Hacker News Reader

I think you're correct in everything you've written, but I guess I go back to OP's question "why is this happening" and focus on who is driving this and why?

Sure, we understand why people are going along with it quite well at this point, but who and what are behind the push to remove civil liberties is the more interesting component to this issue in my mind.

Agreed, that is a very important question. But, it has always been like this, no? Except may be for brief periods in history. A small group of people have always tried to control the majority - kings, clergymen, military, businessmen etc. We are just more aware of it these days than a few hundred years ago, but other than that what has changed?

If anyone has any resource on this topic, please post - this (and environment) might very well be the most important issues of our time.

I would agree with you that this has been the default state of human history with since the rise of agrarian and pastoral societies. I tend to believe that previous to that in our hunter-gatherer days we were forced to live in a less hierarchical structure, despite probably having a well defined hierarchy of duties even then. Maybe more consensus building among everyone rather than simple blind obedience to the group?

I think it's no one and for no reason. We're living in a hierarchist society (as opposed to an anarchist one). This hierarchy is naturally establishing itself in the greatest invention of our time: the internet and our computers.

> who and what are behind the push to remove civil liberties

There's no master plan, if that's what you're getting at. I think this general drift is the result of a few different things, most of which are older than we'd like to admit:

• A lot of people like authoritarianism • People blame government by default for any problem that doesn't have any more obvious perpetrator (see point 1) • The massive mismatch in military strength between western powers and elsewhere that results in oppression of weaker nations and resultant terrorism

In case you doubt the appeal of authoritarianism just go look at the popularity of Stalin in Russia, or the readership of the Daily Mail in the UK, or the overwhelming political support for the NSA / the PATRIOT Act. Lots and lots of people want to live in a highly authoritarian society and it's worth reflecting on why that is, and whether those people have valid reasons.

I was recently in a former communist country, and took a tour of one of the cities. The tour guide mentioned that a lot of older people weren't so sure that democracy/capitalism is better than communism. Sure, in the communist era people got executed for merely making rude comments or jokes about political leaders, but at least there was working social security, pensions, everyone had a job etc. Whereas post-USSR, often life got harder and the old certainties dissolved.

Authoritarianism is popular because it presents people with a simple deal: support the regime no matter how shitty it gets and in return the government will take care of you - and as long as they have absolute power, if something bad happens to you then it's the government's fault. That government tends to have simple, easily understood solutions for things that appeal to people's animal instincts, like picking someone to blame for something and then executing them. Additionally you will get a comforting story about how by simply being born in this society you are one of the good guys, as opposed to "them" who are the bad guys. All you have to do is not have strong opinions, not be weird, or gay, or a Jew, and fit in with whatever other random biases the leaders have and life will be, if not good, then at least straightforward. And how hard is that, really? Almost by definition most people find it easy to meet that criteria, because they're in the majority.

Contrast with the civil libertarian utopia: if something bad happens to you, it's probably your own fault. You have nobody to blame but yourself. It's not clear what you're supposed to do or how to be a success in life. The government is small and generally refuses blame for things, even if the population is under attack. There is no black/white good vs evil story to hold on to. All around you are people who aren't like you, who don't think like you.

That's just my guess. I would really like to read a well thought out book on the appeal of authoritarianism. I feel like it's an underexplored topic (at least in the modern era).

"In case you doubt the appeal of authoritarianism just go look at the popularity of Stalin in Russia, or the readership of the Daily Mail in the UK, or the overwhelming political support for the NSA / the PATRIOT Act. Lots and lots of people want to live in a highly authoritarian society and it's worth reflecting on why that is, and whether those people have valid reasons."

This is a really salient point and one that comes off as heresy to the standard conspiracy-esque narrative. The reality is that to some extent our slide into authoritarianism is democratic.

Look at the "Arab Spring" -- they got a little democracy and mostly elected totalitarian theocrats. In that case many people want totalitarian enforcement of social norms.

Another place you can see a strong preference for authoritarianism is at a local community level. Many people prefer communities with strong zoning regulations, regulations on the appearance of buildings, and (often indirect) mechanisms for excluding 'undesirable' residents. Without those things you get sprawling, ugly, and sometimes crime-ridden places that just don't feel safe and are not aesthetically appealing.

Yet another is the clear preference many people have for authoritarian computing platforms like iOS. It's the most restricted platform in the history of computing, yet it offers superior user experience and a lack of malware precisely for that reason. The fact is that there's classes of problems that can be easily and simply solved by authoritarianism that are not easily addressed in a freer society.

The Arab spring was largely crushed with the help of American largesse. We ignored Bahrain, we never stopped funding the Egyptian military and said nothing when they reestablished control.

People are unwilling to oppose government control, and when they are they get crushed by outside forces. People in American continue to work for the government, it's even considered prestigious.

We can't even prosecute torture. People who believe in the government are dangerous idiots.

"People who believe in the government are dangerous idiots."

That might be true, but that's still my point-- it is to some extent democratic. If more people were genuinely and strongly opposed to torture, we'd be getting somewhere prosecuting it. I'd say a majority are weakly opposed and a minority are strongly opposed. If a majority or super-majority were strongly opposed something would be happening.

(Being weakly opposed is basically meaningless.)

In some ways all societies are democracies. A totalitarian society is where the majority either supports the totalitarian regime or at least doesn't dislike it enough to invest the energy and risk required to rebel against it. There's a minimum threshold of support that any regime must have in order to maintain control. At the very least you must have sufficient support among a society's wealthy and powerful (money), those who wield weapons (military and police), and those who control key infrastructure (operations). If those sectors of support fail, kings get deposed.

> Look at the "Arab Spring" -- they got a little democracy and mostly elected totalitarian theocrats. In that case many people want totalitarian enforcement of social norms.

It's almost like you need a strong constitution with heavy restrictions on what the government can do in order for democracy to not devolve into autocracy.

Great comment! I certainly wasn't thinking of some secret cabal sitting in a smokey room, but more a bit along the lines of what you have written. I guess I wonder about the specific people agitating/pushing society in this direction, as most people are pretty passive. I guess there are some among the pro-authoritarian crowd who are capable of agency and independent activity and can harness their more passive fellows in the direction they believe in.

I have a hard time wrapping my head around this as pro-authoritarian thinking is so foreign to me.

You're assuming that if everyone did notice, they would just naturally agree with you, but too many of them are 'sheeple' - lured into passivity by entertainment, economic conditions and so on.

I'm sorry, but this is a delusion on the part of many people on the left - the idea that people act against their interests because they just don't understand, and if only they could be brought to see the truth, they'd vote/protest/whatever. The reality is that many people understand the left position just fine, they just don't agree with it. There is a large contingent of people (maybe 30% in the US; hard to gauge in other countries, but you have surely noticed the rise o reactionary political parties in many countries in recent years) who are entirely comfortable with the proposition that people of other races and social classes are inferior and should be institutionally discriminated against, who do not believe in the rehabilitation of criminals, who think pillage is a superior policy to stewardship, and who generally have a completely zero-sum outlook on life.

In some cases they simply believe the strong are entitled to subjugate the weak, and that if we run out of resources in home countries that sooner or later (their notion of) common sense will prevail and the world will return to a colonial model with the strong nations just taking over the territories of weaker ones and putting the people there back in their place. In some cases, they're religiously motivated, believing that the world was ordered a certain way by their God and that they should thus be in charge of things, and/or they consider the world itself a transient distraction from some greater spiritual truth, so any signs of long-term unsustainability are treated as validation of apocalyptic views. This is why very conservative Christians in the US are intensely interested in the Middle East, for example; for them it's not just another geopolitical theater with a complex strategic and resource calculus, but the site of Armaggeddon, the final battle between good and evil.

For example, the rise of the 'Islamic State' over the last year was greeted with considerable enthusiasm in US conservative circles - not approval, but very enthusiastic disapproval - because it seemed like the emergence of a clear ideological opponent who fits in neatly with western eschatology, and the extremist positions of the Islamic State itself evidence a similarly ideological consciousness.

>Also, many people are more idealistic in their youth - before they have families, careers etc and before putting food on the table becomes a bigger priority. That is why it is easier to protest as a college student, than as a 40 year old with a mortgage and two kids. But that is also getting harder these days - student loans, getting a record etc

Unfortunately many people feel like these are things that they must do. People who lead interesting and fulfilling lives without "settling down" are just to gawk at on TV and wonder what it must be like. Pursuit of the typical "American dream" causes people to neuter themselves in order to fit in.