Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister • Hacker News Board

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#101

Post by Aerroon » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 8:47 PM UTC

galbar wrote: post #96

Aerroon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that cigarettes aren't vital to a functioning democracy, information is. When you impose limits on the spreading of information you give tools that can be abused to block valid information. Even if the 'block' is putting a label on everything, it'll still limit the spread of information.

Devil's advocate: democracy worked well (at least as well as the last ten years) before everyone could voice their oppinions in a worldwide public forum. We had journalists that spread the information through various channels.

Did it actually work well though? Because most democracies are rather young. Look at interwar Europe and how most of those democracies turned into autocracies. A longstanding democracy in history seems to be more of an exception rather than the rule. And most of those seem to come with some pretty big asterisks too. It rather seems to me that democracies today have performed better in terms of stability than in the past.

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#102

Post by jokethrowaway » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:52 PM UTC

jfengel wrote: post #31

jokethrowaway wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to clear this misconception that democracy is good. It may be the least evil form of managing societies we attempted until now, but it's in no way good. Democracy is violently (under threat or by direct action) imposing the will of majority on a minority.

All modern democracies have tools in place to protect minorities. It's never as simple as a bare majority imposing its will. Ironically, it leads to the exact opposite, where certain minorities express disproportionate power. For example, the rules always favor the status quo, so a minority in power can retain power, and subvert even largish majorities from passing rules they favor. Democracy may well be the least wo…

In a purely democratic event, the majority will impose its will on the rest of the population (eg. think about Brexit).

I think you're conflating democracy in general with social democracies.

Social democracies are much more complicated - but they have a corruptible government which pretty much guarantees that the richest minority will be able to get laws that appear to satisfy everyone while benefiting them.

A clear example is progressive taxation - it sounds fair to a laymen. Then you see that all the rich people use tax loopholes to pay close to zero while middle class people struggle to get rich because of the extra tax hurdle.

I think the situation is slightly better in Switzerland because it's a semi-direct democracy and the greater use of referendums gives the population a greater chance to shape their society.

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#103

Post by jokethrowaway » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 9:56 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #27

jokethrowaway wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to clear this misconception that democracy is good. It may be the least evil form of managing societies we attempted until now, but it's in no way good. Democracy is violently (under threat or by direct action) imposing the will of majority on a minority.

I totally agree with this. But I believe we can only find something better by changing democracy's rules in an incremental manner.

I believe we will just crash eventually, learn a lesson and try something else. Or we will all die before that. Or we will all get unlimited energy, defeat aging and become gods.

The reason I think this is because of the USA: the USA started as a minarchy, it became very rich (probably because of it) and then slowly became the largest, fattest government ever.

Similarly, tons of smaller governments in EU keep growing larger and more inefficient instead of cutting down and freeing the economy.

Re: Trump Twitter ban 'raises regulation questions' – UK govt minister

#104

Post by techsin101 » Sun, Jan 10, 2021, 10:38 PM UTC

It seems to me concerns regarding censorhips are all gone. Now we have everyone at every level of internet banning people left and right. From DNS provider, hosting, name servers, to social media, youtube, to even blogs.