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Comment by pclmulqdq | Hacker News Reader

Governments are basically the mob, except that they figured out that they can exert more control over a longer period of time if they have documents that "constrain" their powers and they offer you a say in some matters.

Every year, I pay the US government protection money at a higher rate than the mob demanded (~35% vs ~15%). They mark their territory, control who enters and exits, and demand compliance with their rules. If you are under their protection, they give you a little document that tells other gangs not to screw with you.

They back all of this up with guns and threats of violence, held by unelected thugs. They give you a process to prove your innocence, but the process itself is a punishment, since it is a huge resource drain to go through.

The FBI are the most visible thugs.

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This takes me back to conversations in the middle school cafeteria. When was the last time you had to bribe a US official to get basic tasks done like register your car? In places that actually have criminal governments this is the norm.

Do some research about what it's like in places where there is truly no mechanism for people to remove those in power. Look at russia and the mechanisms by which decisions are made and what means there are for the public to change them, and contrast that with all the NIMBYism which often dominates the process in the US.

A democratic government is the means by which the population prevents the monopoly on legal violence from falling permanently into the hands of any individual. It isn't perfect but it's the best option we have. Pretending we would be equally well off with a despot is nonsense.

Even in places that have reasonably good and democratic government, officials take bribes. This happens in Italy, Greece, Spain, India, and many more (almost all of South and Central America). The US and UK are pretty unique in that they aggressively prevent low-level corruption.

Stopping low-level corruption while allowing high-level corruption to pass through (i.e. with high-dollar lobbying) is IMO less democratic than at least letting those with less money buy off at least their small part of government to let them do what the high-dollar people tried to outlaw.

There is no routine bribe paying in Spain. What occurs is similar to what occurs in the US - bribes to get government contracts. Day to day bribes are unheard of and Spain is no more corrupt than the US in that sense (in fact, probably less so - I know of people having to pay small "fees" at a county sheriff's office to get some routine document processed).

Fees paid for document processing are annoying and regressive but are not bribes.

They are there to stop you from wasting department resources with requests for 500,000,000 copies of an incident report whose content you disagree with.

I said "fee" not fee ... This was a cut and dried under the table twenty dollars to get someonw to do something ...

Motte: All governments are like criminal organizations.

Bailey: Even some Western governments have issues with low-level corruption.

Umm... those are two completely different statements, not a Motte and Bailey fallacy. I am happy to defend my position that governments use force the same way mobs do, but they give you more of a say in how the force can be used and they give you some written protections (that they are happy to infringe when convenient).

Also, I never said that we would be better off with a despot or a gang or anything of the sort, as the original reply tried to claim.

> A democratic government is the means by which the population prevents the monopoly on legal violence from falling permanently into the hands of any individual

That would be nice if we had a “democracy”. Because of both gerrymandering and the design of the constitution - 2 senators per state, and the electoral college - we don’t have one.

The “majority” doesn’t care as long as law enforcement is used unfairly against “them”. There is a reason that during the protests in the US, protestors started using “White shields”. They knew how fast the population would turn against law enforcement when the local news showed them beating up on white people.

https://www.blackenterprise.com/white-protesters-form-human-...

The Constitution had the House grow with increase in population. Congress stopped that growth so now lobbyists have the access.

Two Senators per State worked ok when appointed by State because Senators would get recalled and replaced if they voted against State's interests. Now the people vote on Senators and the lobbyists have the access and control.

So you’re saying it was better when the state legislators had control? That’s even less democratic.

You realize that the “states interest” back in the 60s was the continuing of Jim Crow laws in the South. How many Trump supporting states would have recalled Senators in the 2020 for not agreeing to give him the Presidency?

Do you think it would be good to follow the Constitution and have the House grow with population?

It would have been untenable as the country grew. Originally, a representative shouldn’t have represented more than 30K people. If that had continued, we would now have 10,000 representatives.

You could always reduce the size of the government like conservatives want - at least until they realize that for the most part, conservative states are smaller more rural states that are a net beneficiary of federal income taxes.

As it is now, the lobbyists and special interests have control.

30,000 sounds like real representation, would make gerrymandering pointless, and the lobbyists would find it difficult to control even 1/5 of the 30,000. I support this bigger government! They can do zoom calls, meet regionally, or meet in a baseball stadium.

If instead we optimize this democratic republic for cost, then a king will do.

So how would that have worked in 1939 when they capped the number of representatives?

You earlier brought up gerrymandering, electoral college, protests and your "white shields". Now you avoid the solution to the present day lack of representation, a solution which would make gerrymandering and lobbyists irrelevant in the House, by undoing the cap on the House. You instead want to go into 1930s whataboutism with an unexplained reference to Trump.

We can fix this together and everyone could have better representation in the federal House. Neither of the big parties, nor you, will discuss it. America is addicted to arguing for their team, while the lobbyists and special interests feed at our tax trough.

> how would that have worked in 1939

About the same as 1839 and 1937 and 1938.

> You instead want to go into 1930s whataboutism with an unexplained reference to Trump.

It’s not whataboutism or about Trump. When it came time to certify the electoral votes for the election, there was a huge push for Republican representatives and senators not to certify the votes because of the “stolen election” much of that came from state houses. If the states (not the voters) could arbitrarily recall representatives, many of the Republican representatives who did do the right thing wouidnt have.

Besides, there is all types of coercion that could happen remotely that wouldn’t happen when everyone is one place.

> I pay the US government protection money at a higher rate than the mob demanded (~35% vs ~15%)

Does your mob allow a bunch of deductions, tax dodges, "carried interest" rates, IRA's, and other tricks to cut what the well-to-do actually pay them down to half (or less) of their headline "rate"?

EDIT: Examples so far seem to be limited, one-off "if you're patting the right guy's back" situations. Vs. the US gov't allows an unlimited number of sleazy Wall Street types to launder unlimited amounts of money through various tax dodges. This might be good evidence that the mob is smarter about collecting "taxes" than the US gov't...but it sounds like the answer to my question is "basically, no".

My wife's family paid almost nothing to the Italian mafia a hundred years ago because they gave the right people free shoes. I would say "yes."

Edit: To be clear, this was not a unique situation. A lot of businesses generally got sweetheart rates from street gangs and mobs because they helped the mob and mob bosses in other ways. The same way Wall Street financiers get a sweetheart deal because they manage the politicians' money and employ their children.

If you have a problem with the Italian Mafia can you take them to court or have your elected representatives do something about it?

What a ridiculous comparison

As an individual citizen, that comparison isn't quite that ridiculous.

The average person can do more to influence a local mafia boss than they can to influence the federal government. Hell if you have a few dozen friends with guns you can actually stop the mafia from fucking with you for as long as they stick around.

* Edit since I'm spent on replies : Sure you can name that one favela somewhere where a few dozen were beheaded by the mob. The idea isn't that you'll win 100% of the time, the idea is you have some chance. I raise your one unnamed favela with several unnamed Mexican pueblos where cartel was run out by campesinos w/ break-action shotguns and rifles. And the mere fact you actually have a chance at winning is often enough to get a counterparty to back off.

> Hell if you have a few dozen friends with guns you can actually stop the mafia from fucking with you for as long as they stick around.

Go try this in the favela near me and report back. The last group of locals that tried that were beheaded.

I'm beginning to think there's a time limit on relatively fair and effective states, as citizens slowly begin to become almost unbelievably blind to what actual criminal states are like and start dismantling their own institutions.

The institution of the federal government has grown ever more powerful and consuming of peace-time GDP compared to non-war times of ~100+ years ago. Far from dismantling, the consolidation and growth of power of the 'effective state' has created criminals of the common populace in an ever growing compendium of laws.

In no way has the federal government been 'dismantled' as time goes on. Although arguably the constitution has been dismantled, in no small part through ever expanding interpretation of the commerce clause.

So instead of lobbying with a group of citizens to get someone elected it's easier to start an armed attack on the mob leadership?

If you lose your dead, that's not the case in a democracy

A pure democracy is if you lose you can be voted dead. In a constitutional democracy it may not be so direct: i.e. if the majority elect officials that favor say large automotive companies that are permitted to introduce externalities to the water supply that make you dead (see flint water crisis) -- or say your county elects a sheriff who is known to shoot people in 'bad shoots' and then the democratically elected officials prevent effective prosecution of these murders.

That's an indirect death. In the mafia analogy the mafia is the government and challenging them requires force which can result in death.

Yet in areas where the mob is in control does that happen. Look at Mexican drug lords

How often do “elected officials” do anything against law enforcement? Every politician in any city knows not to go against the local police department.

Someone didn't watch Godfather.

I would think so. Ex. bar owner gives some free drinks and use of the bar to the mob probably doesn't have to pay the same protection fee.

> Governments are basically the mob

In exactly the same way that monads are like burritos. If thinking that makes it easier to start learning more about the concept, that's great. If instead it stands in for learning, that's bad.

On the other hand, I do have this strange desire to learn Spanish by claiming that Spanish is exactly the same as English. Then I'd take all the critiques as edge cases until I'm able to argue the same point in Spanish.

> Governments are basically the mob...

Governments are institutions. Considering the anarchic alternative, what we currently have is preferable. People as a group, the actual mob, cannot be trusted. They are irrational and are therefore potentially dangerous.

The trick is to safeguard against institutional rot.

> Governments are institutions.

So's the mob. It's why they call it "organized" crime.

> Governments are basically the mob, except that they figured out that they can exert more control over a longer period of time if they have documents that "constrain" their powers and they offer you a say in some matters.

God is love.

Love is blind.

Ray Charles is blind.

Ray Charles is God.

Thank you, Hegel.

Yup exactly. Our default social contract gives governments a monopoly on violence, of course they’ll use it.

"Right of Force". At some point, freedom is restricted at gunpoint. Government works this way because it is logical that it do so.

This is why it is critical to have government established "of, by, and for" the constituency - because even in a best-case scenario, corruption will get in the cracks and make them bigger, etc.

I'm going to expose my political bias here: I think the only way to prevent the corruption and expansion is to keep the government small by limiting the amount of resources that are under its direct control. Just offering "of, by, and for" won't do it if there are millions of people on the payroll.

Of course, the Somali government is very small and Somali people are very free, and they aren't doing very well either.

Agreed. Thank you for calling me out here - I also disagreed with myself when I chose "of, by, and for", and was going to use more generic words, but thought more interesting ideas may come out with the extra salt.

Would you consider the EU to have a large amount of regulations but those countries are generally doing well.

I would say there's a correlation between less government and worse living conditions on average

> I would say there's a correlation between less government and worse living conditions on average

I think this is true, but I don't think the correlation is causal. Rich countries throughout history have tended to grow their governments after becoming rich by adopting social programs and trying to flex their muscle internationally. Most of Europe followed this model, as did the US.

So post ww2 for the US? We've still one of the best counties to live in.

Edit. Are you claiming social programs are created to flex your country? Do you have proof of this?

I am not claiming that social programs are a flex. The military is a flex.

Post WW2 for the US, post-Victorian era in the UK, post-Napoleon in France, post-Tarism in Russia, post-oil-boom in Scandanavia, etc. Countries with big social programs are still great to live in, but I only mean that the social programs and big government are clearly not part of the reason why those countries became rich. The big government is caused by the wealth, not the other way around.

That doesn't mean a big government isn't responsible for maintaining that wealth which is why I mentioned post ww2 us.

Somalia demonstrates exactly the problem with that approach: power vacuums don't last any longer than any other vacuum, if there's something around to fill it.

I don’t know why people are surprised by this. Sociology has the concept of Monopolization of Violence. In feudal times violence was undertaken by many institutions, but we as a society decided to monopolize it to reduce overall amount of violence a single individual is expected to face

Except for that whole voting thing. The "government", in a functioning democracy, is us.

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