LESSON 1: Do Not Obey In Advance

I would go spend a couple of days on Yale history professor Timothy Snyder reading his books and then watch him on YouTube. Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig is also a major academic in this area. Their respective relevant books are "The Road to Unfreedom" and "They Don't Represent Us." Timothy Snyder also wrote "On Tyranny," which is a very quick read which is directly applicable to the question you are asking, he also narrated it in video form: [this video] Timothy Snyder is more about understanding and fighting the forces of tyranny while Lawrence Lessig focuses more on the mechanics of our democracy and the consequences of our current implementation. I promise you will love Timothy Snyder. My personal take is "democracy" the word has been hijacked and it's probably time to stop using it casually. The core idea and foundation of liberal democracy and what you feel is being eroded and needs strengthening is rule of law . Russia tried to privatize and democratize but failed because they did not have rule of law. Rule of law is where all the good stuff comes from. So what you really want an answer for is "how do I use my technical skills to promote rule of law?" Supporting rule of law means supporting a fact based world, supporting institutions that do investigative research, and promoting empathy for the oppressed. Supporting rule of law means empowering the un-empowered by, for example, supporting unions. Snyder would say: So choose an institution you care about – a court, a

He has a new book On Freedom , too. I haven't read it yet, but I have watched him give excellent talks on youtube, which reference it. I believe his core thesis in On Freedom is that America has focused on negative freedom, when what really matters is positive freedom. "Negative freedom" is the idea that no government should interfere with your life. Authoritarian regimes arbitrarily exercise power, and that results in people being prevented from doing things or forced to do things. Maybe that's restrictions on speech or protest. Focusing on "negative freedom" turns people against their governments, which creates a sort of power vacuum anyone with resources is happy to fill. Negative freedom is good, nobody should want the government interfering with their lives, but focusing solely on negative freedom leads to authoritarianism. We can see this effect right now with "free speech absolutists" functionally becoming oligarchs. He says what people should focus on instead is "positive freedom" -- The idea that you have the freedom to do what you want. If you don't have health, money, or education, you can't really be free. There is no freedom in a hospital bed. So healthcare creates positive freedom. Building housing lets you spend more money on things you want to do instead of rent, that's positive freedom. Without education, you are more easily victimized by those who wish to manipulate you and you are less capable of producing things of value. So education is freeing. He also h

My bad. Doesn't look like I can delete my submission. I apologize for coming off gotcha, gloaty, or sneering I thought I was being pretty blunt. I was genuinely surprised yesterday and realized I have a huge misunderstanding about how things operate here. On the Elon thread dang stated that users flag articles and implied that user flagging was the overriding arbiter of authority on HN and linked [link] (implying flagging/community consensus is above the mods) which is how I came to my 'not very accurate description of how HN works'. Yesterdays response further confused me as the community discussion in the flagged article seemed to lean more towards unflagging than support for the flag remaining. Thanks for clarifying that I still misunderstand. I will ask others still in the bay area for more insight directly and refrain from talking/asking about HN on HN. Honest question what is pre-sneering? Maybe you are mistaking my shock at events yesterday and the position taken here for sneering? I have to admit I am extremely shocked and disillusioned. But I'm definitely not sneering. I think you are mistaking my not obeying in advance ( [this video] ) and asking a very blunt question for some sort of juvenile internet snark. I think responding negatively and how I assumed most people would to outright Nazi behavior and defense/deflection/headburrying of it is different than run of the mill internet snark/sneering. I guess keeping with that post about being post-authenticity yesterday ma