Comment by testing22321
1 day ago
> The comments that this rather expensive endeavour should just be about getting a head count are also amusing to me
Countries conduct censuses so they can understand, in great detail, what is going on with the people who make up the country.
With this accurate information, improvement plans can be made, and life can be improved for everyone.
The comments about just making it a head count give a very interesting window into the mentality of many these days. They don’t want to - it can’t fathom how to - make life better.
It’s sad, really
Indeed, the very word "statistics" originates as an understanding or description of the state [1].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics#History
Or worse, they actively don't want to make life better for the "wrong" kind of people.
Eh, that’s the ‘if people do the right thing’ approach.
Many countries use census data to target (or even round up and murder) specific groups of people by religion, ethnicity, etc.
"Many countries"? Do you have any evidence for this statement?
I think that actually the US is an outlier.
When Germany invaded the Netherlands they found it extremely convenient that the Netherlands had a nice centralised paper filing system telling them exactly where all the Jews lived. The Holocaust proceeded more efficiently in the Netherlands than it had in Germany.
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Here is a case study from Greece in the ‘20’s, but all you need to do is google ‘ethnic cleansing’ and dig in, and you’ll see government data sources (including census data) all played a part.
[https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11208589]
“The census was conducted in a period of successive wars and rapid territorial expansion. We focus on the handling of the census data for Macedonia, a newly annexed territory that would soon become the site of the first instance of large-scale ethnic cleansing in modern Europe.”
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really? bosnia 1990s, turkey early 1900s, pogroms all over europe in the 19th century, holodomor, china with tibet and uighurs, germany tabulating data on the jews with the help of ibm...
If someone says the holocaust happened, do you demand evidence of the claim? Because that’s exactly what you’ve done here
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Ah yes, the old “bad guys did it 50+ years ago, therefore we shouldn’t collect data that will improve our country”
It’s no shock the standard of living continues to fall in what was once ostensibly the greatest country.
‘Gov’t consistently threatens to do x which is bad, does x which is bad. collecting data which makes it easier to do x is… good?’
Do you even listen to yourself? How would collecting that data in this environment actually improve the country, instead of clearly being used to do bad things - which will make the situation worse?
Notably, this is the gun registry problem, and exactly why gun registries are also bad.
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