Yes, no disagreement here. The Five Eyes is a poignant example of what happens if your essential view on societal ordering is that ordinary people are there to serve the select few. The problem for the US and Australia is that they inherited all the flaws from the UK, which till this day is still quite a class based society.
This is also why the US did not inherit a real, solid concept of personal privacy. Instead, ordinary people are increasingly becoming sort of property of corporates. You can see that if you contrast the Rheinland model (state reigns in corporates, protect people rights) with the Anglo-sphere, which is much more suited to a few select capital holders extracting value from the workforce (compare holiday allowance, fire at will etc).
This doesn´t mean that in Europe the Rheinland model is not under active threat, far from it. And look at collective self harm: watch this space (HN) if the EU sometimes takes measures against abusive monopolies. It is a very difficult fight.
This is also why the US did not inherit a real, solid concept of personal privacy. Instead, ordinary people are increasingly becoming sort of property of corporates. You can see that if you contrast the Rheinland model (state reigns in corporates, protect people rights) with the Anglo-sphere, which is much more suited to a few select capital holders extracting value from the workforce (compare holiday allowance, fire at will etc).
This doesn´t mean that in Europe the Rheinland model is not under active threat, far from it. And look at collective self harm: watch this space (HN) if the EU sometimes takes measures against abusive monopolies. It is a very difficult fight.