Thankfully I don’t live in the US, as it was shown again and again that your government is doing whatever it wants to its population, including chemical tests and total surveillance.
I just hope they don’t get bored of you guys anytime soon and start bullying innocent European.
The overly cynical details in my comment are partly on purpose.
Except the government isn’t doing any of that. It’s Facebook and Google and Palantir that are trying to total surveillance.
It’s train companies slacking on safety that puts dangerous chemicals in our water.
It’s the infiltration of business thinking for private good into the government, which manages public goods, that leads to reduced services whose be declining quality.
I believe fear of the government is caused by business interests having influenced the public imagination to redirect justifiable grievances away from where it belongs.
Both can be true. A lot of the bad is business getting what it wants in pursuit of getting All of the money. A lot of the bad is incompetent government officials legislating things they don’t understand, often after “seminars” by lobbyists to “teach” them. And a lot of the bad is government officials with bad ideas doing bad things maliciously.
For example, even businesses don’t want to kill off encryption but every once in a while here comes some Representative to try and do it anyway.
I have a lot of friends who are either centrists or on the right who are also very anti-government or government critical in their own way, and it bleeds into some conspiratorial thinking. One of the most difficult things when discussing politics with these people is separating corporate greed and government complicity. Everything from federal reserve policy to rail safety protocol. It’s a constant struggle to remind people that the government is almost entirely beholden to corporate interest. In most cases, there is no “machine” or elitist hegemony behind the government pulling the strings. Our capitalist society is more often directed by the invisible hand of the corporatocracy. The system is legion, and very few individuals actually have goals beyond the next few quarters.
That’s often the most frustrating thing about arguing with conservatives and libertarians in my circles, at least with regards to systems of power and economic policy. They believe that since the economic powers that be seem to be making their own economic environment worse (and so threatening their own success decades down the line) that there must be some other power pulling the strings… but it’s really just shortsighted greed and economic mob mentality at every level.
That’s not to say that there aren’t warhawks and “law and order” zealots making our country a more dangerous place, and politicians pushing dangerous identity wars to suppress the labor class and garner votes. That’s all certainly happening. I just don’t believe there’s any grand plan in the minds of most powerful people beyond what they can obtain in the next political cycle or four fiscal quarters.
I’m an American with every intention of retiring early in the EU, but I wouldn’t be so confident. There are plenty of examples of “liberal” western governments trying hard to become as totalitarian and anti-citizen as possible. Even today, I don’t think Australia (for example) is lagging behind the USA at all when it comes to surveillance and complete disregard for personal liberty, and they’re in fact far worse in many cases. The UK isn’t far behind either of us. The USA is just the biggest and the baddest and gets the most airtime. Some of the shit I read coming out of Australia just makes me think no one cares how dictatorial some Pacific island-continent becomes, otherwise we would all be talking about it more.
Thankfully I don’t live in the US, as it was shown again and again that your government is doing whatever it wants to its population, including chemical tests and total surveillance. I just hope they don’t get bored of you guys anytime soon and start bullying innocent European.
Except the government isn’t doing any of that. It’s Facebook and Google and Palantir that are trying to total surveillance.
It’s train companies slacking on safety that puts dangerous chemicals in our water.
It’s the infiltration of business thinking for private good into the government, which manages public goods, that leads to reduced services whose be declining quality.
I believe fear of the government is caused by business interests having influenced the public imagination to redirect justifiable grievances away from where it belongs.
Both can be true. A lot of the bad is business getting what it wants in pursuit of getting All of the money. A lot of the bad is incompetent government officials legislating things they don’t understand, often after “seminars” by lobbyists to “teach” them. And a lot of the bad is government officials with bad ideas doing bad things maliciously.
For example, even businesses don’t want to kill off encryption but every once in a while here comes some Representative to try and do it anyway.
I have a lot of friends who are either centrists or on the right who are also very anti-government or government critical in their own way, and it bleeds into some conspiratorial thinking. One of the most difficult things when discussing politics with these people is separating corporate greed and government complicity. Everything from federal reserve policy to rail safety protocol. It’s a constant struggle to remind people that the government is almost entirely beholden to corporate interest. In most cases, there is no “machine” or elitist hegemony behind the government pulling the strings. Our capitalist society is more often directed by the invisible hand of the corporatocracy. The system is legion, and very few individuals actually have goals beyond the next few quarters.
That’s often the most frustrating thing about arguing with conservatives and libertarians in my circles, at least with regards to systems of power and economic policy. They believe that since the economic powers that be seem to be making their own economic environment worse (and so threatening their own success decades down the line) that there must be some other power pulling the strings… but it’s really just shortsighted greed and economic mob mentality at every level.
That’s not to say that there aren’t warhawks and “law and order” zealots making our country a more dangerous place, and politicians pushing dangerous identity wars to suppress the labor class and garner votes. That’s all certainly happening. I just don’t believe there’s any grand plan in the minds of most powerful people beyond what they can obtain in the next political cycle or four fiscal quarters.
Don’t get too comfortable. Fascism is rapidly rising in your part of the world.
I’m an American with every intention of retiring early in the EU, but I wouldn’t be so confident. There are plenty of examples of “liberal” western governments trying hard to become as totalitarian and anti-citizen as possible. Even today, I don’t think Australia (for example) is lagging behind the USA at all when it comes to surveillance and complete disregard for personal liberty, and they’re in fact far worse in many cases. The UK isn’t far behind either of us. The USA is just the biggest and the baddest and gets the most airtime. Some of the shit I read coming out of Australia just makes me think no one cares how dictatorial some Pacific island-continent becomes, otherwise we would all be talking about it more.