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The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

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Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#61

Post by tim333 »

skhunted wrote: post #42
tim333 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people would like quite limited government that does the basics but otherwise leaves them alone.

Can you give some examples of this “leave me alone” that they want to see enacted?

A sort of example might be Hong Kong when I was there thirty or so years ago under British colonial control. The tax rate was about 15% and the government was active in some areas like maintaining the roads, building housing and basic education and health care but otherwise left things mostly to the market. It did pretty well up until the takeover by China which wasn't due to any desire by the population to have China control things, but due to China wanting to take over and having a large military.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#62

Post by [deleted] »

tim333 wrote: post #61
skhunted wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples of this “leave me alone” that they want to see enacted?

A sort of example might be Hong Kong when I was there thirty or so years ago under British colonial control. The tax rate was about 15% and the government was active in some areas like maintaining the roads, building housing and basic education and health care but otherwise left things mostly to the market. It did pretty well up until the takeover by China which wasn't due to any desire by the population to have Chin…

[deleted]

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#63

Post by skhunted »

tim333 wrote: post #61
skhunted wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give some examples of this “leave me alone” that they want to see enacted?

A sort of example might be Hong Kong when I was there thirty or so years ago under British colonial control. The tax rate was about 15% and the government was active in some areas like maintaining the roads, building housing and basic education and health care but otherwise left things mostly to the market. It did pretty well up until the takeover by China which wasn't due to any desire by the population to have Chin…

The voters in the U.S. who want government to leave them alone say they want this also want government to regulate aspects of healthcare they don’t like. They want government to regulate private businesses so that they can’t exclude their notion of what “free speech” means. They want government to crack down on all the people and things they disagree with.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#64

Post by Gud »

skhunted wrote: post #57
fallingsquirrel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments have a terrible track record when it comes to privacy. Everything from the USPS selling your info when you move, to the 2 dozen texts I got yesterday because the government sells[1] your voting records on the cheap. Maybe you don't agree but surely you at least understand why people are widely worried about a future where the government decides to sell your adult website access records to make a few extra…

They should be worried. Bad governance is bad. But people do want something to be done about ease with which children can access pornography online. A solution will eventually be imposed if the industry doesn't clean things up.

It is the parents responsibility to raise their children. It's not my responsibility to have to show ID(I'm a grown adult, there is no mistaking me for someone 18 and below.. though I don't think there is any such laws in any country I would want to live in. this seems to be a fairly US centric world view).

"Think of the children"? That's the argument here?

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#65

Post by mmooss »

brg wrote: post #58
mmooss wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tariffs are at least anti-libertarian.

Absolutely agree. The libertarian view of tariffs is that they limit free trade, and are often used for inefficiently for market manipulation than as a funding source. One question this US election cycle has brought up is how to best fund a government. Every reasonable person understands that a government needs funding to operate. But every mechanism employed has trade offs. But I have not found enough information to…

We can ignore the reasons they give; they're well-established liars. Here are some patterns the tariffs fit afaict:

They like to shift the tax burden away from wealthy constituents and onto everyone else: Republican states tend to use sales tax, which taxes everyone at an equal rate, rather than progressive income tax. Most/much wealthy income comes from capital gains, etc., which are taxed at a relatively low rate. Most of everyone else's income comes from wages, which are taxed at higher rates ('income tax' should be called 'wage tax', to avoid confusion), including welfare taxes like Social Security, etc.

They are populist nationalists and want to increase nationalism and disrupt international institutions and cooperation. Tariffs ideologically do the first and practically do the second.

> The libertarian view of tariffs is that they limit free trade, and are often used for inefficiently for market manipulation than as a funding source.

Also, tariffs are like sales tax: They tax everyone at the same rate.

> If you or anyone can provide an interesting survey on some principle approaches to tax policy I would be grateful.

Sorry, not off the top of my head ...

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#66

Post by mmooss »

skhunted wrote: post #55
mmooss wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is that made better by tariffs? Do you mean the increased prices will reduce consumption, which will reduce the accompanying waste?

Yes.

Sure but that seems more a clever side-effect than a real policy?

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#67

Post by skhunted »

Gud wrote: post #64
skhunted wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should be worried. Bad governance is bad. But people do want something to be done about ease with which children can access pornography online. A solution will eventually be imposed if the industry doesn't clean things up.

It is the parents responsibility to raise their children. It's not my responsibility to have to show ID(I'm a grown adult, there is no mistaking me for someone 18 and below.. though I don't think there is any such laws in any country I would want to live in. this seems to be a fairly US centric world view). "Think of the children"? That's the argument here?

Do you think a business should be able to sell alcohol to a 10 year child? It’s not the business’ responsibility to raise a person’s kid, afterall.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#69

Post by JohnFen »

skhunted wrote: post #57
fallingsquirrel wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Governments have a terrible track record when it comes to privacy. Everything from the USPS selling your info when you move, to the 2 dozen texts I got yesterday because the government sells[1] your voting records on the cheap. Maybe you don't agree but surely you at least understand why people are widely worried about a future where the government decides to sell your adult website access records to make a few extra…

They should be worried. Bad governance is bad. But people do want something to be done about ease with which children can access pornography online. A solution will eventually be imposed if the industry doesn't clean things up.

I don't disagree. The problem is that the solutions being talked about have a large negative impact far wider than the problem they're intended to address.

Re: The Reasons Authoritarianism Is Growing – and How to Reverse It

#70

Post by JohnFen »

honkycat wrote: post #13
resters wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

indeed! HN has gone way to the authoritarian right. Not just socially but also a lot of HN readers favor economically authoritarian policies like tariffs!

I realized HN was lost during a thread about having to provide identification to access adult websites. There we SO many voices in favor. I was shocked. Hackers historically cared a TON about their privacy, yet they were willing to throw it away for the sake of "the children." Ignoring that there is a huge suite of tools that would allow you to protect children WITHOUT having to register with the government and be tr…

HN is not largely populated by hackers. It's populated mostly by people working for SV-type companies.
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