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Comment by afh1 | Hacker News Reader

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How is that even a comparison? Governments are elected

Edit: To Americans, fix your own democracy before you think the idea of democracy is broken.

The idea that democracy is broken is a convenient piece of propaganda, promulgated by people who have something to gain by weakening the American government, whether that's financial or geopolitical.

The central tenet of techno-fascism / the hard alt-Right / the Dark Enlightenment, is that democracy itself is incompatible with "freedom" (as techno-fascists understand it).

And based on the replies, we're rapidly blazing down that path.

By rational people who can think in nuance, and aren't influenced by big campaign spending?

Yes. Many such cases. Big campaign spending need not be legal, let alone the norm.

There are democracies like that. But you need system with more parties and cap on campaign spending.

See countries outside of America for this.

Answer to sibling about Romania Elections were nulled because of illegal campaign funding. Russia literally bankrolled the campaign and it wasn't reported as part of the campaign funding.

You mean countries like Romania, who had their election forcibly cancelled because the EU is scared of Russian social media posts, and Germany, who thinks that a man giving a speech and promoting a certain party is election interference?

> Romania, who had their election forcibly cancelled because the EU

Well that’s wrong for a start. The election was cancelled by the Romanian constitutional court, not the EU.

Leon has tons of influence unfortunately all over, so yes it’s tantamount to interference. South African citizen shouldn’t have any say in politics outside of South Africa.

This is literally totalitarianism. What the hell? I shouldn't be able to say that I support the AfD just because I don't live in Germany?

No one's saying you can't. The equation changes when a foreign billionaire (and richest man in the world) is saying it.

If you think democracy is threatened because someone pledges their public support for a specific party, then you don't actually believe in democracy.

By many people, who tend to on average avoid fast motions to extremes. Much less volatile than billionaires.

https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil215/Nozick.pdf

Democracy: famous for never improving human rights and freedoms.

Well. That sure was a libertarian who thought he had a point.

Is that supposed to make a difference?

In countries other than America it sure does...

That's what James Madison thought (see Federalist #51)

What's the solution?

A smaller, less powerful government?

We used to have this and, well, it sucked.

Turns out people are still extremely rich but in their own little governments - what we call corporations.

This may seem like an improvement. But these people aren’t elected, so we’re back at square one minus the democracy part.

We had less regulation, less rules, less taxation. People were poor. They were sick. They died when they shouldn’t have. They were illiterate. They were easily influenced. The economy suffered. Markets crashed. People lost their jobs. People starved.

So we decided, “hm maybe that doesn’t work like we thought it did”. Pretty much everyone was on board.

The government has many faults, yes, but many powers too. Power is distributed, and even you yourself hold some power. Having 20,000 people making decisions across 300 agencies sounds awful at first - but is having 10 people making decisions behind closed doors in a boardroom better?

Comparing the present to the past depends entirely on where you set the point to compare against though.

Go back further and we didn't really have corporations and most people worked for themselves and individuals that were much more independent. That was for both good and bad, like everything else.

To compare where we are today only against a point in the past where we had massive corporations and little to no workers' rights feels like cherry picking. We have more options than massive government or massive, unregulated corporations.

If you minimize the government that means you minimize regulations. That's an oxymoron - you want companies regulated, but nobody to regulate them?

There are other options - a communist utopia, a zero-state solution. Somehow, I doubt that's what you're referring to.

I admit, it is cherry-picking. But at least it's historically backed. You're also cherry-picking, but you're doing it on some hypothetical future that you're just imagining. I have zero reason to believe a smaller government makes things better. In fact, everyone has zero reason to believe that. So why try? Burning things done is lazy. Maintaining existing systems and improving them is both tedious and difficult, yes. But we have some baseline assurances down that path.

> There are other options - a communist utopia, a zero-state solution. Somehow, I doubt that's what you're referring to.

Communism, and utopias, aren't really an option. Communism has never been tried, no one seems to get past the phase where a strongman in charges takes control of everything. Regardless of whether that's even what I wanted (it isn't) that doesn't work.

> You're also cherry-picking, but you're doing it on some hypothetical future that you're just imagining.

You're jumping timelines here though. I also cherry picked a point in the past that makes a better example for me, but I never talked about the future.

I assume both of us have an expectation that our model could work in the future, but that's not really what we were talking about.

For what its worth, I consider the future you prefer with an ever growing government attempting to create more and more regulation is just as unlikely as you think it is for us to be able to shrink the government.

I don’t think it’s unlikable at all for the government to shrink - in fact, I see it as very likely. But not for the reasons you think. I think it’s likely because the most powerful people in our society would become more powerful.

Certainly, a return to few laws on labor and education would be extremely advantageous to the ruling class. Certainly, they desire children to work. Certainly, they desire pseudo-slavery. It’s a no-brainer for them to attempt to push things in that direction.

All I know is, our quality of life has gone up significantly since regulations have increased. I think it’s plainly undeniable.

You might claim it’s just correlation, and it would’ve happened anyway. But when you can trace specific lifestyle improvements, like being able to read, to specific pieces of legislation, I think that argument is lazy.

You’re correct, we can’t know for sure. But for me, I consider the evidence strong enough.

> But when you can trace specific lifestyle improvements, like being able to read, to specific pieces of legislation, I think that argument is lazy.

What legislation are you talking about here?

In general I'm all for regulations and laws that protect our rights from being taken from us and wary of laws that stop us from doing what we want (as long as what we want doesn't block others' rights).

I've heard that distinction made before as additive versus subtractive laws. Now I can't remember which is which and I don't want to say it backwards, but the distinction of laws that preserve rights rather than impede free will is really important.

The government is almost always going to be relatively huge, though, if you're comparing it to a single wealthy person.

It's very unlikely we have a $500,000 federal government.

There's a huge gap between a single wealthy person and what we have today.

Surely there's a middle ground. I have to assume the government currently had authority that most people wouldn't actually want it to have, and that the budget has a long list of even just low hanging fruit where money is being wasted on things tax payers wouldn't want it spent on is wouldn't agree with how its done.

We're not willing to try that.

I'm really not. The government consists of many people with a range of ideologies and ethics. Are there problems? Of course. But, the government has checks and balances, well, HAD checks and balances, separation of powers, and a Constitution that limited those powers. I'm more afraid of the corruption of the SCOTUS with dark money and a religio-fascist movement of persuasion and influence toward members of the SCOTUS, Congress, Judiciary and the Executive. It is a handful of billionaires who are driving this race toward authoritarianism.

I'm more worried about losing my job/house/savings due to billionaires fucking around with the market, companies, and employees than the government.

>There lies the real concentration of power.

They're both real

We should and some are. Now combining the two isnt making it less scary

Billionaires influence the government, not the other way around, especially in the US which is heavily controlled by lobbyists...

I can participate in the selection and election of officials in the US Government. And I know my views have some small influence over their actions.

I can’t vote Peter Thiel out of being wealthy and obnoxious. And I know he doesn’t give a shit about me.

Big countries are in a position to abuse their power. E.g., they start wars. Your worries are partially addressed by the separation of powers. The trillionaire government is split in three branches which helps curtail its power. It is not the task of a government to be efficient, it is the task of a government to be correct. I.e., have somewhat just laws that are executed somewhat correctly. I am saying 'somewhat' twice because one should not expect miracles but one can hope for livable and perhaps even prosperous conditions. The threatening collapse of this separation is one big current thing to worry about in the US. A government that respects the separation of powers is less threatening than a company of a tenth or a hundreth its size because the company can act out the will of a single individual. Generally it is true that if an individual/organization gets too much power he/she/it will find a way to abuse it. But government is also necessary to ensure that another, most likely much more intrusive government, comes in by force and starts reigning over you. And also to ensure that big companies and rich people do not abuse their power too much. What is needed in general is that the natural tendency of power to concentrate is kept in check by other powers. In the US this system was thrown out of whack mostly because of the enormous amounts of money needed to fund campaigns in combination with a two party system. It was way too easy to just buy both parties until one of the parties decided to go rogue and become the billionaire interest group, as if billionaires need an interest group. Over time enough damage, mostly in the form of large uncertainty and/or poverty for the average citizen, was done to society so the discontentment over this enabled the fascist leader to rise. Only the future can tell what the result of that will be but it is not impossible that a billion dead bodies will need to be buried because of this. Compared to that your 'ever increasing creep over all aspects of your life' seems a bit of a minor and/or theoretical concern.

The alternative of no or tightly-limited government is potentially worse. It's an economic form of the paradox of tolerance.

One can imagine all kinds of exotic forms of government that don't resemble a traditional large and centrally organized state, which still accomplish summer all of the goals that we might want a state to accomplish. But so far we have never seen that put into effect at any scale above a commune. So we are kind of stuck with the binary choice for the time being.

Governments (are supposed to) have checks and balances. Billionaires not so much.

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