Yes, the article is about that stuff in China, because in 2020 that's there the most aggressive development of that occurs. But it's not "about China", as if it was also about cuisine and any random thing to do with China. It's more specific than that.
There is a lot to read here, but it is all important and all possible. I don't know that it can even be stopped at this point, it's just an index to check on periodically to confirm "ok, that's how far down the path we are right now".
"Predictions" are pointless. It's wrong, and just about everything that is good and decent about human life and the human mind is endangered by it. So I'm against it, regardless of the "chances" of whatever outcome. I know what's required for human dignity, I will rather die than betray that, and if everybody thought that way, it would be over in one week. That they don't is their problem and something for them to find peace with. I don't worry about that nor about saving the world, my sole responsibility is being worthy of having been born into a better one, or into the same one among better peers. That is within my agency, and only I can let it slip.
> What exactly are you suggesting, other than "be a good person?"
I didn't say "be a good person", so what exactly are you taking issue with, other than what it "seems like" to you? I even stated that I'm not primarily concerned with outcome or others, this isn't advice to anyone, it's a statement of fact.
It doesn't seem like facts, it seems like opinions, but that's ok too. For instance...
> "I know what's required for human dignity..."
This is a personal value statement, different people have different ideas of what dignity means. There are likely some universals but there's a huge amount of variance too.
> different people have different ideas of what dignity means
Then they can come forward and state that theirs is compatible with being subject to totalitarian rule.
Even without trying, I find so many wise words in support to what I know to be true both in my heart of hearts and from decades of lived experience.
> I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech — the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don’t convince me and that our civilisation over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice.
and
> The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside.
-- George Orwell
> the concept of “freedom and the pursuit of non-material goals” is incredibly important, but also incredibly fragile. Not only does it allow us to pursue our own lives, it also prevents us from becoming tools of crime. It is humanity’s first line of defense, or we should say the last. Actually, it’s the sole line of defense. [..] Freedom is not a handout, we need to earn it with our efforts. You can lock up my body but you can never imprison my will.
-- Qu Weiguo
> Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can't tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.
-- Noam Chomsky
In the meantime, the criticism is that "other people think differently", with not even a hint of what arguments they might have.
And the kicker is, if the arguments are for totalitarian rule, their content wouldn't even matter, I could simply kill or ignore or slander the people who bring them forward to win the argument -- while that would violate my own principles, it would not violate theirs. If being ruled by and deciding facts by force is okay, my force is as well as any -- but if that path is suggested in earnest, the hypocrisy instantly becomes visible. And preaching water and drinking wine isn't even a different set of values, it's nothing.
"A crude version of such a system is already in operation in China’s northwestern territory of Xinjiang, where more than 1 million Muslim Uighurs have been imprisoned, the largest internment of an ethnic-religious minority since the fall of the Third Reich."
There's so much in this article that merits comment / discussion, but this sentence really jumped out at me. I'd been vaguely aware that this kind of thing was happening in the PRC, but not at this historic scale....
Western values matter more than ever. Here's hoping for a sea change this fall.
Pro tip: If you ever find yourself in a semi-professional discussion, I would avoid referring to democracy, human rights, and individual freedoms as "Western values." Attaching a specific cultural and anthropological carte to what I view more as universal values that have yet to take roots universally, is exclusive and counter-productive. For one, China went through a period of Western domination starting in the 19th century, and Chinese people haven't forgotten that. Asking China to follow Western values in this context is about the worst thing you can say. Just because these concepts originated in the Western world should not preclude one from putting them in the context of the larger human enterprise. Do not ask, "Why shall China not walk in the footsteps of the West in giving its people the right to shape their destiny?" Ask, "Why shall the Chinese people not be at liberty of shaping their own destiny?"
Yeah it also invites all sorts of stupidity to paint totalitarianism as "just their culture" which is itself bigotry wearing a mask of anti-colonialism in apologetics to that which should be condemned. It brings to mind dismissing infamous warlord oppression with child soldiers and instituionalized rape as "just their culture".
This should be universally obvious but fundamentally people are people no matter their origin or culture.
Oddly enough, the West conceded this battle against the Muslim world to some degree. We are exhausted from that debate. The Muslim world mostly believes in their own bullshit, thankfully we bowed out from that fight.
We need to bow out in the same manner with the debate against the East. There’s a billion people, if they don’t want free uncensored Internet, who are we to say anything? If they wanted it, they’d have it. They know the ins and outs of the idiosyncrasies of their society, the same way the west does (how the west reconciles virtual slave labor to maintain it’s lifestyle of affordable luxuries (everything from food to clothes to electronics)).
But, there is a new issue. Slavery in America was considered the ‘peculiar’ institution. Surveillance state is something we have to ignore, similar to, I don’t know, making your women wear varieties of face coverings (Islam), we have to accept they are acclimated to the mental gymnastics required to sustain their pride. Whatever. We shouldn’t waste our energy on that, it’s a losing battle.
But, the ‘peculiar’ institutions are the things we need to probe. A repeat of pre-extermination Holocaust in China is a no go. I hope the examination keeps up, and I hope we retroactively apply this new spirit to some of the trespasses that occurred in Palestine as well.
Oddly enough, the West conceded this battle against the Muslim world to some degree. We are exhausted from that debate. The Muslim world mostly believes in their own bullshit, thankfully we bowed out from that fight.
China, though, owns an Islamic region. So they can't run away from it. They could build a wall, as Israel did, but that just contained the problem. Israel was never able to get large numbers of Arabs to abandon Islam. So Israel has an ongoing headache. China is trying to avoid getting stuck in that deadlock.
It's not the surveillance system that's the big problem. It's that they went all the way to concentration and re-education camps. They're trying to break the hold of Islam. In too brutal a way.
It's pretty much an official propaganda policy of CPC to maximally polarise the conversation, and convert it to "US vs them" format, with "our (imagined) values," and "their values"
Nobody's willing to defend them? I think you mean you can't be bothered. Some years ago I raised an abuse of power by the british government with the EU and wheels started to move. I'm not giving details and it was nothing too major but it's surprising what one letter to the right official did (ok, I imagine there were others also complaining so not just me).
With a number of people here for whom failure is not an option, it's a bloody destination, undermining anyone who tries, you will get the society you deserve.
> Nobody's willing to defend them? I think you mean you can't be bothered.
I mean, I do also write to MPs and various offices. What I mean to say is it's very difficult to build a grassroots movement that opposes the establishment, Brexit being the big exception to the rule.
Anyone campaigning for say, digital rights against government surveillance could get cancelled by the media very quickly.
Trouble is there are too many who won't try. And brexit was anything but grass roots, it was led by the top. There was also a lot of passion there to be led, for better or worse.
> Anyone campaigning for say, digital rights against government surveillance could get cancelled by the media very quickly.
Oh come on, get cancelled by the media? They might be lazy at times but the media doesn't 'cancel' stuff.
Eh?? Brexit was fiercely decried by the ruling class. The only reason the vote happened was because it threatened to break up the conservative party. Nobody expected the result we got.
The media doesn't cancel people directly but they do amplify minor Twitter outrage to a global audience and as such, part of the problem. The canonical example is entire articles being written on 1-2 tweets supporting a particular opinion, but ignores thousands of tweets with a different opinions.
My understanding is that 'western values' is also a dogwhistle for a particular sort of nationalist authoritarianism that does not represent, for instance, the Allies in WWII.
Rather the other side of that conflict, really. This complicates things. I have to ask, especially seeing the 'cancel culture' and the suggestion that things have been getting worse for years, which definition of 'western values' you mean.
From where I'm standing, there's never been as much ability to advocate for your POV, including from groups that have historically been brutally oppressed. It's messy, but that's democracy for you. I think it's an instructive contrast with what's going on in China.
Western values can be a big pain in the butt, and yet I wouldn't have it any other way. We're living through a spectacular vindication of exactly Western values, compared to some other ideologies/ethos that have gained traction in the past.
I don't know that extremists on both far left and far right yelling over each other to drive public policy is a sign of a healthy democracy.
Neither of those groups naturally represent a majority of people, they're just having an outsized megative impact on society by being loud.
While Soviet Union had centralized unidirectional brainwashing, US now has bipolar, decentralized brainwashing. Not quite the same but also not quite that different.
If anything it's all those "western values" clashing together in a rather unfortunate way, exposing our society's inability to deal with free speech amplified by technology, corrupt politicians, greedy billionaires, and consolidated media empires.
This sucks, and it's not just messy, the whole thing is failing at the seams with no hope in sight.
"dogwhistle for a particular sort of nationalist authoritarianism"
No such dogwhistle signal was intended here, at all. "Western values" was meant as shorthand for democracy and democratic ideals. Related tangent: it bothers me that the far right attempts to conflate patriotism with nationalism.
As much as I hate Trump, I must admit that the alternative at the time involved continuing to pretend China is an ally.
HRC was a principal driver of the Trans Pacific Partnership. I've heard claims that it was about containing China but they've always come with no citations. My general understanding was that the TPP would have made it easier to outsource to China even more, harmonizing (at least on paper) IP law to allow more outsourcing of things like programming, radiology, CAD, IT, accounting, paralegal, etc., which could have been a final nail in the coffin of the US middle class. These are among the last upwardly mobile middle class jobs that remain in the United States. While it's true that US manufacturing remains a large component of GDP, automation and efficiency gains have made it a declining contributor to employment.
I categorically cannot vote for Trump because he is a racist and is associated with fascists (categorical blacklist in my mind) and is personally constitutionally unfit to be president, but I fear that Biden will return us to a course of pretending China is a friendly nation. Like the last election where I unhappily voted against Trump (not "for" HRC), there is no good choice.
The motive for our China policy is of course the same as the motive for looking the other way at Saudi human rights abuses and their role in 9/11: money. Had Hitler found a way to line American pockets, I wonder if that holocaust thing would have mattered.
International Trade Treaties were meant to do so earlier but wound up botched by including too many outright special interests forcing deal breakers. Beyond even state level interests into irrelevant "noisy minority" ones like trying to enforce location name branding onto new world which used it for centuries as implicitly "in the style of Parma".
The IP strategy ones often missed that it wasn't stealing - they sent the plans over themselves to save money. Even without illicit third shifts or counterfitting per se they would fundamentally learn enough to compete on knock offs. If the IP was actually precious to them they would have never sent it abroad to manufacture as the percentage saved wouldn't be worth it.
In my opinion what is spoken about IP in general and trade with China beyond "it is cheap/has high industrial concentration advantages" are comfortable lies to ease anxiety of the status quo as opposed to recognizing a nuanced and messy strategic situation of many actors which doesn't fit into a TED talk let alone a sound bite.
I don't think it was missed, in whole or in nuance, by anyone paying attention, but bringing attention to it was met with accusations of racism, and those were partisan.
Not that I'm chill with the Right, either: the "markets can do no wrong" philosophy leads to an enormous blind spot. Greedy optimizers fall apart when sub-components need to coordinate. When an adversary realizes they can just pay the hand to shoot the foot, suddenly the system finds itself with a destroyed industrial base but can't understand what just happened because the explanation lies in the blind spot. That's an even bigger problem than easily co-opted social justice causes.
Let us presuppose that Palestine is a country. Having a small territory, angry neighbors and a blockade at your border doesn’t make you a prisoner. It simply means that you are at war and losing, or have been conquered and are now occupied territory until you submit to your new overlords.
To become prisoners, one would have to consider Palestinians to not be members of a separate country to Israel, but rather 2nd class citizens forced into a sort of apartheid.
So the takeaway is that the poster has to be a renowed (within this thread) expert or what, the ostensible point is lost? The derail (whataboutism) is not constructive. The Palestinian/Israeli dispute/occupation is not in the same realm as Chinas historic actions.
Yes I read the quote, but my understanding of the Palestinians in Gaza is based on reality and not ideology. Gaza is a separate territority. The Palestinians there are more of less free to leave, especially if they want to go somewhere other than Israel. The plight of an impoverished people held hostage by a terrorist government does not a concentration camp make.
The Chinese government is literally putting Uighurs in box cars and shipping them to camps.
Seems to hinge on the definition/degree of imprisonment. From what I have read they aren't really in the same ballpark. What's going on in Gaza does seem unethical.
It doesn't benefit the rich and powerful to bring attention to what is going on in Xinjiang and to Uighurs. Just like IBM, Hugo Boss, Coca-Cola, etc. made money in Nazi Germany, the likes of Volkswagen, Nike, etc. are making money today by turning a blind eye to forced re-education camps, forced labor, etc.
The average man always wants cheaper goods and services, even if that is the result of misery/suffering of some people, few of which will be known to him.
In a resource-constrained, cut-throat competetive economy where everything is seen as a zero-sum deal, the average man will never hesitate to root for less-for-others if it guarantees more-for-me.
Where people's measure of worth is what one owns rather than what one does or how one lives, such a decadence is but a mere natural happenstance.
The eastern scriptures depict this in an allegorical way - a time in the world where there's no evil (satya yuga, pure and natural), followed by a time where the world is deviating towards order (treta yuga), followed by a time in the world where the balance of dharma (righteousness) tilts slightly towards adharma (wickedness or everything opposite of righteous) which was Dwaparayuga, followed by the age where righteousness is nowhere to be found (Kali yuga which is where we are now) This being a cycle and the cycle continues forever and ever. A refresh will happen - how soon or later, nobody seems to know!
A good read. Again, imagine such a government in charge of universal basic income distribution and the majority of 'citizens' dependent on that. Not a bright future.
With such a government, any future wouldn’t be desirable. Imagine such government in charge of unemployment benefits, health services, the military, anything really: it’s grim in any case.
Moreover, universal basic income is universal, by definition. If a government denies it to some particular citizens according to some criteria, it is not universal anymore. It becomes an income provided to anyone who is in favor of the government, which is a very different thing.
So, if universal basic income existed, even the Chinese government would have to give it to everyone... or otherwise give it another name.
God, I hate the rhetoric around the 3/5ths compromise.
Not because I support it, but because in the circumstances in question the implication that they should have been treated as "full people" (in the only place 3/5 applied) is the pro slavery position.
Of course the slaves should have had freedom. Of course they should have had the vote. But they had zero of either of those. Increasing the power of the society that enslaves by 3/5 the number of slaves isn't treating them as 3/5 of a person! Morally speaking the number should have been zero (or negative!) if it had to be a question at all.
Slaveholders were taxed, but slaves were not represented. The taxation compromise was intended by Feds to delay the same forces that led to the Civil War. It was not a pro slavery position, but it definitely kowtowed to pro slavery positions predominantly held by slaveholders. Unintended consequences of negotiating with slavers were that the compromise was interpreted by slaveholders as increasingly punitive and untenable as time went on.
That’s why you don’t negotiate with terrorists. Sooner or later, they will leverage their position into a better deal at your table, or they will find a better deal at a different table, one which may render any leverage against them moot.
Oh, right! I focused on the representation (which remains tied to the computed number) bit and forgot about the impact on taxes (which are no longer).
To the degree that increasing that fraction from 3/5 would raise the taxes paid by slave holders, it is not "pro slavery".
Having said that, IIUC, the restriction only applied to "direct taxes" whereas the bulk of US Federal Government revenue at the time was from tariffs and excise, and in any case was a much smaller portion of GDP than today (although to some degree that extends to representation as well, as a limitation of the power being controlled).
My general point stands that the great injustice was all the ways we were treating people as 0/5th of a person, not that we could have taxed some states a little more or given them a bit more power.
What you are not allowing is that the “universality” will not be inalienable... which we already see in terms of, you have a right to free speech, but it’s not “consequence free” which was how the soviets treated free speech. Their constitution also enshrined free speech, but as the joke went, they could also say “Reagan is an idiot”, not only Americans.
The likelihood of universal basic income being completely strings free is very low. You get convicted of some felony, you lose it, you are guilty of domestic violence you lose it, you say something very un-PC you lose it. And you may say, yeah, so what, those are bad people. But it would be like “hate speech”. Hate speech in the 90s was one thing, today it means someone disagrees with you on policy.
This isn't a technology problem. Congress could put whatever restrictions on UBI it wants to. The technology would be required to implement whatever kind of UBI system Congress made into law. Congress could also change the law any time in the future -- and every time party control over congress changes, you can bet they will push for tweaks to UBI that they promised to their base.
The most likely outcome, which happens with many other kinds of government programs, would be for Congress to delegate significant authority over UBI to some regulatory bureaucracy in the executive branch.
Similar to the way the IRS, EPA, and FDA work, there would be some department of UBI with broad discretion over how the law is interpreted, the ability create additional regulations and fine people who do not obey them, etc.
You can't solve this problem with code. It's a political problem.
If you had crypto that used biometrics to generate unique secret keys and automatically mined X amount of coins (based on a set of public economic inputs) to evenly distribute to all participants, and made it part of the constitution that the distribution mechanism can never be changed you'd be as close as you can to solving this issue.
Any group trying to take it away once people have it will find out it won't go well.
Imagine such a government in charge of your basic healthcare determining if you get health care or are put on a waiting list to die, determining what drugs are distributed and what are not and the majority of 'citizens' dependent on that. Not a bright future.
Medicare has worked pretty well for the elderly for years. Old people and their families don’t lose everything for routine care anymore. Until it comes time for long term nursing home type care.
Everyone else is one car accident or cancer diagnosis away from ruin.
Literally every senior has Medicare and has access to many types of care that requires private insurance for anyone else. There are overlay private plans as well that vary. The big complaint about Medicare is that the results-driven approach and reimbursement model for nursing and rehabilitation incentivizes unethical providers to purge people who need more rehab, and to provide substandard rehab in nursing homes.
If you are unable to work, you’re unable to maintain coverage in many circumstances. Many many people will be terminated within days or weeks of being out of work.
I used to setup Medicaid enrollment systems as a consultant — big counties have contractors to liquidate the assets of sick people driven into Medicaid every day.
Ok, but that in no way means it is "good", you seem to operate under the flawed belief that universality == good, when it can be universally bad
>has access to many types of care that requires private insurance for anyone else.
That is clearly false, as an example when my parents got on medicare they had to find new providers and new doctors as their long time doctors did not accept medicare at all largely due to the substandard payments they would receive.
It is false to say the medicare offers the exact same access as private payers. There are many many many doctors in private practice that do not accept medicare, you almost exclusively have to enter a large health network for it to except medicare largely because those health networks have the ability to increase the prices on their non-medicare patients to make up of the loss they experience by accepting medicare and/or they end up with a HUGE patient / doctor work load for medicare patients requiring them to schedule appointments months or some times a year or more in advance
To highlight medicare as model we should all have shows either A) your ignorance of medicare or b) your willingness to accept a standard of care far lower than what we have today in private medical treatment
>>big counties have contractors to liquidate the assets of sick people driven into Medicaid every day.
it is ironic that you talk about people being on illness away from ruin in the private system when you understand and know that if you end up with a illness bad enough the government will seize all of your assets to pay for that care. Does not seem like a vary fair system to me but I am sure you do not believe in private property either most socialist do not
I'm sorry that your parents were inconvenienced. Why didn't they just pay for private medical care? Nobody forces you to use insurance.
When my dad had a stroke, requiring extensive hospitalization and rehabilitation, the biggest expense that they faced for the hospitalization and rehab phase was ambulance/ambulette service. They were fortunate to have had the means for private supplements for things like homecare and physical therapy beyond that Medicare, private insurance and family could accomodate. Most folks do not.
> it is ironic that you talk about people being on illness away from ruin in the private system when you understand and know that if you end up with a illness bad enough the government will seize all of your assets to pay for that care. Does not seem like a vary fair system to me but I am sure you do not believe in private property either most socialist do not
I've spent most of my career in finance, so I doubt that I would fit in well in socialist circles. I would agree with you that the system that requires people of modest means to either self finance care that costs $300-700/day, or become indigent to receive Medicaid social benefits is fundamentally unfair and arguably cruel. Ultimately it's draining the wealth of the nation away, and will impact the earnings potential of our fellow capitalists - how will consumers buy my products if 60% of their cashflow is rent/health/transportation?
Repeat your exact comment replacing the word “government” with “employer and its chosen for-profit insurance provider” and you’ve described the United States.
My employer can fire me for any or no reason and no notice and I’d be left with a short COBRA runway of suddenly-expensive healthcare, which I now can’t afford because I was just fired.
My employer can (and does) change my insurance provider, add or remove benefits, and I have zero say over that process. I certainly can’t vote for a new CEO or request a different provider from my company. Take it or leave it.
My health and well-being is tied up with the same entity that tells me what to do for 8 hours a day. That doesn’t feel like “freedom” to me.
Universal healthcare as a concept is not by itself related to authoritarianism. Indeed, guaranteeing healthcare (whether it be state-run like the UK or all-private like Germany) and paying for it through tax revenue rather than through employment subsidy is a feature of many Western democracies.
>>Repeat your exact comment replacing the word “government” with “employer and its chosen for-profit insurance provider” and you’ve described the United States.
You can thank government for that as well, as Price Controls from WWII, and ongoing regulations and tax burdens are the leading reasons employment and healthcare are linked in the way they are.
>>Universal healthcare as a concept is not by itself related to authoritarianism.
If you do not believe that is authoritarianism then I shutter to think what it would take for you to recognize an authoritarian system
>> Indeed, guaranteeing healthcare (whether it be state-run like the UK or all-private like Germany) and paying for it through tax revenue rather than through employment subsidy is a feature of many Western democracies.
That is a false dilemma, I support neither system nor is employer provided vs government provided the only choice we have as a society
Using the Authoritarian nations (though I am sure your going to disagree describing them as authoritarian) of the UK and Germany to support your position is not going to win me over.
I support individual liberty, and individual rights, and generally only Negative forms of right.
the UK, Germany, and most of the EU have adopted a position of Collective rights, and a whole host of Positive rights which are Authoritarian in nature. Sure they are not NK or China, but simply because they are not full on Totalitarian regime's does not make them libertarian either
It’s a good, chilling read but this sentence right at the end bothered me.
“Until they secure their personal liberty, at some unimaginable cost, free people everywhere will have to hope against hope that the world’s most intelligent machines are made elsewhere.”
I don’t agree, with the “right” people in charge, the intelligent machines pose a risk to humankind everywhere.
I agree with that intelligent machines pose a risk regardless of who has the best intentions, but its also true that certain countries (namely china) have demonstrated that they are more willing and motivated to use it for devious surveillance purposes.
You realize a concentration camp implies concentrating people’s physical bodies into a contained space, right? There are many examples, including right here in the US (border camps, Guantanamo). Being subject to a corporation’s whims is not comparable to being an enemy or prisoner of the state without due process.
Palantir, on the other hand, has a direct role in this process of concentrating undesirables.
Earth is a confined space. Total surveillance could mean there are few places in the world outside maybe deep wilderness where surveillance can be escaped.
There is a major logical flaw in that rhetoric. What good would displaying ads to concentration camp prisoners do? Advertising is fundamentally about getting something that they want from the capabilities of the audience be it votes or money. Concentration camp victims are rather lacking in them - even if you include "ability to resist" which in itself is redudant given the extreme measures of control.
That is like saying "In the dark future of unrestrained capitalism will sell ads to sex slaves chained in the basement - where they have no money or freedom." It might tug at heart strings but it makes so little sense it sounds like an outright parody of such sentiments.
Stuck at home with more time on my hands I've been rereading a lot of old sf. I just finished the last of John Twelve Hawk's 4th realm trilogy which has a modern technological Panopticon society as it's central theme. While some of the technological speculation is strictly fiction, it's surprising how much the series (last volume published 2009) foreshadows modern surveillance trends. The trends mentioned in the article could have dropped right into the story.
Here's hoping for a Butlerian Jihad... or, you know, just introducing privacy legislation that make specific outcomes, not methods, illegal – in the same way that murder is illegal, regardless of method, tools, etc.
While Tethics and AI are buzzwords du jour, the problem is more general: The weakening of liberal democratic values.
We need laws and regulation that guarantee privacy more concretely as a foundational right.
Spot on, America, and West such, wouldn't have a reason to worry in the first place if it managed to maintain the integrity of the Western bloc after the cold war.
By letting its foreign policy wonder into grey area by playing overtures with regimes of all kind without any reservations, it allowed for norms, and boundaries to be blurred, and resolve of its camp blunted.
What is happening now, is that the whole Western camp have descended into whataboutism with relation to what rogue regime each bloc member is playing ball with, without no authority left in the bloc "clean enough" to police it.
What rogue regimes made to the West in the last 20 years, is nothing, but a gang initiation in reverse.
First they lured the West into playing their dirty games, and when Western countries thoroughly dirtied their hands, then come and say "your hands are as dirty as mine, what's the point fighting now?"
... and the West slipping into borderline crypto-authoritarianism itself with mass-surveillance and so on - encroaching on citizens' rights while excusing themselves with being the good guys, and only protecting the population against the usual suspects of bad actors.
Bollocks. "The West" is not one place, and the "crpyto-authoritarianism" is a lame attempt to generalize. There is no comparison between Russia / China and Western Europe or the US.
Make no mistake, I think that facebook and social media have chilling effects on discourse and are, on the whole, very negative, but I can still get on any forum and call my national leader a clown (aka Xi = Winnie the Poo) and not risk going to jail.
That integrity of the West during and before the cold war included some nasty moves as well (Vietnam to name one). In fact, I find your thesis jingoism at its best.
The critical difference was that when the West was engaging with rogue elements, they stayed rogue elements, not "strategic partners," and trade deal members.
That's because they stopped being useful in pushing back against global communism. Chile, for example, ditched Pinochet but kept the liberal US style economy.
And Argentina is kept in line via WHO loans and regular scourging through economic means.
> First they lured the West into playing their dirty games, and when Western countries thoroughly dirtied their hands, then come and say "your hands are as dirty as mine, what's the point fighting now?"
I am very curious when exactly you imagine a period where "The West"'s hands weren't dirty. Both before and after WW2 ended, for example, many European nations still had colonial empires where unspeakable atrocities were happening under their direct rule (not as abhorrent as the Holocaust, but still extraordinarily disgusting). In the period that followed, "the West", just as much as Russia and China, immediately started supporting favorable dictators wherever there was some conflict - like the military anti-communist dictatorship in Greece with Allied backing, and many far-right regimes in South America and Asia.
During this same time, gay people were legally persecuted across "the West" just as much as elsewhere (though, oddly enough, with a short reprieve in early communist Russia - before WW2, before Stalin) - including, famously, war heroes like Alan Turing. Lynchings were still happening in the USA. In fact, the USA at this time had a system of first class and second class citizens with explicitly racist laws.
And in the years that followed, while civil rights movements grew in power in Europe and the US (with strong opposition from the government, for a very long time), "the West" only escalated its fight against democracy in the rest of the world - either by supporting brutal dictatorships established by others (Indonesia, South Vietnam, a lot of South America, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, even in communist bloc countries such as Romania), or by orchestrating their own coups to install loyal dictators in place of elected leaders (with initial success in Iran or Nicaragua, or ending in failure in Cuba, North Vietnam). Other European countries supported horrible regimes in their former colonies, usually supporting white or loyalist people against revolutionary or "brown" people - such as Swiss, UK and US support of the apartheid state in South Africa in the 1980s.
The US economy is at the mercy of the tech industry.
How does that saying go? "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it".
Thank you Google.
Let's try a thought experiment. Suppose that human intelligence and consciousness are not ends unto themselves: I think therefore I am is false. Suppose that human intelligence is secondary to the will to power, to life, which is merely a chemical that repeats or does not: I am that I am, just an infinite paperclip factory. Suppose what is meant by consciousness and feeling is merely a death/not-death projection machine that attempts to conjure scenarios of fear and joy, dreams and nightmares, through the dimension of time, via memory stored in gray matter. Now this human AI creates a tool which can read the nuances of the human AI and bend them to its will.
It looks like AI will be simple and not prohibitively expensive to develop. So it doesn't matter who "wins the race"---once it exists, it will be available to all.
Does the technology exist? Can we put the genie back in the bottle? So then what?
This article and a lot of the literature assumes the same tools are not also turned upon the managers of society (i.e. that they get to use the times in secret). Many fear that knowledge of our lives will support interference in our lives. Perhaps any such interference must be just as observable and prohibited by law in a free society.
Who watches the watchers? We all could. When there is a conflict or question we have records to review and public opinion to adjudicate.
Of course we would have to rethink a number of assumable cultural expectations.
My personal belief is that the problems are being oversimplified and that is very counterproductive.
I'm sure people will misinterpret what I am trying to say. But, it is framed as a "democracy or tyranny" question. I believe that although the authoritarianism is quite horrific in some ways, in some respects there are actually advantages. Which, if you are still reading, is not to suggest in any way that it is the correct path, but maybe is a hint that our current "democratic system" may not be quite what it is cracked up to be either.
Again, in no
way suggesting we should get closer to a closed system, but I feel like honest evaluation will see very significant deficiencies with western governments such as the United States. For example, looking at the extreme political divide in the country sometimes makes government seem like a joke.
I personally believe that the best and maybe the only way to move forward constructively is to be realistic about the flaws in both extremely divergent views (east and west) and think of a totally new shared philosophy and way for government to operate..
But most likely that will not happen, and I also personally believe that another world war may be stimulated by poor technical adjustment to global accounting collapse (along with the complete failure of cultural and political integration). I think if this occurs then it will prove that humans are not fit to control the planet, and hope that we will soon have competent and (one can hope benign) but much more sophisticated AIs that we can pass the torch of evolution to.
114 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 191 ms ] threadNothing to substantiate the title.
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0697813/
=] very first opening line
Yes, the article is about that stuff in China, because in 2020 that's there the most aggressive development of that occurs. But it's not "about China", as if it was also about cuisine and any random thing to do with China. It's more specific than that.
What exactly are you suggesting, other than "be a good person?"
I didn't say "be a good person", so what exactly are you taking issue with, other than what it "seems like" to you? I even stated that I'm not primarily concerned with outcome or others, this isn't advice to anyone, it's a statement of fact.
> "I know what's required for human dignity..."
This is a personal value statement, different people have different ideas of what dignity means. There are likely some universals but there's a huge amount of variance too.
Of course it is. What else could it be?
> different people have different ideas of what dignity means
Then they can come forward and state that theirs is compatible with being subject to totalitarian rule.
Even without trying, I find so many wise words in support to what I know to be true both in my heart of hearts and from decades of lived experience.
> I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech — the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don’t convince me and that our civilisation over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice.
and
> The fallacy is to believe that under a dictatorial government you can be free inside.
-- George Orwell
> the concept of “freedom and the pursuit of non-material goals” is incredibly important, but also incredibly fragile. Not only does it allow us to pursue our own lives, it also prevents us from becoming tools of crime. It is humanity’s first line of defense, or we should say the last. Actually, it’s the sole line of defense. [..] Freedom is not a handout, we need to earn it with our efforts. You can lock up my body but you can never imprison my will.
-- Qu Weiguo
> Suppose that humans happen to be so constructed that they desire the opportunity for freely undertaken productive work. Suppose that they want to be free from the meddling of technocrats and commissars, bankers and tycoons, mad bombers who engage in psychological tests of will with peasants defending their homes, behavioral scientists who can't tell a pigeon from a poet, or anyone else who tries to wish freedom and dignity out of existence or beat them into oblivion.
-- Noam Chomsky
In the meantime, the criticism is that "other people think differently", with not even a hint of what arguments they might have.
And the kicker is, if the arguments are for totalitarian rule, their content wouldn't even matter, I could simply kill or ignore or slander the people who bring them forward to win the argument -- while that would violate my own principles, it would not violate theirs. If being ruled by and deciding facts by force is okay, my force is as well as any -- but if that path is suggested in earnest, the hypocrisy instantly becomes visible. And preaching water and drinking wine isn't even a different set of values, it's nothing.
There's so much in this article that merits comment / discussion, but this sentence really jumped out at me. I'd been vaguely aware that this kind of thing was happening in the PRC, but not at this historic scale....
Western values matter more than ever. Here's hoping for a sea change this fall.
This should be universally obvious but fundamentally people are people no matter their origin or culture.
We need to bow out in the same manner with the debate against the East. There’s a billion people, if they don’t want free uncensored Internet, who are we to say anything? If they wanted it, they’d have it. They know the ins and outs of the idiosyncrasies of their society, the same way the west does (how the west reconciles virtual slave labor to maintain it’s lifestyle of affordable luxuries (everything from food to clothes to electronics)).
But, there is a new issue. Slavery in America was considered the ‘peculiar’ institution. Surveillance state is something we have to ignore, similar to, I don’t know, making your women wear varieties of face coverings (Islam), we have to accept they are acclimated to the mental gymnastics required to sustain their pride. Whatever. We shouldn’t waste our energy on that, it’s a losing battle.
But, the ‘peculiar’ institutions are the things we need to probe. A repeat of pre-extermination Holocaust in China is a no go. I hope the examination keeps up, and I hope we retroactively apply this new spirit to some of the trespasses that occurred in Palestine as well.
China, though, owns an Islamic region. So they can't run away from it. They could build a wall, as Israel did, but that just contained the problem. Israel was never able to get large numbers of Arabs to abandon Islam. So Israel has an ongoing headache. China is trying to avoid getting stuck in that deadlock.
It's not the surveillance system that's the big problem. It's that they went all the way to concentration and re-education camps. They're trying to break the hold of Islam. In too brutal a way.
It's pretty much an official propaganda policy of CPC to maximally polarise the conversation, and convert it to "US vs them" format, with "our (imagined) values," and "their values"
With a number of people here for whom failure is not an option, it's a bloody destination, undermining anyone who tries, you will get the society you deserve.
I mean, I do also write to MPs and various offices. What I mean to say is it's very difficult to build a grassroots movement that opposes the establishment, Brexit being the big exception to the rule.
Anyone campaigning for say, digital rights against government surveillance could get cancelled by the media very quickly.
> Anyone campaigning for say, digital rights against government surveillance could get cancelled by the media very quickly.
Oh come on, get cancelled by the media? They might be lazy at times but the media doesn't 'cancel' stuff.
Seems like it's there.
The media doesn't cancel people directly but they do amplify minor Twitter outrage to a global audience and as such, part of the problem. The canonical example is entire articles being written on 1-2 tweets supporting a particular opinion, but ignores thousands of tweets with a different opinions.
You are asking people to be bothered, when their own Western governments were asking them not to for the last 20 years.
These people got very well habituated to the injustice their own countries perpetuate.
Rather the other side of that conflict, really. This complicates things. I have to ask, especially seeing the 'cancel culture' and the suggestion that things have been getting worse for years, which definition of 'western values' you mean.
From where I'm standing, there's never been as much ability to advocate for your POV, including from groups that have historically been brutally oppressed. It's messy, but that's democracy for you. I think it's an instructive contrast with what's going on in China.
Western values can be a big pain in the butt, and yet I wouldn't have it any other way. We're living through a spectacular vindication of exactly Western values, compared to some other ideologies/ethos that have gained traction in the past.
Neither of those groups naturally represent a majority of people, they're just having an outsized megative impact on society by being loud.
While Soviet Union had centralized unidirectional brainwashing, US now has bipolar, decentralized brainwashing. Not quite the same but also not quite that different.
If anything it's all those "western values" clashing together in a rather unfortunate way, exposing our society's inability to deal with free speech amplified by technology, corrupt politicians, greedy billionaires, and consolidated media empires.
This sucks, and it's not just messy, the whole thing is failing at the seams with no hope in sight.
No such dogwhistle signal was intended here, at all. "Western values" was meant as shorthand for democracy and democratic ideals. Related tangent: it bothers me that the far right attempts to conflate patriotism with nationalism.
HRC was a principal driver of the Trans Pacific Partnership. I've heard claims that it was about containing China but they've always come with no citations. My general understanding was that the TPP would have made it easier to outsource to China even more, harmonizing (at least on paper) IP law to allow more outsourcing of things like programming, radiology, CAD, IT, accounting, paralegal, etc., which could have been a final nail in the coffin of the US middle class. These are among the last upwardly mobile middle class jobs that remain in the United States. While it's true that US manufacturing remains a large component of GDP, automation and efficiency gains have made it a declining contributor to employment.
I categorically cannot vote for Trump because he is a racist and is associated with fascists (categorical blacklist in my mind) and is personally constitutionally unfit to be president, but I fear that Biden will return us to a course of pretending China is a friendly nation. Like the last election where I unhappily voted against Trump (not "for" HRC), there is no good choice.
The motive for our China policy is of course the same as the motive for looking the other way at Saudi human rights abuses and their role in 9/11: money. Had Hitler found a way to line American pockets, I wonder if that holocaust thing would have mattered.
I've seen hopeful signs that standing up to China is now a bipartisan position, but 5 years ago it certainly wasn't.
International Trade Treaties were meant to do so earlier but wound up botched by including too many outright special interests forcing deal breakers. Beyond even state level interests into irrelevant "noisy minority" ones like trying to enforce location name branding onto new world which used it for centuries as implicitly "in the style of Parma".
The IP strategy ones often missed that it wasn't stealing - they sent the plans over themselves to save money. Even without illicit third shifts or counterfitting per se they would fundamentally learn enough to compete on knock offs. If the IP was actually precious to them they would have never sent it abroad to manufacture as the percentage saved wouldn't be worth it.
In my opinion what is spoken about IP in general and trade with China beyond "it is cheap/has high industrial concentration advantages" are comfortable lies to ease anxiety of the status quo as opposed to recognizing a nuanced and messy strategic situation of many actors which doesn't fit into a TED talk let alone a sound bite.
I don't think it was missed, in whole or in nuance, by anyone paying attention, but bringing attention to it was met with accusations of racism, and those were partisan.
Not that I'm chill with the Right, either: the "markets can do no wrong" philosophy leads to an enormous blind spot. Greedy optimizers fall apart when sub-components need to coordinate. When an adversary realizes they can just pay the hand to shoot the foot, suddenly the system finds itself with a destroyed industrial base but can't understand what just happened because the explanation lies in the blind spot. That's an even bigger problem than easily co-opted social justice causes.
There are 1.8 million Palestinians in Gaza.
OP was just pointing out that Palestinians are also imprisoned and in fact are a larger group.
To become prisoners, one would have to consider Palestinians to not be members of a separate country to Israel, but rather 2nd class citizens forced into a sort of apartheid.
The Chinese government is literally putting Uighurs in box cars and shipping them to camps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_Strip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang#Human_rights
In a resource-constrained, cut-throat competetive economy where everything is seen as a zero-sum deal, the average man will never hesitate to root for less-for-others if it guarantees more-for-me.
Where people's measure of worth is what one owns rather than what one does or how one lives, such a decadence is but a mere natural happenstance.
The eastern scriptures depict this in an allegorical way - a time in the world where there's no evil (satya yuga, pure and natural), followed by a time where the world is deviating towards order (treta yuga), followed by a time in the world where the balance of dharma (righteousness) tilts slightly towards adharma (wickedness or everything opposite of righteous) which was Dwaparayuga, followed by the age where righteousness is nowhere to be found (Kali yuga which is where we are now) This being a cycle and the cycle continues forever and ever. A refresh will happen - how soon or later, nobody seems to know!
With such a government, any future wouldn’t be desirable. Imagine such government in charge of unemployment benefits, health services, the military, anything really: it’s grim in any case.
Moreover, universal basic income is universal, by definition. If a government denies it to some particular citizens according to some criteria, it is not universal anymore. It becomes an income provided to anyone who is in favor of the government, which is a very different thing. So, if universal basic income existed, even the Chinese government would have to give it to everyone... or otherwise give it another name.
Not because I support it, but because in the circumstances in question the implication that they should have been treated as "full people" (in the only place 3/5 applied) is the pro slavery position.
Of course the slaves should have had freedom. Of course they should have had the vote. But they had zero of either of those. Increasing the power of the society that enslaves by 3/5 the number of slaves isn't treating them as 3/5 of a person! Morally speaking the number should have been zero (or negative!) if it had to be a question at all.
That’s why you don’t negotiate with terrorists. Sooner or later, they will leverage their position into a better deal at your table, or they will find a better deal at a different table, one which may render any leverage against them moot.
To the degree that increasing that fraction from 3/5 would raise the taxes paid by slave holders, it is not "pro slavery".
Having said that, IIUC, the restriction only applied to "direct taxes" whereas the bulk of US Federal Government revenue at the time was from tariffs and excise, and in any case was a much smaller portion of GDP than today (although to some degree that extends to representation as well, as a limitation of the power being controlled).
My general point stands that the great injustice was all the ways we were treating people as 0/5th of a person, not that we could have taxed some states a little more or given them a bit more power.
The likelihood of universal basic income being completely strings free is very low. You get convicted of some felony, you lose it, you are guilty of domestic violence you lose it, you say something very un-PC you lose it. And you may say, yeah, so what, those are bad people. But it would be like “hate speech”. Hate speech in the 90s was one thing, today it means someone disagrees with you on policy.
UBI gives government a lever to control people by threatening to reduce or stop payments as a form of punishment.
I've never seen anyone point that out before.
The most likely outcome, which happens with many other kinds of government programs, would be for Congress to delegate significant authority over UBI to some regulatory bureaucracy in the executive branch.
Similar to the way the IRS, EPA, and FDA work, there would be some department of UBI with broad discretion over how the law is interpreted, the ability create additional regulations and fine people who do not obey them, etc.
You can't solve this problem with code. It's a political problem.
Any group trying to take it away once people have it will find out it won't go well.
You are perhaps imaging a scenario where UBi is provided by a NGO?
Medicare has worked pretty well for the elderly for years. Old people and their families don’t lose everything for routine care anymore. Until it comes time for long term nursing home type care.
Everyone else is one car accident or cancer diagnosis away from ruin.
Further, no everyone is not one car accident or cancer diagnosis away from ruin, have been involved personally with both this is a false statement
If you are unable to work, you’re unable to maintain coverage in many circumstances. Many many people will be terminated within days or weeks of being out of work.
I used to setup Medicaid enrollment systems as a consultant — big counties have contractors to liquidate the assets of sick people driven into Medicaid every day.
Ok, but that in no way means it is "good", you seem to operate under the flawed belief that universality == good, when it can be universally bad
>has access to many types of care that requires private insurance for anyone else.
That is clearly false, as an example when my parents got on medicare they had to find new providers and new doctors as their long time doctors did not accept medicare at all largely due to the substandard payments they would receive.
It is false to say the medicare offers the exact same access as private payers. There are many many many doctors in private practice that do not accept medicare, you almost exclusively have to enter a large health network for it to except medicare largely because those health networks have the ability to increase the prices on their non-medicare patients to make up of the loss they experience by accepting medicare and/or they end up with a HUGE patient / doctor work load for medicare patients requiring them to schedule appointments months or some times a year or more in advance
To highlight medicare as model we should all have shows either A) your ignorance of medicare or b) your willingness to accept a standard of care far lower than what we have today in private medical treatment
>>big counties have contractors to liquidate the assets of sick people driven into Medicaid every day.
it is ironic that you talk about people being on illness away from ruin in the private system when you understand and know that if you end up with a illness bad enough the government will seize all of your assets to pay for that care. Does not seem like a vary fair system to me but I am sure you do not believe in private property either most socialist do not
When my dad had a stroke, requiring extensive hospitalization and rehabilitation, the biggest expense that they faced for the hospitalization and rehab phase was ambulance/ambulette service. They were fortunate to have had the means for private supplements for things like homecare and physical therapy beyond that Medicare, private insurance and family could accomodate. Most folks do not.
> it is ironic that you talk about people being on illness away from ruin in the private system when you understand and know that if you end up with a illness bad enough the government will seize all of your assets to pay for that care. Does not seem like a vary fair system to me but I am sure you do not believe in private property either most socialist do not
I've spent most of my career in finance, so I doubt that I would fit in well in socialist circles. I would agree with you that the system that requires people of modest means to either self finance care that costs $300-700/day, or become indigent to receive Medicaid social benefits is fundamentally unfair and arguably cruel. Ultimately it's draining the wealth of the nation away, and will impact the earnings potential of our fellow capitalists - how will consumers buy my products if 60% of their cashflow is rent/health/transportation?
My employer can fire me for any or no reason and no notice and I’d be left with a short COBRA runway of suddenly-expensive healthcare, which I now can’t afford because I was just fired.
My employer can (and does) change my insurance provider, add or remove benefits, and I have zero say over that process. I certainly can’t vote for a new CEO or request a different provider from my company. Take it or leave it.
My health and well-being is tied up with the same entity that tells me what to do for 8 hours a day. That doesn’t feel like “freedom” to me.
Universal healthcare as a concept is not by itself related to authoritarianism. Indeed, guaranteeing healthcare (whether it be state-run like the UK or all-private like Germany) and paying for it through tax revenue rather than through employment subsidy is a feature of many Western democracies.
You can thank government for that as well, as Price Controls from WWII, and ongoing regulations and tax burdens are the leading reasons employment and healthcare are linked in the way they are.
>>Universal healthcare as a concept is not by itself related to authoritarianism.
If you do not believe that is authoritarianism then I shutter to think what it would take for you to recognize an authoritarian system
>> Indeed, guaranteeing healthcare (whether it be state-run like the UK or all-private like Germany) and paying for it through tax revenue rather than through employment subsidy is a feature of many Western democracies.
That is a false dilemma, I support neither system nor is employer provided vs government provided the only choice we have as a society
Using the Authoritarian nations (though I am sure your going to disagree describing them as authoritarian) of the UK and Germany to support your position is not going to win me over.
I support individual liberty, and individual rights, and generally only Negative forms of right.
the UK, Germany, and most of the EU have adopted a position of Collective rights, and a whole host of Positive rights which are Authoritarian in nature. Sure they are not NK or China, but simply because they are not full on Totalitarian regime's does not make them libertarian either
“Until they secure their personal liberty, at some unimaginable cost, free people everywhere will have to hope against hope that the world’s most intelligent machines are made elsewhere.”
I don’t agree, with the “right” people in charge, the intelligent machines pose a risk to humankind everywhere.
Palantir, on the other hand, has a direct role in this process of concentrating undesirables.
That is like saying "In the dark future of unrestrained capitalism will sell ads to sex slaves chained in the basement - where they have no money or freedom." It might tug at heart strings but it makes so little sense it sounds like an outright parody of such sentiments.
Developments like these will just turn that up to 11
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Realm_Trilogy
While Tethics and AI are buzzwords du jour, the problem is more general: The weakening of liberal democratic values.
We need laws and regulation that guarantee privacy more concretely as a foundational right.
By letting its foreign policy wonder into grey area by playing overtures with regimes of all kind without any reservations, it allowed for norms, and boundaries to be blurred, and resolve of its camp blunted.
What is happening now, is that the whole Western camp have descended into whataboutism with relation to what rogue regime each bloc member is playing ball with, without no authority left in the bloc "clean enough" to police it.
What rogue regimes made to the West in the last 20 years, is nothing, but a gang initiation in reverse.
First they lured the West into playing their dirty games, and when Western countries thoroughly dirtied their hands, then come and say "your hands are as dirty as mine, what's the point fighting now?"
Make no mistake, I think that facebook and social media have chilling effects on discourse and are, on the whole, very negative, but I can still get on any forum and call my national leader a clown (aka Xi = Winnie the Poo) and not risk going to jail.
I'm not making a comparison – I'm simply arguing against something.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/159184620X?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_...
And Argentina is kept in line via WHO loans and regular scourging through economic means.
I am very curious when exactly you imagine a period where "The West"'s hands weren't dirty. Both before and after WW2 ended, for example, many European nations still had colonial empires where unspeakable atrocities were happening under their direct rule (not as abhorrent as the Holocaust, but still extraordinarily disgusting). In the period that followed, "the West", just as much as Russia and China, immediately started supporting favorable dictators wherever there was some conflict - like the military anti-communist dictatorship in Greece with Allied backing, and many far-right regimes in South America and Asia.
During this same time, gay people were legally persecuted across "the West" just as much as elsewhere (though, oddly enough, with a short reprieve in early communist Russia - before WW2, before Stalin) - including, famously, war heroes like Alan Turing. Lynchings were still happening in the USA. In fact, the USA at this time had a system of first class and second class citizens with explicitly racist laws.
And in the years that followed, while civil rights movements grew in power in Europe and the US (with strong opposition from the government, for a very long time), "the West" only escalated its fight against democracy in the rest of the world - either by supporting brutal dictatorships established by others (Indonesia, South Vietnam, a lot of South America, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, even in communist bloc countries such as Romania), or by orchestrating their own coups to install loyal dictators in place of elected leaders (with initial success in Iran or Nicaragua, or ending in failure in Cuba, North Vietnam). Other European countries supported horrible regimes in their former colonies, usually supporting white or loyalist people against revolutionary or "brown" people - such as Swiss, UK and US support of the apartheid state in South Africa in the 1980s.
How does that saying go? "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it". Thank you Google.
What occurs after?
AI is a race that absolutely must be won by good actors rather than totalitarian states.
This article and a lot of the literature assumes the same tools are not also turned upon the managers of society (i.e. that they get to use the times in secret). Many fear that knowledge of our lives will support interference in our lives. Perhaps any such interference must be just as observable and prohibited by law in a free society.
Who watches the watchers? We all could. When there is a conflict or question we have records to review and public opinion to adjudicate.
Of course we would have to rethink a number of assumable cultural expectations.
I'm sure people will misinterpret what I am trying to say. But, it is framed as a "democracy or tyranny" question. I believe that although the authoritarianism is quite horrific in some ways, in some respects there are actually advantages. Which, if you are still reading, is not to suggest in any way that it is the correct path, but maybe is a hint that our current "democratic system" may not be quite what it is cracked up to be either.
Again, in no way suggesting we should get closer to a closed system, but I feel like honest evaluation will see very significant deficiencies with western governments such as the United States. For example, looking at the extreme political divide in the country sometimes makes government seem like a joke.
I personally believe that the best and maybe the only way to move forward constructively is to be realistic about the flaws in both extremely divergent views (east and west) and think of a totally new shared philosophy and way for government to operate..
But most likely that will not happen, and I also personally believe that another world war may be stimulated by poor technical adjustment to global accounting collapse (along with the complete failure of cultural and political integration). I think if this occurs then it will prove that humans are not fit to control the planet, and hope that we will soon have competent and (one can hope benign) but much more sophisticated AIs that we can pass the torch of evolution to.