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Comment by pinaceae | Hacker News Reader

of course not, that would be the worker's council and the union.

you silly Americans :)

HR employees can be fired, hence are under pressure, hence are on the side of the company. Works council members in developed nations are protected, cannot be fired on a whim and get fully paid while fighting for you.

As a European working in the US it feels like time travel when it comes to work, health, banking. Just had a discussion about why Google Health has failed - while Austrian citizens already enjoy an electronic health record, tracking their medication across doctors.

So many patriots here will defend the US as the greatest country, no matter what - but actively oppose the very fabric of this nation, the government, with its rules and regulations to protect the people. Very hard to wrap my head around this.

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The government is not 'the very fabric of this nation'.

You know the government is supposed to be representatives of the people, right? Of the people for the people. I'm worrying for the US and the world, because Americans are so anti government. Peoples rights aren't being respected.

Speaking as an anti-government American, I'm against the current form of American government because it has strayed so far from the limited government principles on which this country was founded. It's literally impossible for a government this large to be representative.

Oh you mean the Articles of Confederation which were so poorly thought it the country was imploding after 10 years so badly that they had to start from scratch and write a whole new document called the constitution to fix the mess of constant rebellions?

Is that the founding principles you mean? Because George Washington had nothing good to say about them after having tried them during his terms in office.

Not saying that I agree with GP, but the US was much less centralized during the early days of the Constitution than it is today. Part of that is practical - fast communication makes it easier to centralize.

But over many years through a combination of Supreme Court decisions, legislation, and executive decisions, authority has become more concentrated in the hands of the Federal government than in the state/local government, or left to the individual.

That's not to say that it's all bad - civil rights, for example was a hugely important movement only made possible by moving some power away from the states. But to deny that it has happened isn't right either.

That's an oddly aggressive response.

No, I was not referring to the Articles of Confederation. I was instead referring to the system of limited government defined by the Constitution.

You mean the tyrannical power grabbing centralized monstrosity all real Americans hated? Because that's what the Constitution was to the real Americans who founded this country and not the jack boot licking, spineless cowards who could look true freedom in the eye and made the federal government the hydra that it is today.

(the tone of this post has been set by the federalist and anti-federalist pamphlets that lead up to the Constitutional convention, some words have been changed for clarity)

The government is supposed to be of the people, and for the people. The government should be subservient to the people, not the other way around (at one point in history, a novel concept).

The concept of the "American people" predates the current American government. It will survive the current American government (plenty of developed or developing countries have had multiple governments in the past century, without interrupting the notion of that country as a group of people. In the more distant past, consider France. France remained a country of the French, despite several dramatic changes in the nature of French government in the past 300 years). The people are the "fabric of America", not the government that the people have created. That government is just an imperfect tool used by the people.

That's the idea anyway.

My thoughts exactly.

>while Austrian citizens already enjoy an electronic health record, tracking their medication across doctors.

And if you understand why Austrian citizens' tracking doesn't extend across all of the EU, maybe you'll also understand why it doesn't happen across the US.

What feels like time travel is going to Europe and having to use cash everywhere in Portugal because cards are so rarely accepted outside of big chains. Felt very backwards.

Borders between states are hardly the same as borders between countries, and Portugal is not representative of Europe. Europe is a region with multiple cultures, languages, countries, and governments.

Well that's the point that he/she is trying to make isn't it? States in the US are more like to countries within the EU. That's in part why I think a lot of people from the US refer to 'Europe' as a cohesive entity, because in many ways it is. Different states and different countries are at different levels of progress.

States in the US =/= Countries within the EU. Europe is really not a cohesive entity. Different languages, different history (stretching back a thousand+ years), completely different value systems, cultures, etc.

Trying to insinuate that the degree of differentiation between states is the same as between Europe countries is utter absurdity. Clearly, trying to track healthcare across different governments with different languages and different cultures is much harder than trying to track healthcare across different states with the same language, the same national government, and a very similar culture.

Culture and that other stuff you mention are important, but so is size and distance. In the same way that someone who moved from Austria to Scotland would be tolerant of differences in official services, so is someone who moves from Seattle to Orlando.

So governments are to be rejected while profile-building credit card companies are something to aspire to?

While CC companies have no means to jail you, locking down your credit card access in a mostly cash-less world can be a real pain - and unlike governments, they have no (somewhat) independent appeals process.

At least you can use chip&pin :)

because rules and regulations are links in the chains that bind you. rules and regulations created the corporations, rules and regulations tax you, rules and regulations throw you in jail for imbibing in herbs...

Worker Unions? You mean the mob?

The US has a proud history of leveraging criminals for discrediting unions. And the legacy in popular culture is that unions lead to organized crime. Good luck in your reciding, sorry "recovering", economy.

Do you eat meat? 'cause a number of the rendering plants that produce animal feed are still mob owned.

link?

"Report to the President and the Attorney General" https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/102922NCJRS.pdf "Organized Crime and the Meat Industry: A Study in Competition "

http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2m3avv/i_am_mike_rowe_...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Jackson_(gangster)

It was partially sarcastic, partially not. In 2014, its about as relevant as complaining about links between the Mafia & Unions. They used to be connected in places but it was relatively small scale (e.g. local) and not on the scale people like the parent claimed.

fair enough. thanks for the reply!

You are the link. You eat mob owned meat.

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