Comment by saraid216 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by saraid216 | Hacker News Reader

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There's two things that jump out at me as worth mentioning:

1) Estonians can imagine losing a war over their territory. It's happened within recent memory. They have contingency plans. Contrast with the United States, where such a thing is the stuff of fantasy, mostly to do with China's military, and our contingency plans seem to involve cutting our leaders off from the world and waiting it out.

2) Americans wouldn't stand for a unified identification system. The moment you propose it, you'd have the Moral Majority breathing down your neck about giving in to the UN and taking a step towards a One World Government. This kind of religiosity permeates our entire civic culture. The very idea of modifying the Constitution horrifies even intelligent commentators, because it was written 200 years ago so it must obviously work well. This is the exact same logic you see from Bible-thumpers.

I really appreciate both the notion of the "boring European state" and the "start-up mindset" that Tamkivi brings up, though they're somewhat at odds. A boring government is a good objective; you don't want the government to be interesting: you want it to work. It makes little sense to me to think of growth as an end rather than a means, but I admit I'm not good at economics; I can see its need when you need a buffer zone for experimentation, but I don't see why it's any kind of measure of success.

What I find strange is that the same people who are against the federal government issued ID cards are also often completely ok, and in fact, very much in favor of what the NSA is doing. This is an observations for personal conversations, not some statistical fact, but I think many would agree with it. I find it very hard to wrap my head around that contradiction.

Well, more on topic, I find the opposite strange: that the same people who are outraged about NSA imply that people who are against mandatory government ID cards are stupid - such as the GP.

In Denmark, you can barely sneeze without giving up your CPR (Central Person Registry) number. Taxes, health, public transport travel record, phone records, bank records and more are all indexed on the CPR number. They live in separate databases and the shutters between those databases are mostly solid, but there is much less opposition to attempts to lower the barriers to access of this data that I'm comfortable with.

At the end of the day, why would you trust one end of the government (the above) and not another (NSA) with your data?

The NSA/SIS/Security Service (who have a very tightly controlled remit) vs some petty bureaucrat in the social security ministry whose targeted on how many people benefit the they can fuck over.

NSA every time

I'm not outraged at the NSA. Not really sure how you read it in my original comment.

To add to your anecdotal tally, I'm against federal ID cards AND what the NSA has done.

I know who you're talking about though, the vast majority of the Republican party is high on talk of limited government, but short on implementation, especially in the name of security.

To be clear, I really like what they've done in Estonia. But let's not kid ourselves, our government has only themselves in mind to benefit from the use of federal IDs.

China's military?!? China doesn't exactly have a distinguished history of conquest. What do they have to show for literally centuries of trying to take Vietnam?

It would surely make more sense to fantasize about a more militaristic culture waging the war, no?

Everyone neighbouring country has fought wars in indochina over the years. No country has been to successfully control them for long periods of time. In a land war the chinese have a lot going for them, just look at the korean war to see the strengths of chinese military. The fact the china was once many small countries that were all conquered by the qin kingdom should show that china has a long history of conquest. Just in the 20th century they conquered tibet and xinjiang and held back the US invasion of north korea. On the sea they have next to nothing and their navy is a job. China has never been a big sea power but it looks like they are trying to change that only time will tell how that turns out

China has never been a big sea power

Not actually true; in the 1500s China was a huge sea power. They had ships big enough to grow crops on deck and Admiral Cheng Ho got as far as Middle East and Africa. Then the bureaucrats, losing power to the merchants and the Navy manipulated the Emperor into declaring owning a ship with more than one mast a capital offence (!) and that was the end of that.

Fast forward a few years and the Portuguese show up on the other side of Africa, Vasco Da Gama at the helm. He should have encountered a Navy that embarrassed anything the Europeans had at the time. Instead, nothing, and then European colonial history happened.

Fun fact: jingoistic Chinese claim (without documentation of any kind, as far as I know) that Zheng He (= the guy you mention) actually visited the Americas.

Also, wikipedia indicates his expeditions occurred 1405 to 1433, not 1500s.

You are right, I got 1500 and 15th century mixed up :-)

China has always had extreme difficulty expanding beyond its river basins. You might consider it quibbling, but China didn't conquer Tibet and central Asia; foreign armies conquered China as well as Tibet and central Asia. They then, being the same people as themselves, ruled those territories more or less together.

And even beyond all that, a war between China and the US would necessarily be naval. They don't share much in the way of a land border.

I wonder how the Tibetans and Uighurs feel knowing that despite being part of different ethnic and linguistic groups, they're "being the same people" as the Han.

Probably warms their hearts these days to know they're being exterminated by "their own kind," as the Han are busy eradicating the native Tibetans and Uighurs and their cultures at this very moment.

"Thanks" for your insight.

The Han are doing well against the Uighurs; the Tibetans are doing a great job of holding their own. Han who move into Tibet suffer a variety of health problems.

And, obviously, I was referring to the Manchus, who overran China, Tibet, central Asia, etc., and administered it all together. The Manchus who conquered Tibet were the same Manchus as the Manchus who conquered China. Note that they are just as separate, ethnically and linguistically, from the Han as the Han are from the Tibetans (the Qing imperial family's surname was four syllables long!).

Imagine a horde of barbarians sweeping out of Mexico and taking over all of the US and Canada, administering all of North America as one big empire. After 2-300 years, the Mexicans fall from power, and ethnic Americans assume control of the empire. Would it make sense to talk about how the US took over Canada?

Well, they conquered all of China.

See my reply to your sibling -- they didn't. China was itself conquered along with a big swathe of the rest of Asia; its current extent does not come from Chinese expeditions.

Which part of "stuff of fantasy" was unclear?

Hell, there was a recent movie about a bunch of scrappy Americans playing guerilla against a successful Chinese beachhead. (I don't remember the name; I just saw the trailer in theaters a bunch.)

If you talk about invasion on home soil, virtually any American will bring up how it would be opposed by armed citizens at every step.

> It would surely make more sense to fantasize about a more militaristic culture waging the war, no?

Like who? Canada? Mexico? Our special relationship with the UK? France? Russia? There's no country where an invasion makes sense. At best, there's a reasonable fear of someone carpet-bombing all of our major cities with nukes.

Nothing about "stuff of fantasy" was unclear, but I'm surprised to see such a flagrantly inappropriate choice of villain to fill the role. Just like I'd be surprised to see Quakers filling the role of "oppressive religion" in a theocratic dystopia novel.

Of the countries you mention, Russia has a long and recent history of aggressive expansion, and is physically quite close to the US (that is, Alaska). It's easily a more suitable candidate for invading. Mexico is probably the next most plausible. As you say, it's not particularly plausible in any event, but I'd expect that to mean that nobody bothered thinking about it at all.

Hi! I return bearing an HN comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7161044

Copied in full:

> Time does not stand still, and to assume that China will is foolish. With wealth comes power, and China's military will likely be unrecognizable in 30 years. To underestimate one's enemy is simply stupid.

Said fantasies: also on HN.

You're presuming that the people who come up with these fantasies know anything about history besides "Jesus was born in 0 AD."

Yes, I'm aware that 0 A.D. is not a thing.

I wonder if there would be any way to implement some alternative identification system that would enable the benefits the article mentions, but still allow for privacy that does not require a trustworthy government. I think, if the government can be trusted (always questionable, but sometimes true), a national ID is clearly an efficient solution. But if government can't be trusted, then maybe some kind of decentralized pseudonymity-based system could work. The state could tax the pseudonyms, they might hold the access rights to medical records etc. Of course this would be cumbersome and allow a certain level of fraud, but might still be an interesting alternative in hostile environments (the state either opposes what one does, or at least does not support it). Maybe one should look into how guerrillas and organized crime identify people that belong to their networks.

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