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Comment by takeda | Hacker News Reader

Yeah it's really sad, Bloomberg essentially is Democratic version of Trump.

In some ways he's far more dangerous. He implemented a truly scary authoritarian police state during his term as mayor of New York City.

This is the allure of libertarianism - since a free democracy can't predict the quality of its leaders, representatives, and lobbyists, the government should be given as short a leash as possible to prevent things like a "truly scary authoritarian police state".

Of course, the flip side is that such a government can't accomplish anything positive either.

Comparable to a library of unix programs - would you rather have small tools (/ organiziations) that are limited to a single job - which they are often optimized for - or a single behemoth which tries to do everything, and may not do it very well?

...and now the systemD vitriol makes sense.

The federal government is far more comparable to the first situation than the second. And most of the departments are extremely effective when they have leadership that believes in the mission of the agency.

Michael Lewis' the Fifth Risk highlights this pretty well.

Libertarianism just replaces one tyranny with many. A powerful state is replaced by powerful corporations and individuals.

Anarcho-Capitalist libertarianism maybe. They're the ones who want a smaller government at all costs, even if that means creating a power vaccuum for some other (potentially bad) actors to fill.

Maximizing-liberty libertarianism would say that an impartial government is necessary to enforce rights for all citizens, even if that's the right to information to vote efficiently.

Exactly. The only thing preventing Trump from being more successful in implementing his ideas is that he's so brash and offensive to people's tastes in character. If Bloomberg can put on a nice mask, he can (and if the past is anything to go by, will) enact much worse than Trump did, and I wouldn't be surprised if mainstream media outlets announce his policies with fanfare.

Not really. He's the centrist/right leaning version of Trump.

I was referring to his current party. He was in Republican party when he was a mayor and only changed his party affiliation in 2018 (most likely after noticing 2018 election results)

In what way, other than both being old, white, rich and from New York.

Trump wanted to tack hard away from the center and to tear down the Republican establishment and rebuild it with a more populist vision. Bloomberg is running to stop the Democrats from tacking away from the center and to 'protect' the party from those threatening to tear it down and rebuild it with a more populist image.

Trump ran as an outsider populist, Bloomberg as an insider technocrat.

Bloomberg is a Republican, a lot of people have just forgotten what a more centrist Republican looks like. He's also like Trump in his racism, sexism, authoritarianism, etc. Ask New Yorkers about him.

Different flavors of dictator. Confederate Fascism where the leader rules based on tribal loyalty vs. an Octavian-style emperor who rules by controlling everyone who matters behind the scenes.

Neither candidate believes in compromise or their own fallibility. In either case, we would be choosing to forfeit the ability to decide for ourselves going forward.

>Neither candidate believes in compromise or their own fallibility

There are no candidate that signals fallibility and or possibility of compromise. Why should they, anyway?

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