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Who is surprised? The committee that granted a trillion dollar bail-out of a few companies including Goldman Sachs was staffed with plenty of current/former ex
by pstack 15y ago
Who is surprised?
The committee that granted a trillion dollar bail-out of a few companies including Goldman Sachs was staffed with plenty of current/former executives from Goldman Sachs.
The FDA and agencies involved for approving bovine growth hormone (later found to do freakishly hideous things to the poor cows and increase by incredible amounts the contamination of the milk we drink from infected utters), the Round-Up-ready patented corn seeds, and aspartame just happen to be largely staffed by current/former Monsanto executives.
The FDA and agencies involved in inspecting the food production in the states and making sure that it remains uncontaminated and safe and regularly inspected have reduced the number of inspections by something like 85% and the contamination rates increase, while under the watch of agencies staffed largely by current/former executives of the few main companies being overseen.
The US government is beyond corrupt and beyond any possible reform and nobody cares. Nobody gives a damn that almost every office and committee appointment in the country is a matter of the wolves guarding the sheep. It has been this way for decades and they are now so brazen about it that you can look at every single person in every single job and do a simple search to trace the truth of their position and appointment back and nobody gives a damn.
I mean, seriously, we let them give themselves a trillion dollars. We let them poison our food supply with largely untested and unproven chemicals. We let them cover up and manipulate right in front of our faces and we do nothing. After thirty years of looking the other way on all of these things, what on earth could possibly ever even remotely raise our eyebrows and make us do something other than participate in the attention-occupying busy-body bullshit of "durr durr republicans are stupid and evil" and "durr durr democrats are stupid and evil" my team versus yours bullshit?
Maybe if the government and corporations decided that it was just easier to require that all births be sponsored to make sure they can be cared for until adulthood and then those sponsored children become indentured servants for their sponsor company until the age of 40 . . . maybe . . . MAYBE we might possibly take our eyes off Dancing With the Stars and the football game long enough to do something other than pull the red or blue lever according to the team we've associated ourselves with and demand that we have choices that aren't part of the game and won't be part of the game and will radically change things.
It won't happen in my lifetime. I know that much.
- KevBurnsJr 15y agoWell not with that attitude!
- iuguy 15y agoSo, in the spirit of HN I'd like to foster a challenge. I challenge the people of HN to come up with a startup to challenge the status quo. How about a startup that could expose this in an easily consumable way by the public? What about a startup that makes government corruption irrelevant? Lets put our money where our mouth is. Is there money to be made from benefiting the social good? Is there a way we can bring people together with an app or service that can bring about an end to all of this? On HN I see some of the most intelligent people that have ever lived. If we can't come up with a solution, then who can?
- 18pfsmt 15y agoI've banged my head over a similar idea for a while, and I have failed to figure out a viable monetization strategy that won't compromise such a service eventually. The best I've come up with is that it must start at bottom and move up. From local communities and the governments that manage them, the power could be slowly drained away from the federal level (and even the state) eventually leading to a more decentralized system that is less susceptible to corruption (which obviously requires constant vigilance on the part of the local communities).
- iuguy 15y agoSo what about a site that allows local communities to organise and co-ordinate? Your big problem would be astroturfing, but if you did it right, it would be as simple for them to arrange for 'Lets get rid of taxes on oil firms" as "Lets get the garbage taken out properly in the xth district in y area", then to link them together. I think the key thing is to disrupt the lobby structure. If we can do that as well as MP3 downloads disrupted the RIAA then we win.
- pyre 15y agoWhat about a social-network-like site where people communicate directly with their elected officials? This would need someway to make sure that the politician was actually looking at the site and not just the delegating it to subordinates. Having a direct line to these politicians (that cuts past all of the subordinates that answer email, snail mail, etc) is one of the strengths of lobby groups.