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Australia is becoming a surveillance state

ia.acs.org.au

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Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#321

Post by kwere »

MisterTea wrote: post #111
thisone22 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just bog standard Australian cultural cringe. I've spent a good chunk of my adulthood living in various countries in Europe, and Australia. Europhilic nonsense such as in the GP betray their almost total lack of understanding as to the actual state of affairs in European countries. Corruption is everywhere. Corporate interests influence policy.. everywhere. Moronic government decisions abound.. literally everywh…

As an American I have heard many people romanticize Europe and compared it favorably to the USA in terms of politics, social progression, etc. Rose colored glasses, grass is always greener and all that.

> politics, social progression, etc

Yes, European Countries, except some ex-soviet countries are better than Usa (excluded California or New York probably) on social matters aside maybe personal opportunities due to a Left-Conservatory enviroments

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#322

Post by janeroe »

advanced-DnD wrote: post #287
hestefisk wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is nicely said. I grew up in a Western European country where I was used to most people caring about big societal issues such as health, environment, civil rights and privacy. In most European countries there is real competition between newspapers and an, at least in some places, a tradition of democratic participation. Meanwhile, in Australia, the “free press” is effectively owned by Rupert Murdoch, the…

> our leading politicians still debate whether climate change is real or not. But the Great Barrier Reef is definitely no endangered, because UNESCO says so!!! Australia is a joke of a country. It's just a Texas with ocean.

> Australia is a joke of a country. It's just a Texas with ocean.

It's called California.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#323

Post by kwere »

sk0g wrote: post #231
randomhodler84 wrote: post #114

Australian tech workers, get out get out get out get out… I can’t stress this enough. The Australian tech industry is a failing joke. You are being grossly underpaid. The country _is_ an authoritarian surveillance state and has been for years and years. The frog boiled and died years ago. Peace out, and find somewhere that will treat you well.

There's what, 5 countries that might pay better? USA of course, which has its own share of problems, Canada, England, Switzerland. Maybe one of Netherlands or Germany if you're lucky. No easy choice there, unfortunately.

England? For what i know they have/had enourmous labour offer compared to demand

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#324

Post by xyzzy123 »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #201
xyzzy123 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's take doctors as a specific example. Suppose we take the Phillipines and Malaysia, they (together) have about 6x the population of Australia. They have the capacity to train a lot of doctors - and a doctor can have a great life in either of those countries. They can both also produce doctors more efficiently than Australia, partly due to living costs / ppp and population size, and partly due to Baumol's disease…

What you write doesn't refute the problem which is that countries like this generally have worse health outcomes, healthcare systems, they have fewer skilled workers to build their economies. Skimming their best resources off the top can't be justified by some dry economic formula (if it happens to be correct) that just by pure coincidence results in a worse outcome for that poorer country and a better outcome for th…

You might enjoy this article from a Malaysian doctor (ok, Cambridge educated but fine) who is arguing that Malaysia is over-producing doctors: https://www.thestar.com.my/opinion/columnists/vital-signs/20...

I would agree that the Phillipines are under-supplied according to OECD ratios but again, I don't think the problem is emigration.

Personally I think your mental model of these countries is out-of-date. They are sophisticated and industrialised but do have high inequality and some governance problems. As usual, it's a distribution problem. I think you are under-estimating their capacity and they are not at all lacking in talent, education or human resources. Australia is lucky to get skilled migrants but is by no means "draining" them. I think I'd want to see a more quantitative argument before I was willing to accept that.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#325

Post by rtkwe »

nemo44x wrote: post #250
rtkwe wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> See: Middle East That's always tricky because the most successful examples of a guerilla army winning like that are all a foreign army coming into a local rebelling population. They mostly work by just wearing down the invaders until the cost and time requirements wear heavy enough that the foreign army decides to just go home, that same dynamic doesn't map as well when it's the state fighting for it's own survival…

It's actually probably easier since the government would be asking its own people to kill its own people. If the local government were in broadly thought to be tyrannical, a guerilla civil war would have a high chance of success. Ask Cuba.

It's impossible to say with certainty which way it will go. There's factors pushing in both directions. You're right there will be some defection from the military to any US insurgent side but there's also a lot of space to draw divisions in the US and given enough people you can assign soldiers to fight places they're not particularly aligned to support.

My biggest point is that all the often cited success stories of a guerilla army winning against any modern military are all on a home turf vs invading army (and the guerilla forces are often heavily backed by outside forces or backed up by an actual regular army like in Vietnam). There are completely different incentives there, on the extreme end of things losing means you might be killed

Also don't be so sure about Cuba if you're talking about the current situation, it's far from over and they're not exactly a peer comparison to make to a theoretical US insurgency.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#326

Post by timbit42 »

nemo44x wrote: post #245
nextstep wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having done the same move from the US (to Western Europe) I have come to the same conclusion. The United States is by and for the corporations; there’s a large enough bourgeois that think the system is meritocratic or in any way lives up to the country’s states ideals that a social consciousness shift is unlikely. It also helps that most Americans have so little time off work that they’ll never see another developed…

What's interesting is how many more Europeans emigrate to the USA compared to American's that move to Europe. 3 times as many, in fact.

What's interesting is why they move. Europeans would mostly move for the ability to make money. Americans would mostly move for the better society.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#327

Post by antisol »

L_226 wrote: post #66

Since leaving Australia (and started living in Europe) I have come to the conclusion that Australia is not a "real" country - it is just a continent owned by corporate interests that happens to also have people living on it. Corporate interests own the media, politicians, food production, education etc. and no one cares, because Life Is Good. Why expect anything to change, or people to care about strong democratic in…

>I have come to the conclusion that Australia is not a "real" country - it is just a continent owned by corporate interests that happens to also have people living on it.

Not a bad metaphor. I've always thought of it as kind of like Puerto Rico: essentially a US state, but without any of the good things that come with that. Like, you know, basic human rights such as freedom of speech. We have all the crony capitalism, oligarchy, and pseudo-democracy, but none of the fun stuff that the seppos have. And shitty internet.

But hey, there are beaches. And footy. If that's your thing.

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#328

Post by kwere »

sumedh wrote: post #129
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #3

What real/perceived security risk is AU dealing with to justify all these legal changes? They seem relatively isolated from many of the threats facing the US/EU west regarding terrorism/extremism. Borders in AU are pretty naturally secured by oceans.

> Borders in AU are pretty naturally secured by oceans. There have been few cases of people getting indoctrinated with ISIS videos and then doing terrorist attacks.

those are fringe cases, and pretty much 95% of the 0.0001% australian radicalizing can be spotted and monitored

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#329

Post by antisol »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #153
antisol wrote: post #14

you know what's hilarious? An article talking about surveillance states that immediately pops up a request for a bunch of personal information.

yep... I've never been on that site, never even seen an article there, and the first one I want to see, they cover up with a popup, asking me to subscribe... I have no idea whose idea this is, and how many people actually subscribe on the first visit, but there must be some pointy haired boss somewhere involved.

The ublock rule you want is:

ia.acs.org.au###subscribeModal

:)

Re: Australia is becoming a surveillance state

#330

Post by jacobr1 »

whatshisface wrote: post #274
marcusverus wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the government needs to make voting for federal elections compulsory in order to get people to take a stance / have an opinion (yes, you will get a fine if you don’t vote!) This seems like such a bad idea. Ideally, the democratic process taps ‘the wisdom of crowds’ and allows a society to make reasonable decisions. But all human beings are not capable of contributing to good decision making. Roughly the 15% of peop…

> Roughly the 15% of people have IQs below 85, making them effectively mentally retarded. And beyond that, a huge number of people are grossly uninformed about contemporary political issues, history, science, etc. The best contribution that some folks can make to the democratic process is not participating in the democratic process. You're thinking of the role of democracy as a way to solve problems, but it also play…

The paternalistic argument is that the low-IQ voters will be misled, and vote _against_ their own interests. That they just will vote for whatever higher-IQ group can best market to them, and will get a basket of outcomes that is, at best, indifferent to their specific needs. This argument is very dismissive the agency of these individuals.

I would argue that largely happens today, but not on the basis of IQ. Large chunks of western countries believe all sorts of (what I would consider) crazy things. And IQ isn't the driving force of belief here.

None of this is an argument to disenfranchise segments of the populace. But it is also increasingly naive to believe that voters vote on the basis of rational self-interest, and we need to have serious discussions about how to counter the forces that drive that, be it IQ, misinformation, in-group/out-group dynamics and more.

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