Not sure what you mean by 'propagandaland'. I'm glad so many Americans still believe in limited government. This is one of the most important / best features of this country.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14362943 and marked it off-topic.
Additionally, when massive economies of scale drive the market towards a single provider, your options are to either trust a corporation to behave ethically (given history, a terrible choice) or to run a state monopoly.
There are definitely times when a planned system backed by the state can do a better job of serving the public good than a free market. The right answer is to be flexible and examine each situation independently rather than be dogmatic about government vs markets.
That's true whether it's for ill or for good. Last time I checked Google isn't bombing kids in other countries, our government is.
It could only be built with the use of imminent domain.
>Last time I checked Google isn't bombing kids in other countries, our government is.
And at the same time the reason Google (or some other multi-billion dollar company) isn't doing the equivalent of bombing kids in other countries is because the existence of a government with a monopoly on the user of force.
That's how we got into the situation we're in now with respect to net neutrality. Sure there are fixes that involve regulating the private infrastructure, but what's so great about that vs. just making the infrastructure public in the first place?
You can always contract out the building and management of the infrastructure while still maintaining public ownership and control.
Who believes in unlimited government? Can you name a person or group that does? I'd like to ask them what that even means.
He never said anybody believed in unlimited government. There are plenty of people that believe the government should have more power over individuals. i.e. Socialism, Communism, Socialized Healthcare, etc.
At it's core, it the collective imposing it's will upon the individual. If we continue to give power to the collective to impose on the individual, the individual will cease to have freedoms & rights.
Note that things are even more nuanced. Some individuals hold inordinate influence over the apparatus of the collective, which is used to impose rules on other individuals.
That's kind of implied in expressing joy that there are "still" Americans who believe in limited government. There is no in-between, anything that's not limited is unlimited.
> Socialism, Communism, Socialized Healthcare, etc.
Making murder and kidnapping illegal, and so on? If no, where do you draw the line, what makes socialism, communism and socialized healthcare go together, but not, say, copyright?
> At it's core, it the collective imposing it's will upon the individual. If we continue to give power to the collective to impose on the individual, the individual will cease to have freedoms & rights.
First off, "the collective" is just a whole bunch of individuals. Secondly, it's also a way to for people to organize things they can't hack on too small scale, and a way to enforce some minimum social responsibility on each other regardless of level of individual development. Would you be okay with the frail, young, or otherwise defenseless who can't afford private security and don't have family being free game? I mean, "the government" is what makes it illegal to just steal from and kill poor or demented people without relatives for example; there is NO money in preventing that, the "free market" will not provide for that. Humans do, in spite of it, on the side.
> Some individuals hold inordinate influence over the apparatus of the collective, which is used to impose rules on other individuals.
True. I'm not saying it's not broken, but IMO it's better to repair the ship and discuss modifications than just jump off. There's no land there. I'm not even saying we need a government per se, but we need a society, some minimums, some standards of decency in which the profit for fun and profit can be embedded in, rather than pretending fun and profit can provide the necessary amount of glue. Whether the rules are enforced with cops or remembering the eyes of ones father or however is kind of secondary, really. But capital creating more capital, all by itself, is just an eating mechanism, it's like fire. Not even enough to define the difference between a camp fire and a candle or anything, just the raw process of burning material using oxygen.
Kind of like a power drunk mob, I'll grant that, and I'm not saying there's not plenty of worrying tendencies in that direction, too. I just don't see one as the antidote of the other, I see both more as scapegoats for each other, and ultimately both as undermining the freedom they espouse. We only are as free as the most defenseless members of society are. Well, I am. So in a way, people who say "fuck you, got mine" are directly imposing on my freedom, that they are unaware of that doesn't make it less real to me. Quite the conundrum huh.
Spending $600B/yr on the military is right wing welfare.
On HN that probably means "Trump supporter".
The left still thinks patronizing the right as "stupid" and incapable is going to get them somewhere.