Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives • Hacker News Board

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#101

Post by mjburgess » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:09 PM UTC

luckylion wrote: post #97

mjburgess wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trains run. Given human history, and every other undeveloped country, this is working. It is incredibly difficult for a society to function as smoothly as any western country does. It is miraculous to people in many nations that there can be such things as timetables at all.

> The trains run. Given human history, and every other undeveloped country, this is working. Sure, and in the context of any single country it might not be working. Is a train running at 3mph "working" because there were no trains on earth during all those years of human history before the invention of trains? I don't think that's a useful definition of "working". I do absolutely agree that advanced societies are mir…

your definition of "work" is a moral/aesethic one, rather than a functional one

there is no sense in which a $1k dollar burger weighs on whether a society is functioning

your moral distaste at the marginal value of $1k to different people, doesnt strike me, as very relevant to the issue

indeed, that, people have different marginal values for $1k is precisely a symptom of how profoundly well rich societies function

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#102

Post by CryptoPunk » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:14 PM UTC

netcan wrote: post #38

CryptoPunk wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>The internet is, OTOH, obviously structurally inclined to being an agent of chaos. Decentralization != chaos. On the contrary, it can be far more stable for the forces of coordination, allowing for greater production of knowledge and intelligent action. See Wikipedia.

I meant chaos in a more casual sense of "disruption of status quo." Old media was a lot less inclined to get behind any old revolution that comes along.

Not permanently though. A new status will emerge from the internet, and that may prove to be more stable than the more centralized one it replaced. Distributed power structures can be less fragile than centralized ones.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#103

Post by baybal2 » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:20 PM UTC

082349872349872 wrote: post #99

baybal2 wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never saw USSR myself, but for few very blurry memories of my first years of life I barely recall. But from my lifelong interest studying how countries work, and fail, I would tell that an average union's citizen would be given a chance to see such inoculatory dosages of "truths" a dozen or so times in his life, the more the higher the rank the person has in the society. And that for most, the exposure to it will p…

Thank you. That seems to confirm the first half of my hypothesis for the rise of ЕР in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24698473 , do you have any opinions on the validity of the second half? > "neo-feudalism is what one gets when russians spend the 1980's deciding the capitalists had valid criticisms of communism, then the 1990's deciding the communists had valid criticisms of capitalism." where by neo-feudalism…

> where by neo-feudalism I mean I believe the basic deal Putin has with the populace is: what corruption there is will keep its ill-gotten gains at home and not flee to London, followed by governors may fleece their region but if there's a scandal they're out.

Somewhat remotely close to truth. The trick of Putin's ascension to power was him being completely pliant when it comes to crimes of regional elites, mafias, and governors. He did pretty much everything, but saying it out loud that "I will let you steal as much as you want if you just don't touch me"

1. It didn't anywhere, but in Moscow, and their imagination

2. A majority did flee to London, as mafias went out of all bounds killing each other when Putin gave them that carte blanche

3. There were, and are governors who are scandalised more than Jerry Springer

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#104

Post by shrubble » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:31 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #40

baybal2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will call this a "Elzin Effect": — When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake — Yes, that Boris Yeltsin. In 1989 the future first president of post-Soviet Russia visited Houston, and what most impressed him wasn’t NASA. — It was a Randall’s grocery store, where the Houston Chronicle saw him “nodding his head in amazement” at the fish, produce and frozen pudding pops: — “He commented that if the Soviet p…

This story reminds me of when the Soviets fought their way into Germany in 1945, and eventually Berlin. The Red Army soldiers saw the wealth that Germany possessed and it pissed them off even more. They thought "why would a country this rich invade a poor country like ours?". The theory is that it was a contribution to the brutal treatment of Germans immediately before and after the end of the war (beyond the retribu…

Might I suggest reading the propaganda of Ilya Ehrenburg that was distributed to the soldiers entering German territory...

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#105

Post by romanoderoma » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:44 PM UTC

082349872349872 wrote: post #95

romanoderoma wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm from Italy, my grandfather lived in Russia, during and soon after WWII. I wasn't saying that Russia in the 90s was an happy place like the cocaine driven USA of the 90s. Russia in the 90s was dealing with the ruins left by the regime. I know of people that died because they poisoned themselves with home made vodka. In Italy people were going crazy from all the novelties too, like any novelty people are attracted…

The war in Afghanistan[1] was on the spending side, on the income side was the double whammy of oil price and (because oil is denominated in it) dollar decline. I think Fahd probably deserves a bit more credit for kneecapping the USSR than he commonly gets. Bonus clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttzAsH1yM6E&t=60 (along the lines of: officers, you brought sons back to their mothers) [1] I remember back when the T…

War in Afghanistan was a proxy for the cold war where primarily US and UK (but also China, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) backed the mujahideen (including Taliban) to keep USSR spending a vast amount of money in the region while also cutting their income.

They succeeded in their intent and the fall of the USSR was so sudden that hundreds of soviet tanks were abandoned on the field

http://www.artificialowl.net/2008/08/ussr-red-army-tanks-gra...

A few years after the end of the war US left the region, refused to help with the reconstruction and handled control to Pakistan that in exchange for routes and security made pacts with local warlords and the Taliban.

With the consequences we know.

I wish I could understand what the Russian Walter White is singing in that YouTube video!

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#106

Post by hallway_monitor » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:47 PM UTC

gameswithgo wrote: post #85

op03 wrote: post #12

Dont we see this with open source? More people show up. More people can find issues. Many more people can find issues than can fix them. The bug tracker bloats. Core team members get called incompetent every 2 hrs. As a counter reaction some core team members get it into their head, to share less or react in unhelpful ways that have long term costs and things go back and forth in waves. We have a few rules at work. 1…

I think it has more to do with how quickly trolls can spread insane memes than anything like this. Flat earth, QAnon, pizza pedos. People have insanity trying to get in their heads all day. I bet it isn't just government people trust less since mobile internet, but everything.

Just wanted to point out there did actually turn out to be a secret pedophile ring, you know, the one led by Epstein. Not every conspiracy theory is false.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#107

Post by netcan » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:49 PM UTC

CryptoPunk wrote: post #102

netcan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I meant chaos in a more casual sense of "disruption of status quo." Old media was a lot less inclined to get behind any old revolution that comes along.

Not permanently though. A new status will emerge from the internet, and that may prove to be more stable than the more centralized one it replaced. Distributed power structures can be less fragile than centralized ones.

This is getting pretty far from the original point... but I'm dubious.

First, the internet isn't really distributed anymore. The media part, at least, is controlled by a handful of operators. It is a many-2-many medium, which is a strong distributed quality... but IDK. Idealism about the internet is starting to seem quaint and naive. I did think so, though, at one point.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#108

Post by bena » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 1:57 PM UTC

bonoboTP wrote: post #45

baybal2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will call this a "Elzin Effect": — When Boris Yeltsin went grocery shopping in Clear Lake — Yes, that Boris Yeltsin. In 1989 the future first president of post-Soviet Russia visited Houston, and what most impressed him wasn’t NASA. — It was a Randall’s grocery store, where the Houston Chronicle saw him “nodding his head in amazement” at the fish, produce and frozen pudding pops: — “He commented that if the Soviet p…

That Yeltsin story is a great anecdote but surely the Soviets did enough (and way more) spying to know basic and everyday facts about the US, like whether supermarket shelves are stocked. I mean, how much does it take to know this fact?

If you were to look at stuff coming out of North Korea, you'd see the veneer of wealth and plenty as well.

So the simple answer is "We lie about this, therefore, they must also be lying about this."

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#109

Post by mariodiana » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:05 PM UTC

"Sunlight is the best disinfectant"?

I find it interesting that we refer to "faith" in government, as opposed to "trust." When cheaply printed books and pamphlets arrived on the seen, thanks to the printing press, we saw another kind of faith shaken. What followed, eventually, is what we call "The Enlightenment."

I'm not sure the decline in government is a bad thing. Here I will disclose my political leanings. I lean very heavily libertarian. I'm something of a classical liberal, in favor of what's derided as a "night watchmen" government. I am not for getting rid of government. I just think it should do a lot less. The scope of government increases only because of the "faith" people place in it, because its track record by comparison isn't all that good.

Re: Faith in government declines when mobile internet arrives

#110

Post by hirundo » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

> Among 102 elections in 33 European countries, incumbent parties’ vote-share fell by an average of 4.7 percentage points once 3g arrived.

That's not a loss in faith in government, it's a loss in faith in the current government. A loss of faith in government would be voting for those who want a smaller government with less power, but the movements in Europe and elsewhere are hardly libertarian. Perhaps mobile internet is driving a desire for change, but for different, not less. Why would you desire that if it's government in general that you've lost faith in?