Law enforcement and government are addicted to power to an unhealthy degree. Convincing people to voluntarily give up power is rarely successful.

You seem to believe majority support is enough to make something happen. It is not.

The Public Option has 75% popular support. Medicare-For-All has 59% popular support.

Yet we have neither.

I didn't live in the past, but my reading of it leads me to believe that, at least through US history, it seemed that the public consciousness in the past has had very real skepticism of authority.

Perhaps that is the opposite today in many parts of the developed world. For example, a German guy recently looked me dead in the eye, smiled, and said sincerely: "But why would anybody not trust their government?"

So we have two seemingly popular things that haven't happened and one that has happened but was not so popular (but it turns out that it was more popular than was suspected by anyone beforehand). I'm afraid that is politics. If it helps, I am not a fan of Brexit but will have to live with it anyway.

There is no conspiracy and I don't think that it is fair to accuse your police and government of being arseholes (to put words in your mouth!) Sometimes we simply have to accept that our personal will does not always dovetail with that of the majority - that is how democracy works. To be fair though, there is also nothing wrong with getting a good rant in on HN.

If you feel really strongly about healthcare, why not emigrate to the UK? Our NHS is bloody amazing and only costs: https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much-you-pay - roughly 12% of your salary. There is a lower band and an upper band so it is not 12% of everything you earn and it also covers unemployment payments and other things.

That's true. But said acceptance doesn't need to translate to acceptance of the laws that the misguided majority enacts - you can sabotage those instead, Underground Railroad style.

You've clearly never dealt with either in the US for a protracted period of time.

Yes, they very much are. Their response to them breaking the law and/or making a mistake is "Fuck off, sue us."

> If you feel really strongly about healthcare, why not emigrate to the UK? Our NHS is bloody amazing and only costs: https://www.gov.uk/national-insurance/how-much-you-pay - roughly 12% of your salary. There is a lower band and an upper band so it is not 12% of everything you earn and it also covers unemployment payments and other things.

A) You are moving the goal posts from the original discussion.

B) I was born here. I'm not leaving just because I don't win every battle.

> Brexit was decided on an embarrassingly close vote: 51.9%

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/10/russian-influe...

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/britains-russia...

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/06/top-brexit-back...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43336351

> The four most recent readings - taken by BMG Research and Survation between November and January - have, on average, once the 8% who said "don't know" are left to one side, put Remain on 52% and Leave on 48%.

Now that it isn't being influenced by an outside party, it is no longer narrowly winning.

To be honest, I don't think people should cry they have a mandate from the people with less than a 55% majority.

My original point about Brexit being very close still stands and I would suggest that your Remain on 52% and Leave on 48% are still very close given the sheer pain of the separation that has become apparent since the original vote (you try listening to the news here - its bloody boring.) If you had waved say 60% Remain, I might take notice.

Can I ask what 55 is? (for instance, in India 66 is a special percentage required for some bills).

It is a bit nuanced but there are several forms of fund raising and such that require a 55% majority to pass.

We have other things that require a 2/3rds majority as well.

I get paid better over here, and the weather in the UK is shit.

This sounds like a highly irresponsible tactic if your actual goal is to help people.

There is no reason to believe that the state will afford the kind of changes you're describing, and even if it does, no reason to believe that it will obey the new laws in question.

While you are busy keeping yourself safe by staying within the lines of a tyrannical coloring book, real people are suffering the consequences of surveillance.

Even if this were possible: why constrain the internet, whose constituency is international and impetus is mathematical, to the confines of some ridiculous tantrum-throwing government and its childish ideas of control? What's the benefit?

Changing the law means nothing if it gets changed back the following decade.

Technical solutions tend to be more permanent.

Your solution is equivalent to saying "why are we focused so much on pretecting ourselves from hackers? We should instead change society such that nobody even WANTS to be a hacker!"