> ... I've never seen the government efficiently action on any data they have collected.

It isn't usually a question of efficiency, it is a question of damage. Technically there is an argument that something like the holocaust was inefficiently executed, but still a good reason to actively prevent governments having ready-to-use data on hand about people's ethnic origin.

A lot of the same observations probably apply to the ICE situation too. One of the big problems with the mass-migration programs has always been that there is no reasonable way to undo that sort of thing because it is far too risky for the government to be primed to identify and deport large groups of people. For all the fire and thunder the Trump administration probably isn't going to accomplish very much, but at great cost.

The people complaining probably live in the UK or are related to it somehow. Then it would make sense that they are more worried about authoritarianism in the UK rather than in South America.

And even if the man was wearing a proper "Palestine Action" shirt that'd still be pretty concerning. It is an insane stretch to say that wearing a shirt represents a matter for police action. How far the world has moved on from when the UK could be considered a forward-thinking bastion of liberalism.

The people complaining were American AFAICT and weren’t worried by either, they were just drawing hyperbolic equivalences between suppression of speech and state orchestrated mass kidnapping and murder.

If we're talking about the Palestine Action shirt, Israel is defending against accusations [0] that they are genocidal. The police action of the UK seems like it could be pretty easily construed as suppression of speech in support of state orchestrated mass kidnapping and murder on a concerning scale.

Whatever is happening in SA might be as bad, I suppose, but I don't speak Spanish or have any family connection there so I'm not going to look it up. Although if they're genocidal then they should stop too, should that need to be said.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa's_genocide_case_a...

The example given was of a man in a “Plasticine Action” t-shirt, with the poster saying how that man was “disappeared” by the British state when he was briefly arrested and released.

If you’re not aware of the history of people being disappeared by states such as Chile under Pinochet, or more broadly what it means for a state to disappear someone, that’s kinda on you.

Either way these are not equivalent actions.

Yes, it’s suppression of free speech in a chilling manner. I hate it. No, it’s not the same as suppressing that speech by taking someone and holding them in a secret prison for years and/or killing them.

> No, it’s not the same as suppressing that speech by taking someone and holding them in a secret prison for years and/or killing them.

Sure. Though in the UK I give you Julian Assange - 5 years in BellMarsh, mostly in total isolation as if he was some major threat.

And one thing Assange used to say over and over again, was that he was inspired by government attempts to suppress WikiLeaks releases, because that was evidence that they feared the information in them could actually change things. This is pretty much also the main thesis of Chomsky, and many other western dissidents (and some others too, e.g. Ai Weiwei): our leaders are as unaccountable and willing to use brutality as any dictatorship, they just have less reason to.

Call me when the UK government brings the machine guns and starts slaughtering 40k Palestine Action protestors and I promise to agree it's all the same

They don't have to, because British are more obedient than Iranians.

I'll make it easier for you: wake me up when the UK government slaughters 1% the amount of the protestors the Iranian government just did in two days. 400 protestors shot by machine guns mounted on SUVs in London.

That just might be approaching slippery slope territory to the current Iranian actions.

Currently I believe we are at zero protestors casually shot on the streets of the UK, so I fail to see the equivalency

Bad as the Iranian regime is, we know that foreign governments are actively working for regime change/collapse in Iran (Mossad boasted in public about being with the protesters on the ground in Iran, whether that's true or not it seems like a statement intended to make things worse). So maybe be extra careful where you source those death numbers claims.

UK is not, and will not be in the situation Iran is in for the foreseeable future. There will not be several powerful countries, some widely hated in UK and openly preferring a UK in smoking ruins to democratic government in the UK, calling for revolution there (although don't get me wrong, UK too could totally could use a revolution). UK has nuclear weapons. UK has a world-class surveillance apparatus, and doesn't have to contend with the cynical people running it getting regularly murdered or bought out by more powerful actors.

What all this means - and this has been the core message of just about all dissidents in western countries for decades - is that the people with control in the UK don't have to gun down hundreds (or tens of thousands, if you believe the colored reports) in the streets to cling to power. If it was their best option, they might.

Sure, and his treatment has been awful in so many ways.

I'm honestly not trying to defend any action by any state in this thread, I'm not trying to say that the UK is better than any other state. I'm not trying to make any point at all beyond using a specific example in agreeing with the comments above mine that "Everything is the same and comparable never mind how hyperbolic."

But it seems to be construed as if I am, no matter how much I agree that the actions we're talking about are terrible. People come back and tell me the UK is bad and I should feel bad for defending it. I know right! And if I was I would!

I must admit I find the whole thing very frustrating.

The problem is you have to fight for these things every generation.

It's a mistake to take things like trial by jury, open justice ( not secret courts ), non-arbitrary detention, even regular elections for granted.

I totally agree with you that the UK is not Iran and there is too much hyperbole - but at the same time the current government is trying to criminalise legitimate protest, cancelling elections and trying to remove trial by jury for a substantial set of things ( the ultimate protection against an authoritarian state ).

As an example, it's very telling that the government ensured that in all the Assange legal proceedings it never went before a jury.

The current government creating all these precedents, in the shadow of the prospect of a potential Reform government is something I think we should all be concerned about.

Tell me about it, that Jury thing in particular was shocking to hear, that they’re considering throwing aside an ancient right in the name of expediency and clearing a backlog, as if it was a minor detail and not the basis of the system of justice.

Especially since there is no evidence that it's the presence of juries is the cause of the backlog.

The idea that the state can deprive you of your freedom for a sentence likely to be less than 3 years without the chance to be tried before you peers, is worrying.

Note is was six months before Nov 2024, it's 12 months now and they are looking to extend to 3 years! ( or more - given the word: likely ).

Juries are not an administrative inconvenience or process inefficiency.

The current legal reform seems to be operating on the assumption that the defendent is guilty - rather thana resumption of innocence.

Better to let the guilty to go free, than imprison the innocent.

and that's exactly how the discussion pattern I was describing above works out

and that's why it is efficient propaganda

I mean, you bought up an example of a man being dragged off the streets of the UK for (1) trying to express support for playdough and (2) being suspected of undermining support for genocide.

I have relatives in the UK, right now. And after this conversation I'm now more concerned for them than I was this morning, and I can make some educated guesses about why ol' mate didn't want to talk to you about Pinochet, who Wikipedia suggests died 20 years ago. Sounds like something is going on in the UK right now.

I mean, seriously, I have left-wing family members who might be travelling to the UK this year. Is there some sort of guide to what political t-shirts will get them arrested?

You can do that with mental phenomenon too - eg, having memories, feelings, consciousness, thoughts. All aspects of "I" that might be present or not - so they can't really be said to be you as much as possessed by you for a moment. Insofar as a soul exists for you to be ... it is quite small.

> You can do that with mental phenomenon too - eg, having memories, feelings, consciousness, thoughts.

But once you carry that reasoning to its full conclusion, the original argument for a "soul" or "self" that can even be meaningfully called "I" vanishes entirely. There still is some sort of underlying "true" subjective awareness that's felt to be ontologically basic in some sense (just like the "soul") but now it's entirely impersonal (the traditional term is "spirit", or "the absolute") since anything that's still personal is no longer comprised in it: an ongoing phenomenon and perhaps an inherent feature of existence itself, not a "thing".

Yes. That's the point? Your personality might change and you're still you.

From an evolutionary viewpoint this makes perfect sense.

You better always feel like you otherwise you may not help this non-you survive, hence the non-you's went extinct quickly.

Yeah but that probably isn't going to what the original research is saying. Society is basically run by a tiny fraction of people (1-5% of the population range) and the rest are just along for the ride. Democracy is a major innovation where the majority has to nod along every few years or there is a mix up in who in the upper class gets to sit at the top of the tree.

From that perspective it becomes clearer what a 3.5% rule is getting at - 3.5% of the population mobilised is enough to overwhelm any ruling class that isn't on top of its game, especially if mass shooting of people is still of the table or if the 3.5% includes a lot of people from the upper classes. It isn't about whether an issue is supported by 3.5% of the population or more, it is a question of whether that fraction of society is actively trying to topple a government system.

One of the major lessons of the 1900s is that the moral ills of your own tribe are more important than the problems other people might have. You don't live in some other country, you live in your own. Local concerns are by far the #1 issue.

Even in the 2000s, one of the most ironic outcomes is that US hegemony forced a bunch of countries into really dominant regional positions (thinking especially of Japan, China and Germany) because they had nothing else to do but fix their own internal problems and it turns out that is a dominant strategy over militarism. Moral positions like peace, law, consistency and fairness aren't vague nice-to-haves, they are principles that lead to better outcomes for the people who stick with them.

> The fact is that there's evidence that unions can correct power imbalances, raise wages, reduce inequality, and even support long-term productivity and social stability

I suppose there was a time when American manufacturing had a big power/equality/productivity and social stability imbalance over Chinese manufacturing and the US unions did play a role in correcting that and promoting Chinese wealth and power. So in principle I agree. I'm just less sure that AWS employees are going to benefit from doing the same thing in software.

There was never much of an argument behind "too big to fail", it is generally a euphemism for upper-class welfare. In a more realist world, "too big to fail" is a mis-statement of "too risky to keep". Everything fails eventually and keeping incentives aligned relies on having a mechanism - failure - to flush out incompetents.

> Coordinating technical matters like healthcare through the UN does seem a bit unwise given that everyone is posturing up for some sort of Cold-war or potential WWIII style scenario.

On the contrary, the fact that we have to coordinate technical matters like healthcare through the UN is a large part of the reason why the Cold War remained cold and we had WW2 within 20 years of WW1 but no WW3 in the 80 years since.

Until the US decided to re-elect a literal madman, the necessity of coordinating on technical matters was obvious to all, which meant these countries weee constantly talking, building relationships and communicating with each other which helped prevent minor conflagrations from escalating.

> The UN is structurally designed to give China and Russia outsized influence.

An interesting assertion. I presume you are implying outsized influence over the US (or do you mean every other country?). I'm honestly curious: can you describe this structural design?

The thing that jumps to mind is the Security Council, which they can parley into diplomatic favours from other people. And the whole point of the UN is that it was the victors of WWII explaining to the rest of the world how international affairs were going to work, so I'd be pleasantly surprised if the special privileges stopped there.

And even without that, the UN isn't really set up to handle technical matters. It is a diplomatic club. The point is to give people a seat at the table without considering their competence.

The Security Council is controlled by the US and its allies (3 out of 5 permanent seats). And the Security Council does not decide on matters of public health like the WHO does. The WHO is staffed by very competent people, certainly more competent than RFK.

The UN has handled several technical matters successfully, including global vaccination programs.

Perhaps they mean that Russia, a corrupted warmonger weak country, has veto power, while more powerful, free and democratic countries have not.

Honestly, ceteris paribus for the US

Thank you sir. Love learning new things every day in a tech forum, especially Latin.

One aspect of that which is interesting is that what the article calls "Guess culture" is fundamentally exclusionary. If you aren't initiated into how the signalling system works by an insider or in a position of sufficient stability to fail socially many times there isn't a good way to break in. That gives the culture a lot of interesting properties that promote its ability to identify and coordinate against out-groups (which to the people involved would manifest as a "these barbarians just don't know how to be polite and we can't work with them"). One of those adaptions that is a bit crazy in the micro (could just ask for what they want, geeze) but makes a lot of sense in the macro.

It's a matter of different protocols, not exclusivity. An asker going into a guesser culture is like a client that doesn't respect congestion backoff; the guesser protocol is meant to ensure fairness for clients.

The way to deal with it is having some kind of handshake that indicates what protocol is being used.

Only on HN do we explain social interactions using network protocol analogies, and not the other way around!

> An asker going into a guesser culture is like a client that doesn't respect congestion backoff; the guesser protocol is meant to ensure fairness for clients.

The metaphor might be a bit strained, because a congestion protocol is fundamentally determining the system state by testing it with an optimistic request for what the client wants then responding based on the server answer or lack thereof. Which is to say, the typical asker strategy.

Having a protocol at all might be more of a guesser thing though - good luck getting to index.html by sending "Hey my server friend can I have a copy of index.html pls?" to port 80 in with netcat. Very clear request, unlikely to get much consideration by nginx even if it is willing to hand over the page.

Now, hear me out, what if we hooked an LLM up to some TCP sockets…

And, importantly, there isn't one single "guess culture"; there are a myriad of different micro-cultures with their own local signals and codes for subtly communicating the information that isn't spelled out in speech.

So even if you are a consummate Guesser, and have been one all your life, if you move across the country (or even just across town!) and find yourself in a group with a different set of Guessers, you may be nearly as badly off as if you were an Asker in that subculture.

Any type of culture is "fundamentally" exclusionary if you don't know how it works. Let me guess which culture you're from :)

Enduring survival properties aren't the same as enduring beneficial properties. Feudalism and slavery stuck around for quite a long time and were mostly forced out against their will.

Slavery has existed for all human history and still exists today.

That sounds like a significant problem ... for either the Germans or the French to resolve. The only thing stopping foreign investors is law enforcement officers telling them to stop. The Germans can, literally, just not do anything except enforce basic property laws and foreign investment would pour money in.

I'm put in mind of US citizens who seem to be the lepers of international finance, often when I see prospectuses they have a lot of text on the the front saying "don't show this to anyone from the US" because they don't want to deal with the compliance costs of US law. In that case it is the US's problem and the US has an easy solution.

When people talk about larger regulatory frameworks they see the problem as the more permissive side is giving people options and want that shut down immediately. If the US started talking about global regulation to ease investment, for example, that means they don't intend to make it any easier but they do want everyone to adhere to US compliance ideas whether or not they do business in the US. It is a way for people with bad ideas to make the world worse. I'd assume the situation in Europe turns out similarly.

> That sounds like a significant problem ... for either the Germans or the French to resolve.

If you do the math on the number of pairs of EU countries that need to find bilateral solutions ... it becomes clear why the EU government exists. It's just not efficient otherwise. (Answer: 351)

> When people talk about larger regulatory frameworks they see the problem as the more permissive side is giving people options and want that shut down immediately.

Who are you talking to? People on HN and in US business, and the most popular theme in US government, is anti-regulation. I think both sides are misguided, sort of like being against or for laws - we need the right laws; sometimes we need more, less, or changes.

> US citizens who seem to be the lepers of international finance

> If the US started talking about global regulation to ease investment, for example, that means they don't intend to make it any easier but they do want everyone to adhere to US compliance ideas whether or not they do business in the US ...

Doesn't Wall Street dominate international finance? They don't seem like lepers. Also, when international financial regulation has been discussed, I think it's the US that usually undermines it. But maybe you mean something else than what I understood?

> If you do the math on the number of pairs of EU countries that need to find bilateral solutions ... it becomes clear why the EU government exists. It's just not efficient otherwise. (Answer: 351)

That logic doesn't hold. If it made sense supermarkets wouldn't work because they have to hold bilateral negotiations with hundreds of thousands of customers. In practice, they just offer a take-it-or-leave-it deal and people either accept it or they don't.

Similarly, countries offer a take-it-or-leave-it set of requirements to foreign investors. If investors aren't taking the deal, countries have the power to unilaterally renegotiate what they offer.

> Doesn't Wall Street dominate international finance? They don't seem like lepers. Also, when international financial regulation has been discussed, I think it's the US that usually undermines it. But maybe you mean something else than what I understood?

I dunno, maybe they operate out of the Caymans or something legally complicated. I'd estimate maybe 20-30% of the stock offers I see have a lot of front matter materials saying something to the effect of "if you come from the US you aren't even allowed to read this, go away". Very US-specific exclusions. Maybe the offers I get are too small time? I dunno, I just report what I see. I always chuckle at it though.

> I'd estimate maybe 20-30% of the stock offers I see have a lot of front matter materials saying something to the effect of "if you come from the US you aren't even allowed to read this, go away".

That is interesting. I wonder why. It seems like they could offer a combined prospectus that addresses all major sets of requirements. I do know that the US an (much of?) the EU use different accounting standards; maybe the numbers are for one region or the other.

> That logic doesn't hold. If it made sense supermarkets wouldn't work because they have to hold bilateral negotiations with hundreds of thousands of customers. In practice, they just offer a take-it-or-leave-it deal and people either accept it or they don't.

This isn't buying a can of soup at retail.