Hacker News Reader

Comment by jvanderbot | Hacker News Reader

Right. A perfect surveillance state is still wrong by design.

If you dont accept this, consider the perfect surveillance state under president N, used by president N+1 given the inevitable flipflop in party control.

View on HN

In the scenario where president n achieves a perfect surveillance state, I don’t see us getting a president n+1.

Also correct!

Well, not by free and fair election, but unless the perfect surveillance state also solves the problem of mortality, there will probably be a successor.

Possibly at a time facilitated by the security apparatus that puts the teeth in the surveillance state, because even if they theoretically have the capability autocrats rarely are interested in running their surveillance and security systems themselves, and want to spend time doing other things—which puts a lot of power in the hands to which those tedious bits are delegated.

The Christians have to vote just once more, right?

Unfortunately, the Trump presidency has conclusively proved the "imagine if your opponent was in power" argument doesn't work. Everybody says Trump should be impeached, nobody says the office of the president should be deprived of the powers Trump used to do the things he should be impeached for.

that's strictly not true. at least one person doesn't believe in absolute presidential power. a lot of us believe that the president should really be an administrative head, and very limited ability to effect policy directly at all.

People say that and maybe even believe it but, even more than they believe that, the believe that the one thing the next president is going to unilaterally do is too important to let Congress deliberate on and, possibly, not do.

People believe a lot of things, especially when the other side has power. The point is that people complain about how the power is used by the other side. When power switches sides, they don't roll that power back. They pretty much always leave it in place.

no one, including me, actually believes in democracy. its just an eternal fight between the libertarian and the authoritarian. pick your side and fight as you can. thanks for disabusing me of my illusions, you know me better than I know myself.

you can mock my beliefs, you can try to convince how misguided they are, but its really outside the minimum rules of discourse to tell me what I actually believe

Now I feel stupid for writing my comment, because complaining about your use of "no one" would make me a hypocrite.

Exactly, the abuse of power and the everyone going along with it is the issue. The supreme court and executive now function as a complete governing body without any input from congress. Every spending bill gets passed with bipartisan support, even if the Democrats need to sacrifice a few members. Meanwhile I hear very few people complaining about colonizing Venezuela.

> Everybody says Trump should be impeached, nobody says the office of the president should be deprived of the powers Trump used to do the things he should be impeached for.

I've been shouting this from the mountaintops.

Not that many people on the mountain. Shout it at the McDonalds. Of course, you'll be arrested.

>Everybody says Trump should be impeached, nobody says the office of the president should be deprived of the powers Trump used to do the things he should be impeached for.

Because when the other side gets in they're going to use those awesome powers to do "good" things. No one believes in institutions anymore.

I think that's because he doesn't have those powers. He only wields them on behalf of Congress, which has decided not to defend that which belongs to it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com