the big irony, of course, is that i'm much more comfortable with China surveilling me than the US, since the latter can throw me in jail, seize my assets, and ruin my family's life, while the former cannot.
> it amazes me how often I see this kind of anti-democratic institition sentiment.
leeoniya didn't say anything about democracy. The practical reality is that regardless of what forms of government are involved, whichever government has the ability to arrest you is the government which is the greatest threat in your day-to-day life.
> government has the ability to arrest you is the government which is the greatest threat in your day-to-day life
Assuming every government is the same, which I'm not so sure about. I rather be arrested by the German government than the US government, mainly because I don't want to disappear to black site and be made to disappear for years while I'm t̶o̶r̶t̶u̶r̶e̶d̶ receiving enhanced discussion techniques. At least I know I'll be treated relatively OK by Germany, while my fear is pretty much the opposite from a lot of other governments out there.
Wrong. The American government is much better than the Russian government, but the Russian government cannot arrest me while the American government can, therefore the American government is a much more serious threat to me than the Russian government. No equivalence between the two governments is assumed or implied.
"The government that has the ability to arrest you" is the one that controls the police on the street you live on. Not some abstract commentary on which government is best at arresting people.
I've already placed my bets that current president will be the first to serve at least three terms since the two-term limit was introduced. Judging by what's happening, seems like a safer and safer bet every day.
I think the most likely reason that won't happen is some sort of cardiovascular failure (heart attack or stroke), not because anyone will actually stop the Republicans otherwise trying. Conservatives want a monarchy.
Shitty bet tbqh, but it's your money. Trump promises his supporters much but delivers very little. If J6 is the sort of insurrection his base can muster, there's no chance in hell of him getting another term.
He has said that he cannot do more than two terms, but also there are ways to do more terms. Then he said it's too early to think about, then that he is joking, then that he wasn't joking, then that he isn't looking into it, but that they're "probably entitled to another four after that" (https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-trump-has-said-about-pursu...), whatever the fuck that means.
Ultimately, I don't think it matters much what he says or has said, he won't clearly say what he/they are planning, obviously.
> Ultimately, I don't think it matters much what he says or has said, he won't clearly say what he/they are planning, obviously.
Honestly they're pretty open about their plans. They laid most of them out in Project 2025. They just sometimes carry out those plans while also denying that they are following the playbook. Trump in particular will be surprisingly candid about what he's doing in between bouts of lies and denials.
Like he said he didn't know anything about project 2025?
Steve Bannon is the one working on this, has said they have a plan to do it. Trump himself seems to believe that if the country is at war elections are postponed because that is how it works in Ukraine. Ergo Venezuela.
It’s not anti-democratic, it’s simply a matter of exposure. China can WANT to do whatever they want to me, but I have no assets in China, no trade in China, and neither me nor anyone close to me will ever go to China. So it simply matters a lot less what China has on me than the country where I have friends, loved ones, financial assets, property, and frequently visit.
Generally I'd agree. The threats here are larger. That said China isn't powerless to hurt you either. I haven't seen much of it happening, but in theory China could blackmail you. They can manipulate and influence you and your children through social media and advertising, even encouraging kids to harm themselves/others.
They can also fill the products they make for us with heavy metals and other poisons while building them to break draining our finances and filling our country with trash. The worst thing they could do though is just stop producing crap for us entirely since we're basically dependent on them for just about everything.
And the united states can also do those things. We’ve been fighting against the hormone-filled milk for decades, and half of the ingredients are banned by smarter countries, but more than half of our food is still imported poison.
But none of that has to do with who is surveilling me online.
Yes the US is a democracy, but a lot of our systems suck ass and are also close in proximity. You DO NOT want to get into legal trouble in the US. Our justice system is beyond fucked. If there's one way to permanently ruin your life in the US, it's getting into legal trouble. You're better off smoking crack cocaine, that's probably healthier for your livelihood.
I don't know about China's legal system, but even assuming it's more fucked, it's all the way over there. Not here.
The main trouble with Flock and companies like them is that they attach to our broken systems like a tumor. If the system fails, which it often does, these accelerate it and make it worse. If you get falsely accused of something or piss off the wrong PD, this shit can ruin your life. Permanently and expeditiously.
Even if you are the most Moral Orel you should be skeptical of these crime reduction claims. They don't just beat down crime, they beat down regular people, too. And if you ask them, they don't know the difference.
> I don't know about China's legal system, but even assuming it's more fucked, it's all the way over there. Not here.
You're saying that the US legal system is extremely bad, shouldn't the assumption be that other countries have it better? I don't know much about either country's legal systems, but I do know that if I feel like my country is extremely bad at something, other countries probably do it better, at least that what I'll assume until I see evidence of something else.
I don't see how it matters how other countries rank vs the one a person lives in. Even if Canada's legal system is better than the US, you can't choose to subject yourself to the Canadian legal system without extricating yourself from the US first.
Maybe, I mostly gave that disclaimer to say that it actually doesn't matter much. Even if it's worse, that's still better, because it's over there.
But yes, generally, I assume virtually every developed country (and some of the kind of developed countries) have a more just and competent legal system than the US.
The US is an interesting beast, because when you compare it to the entire world on a bunch of stuff, it doesn't seem so bad. But when you compare to countries that have, like, clean running water, then it really falls flat in a lot of ways. This allows apologists to basically justify anything the US does, because somebody, somewhere, is doing it much worse. Hey guys, look at Uganda, they're genociding gay people!
Not being an expert in every single country's legal system, I would guess that the USA's is about middle of the spectrum in terms of badness/fairness/justice.
These things are hard to weigh objectively. For instance, in America the police don't take bribes, you can't bribe your way out of a traffic ticket. The cops will laugh at your attempt and pile on more charges. But if you're a local business owner, the bribes to local politicians are far from unheard of and all manner of corrupt dealings between business and local government is prevalent. So how you rank America's corruption depends on how you weigh those two forms of corruption. There's not one single objectively correct way to do that.
> For instance, in America the police don't take bribes, you can't bribe your way out of a traffic ticket. The cops will laugh at your attempt and pile on more charges.
Sure, they might not take as many bribes as South American police tends to take (as someone who traveled that continent in car without a driving license, I'd say 90% are accepting of bribes for minor crimes), but American police also accept bribes from time to time. They'll laugh at you and pile on more charges if you offer too little, but even American police has a price.
FY 2024 has 229 "Number of Bribery Offenses" (https://www.ussc.gov/research/quick-facts/bribery), which obviously doesn't account for the bribing that no one noticed or where there wasn't enough proof, we could probably assume it's at least 50% higher than that if we're being charitable, but in reality that number is probably way higher, by magnitudes.
I don't see anything about cops in that link. What I do see is that public officials were 49% of those charged but 45% were high-level elected officials. So that's what, maybe 4% that might be cops?
In Mexico, cops will pull people over just to collect chump change cash bribes. In America, you have people like Epstein bribing state attorney generals, but nobody even thinks to slip a cop a $100 bill with their drivers license. This sort of casual everyday roadside bribery does not exist in America.
> but nobody even thinks to slip a cop a $100 bill with their drivers license. This sort of casual everyday roadside bribery does not exist in America.
Obviously incorrect for both Southern and middle states in America. But sure, go on believing the US cops are somehow immune to corruption, which is something I never thought someone would honestly believe, even on the internet.
If you ever decide to visit America and learn what it's like firsthand, I encourage you to try this. Just make sure you know a good orthodontist first, and probably a good therapist too, because you're going to get thrown to the ground, handcuffed and sent to jail. There is no world in which trying to bribe your way out of an American traffic ticket makes more sense than just taking and paying the ticket. Even trying this is genuinely one of the stupidest things you could ever do.
Maybe it isn't the US government we need to worry about. What's stopping Flock from compiling and selling personal dossiers on every citizen like all the other big tech companies? They're just a private company so nothing to worry about, right?
Another sign of Chinese ideological dominance is that nobody can conceive of a future that does not mimic China's solutions to social problems. Trump says frequently that he's jealous of Xi's position as dictator, tech firms envy 996 culture, public safety advocates are pivoting to restricting internet speech and constant surveillance.. etc. etc.
Well a lot of people can conceive of a cultural hegemony that is more pleasant to live under. It’s more that Y Combinator wants to be exposed to the returns of the Palantirs, Andurils and Clearviews out there.
Possibly. I think, at the very least, Garry Tan is a true believer. He's not proposing putting this in someone else's neighborhood or city, he wants it in SF, SJ, Berkeley, etc.
it's the opposite. expanding the Y Combinator startup index strategy to include the surveillance startups is less belief not more. it's less opinionated. Paul Graham is actually more opinionated about this than Garry Tan is.
In the book "Blockchain Chicken Farm", American Journalist Xiaowei Wang went to her parents' home country of China to interview various parts of the economy to get an understanding of how it works from an outsider's perspective.
In one part of the book, she goes to speak to a police chief on the topic of surveillance. She discusses with the officer the challenges of tracking migrant workers, and how in China there isn't a single ID number similar to an SSN in the states.
Towards the end of the interview, the officer, Xiaoli comments that much of the modernizing of the policing work is moving to be more "United States-Like".
Incredible anecdote, I purchased the book. In this way, the relationship between America and China is exactly like the relationship between America and the USSR was -- each trying to become the other precisely as they try to consume each other.
jesus fuck the gloves really came off in the past few years. noone even cares to hide it anymore.
i could almost admire the transparency of these people, the way they're apparently okay accepting collateral damage of their schemes, up to the complete destruction of the fabric of society... as long as there's money to be made.
American venture capitalism ironically creates all of the same authoritarian issues as Chinese state capitalism, but without any of the lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty part.
This isn't a surprising sentiment when you consider America is a country that protects billionaire pedophiles who partied on Epstein Island while China puts corrupt billionaires in the slammer, or even executes them. America is a country that exists to keep him rich at the expense of the poor while China does the reverse - its the greatest threat to his continued class dominance over the proles.
The police are usually pretty good at their jobs, within reason. It's almost always going to take them several minutes at least to respond to your call, but when they do manage to arrive on the scene they are usually pretty good about eliminating the threat and rendering first aid/etc. There are some infamous cases where this severely broke down, instances of cops not entering an active crime scene and instead seeing fit to stop the public from taking matters into their own hands, but these instances are so notorious because of how unusual and counter to American values they were.
It's usually prosecutors and judges who drop the ball.
Cops can't win that game. If they patrol black neighborhoods they're accused of profiling and discrimination. If they don't, they're accused of cowardice and again, discrimination. The cold truth is there are racial discrepancies in American crime statistics which can't be hand-waved away as manifestations of police bias, but nobody wants to talk about that.
We’re pretending our upper middle class SV bubble is reality. Poor and historically disadvantaged people don’t exist for the purposes of this conversation. /s
You know you don’t have to say it in so many words, “rural working class America” = poor white people. Of course they love the racist police (who used to catch slaves and enforce Jim Crow). And I say that as someone who grew up in rural America. I just happen to have read a few history books.
Half the people I work with in rural PA aren't white, you're just showing off your own racial bias with such an assumption. They still overwhelmingly support the police.
Get out of your liberal urban centers and you'll find that in most of America the police are very popular and it has nothing to do with income or race. Low income? That means crime effects you even more, which is more reason to support the police. Live in a very white part of the country? The overwhelming amount of crime will come from other white people, and accordingly most of the arrests will be of white people. And yet the people of those communities still support the police with borderline religious devotion.
Half the people I work with aren't white, and roughly half aren't straight either. By internet stereotypes they'd be judged to be progressive liberals who want police reform but in actuality my car is one of the few in the parking lot that isn't a pickup truck with "back the blue" decals on it.
Another point of fact: When democrats trash the police they start losing elections. Even most people who usually vote democrat get demoralized and stay home when the election turns to anti-police rhetoric. The only people who really hate the police are career criminals, people adjacent to career criminal lifestyle and culture (their families, etc) and of course rich liberals who can easily afford to insure all their property, live in controlled access communities and never have to interact with the criminal elements of society except on their own terms.
Unsurprisingly you completely ignore the link I sent and keep yapping about the people you work with. Facts and evidence are pointless with you people.
I've never heard about this Tan guy before, I don't keep up with politics/corporatism anymore, but is that possibly sarcasm? It sure feels like it to me. But again, I don't know this person, but if I came across that by itself I feel like it's pretty clearly sarcastic, as Twitter tends to be. Maybe I'm just tone deaf myself to how tone deaf others could be?
He probably being sincere. If you're logged in (or use something like xcancel), you can see the full thread, where he starts off with
> Flock Safety currently solves 700,000 reported cases of crime per year, which is about 10% of reported crime nationwide
> And they're just getting started
His profile also says:
>President & CEO @ycombinator —Founder @Initialized—designer/engineer who helps founders—SF Dem accelerating the boom loop—haters not allowed in my sauna
It's really interesting the different cultures "YCombinator the startup incubator" and "Ycombinator/HN the internet forum has". A comment being so oblivious about surveillance would probably be flagged here, at least heavily downvoted, while this guy is actively the president and CEO of Ycombinator today?
pg, what happened? Ycombinator used to be a beacon of sense in a sea of uselessness, but now uselessness is running Ycombinator?
Another case in point is most commenters are incredulous about AI, often coming from people who try and use it and see its shortcomings. Then you scroll over YC startups and I believe every single one at this point is some dumb AI startup.
Don't look to pg for anything that can be seen as "woke" - he wants that mind-virus eliminated forever[0]. Many billionaires revealed their true colors after November 2024, remember this when they adjust their public posture to follow the political winds.
This is not woke, no matter how large you define woke. You can see links with the ACLU or various human rights defense groups, but those groups may have become woke, without “global surveillance” becoming a woke topic.
Wokism is about making racist accusations of dominance over an audience who didn’t do it. It’s about unfairness and hyping factions against each other. The global surveillance is not about pitting groups against each other. To wit, 1984 has always been a very right-wing torpe.
"Wokism" is an amorphous culture-war weapon that can be anything an author wants it to be. Diversity is woke, equity is woke, inclusion is woke, non-heteronomative relationships are woke, movies that are barely critical of unbridled capitalism are woke. Not being onboard with "law and order" is woke - and not being 100% onboard with Flock can be reframed as being pro-Criminal and "woke"
> global surveillance is not about pitting groups against each other.
And yet this is exactly how the surveillance companies sell their global surveillance tools. Ring, Flock are all about keeping an eye on "outsiders" - see Nextdoor for examples on how people justifying surveiling others.
Many gays (or “non-heteronormative” as you say) are anti-woke. You’re operating a dichotomy between your opponents and you, trying to paint them as sweeping generalizators. But this is not wokism. Wokism is when you take “gays” and attribute them to your side, painting the others as nazis.
I’m gay and the single most powerful harm that was made to my life was the emergence of wokism.
> Many gays (or “non-heteronormative” as you say) are anti-woke.
That doesn't mean other conservatives dont see gay rights and marriage equality as "woke". You just proved my point though, "woke" is the bespoke set of things you don't like.
Do you want links to the numerous instances of conservatives lumping the existence of gays with being "woke"? Or before they hijacked the term, derided the "gay agenda"? Even the Log Cabin Republicans cried uncle[1]
Did you link the right comment? He seems to argue against "aggressively performative moralism", something a lot more specific than the common "woke-ism" conservatives in the US is yelling about which is basically about anything with "social" in it's name (for them, in their eyes).
Generally speaking, today, surveillance capitalism is the foundation of both our political culture, economy, and the tech industry that backs them.
In polite circles we call surveillance "user telemetry" and the like. It's not just Palantir and FLock; where does Meta's money come from...? Google's for that matter...?
> You're thinking Chinese surveillance
> US-based surveillance helps victims and prevents more victims
[1] https://x.com/neurajordan/status/1963303084609966288
[2] https://x.com/garrytan/status/1963310592615485955