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Comment by personomas | Hacker News Reader

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Weird, I see no fires

Obviously, I'm exaggerating. But we have war in Europe. We have other problems. We have Hungary and other countries rejecting or leaving the EU. We have voters rejecting the prominent EU parties in favor of Russian-backed parties. We have economies stagnating or starting to go backwards! We have dictatorship countries like China catching up to the EU! And this is just the beginning of the slow degradation of Europe. The slow burning of Europe.

The Vize-President of Germany just recently said, "The State makes no mistakes." [0]

[0] https://www.nius.de/kommentar/der-staat-macht-keine-fehler-h...

Minor correction: this is the Vice-Chancellor. Germany does not have a Vice-President.

Thanks. You're right. I do live in Germany actually

If you actually read what he says[1] as opposed to some ultra-right-wing blog that picks up a soundbite and makes a diatribe out of it--, you'll find that he says that "the-stake-doesn't-make-mistakes" is what people expect, not that it's actually true. People expect, demand, that regulations and decisions are bulletproof and that's one of the causes of bureaucracy.

Which is undoubtedly true, it's a cover-your-ass mentality that also exists in corporations, but governments absolutely excel at it.

[1] they didn't really get it either, but at least they quote it in context: https://finanzmarktwelt.de/robert-habeck-zeigt-erschuetternd...

You could be right actually (you probably are). I tried looking into it before to understand the context, and I couldn't find anything. But the context your provide does sound more like Mr. Habeck, as opposed to him arguing that the state is always right. So I do accept this misquote and take it back. My _experience_ however living in Europe is that the state actors behave like the State is right, and that the state actors are greater than the individuals. This would seem to be most true in east Germany.

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