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Comment by cognivore | Hacker News Reader

The System better get wise because eventually enough "reasonable" people like me will start to agree with this sentiment and we'll have ourselves executions in the street because I'll be looking the other way because the solution is less worse than the problem.

Don't say it can't happen. Governments much more entrenched than the US have fallen due to mistreatment of their populace.

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The system can't get right because it is fundamentally corrupt. It was carefully designed for this very purpose from the beginning. Too many smart and intelligent people are in charge for the system to get this fucked up by accident.

Just like mediocre software architectures, sometimes a full rewrite is the only way to go. No amount of refactoring will cleanse a self-corrupting system.

Just like a Windows installation after a while, nothing will help but a fresh reinstall with a blank slate.

However, it is the nature of our institutions to try and stay alive, even when they are outdated ideas, have been proven inneffective time and time again. Above all, they want to survive, even if the cost for this is a massively decreased quality of life for virtually everyone not holding the reins.

Most people dont realize the fact that every government collapses eventually. Every single one. You would think that gee maybe something is inherently wrong with the concept after so much epic fail.

Computing made this evident, decentralized systems are almost always superior to centralized ones.

The current government hierarchy is littered with single points of failures. I never believed the action of voting to be relevant in any way whatsoever. This is the biggest illusion of power to the people.

It's like having a faulty production system filling its error log where you can only blindly deploy a fix every four years and hope things get better. All while accumulating user complaints and deferring your customer service offshore.

Too many smart and intelligent people are in charge

Evidence?

The NSA alone should be more than enough. Extremely smart people are working there. I can't think of a bigger insult to the people than what they did.

There is this thing you're told when you're in school in America: People want freedom and this desire has shaped history.

But I am not so sure about this anymore. It might be that people just want a minimal level of comfort. Maybe everybody just wanted a big screen TV.

That is a sobering thought, when "freedom" devolves into "freedom to change the channel".

When "freedom" has long since devolved into "your choice of loan shark", being able to change the channel sounds like owning a television sounds like a large increase in your standard of living.

An interesting question is whether those 'in power' can keep from wanting more though. Those who have a lot keep taking more until those who have nothing react violently. It seems to me that this has been the case in the past, and I don't see why this time will be different.

I'm already at that point. If I start hearing about the general public going after corrupt law enforcement & government officials with lethal force... I will not condemn them.

I'll just be like "Well, they just kept pushing & squeezing on people; something had to give. It's just human nature. Maybe the populace has finally woken up."

BTW, as much as I am anti-firearm... the eventual uprising of the public against the government is the only reason I want the public to be well armed. I can count on all those pro-gun people to have a solid stockpile when the need arises. I actually think those in power know this too.

>>There is a saying that "A well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny." --- http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Second_Amendment

> I can count on all those pro-gun people to have a solid stockpile when the need arises. I actually think those in power know this too.

Unless the pro-gun people are stocking APCs, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles and nuclear weapons, they are exactly zero good against the government when the need arises. We are long past the times when civilians could stand up to the armed forces.

European here....

I am very anti-firearm as well, and the only decent justification for them is that it gives more power to the people against the government in the event of some kind of revolution.

But as an outsider, it does seem that all your pro-gun people in the US seem like a bunch of right wing nutters. Certainly the vocal ones come across that way.

What are your opinions on this?

I definitely see them as mostly Republican/Conservatives, but because of them even democrats can always legally obtain guns. The USGov can never remove the right to bare arms, or the pro-gun people will flip out. So a semi-unknown number of guns remain in the public's possession preventing the USGov from ever trying to really take over. Best chance is for USGov to slowly erode privacy/rights as they're doing, but I think the NSA leaks have messed that up and put all kinds of people, even republicans, on guard. If a civil war actually happened, I think the pro-gun people are a wildcard that the USGov cannot depend on. I think they'll actually split up and a significant amount of them would side with democrats because of their desire to "protect the nation & what the USA flag stands for". With the NSA leaks, I think a lot of them feel like they've been fooled and are now just "pretending" to be republicans, but deep down inside they wouldn't defend the USGov in a civil war. I also think there are a bunch of military personnel who are "just following orders" for now but would defect in the event of a civil war too. Someone(s) just has to be the martyr to get the ball rolling.

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