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They make the CIA sound positively competent.

dr_dshiv 6y ago
The belief in competent government would seem to be a logical flaw -- or at least inconsistency -- in most conspiracy theorizing. I'm sometimes shocked by how competent people think the government can be -- especially people with so little faith in government.
- bcraven 6y ago
  Adam Curtis: Bugger, Maybe The Real State Secret Is That Spies Aren't Very Good At Their Jobs And Don't Know Very Much About The World https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9...
- patrec 6y ago
  > The belief in competent government would seem to be a logical flaw Only to someone ideologically blinkered or completely ignorant of history. There are countless examples of governments achieving all sorts of highly non-straightforward things both for good and for bad. Even the CIA, which will probably not make it onto many shortlists of history's most competent governmental organizations had its successes.
  - Nasrudith 6y ago
    The real qualifer of signficance is depending upon perfect competence. Which is utterly unrealistic like the "car which runs on water being covered up". Although that example has ample other logical flaws including the fact that it would be a great thing for logistics if possible.
- jondubois 6y ago
  I keep seeing this idea of an incompetent government come up repeatedly. What people don't understand is that it is precisely this incompetence which allows corporations to manipulate the government so well. Laws and regulations do not originate within governments. They originate from lobbyists who are working in the interest of corporations and other large financial interests. When discussing the economy, some people will keep insisting that capitalism is the most intelligent collective system possible, yet when it comes to politics, they will make it seem like capitalism is the dumbest system in the world, utterly incompetent at implementing perverse economic agendas... So I guess the view must be that capitalism maximizes the extraction of value from every kind of activity except when those activities relate to the government? Clearly this makes no sense. Why would capitalism's efficiency at leveraging the collective intelligence stop at politics?
wisty 6y ago
I'm not sure if it's original, but the book American Gods had a good joke about this. "How do you know the CIA didn't kill JFK?"
- api 6y ago
  South Park had an episode where it was revealed that Dick Cheney and other Bush II administration officials were behind a conspiracy to promote 9/11 inside job conspiracy theories in order to convince the world they were actually competent enough to pull such a thing off.

The belief in competent government would seem to be a logical flaw -- or at least inconsistency -- in most conspiracy theorizing. I'm sometimes shocked by how competent people think the government can be -- especially people with so little faith in government.

bcraven 6y ago
Adam Curtis: Bugger, Maybe The Real State Secret Is That Spies Aren't Very Good At Their Jobs And Don't Know Very Much About The World https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9-3149-963f-47bea720b460 https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9...
patrec 6y ago
> The belief in competent government would seem to be a logical flaw Only to someone ideologically blinkered or completely ignorant of history. There are countless examples of governments achieving all sorts of highly non-straightforward things both for good and for bad. Even the CIA, which will probably not make it onto many shortlists of history's most competent governmental organizations had its successes.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  The real qualifer of signficance is depending upon perfect competence. Which is utterly unrealistic like the "car which runs on water being covered up". Although that example has ample other logical flaws including the fact that it would be a great thing for logistics if possible.
jondubois 6y ago
I keep seeing this idea of an incompetent government come up repeatedly. What people don't understand is that it is precisely this incompetence which allows corporations to manipulate the government so well. Laws and regulations do not originate within governments. They originate from lobbyists who are working in the interest of corporations and other large financial interests. When discussing the economy, some people will keep insisting that capitalism is the most intelligent collective system possible, yet when it comes to politics, they will make it seem like capitalism is the dumbest system in the world, utterly incompetent at implementing perverse economic agendas... So I guess the view must be that capitalism maximizes the extraction of value from every kind of activity except when those activities relate to the government? Clearly this makes no sense. Why would capitalism's efficiency at leveraging the collective intelligence stop at politics?

wisty 6y ago

I'm not sure if it's original, but the book American Gods had a good joke about this. "How do you know the CIA didn't kill JFK?"

api 6y ago
South Park had an episode where it was revealed that Dick Cheney and other Bush II administration officials were behind a conspiracy to promote 9/11 inside job conspiracy theories in order to convince the world they were actually competent enough to pull such a thing off.