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Comment by danenania | Hacker News Reader

I understand your viewpoint, but I don't accept that as an excuse.

Remember how quickly SOPA sank after the Silicon Valley establishment turned against it? Do you think the government is going to put the CEOs of some of America's most popular and profitable companies in jail for an act of civil disobedience that the majority of the country and the world would support wholeheartedly?

SV is more powerful than it realizes, and has little to fear in the current climate. The American national security state, on the other hand, is weakened and vulnerable. Now is the time to take a stand. Not doing so is equivalent to complicity.

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SOPA was easy to turn against and I would argue, didn't cost anything to oppose. Fighting the NSA on warrantless wiretaps is a completely different animal in that there will be real money involved in fighting it. Potentially millions of dollars duking it out in court(s).

I think it's already been established that the NSA has HUGE financial resources (from the part that we can tell) and to top it all off, fighting the NSA on it's grounds would most likely pass through the FISA court. A court which in and of itself, is shrouded in secrecy.

Also, this: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/12727867/#.UlKlY2RtVOg

The NSA has financial resources but it's short on political capital. If all the big tech companies were to collectively and publicly decide as a matter of principle to stop adhering to gag orders and cooperating with wholesale monitoring regardless of what FISA says, what is the administration going to do? Shut down Facebook? Shut down Google? Could you imagine? Public opinion is already firmly against them on these issues. Actions like those would make them utterly despised.

I strongly agree with you. It is not clear to me how a billionaire like Larry Page is being forced into anything. It is not conceivable that he personally would be jailed if Google were to defy the US government.

It would be interesting to see what would actually happen if one of the big American internet companies just said the truth. "We have received 35 NSL's and we gave them your data."

What would actually happen? Would their stock go up or down? Would they gain or lose customers? Would anyone be prosecuted and jailed?

> Do you think the government is going to put the CEOs of some of America's most popular and profitable companies in jail for an act of civil disobedience

If you support the rule of law, you should expect and demand that if it comes to legal consequences that's exactly what will happen. You can fight the law in parallel and use the trial to challenge it, but expect the consequences anyway. Otherwise you're calling for the rich and powerful to be held to a different, weaker standard just because in this case you might like the outcome.

You can treat it as the lesser evil, acknowledging that they're already held to weaker standards and that happens to be useful here, but you'd still be helping to entrench a system which is ultimately bad for you unless you're also very rich.

Unfortunately, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and all of those other guys are surveillance poster boys. It's best just to not use their services, and vote with dollars.

Your vote is worth about five bucks a year to Facebook. Not really a huge deal, considering most people aren't concerned about surveillance and a very tiny fraction is concerned enough to give up social networks.

SOPA was a single proposed piece of legislation proposed by corporate lobbyists, who are on an essentially level playing field with Silicon Valley.

The NSA is a 60 year old spy agency at the heart of the national security infrastructure and government.

You are comparing two entirely dissimilar things.

Also, how exactly is the American national security state 'weakened and vulnerable'?

At the moment it is weakened and vulnerable compared to how it was a few years ago. It has not been destroyed or dismantled by Snowden's revelations, far from it, but it is a definite factor the NSA cannot ignore. Five years ago, no one would even think of shutting the NSA down over their abominable deeds, because their abominable deeds were not widely known.

At the moment, there are many people shouting for them to be shut down. Will it happen? Probably not. But at the moment, that is something for the NSA to worry about and to try to do damage control over. In that sense, they are certainly in a quite worse position.

I dunno, if the US government can't figure out if it wants public healthcare by the end of this month, they are gonna have to sell off some of those datacentres to pay the national debt...

Not quite.

The US Government operates on an extralegal basis (ie they're willing to cross any line), and roughly 85%+ of all new debt is purchased by the Federal Reserve. What very specifically is not going to happen, is the shut down of the military industrial complex of which the NSA is such an integral part.

So long as the dollar (Federal Reserve Note I should say) remains the global reserve currency, the national debt is a trivial problem (as is paying the interest on it). The dollar is the real linchpin, to everything. All else is a sideshow of political gamesmanship.

Dollar being the global reserve currency is the real linchpin to everything, but right now US Government seems ready to undermine that with their squabbles over healthcare. I mean, the upcoming default wouldn't destroy the dollar, but it would somewhat reduce the role of dollar reserves and treasury bonds in global markets.

Not raising the debt ceiling is not a default.

If a credit card company refuses to raise your limit, that is not a default. A default is when you stop making payments on your debt. As long as the government has enough tax income to pay interest on its debt, there is no default. Calling it a default is a scare tactic to get their credit card limit raised.

The solution is for governments to spend only the tax revenue they receive - no more. Not only should the debt ceiling not be raised, it should be slowly lowered to zero over the next 10 years. If the government had to explain to everyone how much their taxes would need to be raised in order to invade Syria, etc., people might actually pay attention. Just my opinion.

This is a bit confused. The US needs to pay about 0.5 trillion interest a year, or 1/5th of tax revenue. They borrow about 0.5 extra per year (which is why the budget ceiling needs to go up).

If the US wanted to instantly achieve a balanced budget, they would have to spend 3/5ths the current amount. When a government cuts the amount it spends, it shrinks the economy, and reduces tax take.

In the UK, a limited form of this strategy seems to be working, but in Southern Europe, a strong 'austerity' strategy is creating a spiral of reducing tax take (requiring ever greater cuts).

So the sharp reduction in the deficit you mention is not possible. It would need to be gradual.

The elephant in the room is that, in the US, China, and Europe, the aging population is coming. As the proportion of contributors to consumers of public spending shifts, more debt is inevitable. It's going to suck pretty bad for everyone, but if we (all of us) can't achieve a balanced budget before that hits, then things are not going to be as gentle.

The best solution might be to spend only the tax revenue they receive; however, the idea is purely theoretical because they are not going to do that.

Currently government isn't able to pass a "normal budget" much less a very radically changed budget + huge and rapid changes in government agencies - if USA doesn't rise the debt ceiling, the actual effect will be not paying the interest due which is called a default.

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