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It amazes me when people think the government should be the go-to solution to society's problems. The government can indeed be used for good, and it has solved

It amazes me when people think the government should be the go-to solution to society's problems. The government can indeed be used for good, and it has solved many problems, and regulations can be a good thing. But government should be applied very carefully, and probably as the last solution, after we see the failures of non-government solutions. The government is all powerful. They can destroy any business, destroy any life, and seize all assets and livelihood if they desire to, even in America. But at least in America it is possible to sue the government and maybe rectify the situation, but you have to be wealthy or get a powerful ally like the Washington Post on your side. If it upsets you that the US government is able to hurt an immigrant like is discussed in this article, then you should take a very skeptical view of government actions and also people who advocate giving the government more power. After all, many people who loved Obama's expansion of executive authority now recoil as the enemy party's control of the government reverses his non-congressional approved decisions. The more power you give to the government, the less power the citizenry has.

tracker1 8y ago
Not just immigrants... for years, various jurisdictions in the US would shakedown people passing through. If you had more than a couple hundred in cash, kiss it goodbye. There's been a little tightening of its' use in the past 2-3 years, but it needs to go away.
3pt14159 8y ago
Not last. Not first. Not all powerful. Not feckless. Americans act like their government is representative of governments. It isn't. They act like everything needs to be invented there. It doesn't. They believe that America is the greatest country in the world. It isn't. If people in America just stopped to look around at how other countries do things they'd be doubly as well run. Most parts of Europe, Japan, Canada, and many other places are well run and have a great deal of governmental involvement. America is hobbled by its own broken political system that nobody would replicate if they were starting from scratch today. It's essentially the PHP of government systems. Dominant, but broken.
- refurb 8y ago
  OK, I get it, the US being a superpower is under a microscope and every imperfection is called out so other countries can look down their nose at it. That's fine. But what are you talking about? What could the US learn from Canada on asset forfeiture? Canada does it too! How to do it better? And as a Canadian, saying the gov't run their is better is purely laughable.
  - woolvalley 8y ago
    Go live in the USA, and you'll see the multiple ways it's more broken than Canada. Many other friends who have moved over from other developed countries collaborate the experience. I'm in the bay area, maybe it's just a special kind of broken that you don't see in other places in the USA, but things like flint, michigan also exist in the USA.
    - refurb 8y ago
      I do live in the US. And you know what? I think there is plenty the US has to offer that Canada doesn't. That's why I'm here.
      - untog 8y ago
        I agree that the US offers a whole lot that other countries do not. I would disagree that the US government offers anything other governments do not. Of course, the US government has a role in the other attractive attributes the US has, but I personally think that role is exaggerated. I think the US would still be an economically dominant world power if it had the government of, say, Germany.
        icelancer 8y ago
        >> I would disagree that the US government offers anything other governments do not. You are very first-world centric, then. While I am no interventionist, you are discounting the role the US Military has worldwide on trade, peacekeeping, and other vital roles it actually does a good job at when it's not fucking things up (which is often). >> I think the US would still be an economically dominant world power if it had the government of, say, Germany. Including the racial makeup of Germany and the immigration policies?
wvenable 8y ago
The problem I have with this line of argument is that's used to excuse the government of these kinds of actions. Once you believe that government is simply incapable then you stop demanding that it becomes any better. Even what you describe, limiting the power of government, is a governmental solution. You simply have to elect people who want to make the system better rather than those who want to tear it down. It's easy to say government doesn't work and do nothing.
- seibelj 8y ago
  As I stated in the opening of my post, the government is capable of good and exists for a reason. Regulations can be good. But people should recognize how much power the government has and see issues like civil asset forefeiture as an example of what can go wrong. I’m not saying the government cannot work. I’m saying that when it doesn’t work, the result can have an overwhelming negative impact, so we should be skeptical of government solutions.
  - munk-a 8y ago
    I think the real resolution here is that assumption of innocence works for all the other cases and in the one case where assumption of guilt until proven innocent exists we have real trouble. Civil forfeiture laws are terrible and end up generally being selectively enforced against minorities. Nearly everyone I speak with about civil forfeiture thinks it's a bad idea with terrible incentives, so let's just enact some common sense and fix this one little thing, eh?
  - civilitty 8y ago
    I think that's a very naive perspective brought on by the perception that the government is a big monolithic entity so when the government does something bad, its the government's fault but when a corporation does something wrong it's specifically BP or Google or just one bad apple. The target of the public's ire becomes an entity with much smaller and better defined boundaries, ignoring every other corp that is doing the same exact thing. This process is also very self reinforcing. The only reason you know so much more about government abuses of power is because government is more transparent - the very feature that makes it such a powerful tool also puts it at a PR disadvantage. I've seen far too much unethical and down right illegal behavior by management from inside companies, especially when dealing with privatized government functions, to ever trust them to do anything that they arent forced to (essentially at gun point). While, as an immigrant, I have an extreme distrust of American law enforcement, I would rather them than any private corporation. I say this as someone who has been on the receiving end of civil asset forfeiture. My grandparents refused to take a bunch of cash that I had brought them in case the economic situation in Russia got worse and was taken for $20k and some priceless family heirlooms on the way back through LAX. It took a year and more money in legal fees than was confiscated just so I could get back some sentimental artefacts.
decebalus1 8y ago
> The more power you give to the government, the less power the citizenry has. Sure. So what's the solution in this particular case? Should we go full corporate and privatize border control and customs? The government has a monopoly on violence and law enforcement. Do you think privatizing this outside of government is a good idea? Do you really think this power would be less abused? Don't pick a bad example to dismiss the whole idea of government. At least in theory people can vote out the government, or specific laws/regulations* but they can't vote out money. *) Before dismissing my point, that only works in democracy, not oligarchy, which we have in the US. And if you're wondering how we've reached oligarchy, I may be simplifying things but it has a lot to do with the 'big government is bad' idea which has been floated around within the last century by the people hoarding most money.
- seibelj 8y ago
  Giving the government the ability to seize assets without any sort of hearing or due process, with the burden on the individual to prove innocence with the assumption of guilt, is obviously a bad thing. I can only imagine that it was implemented to fight the drug war. If you agree this is a bad result, and the situation has affected lots of people, then you agree that the government is capable of doing wrong. So you should agree that expansions of government power should be treated extremely skeptically and with serious concern. I do not “dismiss the idea of government” and I opened my post by saying so. I’m saying that we should try and limit the government’s power by default and try not to elect and empower lawmakers who believe otherwise.
  - Turing_Machine 8y ago
    > I can only imagine that it was implemented to fight the drug war. No, actually it comes from English common law, and has been around a long, long time. It has been abused in recent decades (using the drug war as an excuse), but it's far from a new thing.
- Zak 8y ago
  Small government can also provide border controls and customs. Small, in this case might refer to the scope of the government's powers rather than the size of its budget or number of employees. Reasonable limitations in this case might include a requirement that property seized temporarily be the subject of a criminal investigation, with a short, strict time limit for either filing charges or seeking an extension from a judge, who should be expected not to grant it without exceptional circumstances. Forfeiture of property could require a felony conviction, and if the felon isn't the owner of the property, additional proof that the owner knew it was being used illegally. I have no illusions here: these restrictions would sometimes prevent the government from taking the assets of real criminals. That seems like a reasonable trade. The sort of criminal behaviors that civil asset forfeiture might be effective against are not such a significant threat to the stability of the USA as to justify taking the property of innocents with less legal protection than they would have in the criminal justice system.
refurb 8y ago
Human nature being what it is, people who have power want to keep that power and hopefully expand it. That includes the gov't.
jfk92n8 8y ago
Government is made up of people If a person in a government position does a shitty thing, hold them accountable It’s no different than at a job where you “abdicate” certain utilitarian responsibilities to others. What’s really broken is checks and balances They’re outdated for modern life Talking about government as if it is a real thing like a car is silly Define the roles and privileges and shut down violations But of course the public in America has been convinced it’s some ephemeral monster come to eat their babies when the big corps and employers that also fuck us are our saviors with “jobs” It’s a twisted psychosis I’ll never understand
userbinator 8y ago
The more power you give to the government, the less power the citizenry has. "People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people"
ismail 8y ago
> “But government should be applied very carefully, and probably as the last solution, after we see the failures of non-government solutions.” You are advocating a Laissez-faire approach[0]. This is not the only view on government intervention. There are various other approaches such as developmental state[1]. I recall reading an posted to HN that discussed the success of the developmental state In the east. Cannot seem to find it now. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_state https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_state
justherefortart 8y ago
The government by the people can only be as good as its people. This is the government Americans deserve.
chasing 8y ago
A government is your guaranteed voice in making decisions about how society runs. The US government is far from perfect, good lord. But it’s the only mechanism we’ve got for keeping power in the hands of the people.
otalp 8y ago
If the only presented alternative to government is private corporations how is that not much worse? The government indeed is authoritarian and people should recognise it - but at least due to historical factors the citizenry have some control over it and how it functions. For a private corporation the general public has no voice at all. You can vote in presidents and senators, you can't vote in CEOs or executives. The more power you give to private corporations, the less power the citizenry has. A good analogy would be prisons: government run prisons and the penal system in the US are horrific, designed to be racist and exploit the poor. But then you look at how private prisons are run and realise that they are even worse: they have a profit motive to lock up citizens.
Taniwha 8y ago
but that's because you have a crap government and don't hold them to high enough standards - vote in a better one and complain until they do a better job - a democratic govt is supposed to be accountable to the people, not the other way around, I don't think many Americans understand this
YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> The more power you give to the government, the less power the citizenry has. Well, unless the citizenry controls the government. This is the case in some political systems, e.g. democracy.
dustycowboy 8y ago
It amazes me that anytime something goes wrong with the governement, someone says: we should get rid of the government. How about we work to improve it instead?

tracker1 8y ago

Not just immigrants... for years, various jurisdictions in the US would shakedown people passing through. If you had more than a couple hundred in cash, kiss it goodbye. There's been a little tightening of its' use in the past 2-3 years, but it needs to go away.

3pt14159 8y ago

Not last. Not first. Not all powerful. Not feckless. Americans act like their government is representative of governments. It isn't. They act like everything needs to be invented there. It doesn't. They believe that America is the greatest country in the world. It isn't. If people in America just stopped to look around at how other countries do things they'd be doubly as well run. Most parts of Europe, Japan, Canada, and many other places are well run and have a great deal of governmental involvement. America is hobbled by its own broken political system that nobody would replicate if they were starting from scratch today. It's essentially the PHP of government systems. Dominant, but broken.

refurb 8y ago
OK, I get it, the US being a superpower is under a microscope and every imperfection is called out so other countries can look down their nose at it. That's fine. But what are you talking about? What could the US learn from Canada on asset forfeiture? Canada does it too! How to do it better? And as a Canadian, saying the gov't run their is better is purely laughable.
- woolvalley 8y ago
  Go live in the USA, and you'll see the multiple ways it's more broken than Canada. Many other friends who have moved over from other developed countries collaborate the experience. I'm in the bay area, maybe it's just a special kind of broken that you don't see in other places in the USA, but things like flint, michigan also exist in the USA.
  - refurb 8y ago
    I do live in the US. And you know what? I think there is plenty the US has to offer that Canada doesn't. That's why I'm here.
    - untog 8y ago
      I agree that the US offers a whole lot that other countries do not. I would disagree that the US government offers anything other governments do not. Of course, the US government has a role in the other attractive attributes the US has, but I personally think that role is exaggerated. I think the US would still be an economically dominant world power if it had the government of, say, Germany.
      - icelancer 8y ago
        >> I would disagree that the US government offers anything other governments do not. You are very first-world centric, then. While I am no interventionist, you are discounting the role the US Military has worldwide on trade, peacekeeping, and other vital roles it actually does a good job at when it's not fucking things up (which is often). >> I think the US would still be an economically dominant world power if it had the government of, say, Germany. Including the racial makeup of Germany and the immigration policies?

wvenable 8y ago

The problem I have with this line of argument is that's used to excuse the government of these kinds of actions. Once you believe that government is simply incapable then you stop demanding that it becomes any better. Even what you describe, limiting the power of government, is a governmental solution. You simply have to elect people who want to make the system better rather than those who want to tear it down. It's easy to say government doesn't work and do nothing.

seibelj 8y ago
As I stated in the opening of my post, the government is capable of good and exists for a reason. Regulations can be good. But people should recognize how much power the government has and see issues like civil asset forefeiture as an example of what can go wrong. I’m not saying the government cannot work. I’m saying that when it doesn’t work, the result can have an overwhelming negative impact, so we should be skeptical of government solutions.
- munk-a 8y ago
  I think the real resolution here is that assumption of innocence works for all the other cases and in the one case where assumption of guilt until proven innocent exists we have real trouble. Civil forfeiture laws are terrible and end up generally being selectively enforced against minorities. Nearly everyone I speak with about civil forfeiture thinks it's a bad idea with terrible incentives, so let's just enact some common sense and fix this one little thing, eh?
- civilitty 8y ago
  I think that's a very naive perspective brought on by the perception that the government is a big monolithic entity so when the government does something bad, its the government's fault but when a corporation does something wrong it's specifically BP or Google or just one bad apple. The target of the public's ire becomes an entity with much smaller and better defined boundaries, ignoring every other corp that is doing the same exact thing. This process is also very self reinforcing. The only reason you know so much more about government abuses of power is because government is more transparent - the very feature that makes it such a powerful tool also puts it at a PR disadvantage. I've seen far too much unethical and down right illegal behavior by management from inside companies, especially when dealing with privatized government functions, to ever trust them to do anything that they arent forced to (essentially at gun point). While, as an immigrant, I have an extreme distrust of American law enforcement, I would rather them than any private corporation. I say this as someone who has been on the receiving end of civil asset forfeiture. My grandparents refused to take a bunch of cash that I had brought them in case the economic situation in Russia got worse and was taken for $20k and some priceless family heirlooms on the way back through LAX. It took a year and more money in legal fees than was confiscated just so I could get back some sentimental artefacts.

decebalus1 8y ago

> The more power you give to the government, the less power the citizenry has. Sure. So what's the solution in this particular case? Should we go full corporate and privatize border control and customs? The government has a monopoly on violence and law enforcement. Do you think privatizing this outside of government is a good idea? Do you really think this power would be less abused? Don't pick a bad example to dismiss the whole idea of government. At least in theory people can vote out the government, or specific laws/regulations* but they can't vote out money. *) Before dismissing my point, that only works in democracy, not oligarchy, which we have in the US. And if you're wondering how we've reached oligarchy, I may be simplifying things but it has a lot to do with the 'big government is bad' idea which has been floated around within the last century by the people hoarding most money.

seibelj 8y ago
Giving the government the ability to seize assets without any sort of hearing or due process, with the burden on the individual to prove innocence with the assumption of guilt, is obviously a bad thing. I can only imagine that it was implemented to fight the drug war. If you agree this is a bad result, and the situation has affected lots of people, then you agree that the government is capable of doing wrong. So you should agree that expansions of government power should be treated extremely skeptically and with serious concern. I do not “dismiss the idea of government” and I opened my post by saying so. I’m saying that we should try and limit the government’s power by default and try not to elect and empower lawmakers who believe otherwise.
- Turing_Machine 8y ago
  > I can only imagine that it was implemented to fight the drug war. No, actually it comes from English common law, and has been around a long, long time. It has been abused in recent decades (using the drug war as an excuse), but it's far from a new thing.
Zak 8y ago
Small government can also provide border controls and customs. Small, in this case might refer to the scope of the government's powers rather than the size of its budget or number of employees. Reasonable limitations in this case might include a requirement that property seized temporarily be the subject of a criminal investigation, with a short, strict time limit for either filing charges or seeking an extension from a judge, who should be expected not to grant it without exceptional circumstances. Forfeiture of property could require a felony conviction, and if the felon isn't the owner of the property, additional proof that the owner knew it was being used illegally. I have no illusions here: these restrictions would sometimes prevent the government from taking the assets of real criminals. That seems like a reasonable trade. The sort of criminal behaviors that civil asset forfeiture might be effective against are not such a significant threat to the stability of the USA as to justify taking the property of innocents with less legal protection than they would have in the criminal justice system.

refurb 8y ago

Human nature being what it is, people who have power want to keep that power and hopefully expand it. That includes the gov't.

jfk92n8 8y ago

Government is made up of people If a person in a government position does a shitty thing, hold them accountable It’s no different than at a job where you “abdicate” certain utilitarian responsibilities to others. What’s really broken is checks and balances They’re outdated for modern life Talking about government as if it is a real thing like a car is silly Define the roles and privileges and shut down violations But of course the public in America has been convinced it’s some ephemeral monster come to eat their babies when the big corps and employers that also fuck us are our saviors with “jobs” It’s a twisted psychosis I’ll never understand

userbinator 8y ago

The more power you give to the government, the less power the citizenry has. "People should not be afraid of their governments; governments should be afraid of their people"

ismail 8y ago

> “But government should be applied very carefully, and probably as the last solution, after we see the failures of non-government solutions.” You are advocating a Laissez-faire approach[0]. This is not the only view on government intervention. There are various other approaches such as developmental state[1]. I recall reading an posted to HN that discussed the success of the developmental state In the east. Cannot seem to find it now. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laissez-faire [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_state https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developmental_state

justherefortart 8y ago

The government by the people can only be as good as its people. This is the government Americans deserve.

chasing 8y ago

A government is your guaranteed voice in making decisions about how society runs. The US government is far from perfect, good lord. But it’s the only mechanism we’ve got for keeping power in the hands of the people.

otalp 8y ago

If the only presented alternative to government is private corporations how is that not much worse? The government indeed is authoritarian and people should recognise it - but at least due to historical factors the citizenry have some control over it and how it functions. For a private corporation the general public has no voice at all. You can vote in presidents and senators, you can't vote in CEOs or executives. The more power you give to private corporations, the less power the citizenry has. A good analogy would be prisons: government run prisons and the penal system in the US are horrific, designed to be racist and exploit the poor. But then you look at how private prisons are run and realise that they are even worse: they have a profit motive to lock up citizens.

Taniwha 8y ago

but that's because you have a crap government and don't hold them to high enough standards - vote in a better one and complain until they do a better job - a democratic govt is supposed to be accountable to the people, not the other way around, I don't think many Americans understand this

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

>> The more power you give to the government, the less power the citizenry has. Well, unless the citizenry controls the government. This is the case in some political systems, e.g. democracy.

dustycowboy 8y ago

It amazes me that anytime something goes wrong with the governement, someone says: we should get rid of the government. How about we work to improve it instead?