the police and the military who will try to extract them by force (possibly by having crowdfunded guards).

> 3. Switch from using US Dollar as most of the money government generates comes from inflation (gov sells "bonds" that it will never repay in exchange for new money). Since all national currencies are inflationary and controlled by similar institutions all over the world, only Bitcoin is a good alternative. Or gold, if we can protect the vaults properly and build trust in a company that keeps it (but history shows it doesn't work).

> 4. Pay only what you think is fair and where you think it's fair. E.g. if you like social security, pay there directly as much as you want.

So the solution of breaking free from the NSA and problems of US gov't is to isolate yourself and recreate the exact same systems in miniature?

Government != society. By not allowing any excuse for violence (including self-defence) and seeking voluntary arrangement with people around you to protect yourselves you are not isolating yourself. On contrary, you solve the social problem socially, not brutally like today with government.

Are you proposing that it isn't okay to use violence to defend yourself- but that it is okay to make "voluntary arrangement with the people around you" to use violence to protect you? So then it is okay for me to use violence to protect a neighbor, but not to protect myself?

I'm confused at what you are trying to advocate here?

Wait, you intend to take away my right to defend myself too? Fuck that, me being defenseless ended circa high school. Never again.

You don't have any rights. These are just unproven words or bribes given to you by the people with power.

Of course, you'd have to protect yourself when attacked, no question about it. But it's not a moral choice, it's an extreme case where you don't have any choice. So I'm not going to prove any libertarian rights platform based on right to self-defense. Without government, rights will appear in a form of voluntary agreement in parts of society on what's acceptable and what's not. E.g. if in Texas it's acceptable to kill trespassers without asking question, then so be it. I don't like this rule, so I'd just avoid being in Texas. But neither my opinion, nor cowboy's opinion create any globally applicable rights. I just don't want some mafia to take over people living in Texas and dictate them what they can or cannot do. They'd better decide themselves and smoothly adjust as new people arrive or get born there.

If you make this a choice between the surveillance super state and anarchy, you'll get the super state. Everyone knows we need some kind of government.

It's definitely hard to imagine the NSA being defunded, but that is rooted in a culture that is less concerned with government compliance with law and more with "reasonable" outcomes. The inability to control institutions, and the establishment of those institutions as powers in their own right, is the logical consequence.

Everyone knows we need some kind of government.

That depends on either your definition of government or everyone.

Everyone knows we need some kind of government

I don't. Many people I know don't either. So what if we don't really need any kind of government?

I think that we would still have governments because organizing into collectives to assert power and control resources is inevitable as long as inequalities between people and scarcity of resources exist.

I hear Somalia is nice this time of year.

So violence in Somalia is not acceptable to you, but allowing your government a lot of violence is acceptable? If people in Somalia cannot find out a way to avoid violence it does not mean it's not possible in principle, or that government is somehow "good".

Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, etc.

I love white people who are satiated by the blessings of good government that they can talk, without irony, about how they don't need government. I don't meet many anarchists from my part of the world...

The state of human nature is lawlessness and violence. The only thing keeping society from collapsing into the hell that people in those countries live with is the collective force of the majority asserted through government.

Anarchy sounds dandy until a bunch of people realize that in the absence of the overwhelming power of the state, all it takes is a gang of a dozen people to terrorize their neighbors, taking from them whatever they want. Morality doesn't prevent that. The only thing that prevents that is a bigger group of men, with guns. At first those groups of men were warlords, who eventually became kings, and ultimately we decided we should be able to vote for them. History of civilization in a nutshell.

It takes considerably more than "government". It takes a society, with culture and virtues and churches and economy and civic institutions and traditions. There many places in the world that have actual elections were those elections are used by some factions to abuse others. There are still more where decent democracies ultimately collapsed.

Democratic government, government by discourse and persuasion, is a remarkable achievement of a society. It is maintained and supported and continued by that society. There is nothing inevitable about it.

You're right that it does take more than government. The western world enjoys not just (relatively) good government, but a virtuous culture and people. But government by itself can be better than culture by itself. I'd imagine a lot of Iraqis miss the strong but dictatorial government under Saddam as compared to the weak but democratic government they have now. Basic security is a higher need (in the Maslovian sense) than self determination. That is the history of the world, after all. People embraced the kings that saved them from the petty warlords and criminals long before they instituted democratic government.

I saw this comic on the internet once.

It shows this skinny nerd getting beat up by a tattooed thug. With a caption that says something like "This is your anarchist utopia: getting beat up like you were in middle school over and over and over again."

It was awesome (and phrased in a slightly more clever way than I can remember). I really wish I could find it again, but I can't seem too even after trying many times.

Maybe I'm sensitive about it. When I was young, in Bangladesh, we had a house in the capital city. It was surrounded by a concrete wall with broken glass on top and had an iron gate. We once had a bus full of robbers try to break down the gate. They harassed us for 30-40 minutes before the police finally came (apparently this story could have also taken place in Detroit).

I'm as skeptical of the Po Po as the next guy, but the alternative isn't sunshine and rainbows.

My government has not once engaged in violence to me or my family.

The one possible exception is my sister (I wasn't there when she was arrested), but you steal $10,000 worth of silver from an in-law to feed your drug habit and I can't say I'd be surprised that the government gets involved.

P.S. On that note, how does anarchy account for thieves?

Did you pay taxes lately? Have you ever been disappointed by what government does with your taxes? Why haven't you tried to withhold your participation by not paying taxes? E.g. if you dislike the war in Iraq, what stopped you from not paying a part of your taxes? Also, even if you are hard-core fan of taxation, your neighbour may be not. If he also disagrees with the gov on the same matter as you, but decides to withhold some amount of taxes, would you call the cops to arrest him? Or will you let him do his thing and be disappointed if cops find out? Either way, you will notice there is violence behind taxation.

Anarchy is not some structure imposed on people. When I advocate for non-violent solutions, it's not me who needs to prove anything. It's the advocates of violence need to prove why all of a sudden generally undesirable violence becomes totally valid when done by a man in a special costume.

You yourself live 95% of your life in anarchy. You voluntary interact with people you like and avoid people you dislike. You avoid bad districts, you put locks on your bike, purchase insurance, enjoy security video cameras. Ultimately, with modern technology, people can be ostracized economically without any violence whatsoever. You'd need violent action only in extreme case of personal assault, but that's outside of morality. Morality is needed to avoid such situations in the first place.

Like you just said, the government can already generally enforce their laws just fine without violence.

If you go try to beat up the policeman when they come at you with a signed warrant, or ever point a gun in their direction, then don't be surprised when they don't decide to just roll over and die. This is, again, consonant with you mention about personal assault.

But don't try to brush away the question: What does an anarchist propose to do about thieves? Rapists? Murderers? Apparently your answer will not involve violence and will involve sterning telling people to be moral to each other. But I'm not worried about people who are moral, I'm worried about people who aren't.

The tremendous success of governments over the past several thousand years, as well as the even greater success of democratic governments over the past several hundred doesn't count as evidence in their favor?

> My government has not once engaged in violence to me or my family.

What happens if you don't pay taxes?

The government will get violent.

No, they'll garnish my wages. That doesn't require violence at all, the banks and/or my employer will be quite happy to comply.

No, they'll send men with guns to imprison you.

They might have hundreds of years ago. But nowadays they won't (though if I refuse to file taxes things may be different).

Let's not forget that other governments have helped to turn Somalia into what it is today.

> Protect yourself against the police and the military who will try to extract them by force (possibly by having crowdfunded guards).

Yeah, that's not going to happen. "Protect yourself" in this case translates to "ensure your rapid death in a SWAT assault". Security guards aren't going to fight a warrant for your arrest, and mercenaries will just die in the assault.

Why wouldn't a boycott work? Instead of signing petitions that won't change a thing, try something that actually requires some real effort and look for alternatives to the current tech giants. For starters, stop using Facebook (gasp).

When they realize that cooperating with the NSA will severely damage their reputation, they'll think twice before handing over user data this easily. Not to mention that if they realize their users are migrating, they might start lobbying against the NSA.

This seems to be spot on. As unorganized individuals (or even somewhat organized individuals) it will be much harder for us to protest the actions of the government then if we had some billion dollar companies' corporate lobbyists out there every day talking to the actual senators on our behalf.

"We're losing money here, we really need you to vote like this and then we can give you a ton of money for your next campaign. If not, well, we'll fund that other guy and he'll get a bunch of rave press and you'll get a bunch of attack ads during the next election, what do you say Senator?"

Boycotting government is what I was talking about. The problem is to protect yourself and your property against coercion.

No one "cooperates" with NSA. Companies would have their bank accounts and other property seized if they don't obey orders. Even if some court later decides to return their property, company would already be fatally harmed. If you want to continue your business, you must comply.

> most of the money government generates comes from inflation

I don't believe this. And if it is true then witholding your taxes won't help. The people losing money to inflation would probably stop buying bonds if inflation ate into their returns.

I found this Wikipedia article on tax resistance to be full of interesting information.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_resistance

The principled/safe way to withhold your taxes is to just not generate much income.

I still feel powerless, but of course, that's because I'm not a US citizen (though my children are, but they cannot yet speak), while my communications are also spied on by the NSA.

I hope you'll be able to make a difference. Good luck on this.

It sounds so surreal that I'm having to type this out this way, but: If you're on U.S. soil the 4th Amendment applies to you, no matter what your citizenship is.

Actually you aren't powerless. You phone still works and you can call a senator. I don't know the legal ramifications of neglecting to mention that you aren't a member of the voting citizenry.

I cannot imagine there could exist legal ramifications for such an act. Perhaps if our senators hear from good citizens abroad who just wish not to be spied upon it will also weigh upon their conscience.

I don't know if I'm okay with non-Americans trying to interfere with our political process. They're certainly entitled to call, I suppose, but I hope our senators ignore them.

Yeah! That'll work! Just like the Occupy movement.

Will there be beer?

Well now, I live in the UK.

We don't have a written constitution, so the Powers That Be don't have to hack the legal system in quite the same way as as they do in the US (secret courts, secret injunctions, requirements for industry leaders to deny activity &c).

However, we have absolutely no oversight and no way to gain oversight of the agencies that purport to be acting for our protection. It is difficult even to find out how much we are paying for these agencies. As our Prime Minister has recently demonstrated, our elective representatives have very little understanding of how the Internet actually works. There is a cross party consensus that the 'legal framework' is adequate. Maybe it is, but we don't know, and have no way of knowing.

So I'd suggest taking what action you can within your system, because at least you have some avenues for change.

Saying you have absolutely no oversight in the UK is not true. I recently read David Omand's "Securing the State" which is the most informative book I have found on how to integrate secret intelligence into a democratic society. Most of the analysis in the book focuses on the UK system as he is a longtime member of the UK intelligence community. There is a detailed discussion of how to meet the challenges of keeping a secret intelligence system accountable while maintaining its secrecy. Specifically see your JIC (Joint Intelligence Committee) and its history of post-portem analysis after notable incidents such as the Iraq WMD misread. That was about political influence into the workings of intelligence, scope overreach is of course the issue of the day but presumably they could take a crack at it.

In fact I have come to believe that your system is more well-managed than ours here in the US partially because it is a smaller country and hence easier to keep track of. See the Washington Post's article (before Snowden's revelations) on the mushrooming growth of myriad, largely redundant secret intelligence groups dispersed throughout various US agencies: http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articl...

"...David Omand's "Securing the State"..."

I shall add that to the summer reading list. I'm still dubious about how much accountability there actually is. For instance, the quote below is from a (generally favourable) Amazon review of the book referenced

"The book is a bit weak in the realm of intelligence collection, but this is because this is a very sensitive area and Sir David was clearly trying to avoid stepping on toes."

We are good at 'sensitive areas' in the UK.

"...the mushrooming growth of myriad, largely redundant secret intelligence groups..."

I suspect we have some of those as well but as projects/units within the main agencies.

I hope you'll be downvoted to hell.

HN should be about constructive criticism. We're all intelligent people, we can all tear down anything we put our mind at, but that doesn't mean that we should, or we wouldn't leave our house every day.

I know I'm a cynic and it's a bad habit I'm trying to change, maybe you should try too.

We'll there is some merit to his comment(Despite the sarcasm). We have seen so many of these types of petitions/movements recently, only to be totally ignored by the gubment.

If at first you don't succeed...

Do you imagine your comment constructive?

If it can prevent the next wiseass from spouting his mouth, yes.

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