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Comment by boredumb | Hacker News Reader

I find it alarming how authoritarianism and totalitarianism are perfectly acceptable views if people work in particular academic and political circles and mask it in the 'better regulation', 'better government' or other pro-government sentiment. It feels like a whole section of society is trying to shoehorn in a fully regulated society by playing coy and fooling large portions of society at large into believing it's going to be to their benefit by not being completely honest with the implications and historical outcomes of a totalitarian state.

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If you are smart, there is a strong temptation to start telling everyone how to behave, because they are, like, less smart, and do stupid and dangerous things. These simpletons should do what we, the smart bunch, say, for their own good!

In some ancient books this is called hubris. It's a very real danger in any human interaction.

This has been pushed with every hot-button topic, every tragedy, at every opportunity. What boggles my mind even more is how many people seem perfectly willing to step right in line and accept it.

We live in a totalitarian state that's managed by corporations. In true American style, we outsource all of the things you just mentioned to the private sector, but they still very much happen just the same.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism

A lot of academics honestly believe in the idea that we're smart enough now to do it better. I work periodically with one academic who wrote a recent book published by Harvard University Press on the history of German censorship prior to 1945 (and she has relatives who were killed in the Holocaust), and yet who is still a firm believer in current initiatives to censor the Internet to address harmful content.

This "we're smarter now" is a kind of perpetual Achilles heel of academics dealing in policy. e.g., Chinese academics thought they were smarter now too just prior to the cultural revolution, and that they'd be able to steer the tiger they created in the students. They weren't, of course, and many of those academics ended up being targets.

We're smarter now, but apparently not smart enough to realize that "smarts" don't make for a terribly effective countermeasure to being persecuted for disagreeing with those in power.

> authoritarianism and totalitarianism are perfectly acceptable views if people work in particular academic and political circles and mask it in the 'better regulation'

Or, just to be devils advocate, maybe people just want better regulation and not authoritarianism or totalitarianism.

Most people are pretty rational about these things I think and can spot 'problems' a mile away A

Private Corps and Legislators tend to sometimes push things too far, or miss the 'dark side' etc..

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