Hacker News Reader

Comment by CamperBob2 | Hacker News Reader

[flagged]

I'd be surprised if there was a single American who had the CIA Factbook as the deciding factor in determining their vote. It being shutdown is more evidence of how broken the American political system is rather than an indication of the will of the people.

> I'd be surprised if there was a single American who had the CIA Factbook as the deciding factor in determining their vote

That's just the specifics: Steve Bannon explicitly made it clear that one goal was to "dismantle the administrative state"

Bannon is a global security threat, and a dangerous ideologue far surpassing Dugan

As a single issue, probably not. However, the meta-issue that they did vote for was eliminating anything the government pays for (other than military, ICE, or related to drilling oil)

The parent's point seems to be that since most voters of both corporate parties have pretty much universally internalized and accepted they're voting for the "lesser of two evils," it's safe to conclude our political system is captured and has been for decades. Furthermore, 1/3 of people refusing to vote is not solely out of laziness. Many of them have concluded the system is FUBAR.

We're given two shit options which come about through a broken primary process and is reported on by monopolistic media. The news media and social media is siloed in such a way that people filter into one of two corporation-approved spheres of groupthink. These two spheres manufacture consent for each other in numerous ways, one of which is exemplified above. The good cop/bad cop setup makes it look like things are constantly getting broken only to have the illusion of being re-fixed by the other group, as measured by a pre-approved narratives that are disseminated.

The COVID pandemic is another great example. Sadly the CDC has been a disgrace under all recent administrations of both parties and has lots of blood on its hands:

https://www.thegauntlet.news/p/how-the-press-manufactured-co...

Unfortunately the WHO has similar issues:

https://old.reddit.com/r/ZeroCovidCommunity/comments/1q87aki...

Almost as if capital interests are running the show. But what are we fighting about in 2026? That's right, whether we should or should not be affiliated with the WHO, and to what extent our CDC should be funded. Two broken institutions and a performative fight about them. Meanwhile millions have/will see their grave earlier than they otherwise would have, thanks to long COVID (many of whom will never even make that connection, including their doctors who were spoonfed the "vax and relax" / "back to normal" messaging in service to an archaic consumption-based economy.

Voting for the lesser of two evils is entirely how representative democracy works. You'll never see a representative who PERFECTLY represents your own views.

Which is why we have so many single issue voters on things like immigration, abortion, etc, who can safely ignore all evils as long as their single checkbox is checked.

> You'll never see a representative who PERFECTLY represents your own views.

Your strawman has no power here.

It's obvious when we're in a race to the bottom versus when we're making actual long-term progress that benefits a majority of voters.

Holy false dilemma, Batman!

Maybe in the philosophical sense in that this is what their vote wrought, but there is absolutely no way to conclude that people wanted their institutions dismantled. The number of Americans who voted for Donald Trump was nearly identical in 2020 and 2024 once we compensate for population growth (22.4% of the population vs 22.7%). Anyone making drastic conclusions on the will of the people is just making something up whether they are conscious of that or not.

What changed is the number of people who decided they were ok with dismantling institutions. That grew by about 7 million, who voted for the opponent in 2020 but stayed home in 2024.

So perhaps the number of people who wanted institutions dismantled remained the same. But the will of the people as a whole changed sharply, mostly because of people who decided it wasn't worth the effort to oppose it.

>What changed is the number of people who decided they were ok with dismantling institutions. That grew by about 7 million, who voted for the opponent in 2020 but stayed home in 2024.

How do you know this? How can you say the deciding factor was dismantling institutions rather than inflation, Palestine, misogyny against a female candidate, or any number of countless other good or bad reasons to have stayed home? You can't treat a single binary choice for red or blue like it was a referendum on every single individual issue.

Right, World Factbook single issue voters probably don't exist.

That aside, something that frustrates me about US politics is that I rarely see any evidence of consideration given to taxpayers who want value for their money as opposed to having their taxes cut.

I pay taxes here. I like it when those taxes spent on wildly ROI-positive initiatives like the World Factbook.

The Trump lot appear to be killing off a huge range of useful things that I like getting in exchange for the taxes I pay.

Sure, but this is based on a fundamental trust in governments ability to spend money effectively. The ineffective spending has been in the news way more than the effective spending, so some people take this to mean all of the spending is ineffective.

I don’t know how to square this skepticism of government against very vocal “patriotism” coming from the trump camp, but humans can contain multitudes, I guess?

It's a simple question of economics and observation.

In a free marketplace, when a product, service or company is no longer useful...it dies. This creates a natural incentive to constantly improve, operate more efficiently or expand into new areas where it can create value.

With government spending, this doesn't happen because there's no incentive for it to happen. Programs are created and then they grow, perpetually, forever.

My goodness, I still remember Bill Clinton proudly showing a balanced budget. I remember George Bush Jr running with one of his biggest campaign points around fixing Social Security.

How we got from that era of energy for fiscal responsibility to $39 trillion in debt is...maddening.

I think a tremendous amount of people want value for their money. It's one of the reasons so many people talk about cutting government spending where it's wasteful, operating with a balanced budget and reducing the trillions of dollars in debt that we've accrued...which will eventually devalue all of our money.

RIP Carmen Sandiego players.

wouldnt it then be significantly better if you and others who want "value for their money" spend your own money making a world factbook, and then let people who dont much care not spend on it?

isnt this fair and equitable? you wouldnt pay for your neighbors lawnmower or cybertruck either?

This is all information the government will need to collate anyway. How much money do you think they'll save by not publishing it for others to use, exactly?

"will need".... and why exactly do they need that? I could easily envision that the government in fact does not collate such

No.

well you know, I could use a cybertruck, i suppose you'll step up and chip in?

I think it's a pretty strong condemnation of the CIA that they can't find something more important to flamboyantly kill though.

https://www.creators.com/read/thomas-sowell/03/13/budget-pol... (you can stop reading after the first couple paragraphs, it goes into federal budget politics circa 2013)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com