Comment by close04
1 day ago
Or fly a plane or drone overhead and see [0] where the terminals are. After a few fines most people would decide it’s not worth the risk.
I remember how the Uber rollout worked in Berlin. Uber said they don’t need to comply with anything the city asked for and enjoyed their position in the safety of an ocean away so the local authorities instituted eye watering fines for drivers caught providing Uber rides. Uber decided to comply.
[0] https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2026/quadrf-can-spot-drone...
Depends on how many terminals there are and whether or not the neighborhoods they are in are sympathetic to the operators. It’s very easy to move them.
Resistance against totalitarianism is a duty.
I wasn’t thinking of totalitarianism but rather a country objecting to Starlink operating on its territory. This is why I brought up Berlin and fines, not the secret police breaking in your house at night.
After living under one of those totalitarian regimes, all Incan say is that everything sounds easy in an HN comment typed from the safety of a democratic society.
National firewalls and other such things are tools of totalitarianism. Except possibly in wartime, or if they are causing harmful interference, or if Starlink refuses to pay taxes, I don’t really see a good argument against things like Starlink.
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I can see how that worked in Berlin. In USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance that would fail laughably. Americans will drive with no license, registration, in cars they've stolen back from the repo man because they refuse to pay anything to anyone. When my car was totalled by an illegal alien, the police didn't even show up, wisely because they were surely driving without license, identity documents, insurance, registration, or any sort of recoverable assets or any way to punish them but to throw them in an overflowing jail. You could try fining them but it would be like trying to draw blood from a stone. I suppose could try to jail them, but you'd find our jails are already full, and we already let violent criminals out on bail.
In much of the world including USA poor people will slang crack for $5 under threat of life in jail and fines higher than they could ever hope to pay. Suffice to say there's an endless line of people willing to uber for roughly crack slinging wages without the risk of life imprisonment even if the fines are as bad -- because their alternatives are worse.
Albania and Georgia have much healthier culture of resistance than the US.
The US has almost entirely lost this culture except for short moments in isolated places. Minneapolis is nearly a proof by exception in this. Very, very few people need to be detained or killed to get the mass of Americans to stay inside and self-censor. Much less is required to get businesses to put their head down and play nice with the government.
FR lol, people in the US love to talk a big game but most of us take the freedoms for granted and will fold at the drop of a hat when real consequences are on the line
Let American police crush any car violating traffic rules into a cube, and then see how quickly people obey traffic laws.
I think you wanted the opportunity to beat that “healthy culture of resistance” drum. Every tweaker, every inbred, every starved person acting out of desperation is Rosa Parks now.
You name things and decide that‘s “resistance”. People break the law because there’s no real consequence or because they just have nothing to lose. They’re not “resisting”, they’re surviving. The US society decided that a large class of people will be forced to operate at that level their whole life and are incentivized to do worse by the insane punishment model applied only to them.
The only people doing the “resisting” in the US are those who can afford a good lawyer. Everyone else does what the cracks in the system allow, or what they need to do out of desperation.
No German Uber driver is desperate enough to risk their whole livelihood especially for that meager payoff. Most civilized countries make sure that people have something to lose which will keep people acting straight rather than always act on desperation. Depending on your goal, having people exercise self restraint works better than restraining them with tasers, chokeholds, and bullets to the back.
> because their alternatives are worse.
Ah, ok. So not “a healthy culture of resistance” but more “desperation because the country made sure that’s driving them”.
>Ah, ok. So not “a healthy culture of resistance” but more “desperation because the country made sure that’s driving them”.
This is logical fallacy, but you've tried hard to pull a gotcha out of it.
Resisting because you are desperate is perfectly valid and doesn't create a contradiction.
It's not something reserved to "those who can afford a good lawyer." Desperation is one of the hardest drivers of resistance, not something reserved to rich people with lawyers and something to lose. And even if we suppose there's not resistance in USA, I said in USA or someplace with a healthier culture of resistance, which means even if you don't consider USA a place of resistance it still meets the logical test of falling within my statement.
>[now deleted] If you hear this for the first time, hello white male with plenty of money for a lawyer.
Lol you couldn't resist adding that in. Your little racially charged bits about why we're not allowed to call it resistance when a poor black person does such acts. While ignoring your very example of Rosa Parks who was a black woman, child of a teacher and itinerant worker and before activism working largely in domestic work for white families. The contradiction is yours.
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