> The problem is, guys with guns will come to your door, beat you with a wrench, and put you in jail.

This is hyperbole. A dictator might have the tools to shut off a couple of dissident. But if you have a large portion of the population running these dishes, it's game over.

> Most people are bootlickers. Most people want the type of power structure that ends up with the internet blocked. They don't want freedom - they want to be on the side doing the oppressing.

That's a bit contradictory to what you said a few sentences before. Most people like to be the oppressors but not oppressed.

  if you have a large portion of the population running these dishes, it's game over.

Sadly this is wishful and overly optimistic thinking. The Tiananmen Square protesters thought similarly. Dictators will massacre their own people

I don’t know how you can look at the expansion of democracy worldwide over the 20th century and say it’s just wishful thinking!

By most metrics, democracy is currently in contraction.

The space of democracy is already taken by the leader of the freeworld that dictates how democracy should look like. So if you can't play the game, it is logical to want to play your own game.

It's not clear how many died in TSquare but it's a few thousands at most. That's very far from the hundred of millions of people China has.

A counter example is the CCP backing down from the Covid restrictions under popular pressure. If enough people put pressure, the government will react.

> Dictators will massacre their own people

You have to be reminded that the government (and the army) are themselves made of the people. This has the interesting consequences that the most brutal ones are actually oil-funded (because they can outsource security) or countries that have a racial/cultural divide (because they can rally one segment of the population against another, ie: Syria).

> It's not clear how many died in TSquare but it's a few thousands at most. That's very far from the hundred of millions of people China has.

Mao did kill off millions in the Great Leap, with no dissent.

Afaik it was not "planned" unlike Stalin and Beria's NKVD - Mao ordered crows killed to increase crop yields not thinking about the consequences of remove a predator from an ecosystem because the smart folks were either ignorant or afraid of going to a re-education camp.

Mass starvation.

Mao killed people for mistakes far less than that, didn't he.

Under Mao's rule, millions of people were overtly executed. It wasn't just Mao's incompetence that got people killed accidentally. He ordered millions of people to be murdered.

do you have reference for this? I am Chinese and would like to learn.

The Cultural Revolution.

Would you volunteer to be among the first on the firing line? Most people would want to avoid that risk.

A significant portion of Mainland Chinese Internet users have access to a VPN. They can read the whole Internet. It's been that way for about 10 years. Why isn't it "game over" yet for the Chinese Communist Party? How about Myanmar or Cambodia, which have much less sophisticated national Internet firewalls? Still going dictator-strong.

30% is high, but maybe not enough to make a big difference in such a police state.

The point missed by the comment whom you reply to is that tech that enables information sharing (Internet, VPN, comms satellites) comes together with tech that allows for more effective population control and propaganda (great firewall, surveillance satellites, social karma, "everything app", electronic money). It's back to the human factor again: if you don't have protections against dictatorship tech won't help you, but if you do have democracy you don't care about that fancy tech.

That's only on paper. During anniversaries of various politically important events, access to the foreign segment of the Internet is slowed down, infected with packet loss, and disrupted in other ways so that VPNs become practically unusable. This obviously affects not only VPNs, but other kinds of traffic.

Source: I worked for a company that had an office in China, and was responsible for maintaining the Chinese servers. In that case, I had to troubleshoot multi-hour MySQL replication lags. Solved by switching the TCP implementation to BBR, because it is resistant to packet loss.

Perhaps you should read this book. The first chapter is about his dad, Ai Quing, being deported to a work camp in Xinjiang during the Cultural Revolution, along with his two sons.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1000_Years_of_Joys_and_Sorro...

The solution is not technical. My dad had a TV sat dish during the communist regime. He was scheduled to be arrested in '90, but the regime fell during the winter of the previous year.

> if you have a large portion of the population running these dishes, it's game over

Until you jam the uplinks. Laser I/O could solve that problem, but that opens the door to blinding overhead birds.

> But if you have a large portion of the population running these dishes, it's game over

It is illegal to bring them into the country, and if you get caught doing so it's jail time. That is true today of drones and any sat communication system in many, many countries.

The black market tends to pop up to satisfy demand in violation of controls. Find a high ranking official who can tell the police to back off and cut them in: then you're in business, at least until they're purged. But even then, the next person in the seat will most likely respond to the same incentives and business will resume...

Even in North Korea, this process takes place. It's just that much slower and riskier, and when lots of controls are slapped on people become too destitute to buy product. But the letter of the law is ultimately just a "threat" in your SWOT analysis when you're able to tempt people with personal gain.

What good governance ultimately does is to enable everyone's indifference on these matters: the rules are out in the open, nobody's keeping secrets and blackmailing their rivals, and the result is sufficiently fair that going against it is a position only a tiny minority are inclined to take. Once everyone's in circumlocutions about their actual position because the politics have gotten out of hand, you have the kind of confusing, hysterical mess that would move someone to turn off the Internet rather than let any more rumors spread.

Thus, this kind of tech - anything in the realm of decentralized communications - is easiest to access in the places of the world that need it the least.

While your philosophical approach sounds good written down, I can tell you from experience, the reality on the ground is vastly different.

I drove my own vehicle across the land borders into Mauritania, Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, Congo, DRC, Angola, Burundi, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Sudan, Egypt and about 40 more countries.

You DO NOT want to bring sat communication equipment into countries where it is strictly prohibited.

Some of those countries won't even let you bring 2-way radios in (military tech)

Doesn't mean you should just give up. We'll need countermeasures and spread information for a set of SOPs.

- A way to post a video of injustice without being traced back

- A way to shoot a video without others knowing

- A way to prove you aren't just a troll or foreign agent

- miniaturizing hardware like your dish so that they can be hidden easily

"Most people are bootlickers. Most people want the type of power structure that ends up with the internet blocked. They don't want freedom - they want to be on the side doing the oppressing."

There, you nailed it. I wish I could give you +10 ;)

>The reason for the oppression is, a large portion of every country actually wants to be oppressed.

Nobody wants to be oppressed. A large portion of the population often wants to be oppressors themselves. They are addicted to controlling others. This might be raising tax on X group, or criminalizing Y minority.

Many people don't like voluntary association and choice. They want compelled behavior that conforms to their expectation.

The only way to combat this is to establish a baseline respect for individual autonomy and choice as long as it doesn't harm other people.

Most people are hesitant to allow this because they don't like the choices that others make. Either that or they define harm as doing anything which they don't like.

are you familiar with the lower middle-class rednecks who form the republican party, and elect people who at every turn scam them, screw them, and try to take away their medical benefits and social security? yes, they do want to be oppressed - but by their own people. not by your people.

my wife is a chinese xpat who got her master's here and stayed. when we go to visit her old parents who have a picture of mao on the wall, half the sites she visits are blocked. She can't get to the things she spends half her free time on. But it's "good that youtube is blocked, there's bad stuff on it."

Most of that country is like that. The millions you see protesting on the street - there's over a billion who are against them and love their firewall which keeps out western propaganda. and when they get their door nailed shut from outside and die of starvation? we don't talk about that, that didn't happen, gramma just died of old age.

i have friends who live in moscow. lots of people - way over half, support the war. when their son gets drafted, given a non-working rifle with no bullets, and shot, and they don't get paid as promised - they get mad at putin for a day. they next day though, they blame the Ukrainians and support the ugly little bald troll even more.

trust me - you are very wrong. probably not in your local social circle - but that has a huge selection bias. go to the DMV, sit there for an hour, and just listen to people talking.

being under the boot is safe, you don't have to make decisions, you don't have to thing as your opinions are provided - as is at whom you should be angry. it's paradise for many a housecat.

Unfortunately this is so true. I made this experience after travelling to oppressed countries. Just to add, a lot of time it is a net positive for the people, and more complex than propagated from the outside.

>...lower middle-class rednecks who form the republican party, and elect people who at every turn scam them, screw them, and try to take away their medical benefits and social security? yes, they do want to be oppressed

>Mao

>...it's paradise for many a housecat.

Feels like a non-sequitur to compare opposition to state controlled medical coverage to the charmed life of house cats. People often opt to euthanize their aged pets. Animals which misbehave or become unmanageable are sent to shelters where they are euthanized. On the other hand, concerns about death panels and eugenics are laughed away.

Otherwise I agree somewhat with your sentiment. The two goal posts of tribal affiliation are pitted against each other. Authorities take their free kick.

The description of, "lower middle-class rednecks who form the republican party" reads exactly like the kind of partisan 'othering' you describe.

Maybe he's saying that lack of education and or genetics causes people to desire control, to have someone who tells them everything will be allright because they can't handle the size and complexity of the modern world.

>yes, they do want to be oppressed

>being under the boot is safe

Do they want oppression or safety?

They want that particular kind of safety that comes from being under one’s boot: the incredibly reassuring, simple worldview that one can pour all their misgivings and praise for their lot in life into a singular place.

“Bless the king, for I can do X,” “The leader knows how to stop Y from harming us, and knows what we need,” “Damn the council, I get that I must go through them to do toys safely, but it’s so tedious,” etc. You may have never heard any of this, but it’s rather common all the same.

They want safety regardless of how it's done. Many times this means others, i.e. gays may not be safe.

This doesn't make them good people. Good intentions mean very little when weighed against the outcome.

This is why I hate all republicans

I think you are making the grave mistake of confusing cause and effect. Confusing a price willingly paid for motivation.

>yes, they do want to be oppressed - but by their own people. not by your people.

This is a half truth. Nobody wants to be oppressed, but they will choose the boot they think is lighter on them or heavier on others.

You may have been around a lot of different people, but I don't think you actually listened if this is the conclusion you are drawing. You can take that as a comment from someone who identifies more as a "middle class redneck" and then the equivalent alternative.

Nobody is clamoring to have their medical and retirement benefits taken away, but they have been sold on the idea that the alternative is to pay for both their own and that of other people. They are picking the less oppressive option as they understand them.

You can ask your in-laws what they think the alternative to Mao was. You can ask the Russians what they think the alternative to Putin is. Both will provide you an alternative that they think would be worse.

People will accept some oppression if they think it is the Lesser of two options. They don't actively seek it out

GP didn’t say “your access to the internet”, but “access to the internet”. The solution is partly technical, because it’s about increasing the number of heads that must be wrenched to disrupt a society’s access to the internet.

The only way that can be done is by reducing the cost and technical ability needed to connect to the internet with fewer intermediaries that can be wrenched by governments.

> Most people are bootlickers

Not you though, right?

As a EU citizen I’m a bit offended, how do EU citizens have no freedom of speech?

You just got told so.

Ha, ha, very funny.

This is mostly American forum and a lot of members have deeply ingrained belief that proper freedom of speech outside America does not exist.

Which is hilarious given the restrictions on freedom of speech in the US

European countries have different levels of restrictions on the US, more lax in some areas, tighter in others. The main difference with the US is that the EU doesn't pretend they have unlimited free speech, the US does.

Varies from country to country. Here in Germany we have substantially stricter laws against hate speech for example. Even more egregious, we have pretty strict laws against insults as well, which do get abused by people in power. For example, not too long ago someone got his house raided by police for calling the state interior minister a dick on twitter.

These kinds of laws are only possible because we have less strict and explicit rights to free speech in our constitution than the us.

Whoa! How did I miss #PimmelGate????

Yes, sure this is a bit of dark spot for freedom of speech in Germany. From what I'm seeing though pauli zoo got suspended from twitter afterwards and there has been neither suit nor countersuit in that case. So maybe there is more hidden detail here than is publicly known.

So I wasn't really participating in social media anyways, but it still had a cooling effect on what I'm willing to say in public.

The leader of my state (Berlin) is a cheater (proven; plagiarized heavily in her diss) and I strongly dislike her. I'm also positive she's exactly the kind of petty and vindictive person to go after random people insulting her.

A police raid in itself is a huge punishment already. Your home gets violated, lots of stuff destroyed and in this case, all computers and hard drives taken away. If that happened to me, it would be months of absolute pain to return to normality.

> EU citizens have no freedom of speech

First, technically there are no EU citizens, only citizens of EU member states. Speech is handled at member state level (e.g. hate speech, as in inciting violence against an ethnic or religious group, or displaying Nazi affiliation will be handled very differently in Portugal that never had direct Nazi rule, Germany that is doing it's best to make sure there are never Nazis again, and Poland that suffered centuries of massacres from violent oppressors, including the Nazis) so it's even less correct of a saying in this case.

Second, just because it doesn't fit your ideal of free speech, it doesn't make it non-free. Free is directional (from or to), on a spectrum and a matter of perception.

There are no public places on Earth with absolute free speech, and the vast majority of people prefer it that way.

>magats prosecuting women and doctors for murder because of a life-threatening abortion

Are you saying that's something that has happened? Do you have a link?

Mother and daughter charged https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/us/abortion-prosecution-n...

Many women with life threatening conditions get stuck waiting for the inevitable because they have already created evidence by going to a doctor. If anything happens to the baby without evidence of natural causes, they can be prosecuted. This has put women in a tough place.

This is a story that might help you understand

https://www.propublica.org/article/tennessee-abortion-ban-do...

Hmm, I now realize I may have misunderstood the phrase "a life-threatening abortion". I can think of 4 meanings:

1. an abortion to end a pregnancy that threatens the life of the mother

2. an abortion to end a pregnancy where the fetus's life is already threatened

3. an abortion that threatens the life of the mother

4. an abortion that threatens the life of the fetus

Your first link only matches meaning 4. But meaning 4 is tautological, so I'm not sure it makes sense.

In the second link no one was prosecuted.

In neither link was a doctor prosecuted.

> EU citizens have no freedom of speech

I was thinking exactly that the other day, while watching a TV show on national publicly funded television, where a variety of pundits where discussing the first year of the present term of the ruling president, and the on-set comedian summed up the situation : "the panel and the country is split in two : those that don't like the ruler, and those who hate him".

The youngest panelist (a twitch political streamer) argued about constitution changes with an older panelist (journalist in a far right newspaper). The table was filled with various levels of right center, vaguely socio democrats, a few has been still stuck in the 70s, etc...

Everyone talked very loudly and eloquently.

We may lack direct power, direct control over our institution, we may live in tight societies with few chances of social mobility, we definitely have press ownership issues, etc...

But for one think, i believe we have _some_ freedom of speech.

No, I'll leave the floor to those who define "free speech" as "the freedom to insult" :P

The problem with it is that you only have free speech until someone higher in the power structure decides whatever you're saying is insulting. Free speech in the US is actually limited in some ways, for example speech is only protected from abridgement by the government, something that's becoming more relevant by the day as social media platforms gain more and more sway over the public discourse.

I'm not aware of a single issue which has been effectively banned from public discourse due to being moderated on social media, nor any person who has been unable to continue public life or communication, for the same reason. Even "vaccine critical" discourse during COVID was rampant during the time when, supposedly, social media platforms erased it completely.

The "sway" that social media platforms have over public discourse is often vastly overstated for political ends, certainly compared to that of governments.

And the real problem is, if you consider the ability of social media platforms to moderate content to be harmful, the only solution is to have government limit the free speech of those platforms and those who participate on them by coercing them into publishing speech they don't want to, which cedes power to a potentially even worse entity. People are so terrified of the power social media has now - as an extension of the general social panic against "the left" - that they're willing to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Facebook can ban me from their platform but at least they can't send goons to my house and ban me from life.

This.

They are very few (read: "none as far as I know it") people jailed in the EU for having said that vaccines were "dangerous / ineffective / a plot by the governement to inject 5G chip / insert theory here" - neither for writing it on social media, nor for telling it on broadcast radio / TV.

However, and sorry for the cliché, there seems to be some places where you can get in jail for calling a "special operation" a cat.

Well, someone "higher in the power structure" has to decides what your saying is insulting _and_ put in place the means to actually punish you for that.

Speech, like pretty much every other freedom, is restricted by laws. And, we do have a pretty decent level of separation of powers as far as "putting people in jail" is concerned; so, to put you in jail for a long time, the "insult" has to be recognized by lawmaker, judges and governement.

(The situation is more troublesome for "putting you in jail for a few hours after a demonstration". But the forerunner for "repression" on this front at the moment in Europe, is, ironically enough... the UK [1]. So, good for them that they're not under "EU tyranny" anymore, I guess ?)

Europe has a troubled history on this front (we had certain issues for letting certain people "freely" explain why certain religious minorities had to be "dealt" with). So some countries passed some laws barring some discourse about race, slaverly, discrimination, etc... that would be protected by free speech laws in other countries.

(And, contrary to one pervasive piece of "free speech", there is not yet a "global goverment" enacting the same laws everywhere. Go figure.)

As for free speech on social media platform, that's a different topic. But my very personnal opinion to think that "insulting people while protected by putting the blame on twitter" is not a fundamental right. Open a blog, become a "publisher" under "freedom of the press" laws dating back to the late 1800s. Then, bear the consequences of your speech. (Neither is twitter's right to earn money from publishing insults while claiming they're not a publisher.) But, just my 2c, and I agree to disagree.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/08/labour-urge...

I believed this as well. Then came covid-19, and I had to learn that power corrupts people, same for those on the left as well as those on the right. Since then, I basically lost all believe in the narrative of democracy that I have been fed with my entire life. Its all a lie.

Emergencies and wars are bad for démocraties. The question is how fast and bad you come out of them.

Societies stood, jails are not flooded with opponents, I get the weekly interview of an antivax/covidsceptic/whatever on the radio because they're on the "right" political team, the governments are paying the political prices of their handling in the ballot boxes.

This is not perfect and never was meant to. Sorry if you were told otherwise.

Tides turn. People you agree with will be in the ruling majority some day. This will hurt even more ;)

Thanks for this compassionate reply. Its about time that we start understanding eachother even if we are in disagreement. It is subtle, but it really makes a difference. Let me just reply to your last point:

< People you agree with will be in the ruling majority some day. This will hurt even more ;)

In fact, I am psat that, because this was exactly what happened to me. We had a coalition between center-right and the green party. Even the socialists turned up and everyone seemed to unite into a coalition to divide the people. I am lacking the eloquence in english to explain myself fully, but the lesson I got, sadly, was that you really can not trust anyone to not corrupt and try to control you.

"but the lesson I got, sadly, was that you really can not trust anyone to not corrupt and try to control you. "

Even if this would be absolutely true, it would not undermine democracy. It just would proof the need to have build in mechanisms to keep the people in power in check. Exactly because you cannot trust people 100%. And mechanisms like this exist and are in place, but I agree, they should be improved.

This is what I believed as well, until I saw how one of the basic democratic rights, the right to demonstrate, was undermined in my country from the first day on. The main argument wasn't even spreading the virus, while that was aso mentioned as an aside. The main argument was "all of the demonstrators are right-wing nuts, these demonstrations must be condemned". I was schocked, because I knew this wasn't true at all. This is when I reaized, all the safety mechanisms we have been taught about democracy are a shim which can easily be disabled at the time of "need" from a autocratic regime.

I'm sorry that you felt silenced during demonstration. I hope you got other chances to get your voice heared afterwards (and if your voice was heard but just happened to be in a minority... Not much more to say than 'this too, shall pass'.)

As an aside, to be honest, I've always been undecided about demonstrations.

I dread for the day were they will be systematically forbidden or brutally repressed. And then again, I live in a country that is in a perpetual state of strike and demonstrations, but we're it's cool and fashionable not to vote, because, "it doesn't change anything".

I love the creativity that comes in cardboard slogans. (I want to meet the person who invented "16-64 : it's a beer, to a career" during this pension reform season.) And yet, I always feel uncomfortable about being in the same crowd as other, much less original and much more simplistic slogans.(sorry, but I _saw_ the posters explaining that every single person wearing a mask or getting a jab was a fascist decrebrated sheep. Or that COVID was just a trick from the <insert your favorite scapegoat here>. I would not have like walking behind this, sorry.)

Also, at how many people does a demonstration starts to represent "the will of the people" ? It seems like any cause can summon 500.000 people in the streets in May, provided the weather is good. 1 million people is almost a "revolution".

And yet, 1.000.000 people gets you less than 5% of any election with a decent turnout. Should that matter ?

Also, to be clear : I'm frailed or not particularly brave. The idea that "just because you're a big mob, and you can threaten to break stuff, you're right" is frightening.

I supposed I would be even more frightened in an "actual" dictatorship. So, plenty of cognitive dissonance to deal with, hey ?

Maybe I'm just enjoying the privileged position of a country where we get elections that are not entirely tricked (source : my perversion is tallying votes on Sunday nights. Cool kids don't do that, but they don't vote either - They get ready for the next demonstration.)

I hope that, if we ever loose that, I'll get the courage to demonstrate.

> EU citizens have no freedom of speech

Although this is not a EU thing, thus varies country by country, that’s something I’m not happy about the European approach to freedom of speech.

It’s usually the Nazi stuff and defamation that is not allowed, so it doesn’t affect most people but still is in principle I would prefer the absolute free speech. The American approach is better on this.

> The American approach is better on this.

It is not if you're the victim of the so called "freedom of speech" of others and can't do anything about it... The US also doesn't have absolute freedom of speech, just a different set of rules that makes them believe they do.

There are no "EU citizens" only citizens of EU member countries. None of those countries have freedom of speech as expansive as Americans but Americans in practice also don't have absolute freedom of speech.

1) Certain speech such as "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" has long been considered illegal.

2) The US has much more expansive laws about "conspiracy to..." which make it illegal to have certain conversations.

Oh, those don't count? Not real speech. Sure, why not.

3) Most people will experience very real economic consequences for a very wide range of speech. We're not all yeoman farmers entirely independent of paid employment.

That presumably doesn't count because only governments can restrict liberties? Well, have it your way but I would regard losing my job due to speech as a pretty severe restriction on my liberty.

EU citizenship was established by the Treaty on European Union [1] in 1992. While EU citizenship is different and additional to national citizenship, it does exist in law.

[1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/resource.html?uri=cellar:2bf140bf-...

EU citizenship can be removed, by force, on mass, and has been done for millions of people.

I know, I'm one of them. Nonetheless, it still exists.

> Revoking someone’s citizenship is hugely controversial. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines having a nationality as a right, forbidding countries to arbitrarily deprive someone of it.

It seems to me that if I were an EU citizen, the EU would be the ones who had to remove my citizenship, and that would be a very controversial step. I don't recall long winded speeches in the UN denouncing the EU for forcefully removing the citizenship of millions of people, which leads me to think that it's not a "real" citizenship.

The UDHR, Article 15, says that everybody has a right to have nationality and can't arbitrarily be deprived of nationality. The EU is not a nation and nobody has an "EU nationality", so depriving somebody of their EU citizenship doesn't violate Article 15. People in the UK retained their nationalities.

"German citizen" == "Germany nationality"

"Nigeria citizen" == "Nigerian nationality"

"EU citizen" != "EU nationality"

Sounds like you figured it out. Germany and Nigeria are nations, the EU is not. Appropriately, Germany and Nigeria are represented in the United Nations, while the EU is not.

> 1) Certain speech such as "shouting fire in a crowded theatre" has long been considered illegal.

This was a serious curtailment to free speech. "shouting fire in a crowded theater" was a euphemism for telling people to dodge the draft during WWI, making this restriction an overt curtailment of free political speech. Thankfully though, this was overturned several decades ago. The current standard is that you can't "incite imminent lawless action", so for instance it's not legal to say "Hey everybody, let's lynch Mvandenbergh from that tree right now!" But to your point, this is still a restriction on free speech, it's not an absolute right in America. You are correct on that point.

>What you suggest is impossible, because you are attacking a wrench on the head problem with a coding solution. […] The problem is, guys with guns will come to your door, beat you with a wrench, and put you in jail.

I would rather suggest that this is a education issue, mainly on how to widespread behavior that favor common goods and reciprocal mutual help as the basis of every single human out there. That is, methodologies like Marshall Rosenberg worked at disseminating.

Any other option is a race to the bottom of the rawest brutality.

>The reason for the oppression is, a large portion of every country actually wants to be oppressed.

Should I be haunted with so awful thoughts, I wish some people could help me to find an effective mental healing process, really.

Life is hard, and people having to struggle with of all sort of issues will certainly take what seems on the moment to be the easiest path to bring a bit more stability in the mess they are going through. But in no case that mean that anyone is deeply craving for oppression.

>many people want to control and silence others who don't agree

Well, that doesn’t reflect my own experience of interacting with many people. We agree that some people can be animated with that kind of despicable mindset. And we agree, certainly, that some of them can successfully gain significant political/social power. A very small minority of people like that is enough to engender nation wide desolation.

>Most people are bootlickers. Most people want the type of power structure that ends up with the internet blocked. They don't want freedom - they want to be on the side doing the oppressing.

Maybe try to go in different social circles out there. You might be positively surprise.

I don't know if the majority of people want to be oppressed, that sounds like a simplified generalization. Specially taking into account the variances of oppression between different regimes across the world. The reasons for oppressive regimes to arise may be completely different, even if there are some shared psychological and sociological features. The very concept of freedom is not stable and is constantly being negotiated. However you point out an important issue that I agree with, and is many times forgotten: the questions about freedom that arise with technological developments are not technological per se, but political and ethical in their nature

> The problem is, guys with guns will come to your door, beat you with a wrench, and put you in jail.

Counterpoint: guns, doors, wrenches and jails are tools as well. So, I don't buy this notion that technology can't solve societal issues.

It's like saying you can't fix a leaky faucet with a wrench because the real problem is that the pipes are old and rusty. Sure, the root cause may be a societal issue, but that doesn't mean we can't use technology to mitigate the problem. I mean, imagine telling a doctor not to prescribe medicine to a sick patient because the real issue is poor lifestyle choices.

> Counterpoint: guns, doors, wrenches and jails are tools as well. So, I don't buy this notion that technology can't solve societal issues.

I'd go as far as saying, technology is by far most likely to solve societal issues, but it usually happens indirectly, in ways not easily predicted.

To use your example:

> It's like saying you can't fix a leaky faucet with a wrench because the real problem is that the pipes are old and rusty.

Yes, and technological solution for this ends up being... all the metal pipes getting replaced with plastics, because plastics are that amazing and petroleum industry made them cheap as dirt. There are many "technological solutions" at play here, most of them have nothing to do with plumbing, but together they both make the plastic pipes possible, and through economics, make them suddenly appear in everyone's houses.

(The whole setup of course comes with new problems in other areas, but that's almost always the case with any solution to anything.)

> I mean, imagine telling a doctor not to prescribe medicine to a sick patient because the real issue is poor lifestyle choices.

This is what a good chunk of the world believes, and tries to tell the doctors and patients alike. I consider this to be "fuck you advice"; "poor lifestyle choices" are usually not actually choices, and lifestyle changes are much, much harder to implement (often impossible in practice) compared to a medical intervention.

> (EU citizens have no freedom of speech)

As a EU citizen, I really have no clue where you pulled that from. We must have a very different definition of freedom of speech.

I can criticize my government openly and as much as I want but I can't call for a genocide or do a nazi salute. Most of us are perfectly fine with that, but thanks for your concern about our freedom.

> You can always get a dish and connect to your choice of orbital provider, if your ISP - which is regulated - is blocked. The problem is, guys with guns will come to your door, beat you with a wrench, and put you in jail.

They have to catch you first.

What if every computing device sold in the West came as standard with built in, secure mesh networking and ability to uplink to satellites?

Then governments like Pakistan would have to use those computers, and lose the ability to control what their people say.

Alternatively, they could:

(1) not use computers, dooming their country to perpetual poverty

(2) come up with their own solution, and they're too small an economy to come up with one that isn't backward

(3) buy a solution from another autocracy, such as China -- and doom their country to be forever controlled by China

The problem with this idea is that the West doesn't want every compute to come with built in secure mesh networking, because they want to snoop on their people too. But if they did go for this idea, because they're a freer society than their competitors (China and Russia, mainly) it would give them a massive advantage.

> the oppression of you can simply come from a majority (EU citizens have no freedom of speech)

That's a gross over-simplification. EU citizens have a good deal more freedom of speech than in most societies that've ever existed; and in every society there are things you might say that will get you in serious trouble.

> There is no answer, because many people want to control and silence others who don't agree

A lot do; these people are stupid and if they were more sensible they would realise that among societies, there is a strong correlation between amount of freedom of speech and how nice the place is to live in.

> Most people are bootlickers. Most people want the type of power structure that ends up with the internet blocked. They don't want freedom - they want to be on the side doing the oppressing.

They imagine they will be the person wielding the fist and not the person being punched by it.

In truth it will be the ruling class doing the restrictions on freedom. And because power corrupts, even if the ruling class start off as perfectly moral and just people (ha!) they won't stay that way for long.