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Comment by Dig1t | Hacker News Reader

"Citizens will be on their best behavior, because we’re constantly recording and reporting everything that is going on"

-Larry Ellison

That sentiment seems to fail the test with reality, because you have people following the rules and behaving perfectly normally (like the subject in this story) who end up getting scrutinized anyway. That's a recipe for increasing anti-social behavior. After all, why bother following the rules if it doesn't keep me out of trouble?

Because it's not about helping you, it's about control. These people are literal anti-humanists, they just want to control all aspects of society. If people are suffering from the consequences of a massive publicly mandated surveillance state, well that's the price of progress if you listen to the anti-humanists.

Pretty sure the person you're responding to sees that clearly and may in fact be trying to point it out.

The original view presented by the quote is a child's view of authoritarians: they force you to behave the way they want you to.

The other commenter is pointing out how they work in practice, how they'll work with this, is by making noncompliant behavior the accepted norm and then enforcing it selectively based on their changing goals and targets.

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

People like to throw out that one line from the blog comment because it is a wonderful partisan critique of the modern Republican party. But I think it is more interesting with the first part of the comment [0]:

"There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely."

[0] https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progre...

This is an ironic choice of trite quote when contrast with the limitless HN comments one can reference (or have your AI of choice dig through) from the "big data era" during which HN was very, very, very fond of these "we'll slap up 1984 and it'll be great because nobody will speed or litter or install a mailbox post without calling 811" sorts of schemes.

But of course now that the tech of choice is AI and it's threatening everyone's jobs and status it's a bad thing.

There's a lesson about people there.

> There's a lesson about people there.

Could be. But it could also just be a Goomba fallacy.

It’s a fine line. Periodic demonstrations of arbitrary state power over your personal life can enhance the coercive effect. TSA checkpoints serve this purpose.

All of this airport security, all the searches, the screenings, the cameras, the questions, it's just one more way of reducing your liberty, and reminding you that they can fuck with you anytime they want.

George Carlin, “Airport Security” (1999)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQdC-e82gmk

No one in Congress, no TSA administrators, no President, and no judge has ever consciously had the thought that airport security was beneficial to them because it enhances state authority.

The TSA exists because it

1. Made some people look good

2. Made some people money

3. Was thought necessary by some true believers

The incentive structures aren’t aligned in a way that any individual cares about reinforcing state power like that. Mostly the people in charge care about getting reelected, keeping their jobs, making money, or in some cases doing good.

TSA lines suck because you have a bunch of hourly workers directing a a crowd of clueless people through a multi step process.

I just got back from Disney World with the family. We flew out of an airport with TSA, went through dozens of security lines at the parks, and flew out of an airport that doesn’t use TSA.

There was no meaningful difference interactions with any of the security personal. Some were nice some were annoyed, some were bordering on mean.

If anything TSA checkpoints are constant advertisement of the failures of the state apparatus as they spend labor resources on suspicion my golf balls are a 12 rack of grenades.

Excessive coercion eventually leads to the population “giving up”: voluntary unemployment/underemployment rises, productivity falls off a cliff, accidents increase, and corruption skyrockets. Unless there’s an outside benefactor nation both capable of and interested in carrying the weight, the society falls apart and you’re likely to get a revolution. This limits the amount of coercion that can be applied.

>Excessive coercion eventually leads to the population “giving up”: voluntary unemployment/underemployment rises, productivity falls off a cliff, accidents increase, and corruption skyrockets.

Sooo, what we're seeing the early stages of in the US right now?

Early stages, possibly. Depends on how/if things escalate or if we deviate towards reform. We’re still a long way from the most brutal totalitarian regimes of the last century.

Because they're the exception, not the norm. These systems generally do what they're supposed to do, at least if implemented correctly. The key isn't efficacy; you need to be emotionally prepared to oppose privacy violations even if they're doing exactly what they advertise.

Because instead of merely being scrutinized, you get sent to jail.

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