

So how do we get out of this mess? - larry_hagel

So we just found out, our government has been lying straight to our faces all this time. And all the big tech giants too (Mark Zuckerberg, Sergej Brin, etc.).<p>And so now, we&#x27;re all thinking: &quot;Ok, let&#x27;s just have them promise us or &#x27;commit&#x27; to the dismantling of this huge surveillance apparatus. And we&#x27;re good.&quot;<p>But then we understand that we will never ever again be able to trust them (neither the government nor the tech giants). Why?<p>1. They all have no problem continuously lying straight to our faces, this is now proven.
2. The blueprints for such surveillance systems are now there, the tech is now there, the know-how is now there, and even experience is now there. How can you get rid of all this so there won&#x27;t be any more abuse? You just can&#x27;t.<p>So what&#x27;s the solution to prevent our &quot;representatives&quot; from destroying democracy?<p>I don&#x27;t know if there IS one, but I&#x27;m asking myself these days if all this not &quot;simply&quot; tells us that a central government in this form is logically just not responsible anymore. That it will <i>allways</i> become corrupted, sooner or later.<p>I remember one political analyst suggesting quite some time ago that the US will subdivide itself into several smaller zones. What do you think?
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MisterWebz
The populace responds to fear. Shift the fear of terrorists to fear of the
government by making use of propaganda.

~~~
pestaa
Fear, I believe, is a core component why American (and generally any) people
want to shut their doors and not hear any of this scary stuff. More often than
not, myself included.

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varunkho
History has shown us repeatedly that concentration of power and resources is
the root of all evil. Let the world be a collection of thousands of small
states with maximum autonomy to each to govern itself. We used to have this
exact configuration in past but that resulted in frequent battles between
states. That was again an attempt to grow big and concentrate power. Part of
the reason was that the arangement was not created rather it grew out of the
natural evolution. So as we re-create such an arangement, we can take measures
like creating loose federations of multiple levels with UN-like institution at
each level. With autonomous small states, the true democracy can be realized
quite easily.

However, this decentralization has to be done not only for government but also
for economy, because concentration of power by any means – be it money or
military will ultimately force concentration of other powers.

"My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same
opportunities as the strongest… No country in the world today shows any but
patronizing regard for the weak… Western democracy, as it functions today, is
diluted fascism… True democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the
center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village." \-
MK. Gandhi

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bdunbar
> That it will allways become corrupted, sooner or later.

Systems of governance will always fail. This is just the way things are.

The very best one can do is what was done in Philadelphia in 1787: design a
flexible system of checks and balances.

It will not last forever. It will last for a good while. Such a system may
allow for a peaceful revolution into whatever sucessor form of governance
happens.

I suggest one valid successor to American representative democracy is anarcho-
capitalism.

Consider: if government is going to fail us in novel and horrid ways perhaps
the solution is to remove the concept of government.

~~~
c54
You suggest anarcho-capitalism, but consider this: Currently, we have a state-
capitalist society.I say state capitalist because every company that was
'bailed out' is effectively a state institution. There's an important
distinction between the free market and capitalism. Free market socialism can
exist as well as state capitalism.

The only entity in our current system powerful enough to, say, prevent
corporations from overfishing any fishery to destruction is the government.
Similarly, government issued and enforced carbon credits are the only thing
preventing (or attempting to prevent) even more drastic pollution. The list
goes on.

The main reason we need government right now is to put a check on corporate
power (although sometimes it doesn't seem that way, I admit). And the main
reason we need a check on corporate power is because of the profit motive and
the concentration of wealth towards the upper ranks of any corporation.

Instead of anarcho-capitalism, how about anarcho-syndicalism or anarcho-
socialism? In a socialist society, the capital (ie the means of production) is
owned by the workers rather than the rich boss sitting in his office.

Even more so, in a capitalist society, you need some entity in place to
protect your capital (land, factories, slaves, etc) from being used by someone
else, even if you're not using them (and even if you 'own' so much that you're
limiting others' very ability to survive). There are 2 ways to do this: 1)
Look to legislation enforcing capital ownership and a state-run police force.
And 2) establish a police force / military of your own, under your own
control.

The first is what we have now, and the second would quickly collapse into a
military ictatorship or oligarchy.

The way I see it (from the above reasoning), there's plenty of reason to think
that "anarcho-capitalism" is an inherently contradictory statement.

tl;dr: I agree with the anarcho- half of your suggestion, but not capitalism.

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informatimago
\- start using encryption, download and use gnupg. \- set up your own servers
on your own computers. \- start up your own (with neighbors) ISP, not
connected to a central ISP, but to other neighbors' and other town's ISPs.

You have the technology, and you have the freedom to use it, then use it! In
some countries, we don't have the freedom to establish long distance (or even
cross the road) communications without going the a government approved telco
or ISP...

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nobohobo
Stop relying on their technology. Start from scratch with a DYI hardware
movement. While the kids all learn to code, they don't have the resources,
time, patience, or energy to become electrical engineers. We do.

~~~
nicholas73
Could you expand on this? I'm an EE but I don't see the practicality of
building all your own hardware. As it is it is difficult enough to build
economical hardware to sell to others, let alone build one off personal
hardware. What power am I holding here?...

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chrisbridgett
Encrypt everything.

~~~
kimlelly
But that's only a short-term solution.

Because _de_ cription is only a matter of the amount of resources you through
behind, and:

1) Those resources become cheaper by the day

2) Technology, by definition, improves with exponential progression

3) A big central government has all the money it takes (from us, obviously)

~~~
bnegreve
I am not so sure: First Technology, doesn't improve with exponential
progression _by definition_. This is just an empirical observation.
Processors' frequency has stalled already. You can still increase the number
of cores/processors/machines, but the amount of computation you can process
surely doesn't scale linearly with the number of processing units (because of
various overheads).

Secondly, because the number of people and the data they have to store also
increase exponentially. Maybe they can decrypt someone's data but they cannot
decrypt everyone's data. So if we _all_ use encryption, they are pretty much
lost because they won't know what to decrypt.

So I would say that encryption is pretty safe, but very impractical.

edit: To kimlelly, ok if AI is "short term" then I cannot disagree :) But,
then is there a solution at all?

~~~
kimlelly
What I mean by "exponential progression by definition" is this:

We use technology to produce better technology.

That's the cycle that will go on as long as we exist.

It's by definition of exponential acceleration. In a few years, we will be
creating technology based on real artificial intelligence.

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macca321
Peer-to-peer software, rather than server based software.

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pressurefree
if you knew the truth you'd shit yourself...

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pasbesoin
Own the physical medium.

Study systems, including how they segregate and specialize. Realize this
generalizes across all sorts of different environments, from biology to
information to technology.

Compartmentalize.

P.S.

I mean this from the individual's perspective, per the original question.

After posting, I realize these terms can also and do also apply to the "other
side". Pick up any espionage thriller novel, and you're likely to quickly
encounter them.

So... They are universal. They work for both sides.

As an individual interested in having an accountable government, I'd argue for
their limitation for "that side". Transparency, audit trails, accountability.

That however does not obviate the need to cope with the status quo.

