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Comment by blennon | Hacker News Reader

I agree with the author wholeheartedly, except for the mathematical analysis at the end.

I believe one of the existential threats to our country is becoming a dictatorship. I'm always shocked when I share this point of view with people around me and their reaction is basically, "that's so unlikely it's not worth worrying about". There are many examples of this throughout history, e.g. the Roman Republic, the Weimar Republic, those that the author cites, etc. We should not be so arrogant to think that we are somehow exceptional and immune to this.

My personal belief is that there are certain constants in the dynamics of human nature, and one of them is seek power. Broad, unchecked domestic surveillance is a dangerous tool to give to a potential dictator. We should not set up a framework where a power-seeking individual can circumvent our democracy through coercion.

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I deliberately made my analysis overly conservative because I didn't want to come off as a paranoid nut. I could have easily come to much higher figures.

Here is an example. Let's suppose that we're observing the USA at a random point in its history. Then there is a 10% chance that we're looking at it within the last 10% of its history. The USA turns 240 this year, so that means that there is a 10% chance of it collapsing in the next 24 years.

That figure is much, much higher than the 1% odds I used of collapse in the next 30 years. It is also likely to be more realistic. "Stable governments" survive in periods measured in centuries, not millennia. However that number is so high that it would have left me more easily dismissed as a paranoid nut, so I avoided it.

History demonstrates that humans tend to over-estimate the stability of whatever exists now. And are surprised when the present turns out not to be permanent. You should try to compensate for such perceptual biases when you find them in yourself. And should try not to trip such biases in others.

Can you explain the math as to how you know there is a 10% chance that we're seeing the US in the last 10% of its history? I don't understand that part.

He's saying that if you looked at the whole history of the US and divided that into 10 equal parts, then there would be a 10% chance of any random observation falling into the last part. Hence, all else equal, we have a 10% chance that we are looking at the US in the last 10% of it's history.

This would imply that there is also a 10% chance we are currently looking at the first 10% of the country's existence, which means you have confidently calculated the odds of the USA lasting at least 2350 years at 10% based on absolutely nothing. These probabilities are nonsense.

If we assume that we're observing at a random point in our history, we are equally likely to be observing at a point in the first 10%, second 10%, third 10%, and so on. That's what the assumption means. Which means there is a 10% chance that we're observing in the last 10%.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_argument for the most famous use of this line of argument. (It concludes that the human species is likely not long for this universe.)

There's something seriously squirrely about that math.

I really don't think thats true and I also don't think that your doomsday argument link relates to what you are claiming either.

The conclusion absolutely follows from the assumption. But there are two questions.

1. Is that a reasonable assumption to make? (In a surprisingly wide variety of cases, yes. But not always.)

2. How do we update the conclusion of the argument given a variety of other information that we have available to us? For example we have a great deal of information about the US system of government, current political state, potential threats, and so on.

What's stopping us from applying this math to other things? Like, every baby at the 1 minute mark of their life. Shouldn't that mean that ~10% of all babies born dies within a minute and a half?

We can take this to extremes. At the 1 minute mark we have a 99% change of being in the latter 99% of their life (and thus a 99% chance of dying 99 minutes later). It's amazing how many of them beat these odds.

It's an uninformative prior (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability#Uninformativ...). Meaning it's the best estimate you can make, if you don't have any additional information about the problem. Obviously we have a lot of additional information on human lifespans, which allows us to build a more accurate probability distribution.

Also see my comment above.

Nope, your example would be true if we didn't know how long babies lived, and we were observing a baby who was a minute and a half old.

Imagine you're figuring out the chance that you'll die this year. Let's say you're 30--probably a common age on HN. There's a 10% chance that you're in the last 10% of your life. Therefore, there's a 10% chance that you'll die in the next three years.

If you sold life insurance using those kinds of numbers, you'd have some woes.

If you can't use probability meaningfully, it's better not to use it at all; it obfuscates.

Actually if you don't have any other information about life expectancy, that's a perfectly reasonable prior distribution. We have much more data on life expectancy, and so can give much more accurate probability distributions. But if you didn't have that, the uninformed prior is the best you can do. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability#Uninformativ...

J. Richard Gott famously invented this method to estimate the lifespan of the berlin wall, and predicted a 75% chance that it wouldn't be there by 1993.

Also relevant is this article, Risk-Free Bonds Aren't: http://lesswrong.com/lw/hy/riskfree_bonds_arent/

>A list of major governments in 1900 would probably put the Ottoman Empire or Austria-Hungary well ahead of the relatively young United States. Citing the good track record of the US alone, and not all governments of equal apparent stability at the start of the same time period, is purest survivorship bias.

>But even if you don't share those particular assumptions, do you expect the United States to still be around in 300 years? If not, do you know exactly when it will go bust? Then why isn't the risk of losing your capital on a 30-year Treasury bond at least, say, 10%?

By that logic everything has a 10% chance of ending in the next (history length / 10) period. The year has a greater than 10% chance of ending in the next 2 days. Apple has a greater than 10% chance of closing up shop in the next 5 years. There is a 10% chance that Y Combinator won't exist in a year. It is a prediction based on assumptions about statistics and takes nothing else into consideration.

This is an interesting mathematical analysis but I am not sure how predictive it really is. It implies that the longer a country has survived, the more likely it is to continue surviving (because 10% of a larger number is a larger number.) This does not hold true for some things, like people.

The odds of a 100-year-old person dying before reaching age 110 are more than 10%, and the odds of a 10-year-old person dying before reaching age 11 are less than 10%. This is due to age-dependent-factors such as shortened telomeres and accumulated structural damage.

It is possible that countries similarly have age-dependent factors which affect the odds of survival, either positively or negatively.

I am not a statistician; I could be completely wrong. Apparently this is a whole debate: http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Doomsday_argument

With regards to your comments about assumed stability, I believe you are right.

The slow attrition of our civil rights and the strengthening of the surveillance state is not unlike the process of smoking cigarettes. In the beginning it seems like fun. Everyone is doing it. People warn you that it's dangerous, but you don't feel bad, and in fact you feel kind of cool.

Some years down the line and you start to develop a bit of a nasty hacky cough. You brush it off, but in the back of your head you think it might be connected to your smoking habit.

Then one day you feel a lump. You don't feel well, and after a bit of procrastination, you go and see the doctor. You find out you have cancer, and it's terminal.

All of a sudden you're dead. How did that happen? You feel like an idiot. You knew smoking was going to kill you, but you did it anyway.

Slow attrition is the worst for the human psyche. We just can't get out heads around it.

We're not on our first government per se in the US. When you look at basic, constitutional law & the ... mores of how elections work, there's generally a "revolution" about every fifty-eighty years. I'd call the last one at around 1965-1968.

We're much closer to the British model - we consider the law actually independent of the government proper. The government depends on law, but there's a quite specific set of interfaces for government to change law. This model is not only surviving but thriving, around the world.

I don't know how any modern state, post-WWII, survives without a security apparatus. Perhaps it not be the one we have now, but there will be one, should a government failure happen. It takes very little for the government security apparatus to encourage ratting out dissidents as was done in the Soviet Bloc, effectively drafting every citizen as part of the security apparatus. So the present size of such a thing, pre-collapse may not have anything to do with what it looks like post-collapse.

But so far, the basic framework has survived ( knock wood ). There are disturbing parallels with the period leading up to the failure of the Whig Party in American history. But there were self-destruct mechanisms built into things then that aren't apparent now - I can't imagine receiving news of a whopper the size of the Dred Scott Decision today. But perhaps my imagination fails.

>Broad, unchecked domestic surveillance is a dangerous tool to give to a potential dictator. We should not set up a framework where a power-seeking individual can circumvent our democracy through coercion.

I really like the term that I heard for this: "Turnkey Dictatorship".

Actually, it's going to be a global totalitarian oligarchy.

The international agreements for trade, defense, and surveillance cooperation are intersecting with the interests of their respective oligarchies and corporations.

Just ten years ago, who would have thought we'd be extraditing and jailing someone for copyright infringement? How about governments subverting civilian infosec and sharing the exploits? It makes going to war for plain old oil rights and defense profiteering seem quaint.

There are some who make a compelling case that representation of the people has been nerfed already, and we're in a dictatorship of the deep state. If that's true it is inevitable that "security" will be defined in terms of the continuity of control of the deep state.

> our country is becoming a dictatorship.

Our country will never become a dictatorship, and our country is already a dictatorship. To be more precise it is an oligarchy or what was that word... plutocracy? Anyone has a link to that paper?

It is basically ruled by the very few powerful interests.

There are multiple methods of how it is done:

One of the most effective is regulatory capture -- look at heads of FCC, FDA, USDA, Military and corresponding industries: communications, pharma, military industrial complex companies. There is a giant revolving door between them.

Senators and legislature in general (state and federal) can be easily bought as well.

Judicial can be subverted as well. This happens easier on the state level were judges are elected. I found "Hot Coffee" movie pretty interesting and accessible in understanding how the process works: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1445203/

Election campaigns are basically a big theater where future political favors are sold for campaign funds.

And finally the PR involved in polarizing the population and manipulating their opinions. On paper the country will never be a dictatorship so this just means spending extra on manipulating public opinion. Bush did a good job mobilizing Evangelical voters. Obama capitalized on liberal votes and sold a story of hope, change, plus added the racial card in there as well. It really was a very well run campaign, not unlike what Coke or Pepsi would have. This is not just a random internet person talking, AdAge -- one of the main marketing interest groups gave Obama an award in 2008 http://adage.com/article/moy-2008/obama-wins-ad-age-s-market... for the best marketing campaign. Other usual winners are Coke, Nike, Apple.

The other thing that helps out is that various segments of the population, which would benefit from having a unified voice and position, are divided. It happens naturally in society, but it is of course helped a bit by media: Fox News vs liberal news etc. The division lines are multiple: conservative vs liberal; racial: Whites, Blacks, Hispanics, immigrants; regional: North, South, East vs West; by religion: non-religious, vs Christians vs whatever. It is a bit like the sports fans, the hate the other fans, but in fact they are closer to the other fans in terms of interests, income status, and general life outlook, than they are they with the players they are rooting for, who could be all driving sports cars, and hang out in exclusive expensive downtown bars together.

So minus some PR juggling and the need for some extra rhetoric about "Freedom, democracy, and exceptionalism, mixed with a bit of God and manifest destiny" you are not too far off treating the country like a well run dictatorship.

> Our country will never become a dictatorship, and our country is already a dictatorship. To be more precise it is an oligarchy or what was that word... plutocracy? Anyone has a link to that paper?

http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746

1) Oligarchies are not dictatorships.

2) The US was founded as an oligarchy and has been a relatively stable one. This being the case, the OP's point still stands.

> 1) Oligarchies are not dictatorships.

Good enough for a general heuristic. On paper we are Constitutional Republic and not a Democracy either. But it depends on the level of conversation. Most people on the street would not know Constitutional Republic vs a Democracy even if it hit them on the nose.

> 2) The US was founded as an oligarchy and has been a relatively stable one. This being the case, the OP's point still stands.

Note: I didn't say a dictatorship would be unstable or everyone would have a bad time. There are and have been lot of dictatorships people support(ed) and didn't rebel against in order to turn them into democracies.

The bottom line is people don't have the representative power they think they have. And other, most concentrated power centers make decisions for them. Whether it is one person or 20 large companies doesn't matter much. I can't quite be one person so on paper it will never be dictatorship, just like on paper very few countries identify as "The United Dictatorship of <blah>". Even North Korea, is a "Democratic Republic" on paper. That doesn't mean it is one in reality.

> The bottom line is people don't have the representative power they think they have. And other, most concentrated power centers make decisions for them.

The sheer volume of people who think the two parties are the same and/or their voting is pointless would disagree with you.

> Whether it is one person or 20 large companies doesn't matter much. I can't quite be one person so on paper it will never be dictatorship

A large number of opposing poles on a spectrum are involved, it isn't just "20 companies". This competition allows it to function in a reasonable stable manner that appears similar to a Republic as everyone with the power to change the status quo is represented roughly equal to their ability to do so.

The simple truth is revolution requires it to be backed by people with resources.

When I talk to friends about the existential threats to our country this is the other one I think of. Terrorism doesn't even make the list.

I'm totally with you on our country becoming more of an oligarchy. I think we're talking shades of grey here. Today, things aren't good. The trend also isn't in our favor. To paraphrase Robert Reich, money and power go hand in hand, more money buys more power and more power alters the rules of the game in favor of those in power. Sadly, elected officials aren't bought and the moneyed interests have undue influence over the legislative process. This is one of the most important issues of today and I wish more people realized this. The only popular presidential candidate who is talking about this issue is Bernie Sanders.

A soon as you have significant regulation, you now have unwanted coupling between government and industry. The rest is just inevitable.

I love your bit about PR - that's beyond true. But it's the sort of thing that, once you see it, it doesn't really scare you any more. It's all very silly in the end.

The rest? People don't have strong mechanisms for identity any more. They don't live on the same land all their lives, they may or may not have strong affiliation with an extended family, so more ephemeral things creep in. I have friends who rant about the Left or the Right, and when you get 'em calmed down, at their core they're usually pretty centrist, but they depend on political entertainment product too much. And political entertainment product is rapidly going self-referential - this week's FOX story is a volley-hit back from last week's CNN story, ad nauseum. It's just cheap air time with delusions of grandeur.

Can we really use the Roman empire as a predictor for the Unites States? I like to think some things have changed with the world in the last millennia and a half. Maybe I am missing something obvious, but I can't think of any recent examples of a mature democracy that succumbed to a dictatorship without being manipulated by a stronger foreign power. Do you have any examples?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/specials/1020_ageofempire/...

We begin therefore where they are determined not to end, with the question whether any form of democratic self-government, anywhere, is consistent with the kind of massive, pervasive, surveillance into which the Unites States government has led not only us but the world.

This should not actually be a complicated inquiry.

https://archive.org/details/EbenMoglen-WhyFreedomOfThoughtRe...

Surveillance is not an end toward totalitarianism, it is totalitarianism itself.

Said as only a clueless American can.

There are people alive today, in the startup founders age bracket, who lived under Soviet-style communism and escaped it.

Get a grip.

> without being manipulated by a stronger foreign power

That's what always happened and will be happening as long as there's more than one nation state. Moreover, the difference today is that we've created multinational corporations, which are basically like nation states, except they're not tied to the land and they can't raise an army openly.

This whole concept of "mature democracy", like "developed country", especially the implied transcendence and permanence, is just our own historical ego. It's really only been a thing for the last century or so, maybe a bit longer for the US and UK. This is but a brief flash of light in a history of darkness for freedom. Like Ben Franklin said, we have "a republic, if you can keep it". Despite all of our technology, the human condition is fundamentally unchanged. We are subject to the same forces that felled Athens and Rome, and the same forces that made them great.

Hundreds of more recent examples. You've made the criteria rather narrow, but Germany and Cambodia are two scary examples of how the power dynamic in a country can change in a flash.

There is a real chance of Donald Trump or similar taking power in the white house. "Mature" or not, every democracy is a despot away from crumbling.

No! Humanity has not fundamentally changed. We are still made of flesh and blood, we still have the same cognitive biases, we are still fighting religious wars, we still feel jealously, greed, fear and yearn for power. In that sense, nothing has changed. The only shot we have is learning from history.

Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10885465

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