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Comment by fbonetti | Hacker News Reader

It’s funny that the author on one hand acknowledges that the government sucks at everything it does, whether it’s education, infrastructure, or health insurance. He also acknowledges that the federal government has a tendency to constantly engage in costly foreign wars regardless of who happens to be in office. Yet his proposed solution is to give the government even more money and even more power.

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Thus, ironically, the problem for both the right and the left is the same one- that governments today are too weak. The right needs an at least temporarily strong government to effect the dismantling of the state, whereas the left needs a strong government not merely to respond to the grinding conditions of the economic “recovery”, but to overturn previous policies, put in new protections and find some alternative to the current political and economic order. Dark enlightenment types and progressives are confronting the same frustration while having diametrically opposed goals. It is not so much that Washington is too powerful as it is that the power it has is embedded in a system, which, as Mark Leibovich portrays brilliantly, is feckless and corrupt.

https://ieet.org/index.php/IEET2/more/searle20131202

The idea of using "temporary" power to effect the dismantling of structures of power was appealing to Sulla, too. Fortunately for him, he died before seeing Julius Caesar follow his precedent to establish Rome as an empire, and Caesar himself as emperor for life.

History doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes.

https://conventionofstates.com/

Good luck with that. The system does have the one power to do something- to self-perpetuate in its feckless and corrupt upholding of the status quo. Neither party wants constitutional change that could actually change the system at a fundamental level.

This honestly reads as "working as intended" to me. No side can become the tyrant and get everything it wants and screw the other ~50%.

I don’t think the intention was to never solve anything though.

This is really just my opinion, but I think the intention is to solve problems when there is consensus.

seems to me like subcultural-ideology (frankly puerile and overly simplistic) intended to set-up a more robust (still) unrepresented ideology summed up as "just do what the algoritm/computer system tells you to do". i.e. the super-king they want will speak to them through their phones.

Yeah, this article's attempt to explain the Dark Enlightenment subculture is interesting on its own, and deserves its own post. But I also find the author's description of the current problems of the age (and thus gives rise to these radical movements) compelling. It's the same world that the OP is describing.

The government doesn’t suck at everything it does, the problem is that people still believe that the government works for them. The wars objective is not to “win” but to create the need for the military infrastructure, same as the healthcare system primary objective is not healing people but to create the need for itself.

I think a good way to balance or engage better performance out of whoever is in office is to completely rid the federal tax. All people will pay their state tax, and the local/state government will be responsible to provide the federal government money out of the state pool. I think it will drastically change 1) how much the federal government can spend 2) What it gets spent on because the states would much rather keep that money pool to spend internally.

Endless wars would change. Infrastructure would be a larger discussion, etc...

An added benefit of getting rid of federal taxes in favor of state or local taxes is that taxes get less coercive the more decentralized your get.

It's very easy to move from one town to another if you don't like how the local government is running things. It's a hassle, but very possible to move from one state to another. However, moving from the U.S. to another country is incredibly difficult for most people.

it would definitely shift the power balance back to the states. As it is, a large portion of the power the federal government exhibits over the states is threatening to withhold money.

I recommend studying the current European Union then. This is pretty much the status quo over here. And yes, it ensures that the states have way more power. But make your own conclusions.

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