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Declining trust in government is denting democracy (2017)

37 points by isaacimagine 5y ago

fallingknife 5y ago
How does a drop in trust if the government make a country less democratic? Those things aren't necessarily related.
- xwolfi 5y ago
  What is an elector for ? If you dont trust the system you built and are reaponsible for as a voter, what is democracy? Not trusting them to execute the will of the majority means you dont believe you are a democracy. But I guess not trusting them "blindly"?
- AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
  Unclear, indeed. My interpretation would be that distrust in government usually causes a raise in cheap populism and many heavily populist leaders tend to be more authoritarian.
- endisneigh 5y ago
  How would not trusting the government not make the country less democratic? Isn’t democracy by definition a process in which trust is created via electors?
  - kazinator 5y ago
    Hmm. OK, first of all, whether A trusts B has no bearing on whether B is trustworthy, which should only be based on facts and not what A thinks. A could be driven by fear and mislead by misinformation. Secondly, on the opposite end, is it democractic if there exists a widespread, blind trust in the government? The word for a healthy mistrust is skepticism. Maybe the citizens in a constitutional, parliamentary democracy should always be skeptical of what their elected and non-elected public servants are doing. If there is a widespread mistrust which is rationally based in too many government activities and decisions being behind closed doors, that does seem to point to a dent in democracy.
    - chii 5y ago
      > democractic if there exists a widespread, blind trust in the government? yes it is. Whether the trust is blind or based on reason, as long as the choice had been with the people's vote, it is democratic. For some reason, some people assume that democracy will somehow produce the best outcome for them. Democracy doesn't automagically produce good outcomes. Democracy requires that each voter to be rational and informed, and requires the voting system to not exhibit bias (which the USA certainly does - first-past-the-post sucks). And even then, those two requirements only produce an outcome which is representative of the will of the people, rather than a good outcome for all (such as good equality, wealth distribution, etc).
      - kazinator 5y ago
        The strictest logical interpretation of your statement is that since democracy requires various conditions X, Y, Z, as you say, then if any of those conditions are not met, then the phenomenon of democracy must not be present. In that sense, you are agreeing with me because what I wrote is also that democracy requires a rational constituency (that therefore doesn't exhibit blind faith in government). Though you thought you would be writing statements which disagree with mine, as you can see it is difficult to get away from the idea that democracy must be defined by the good outcome, and not the political motions and trappings that are supposed to cargo-cult it into existence. Dictatorships have pseudo-democratic "votes" also. Consider that the bulk of the power structure of a modern "free world" government is not elected. The elected cabinet is like a squad of midget toreadors armed with whips, where the government is a 50,000 pound bull.
  - anoncake 5y ago
    No, democracy is the form of government in which the people (directly or indirectly) rules itself. I.e. ideally, everyone has the same amount of influence on the country's governance.
  - fallingknife 5y ago
    Democracy just means that you get to choose. It doesn't mean you get to be happy with your choice.
- fulafel 5y ago
  Democratic governments are an instrument for people to provide services like a social safety net & healthcare to one another and to collectively engage in stuff like fighting climate change and acting collectively on the world stage by cooperation and treaties with other national governments. If people lose faith in their govenment, they no longer hold it to a high standard, believe in sincerity of government agents, and as a result are less engaged in democratic processes and aren't able to make high quality voting descisions. Sincere do-gooders won't run for office, and instead power-hungry people who can stomach the public distaste for government will run. A spiral of cynicism and distrust also enables actors with antidemocratic agendas like populist parties and strong-man leaders to capture power.
- frankfrankfrank 5y ago
  I think you are missing the point that it's not at all about that. The title is in essence a cypher or "speaking in code"; it means something rather different to people who have the correct key. I don't mean that in any condescending way, but that is what it is. Just read it as "Declining trust in {condition of control} is denting the {conditioning of control}" … "Declining trust in the rider is denting the obedience of the horse" It's essentially like when parents speak in euphemisms or use substitute words to convey the actual meaning. The difference being though that it's also a kind of activation phrase or trigger phrase to execute a certain preconditioned sequence in different audiences; e.g., "that person gives me stuff when I vote for him, therefore I need to keep being able to vote, which makes democracy a 'good' thing that I need to protect". It's something that certain people have long ago figured out and have a long history of using to manipulate people and things in their favor. Once you start understanding just how sophisticated it all is, it's hard to not be utterly impressed by it. THAT's the real nature of the "simulation" theory and also why the reaction to the "NPC" meme was so harsh and disproportionately swift. When you have people in mental Matrix pods living a life they are not even aware is controlled by outside forces, let alone is a ruse, and you are totally dependent on that system remaining in place to continue living a life of excess and decadence; you will do anything to keep it that way. I hope we will get to the point one day where people realize this … realize that the core that manifested itself as slavery and serfdom and feudalism really never ended, it just pivoted, as we call it here. It may make a lot more sense to people when you read the headline as "Declining trust in the divinity of/dependency on the ruling class is denting the system of psychological control over the serfs" … and you realize it is meant to activate the above sequences that concludes that democracy is "good" because it leads to free stuff.
  - antifa 5y ago
    > and also why the reaction to the "NPC" meme was so harsh I don't know how you managed to weave in the private corporation Twitter banning an organized brigade of troll accounts as evidence of anything, but NPC Twitter accounts were used to basically say "people I disagree with aren't real people, they all say the same stuff!". Another way to look at it, the NPC meme is "if everyone is an asshole, it's probably just you" but told from the asshole's point of view.
rogerkirkness 5y ago
Too big, too ineffective. If it was a good use of capital. more people would pay voluntarily higher taxes. No one does because it's where value in the form of capital goes to die.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  It's essentially the same kind of alienation Marx talks about. Replace "workers" with "taxpayers" and it perfectly describes the situation. Even if taxes did go towards useful things, the average taxpayer is simply too detached from their rewards. There's a lot I don't agree with Marx on, but I think he was right on the aspect of alienation.
  - jl2718 5y ago
    There is a difference. Capitalists are not allowed to arrest and/or kill for non-compliance. Well... (noting the date) not anymore at least.
    - lucian1900 5y ago
      Capitalists are in control of the state, so of course they do. Try taking over your workplace, the police will come for you.
      - chii 5y ago
        > Try taking over your workplace aka, try stealing, and you get arrested.
        lucian1900 5y ago
        So the ruling class (capitalists) have defined what theft is and have armed bodies to enforce it. Profits aren’t somehow defined as theft, despite all value being produced by the labour of workers, who are paid a fraction of the value they produce.
Proven 5y ago
It's shocking that most people still believe public governments ought to exist. Why productive, able-bodied persons to live in a democracy is puzzling. Maybe they've never heard of private government, or think they can beat the system and steal through government redistribution more than they pay in taxes.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Sisiutl 5y ago
  Personally I’d rather not turn the country into Somalia, the libertarian archetype.
tengbretson 5y ago
I don't care how high the "democracy score" of the country is. I care about how well people's rights are defended.
- p1esk 5y ago
  How do you measure that?
  - frankfrankfrank 5y ago
    People's, i.e., human rights are rather well established at this point and it is also not a difficult task to monitor and track whether those people/human rights are respected. Even if it could become a rather labour intensive effort if one wanted to, possibly unnecessarily, monitor and track human rights protections and even defence down to the granular/individual level. The real challenge here is not at all a practical one, it's a power problem, those who have the power and control … at all the different levels … have absolutely no interest and jealously will combat the actual tracking and recording of things like whether they are protecting, violating, or defending human rights; because they very well would not fare well under the scrutiny of a truly objective evaluation. Those who have power have zero appreciation for anything that will weaken the perception of their power, because most power is a psychological thing.
- frankfrankfrank 5y ago
  I totally agree, especially since "democracy" has been perverted into little more than absolute meaningless and even in many ways into something that is the inverse of democracy. But that is also a rather loaded statement to make here, because this community and the stakeholders in particular are extremely invested in things that do not at all defend, let alone even respect humans' rights. And that's all I will say, because there is no expectation that the human right to free expression will be respected here, let alone defended.
ulucs 5y ago
"Declining trust in government" is such a gaslighty way to say "Governments being less trustworthy"
- xeromal 5y ago
  Gaslighting as a term is so en vogue right now. lol
- tomjen3 5y ago
  I don't disagree with you that the government is not trustworthy, but it is possible to both perceive it as not trustworthy and have it actually be trustworthy (if not flawless) and have it be totally horrible, but appear totally trustworthy. We should probably try to find the real measure - preferably one that isn't based on recency bias, because the news will always print the worst they can get[0]. [0]: It is important to face the discrimination African Americans feel, and deal with the US police problems, but I have no doubt those problems are a lot smaller today than they were in 1970.
  - chii 5y ago
    > find the real measure why not outcomes based? After all, good outcomes are what people want. Directly measuring outcome, rather than indirect methods like "trustworthiness" means those should improve.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
A few examples, In Fort Collins CO the gov't owns 100% of parking. So if you have a parking violation that you haven't payed you are essentially blackballed from parking in the entire city. It's a government monopoly. And there are big brother parking enforcement trucks driving around that do mass readings of license plates with cameras and print tickets on the spot. My home: St Tammany parish LA, has the highest number of prisoners in the state, in a state that has the highest imprisonments in the country, in a country that has the highest imprisonments in the world. My home is the king of imprisonments. A commission was done years ago to determine how many LAWS are here are in the U.S. and they gave up! Google 'how many LAWS are there in the U.S....Meanwhile ignorance of the law is no excuse for citizens. Police everywhere are getting actual military gear. The ACLU has a whole section of their website on militarization of police. Student loans are by federal law unable to be bankrupted out of. (One of the very few loan types like this). And one of the main reasons college tuitions are so inflated compared to the CPI... is the easy availability of student loan money. It's a self re-enforcing problem caused by the government. The company I'm working for is gov't funded and is millions of dollars in the hole and years behind schedule on a project and still the money printer go brrrr. Property taxes are causing people who have lived in their house for generations to lose their house. Zoning controls peoples homes to the minutest detail. You can lose your house for not 'fitting the neighborhood character'... character that was established before ZONING existed to enforce it. Our law enforcement agencies are: the CIA, FBI, NSA, TSA, DEA, ATF, state police,county police, metro police, city police, etc. Just a few examples. The gov't is way out of control in this country in my opinion but we're boiling the frog so people don't notice the problems and gradual restriction of their freedoms. The govt also has the appearance of being 'for the people' because we vote for it.. meanwhile lobbying and private interest funding of politicians has increased massively after citizens united... and gerrymandering is so commonplace that politicians basically draw their own districts.
- selimthegrim 5y ago
  I might be staying in Bush for a while so I hope I don't run into the fascist Slidell police on the way (who one time made an acquaintance of mine jump up and down on a glass beer bottle on the side of the road until it broke just to torment her and threatened to charge her with theft for having a Waffle House menu in the back of her car even though she worked there as a waitress) Also heard some stories about Livingston PSO but can't repeat them online.
roenxi 5y ago
The real mystery for me that while trust in government remains very low & partisan fear of the other is presumably at all time highs ... at no point does anyone manage to make and carry the argument that the government is too powerful. Instead the US government keeps growing, both in the responsibilities it takes over and the share of the GDP it represents.
- brightball 5y ago
  Only Libertarians it seems
  - mistermann 5y ago
    A few others here and there, like Curtis Yarvin: https://graymirror.substack.com/ https://graymirror.substack.com/
  - karaterobot 5y ago
    I wonder why you're being downvoted. Sometimes HN is funny. I'm not a libertarian, but it seems like one of the things people criticize (and often make fun of) them for is consistently wanting smaller government. So, with certain marginal exceptions, your statement is essentially true, and I think it's worth pointing out in this case.
- Retric 5y ago
  Saying we want less government power generally means we want to change rules rather than actually reduce power. They don’t want to actually reduce governments ability to make war or jail people etc. Even in cases where total government power is theoretically reduced say outlawing municipal broadband it’s less about reducing overall power as it is leveraging control in one area and extending it to another. In effect it’s a power grab at the state level at the expense of local governments. The state can of course change their mind at any time. On the other side of the isle when legalizing pot, it’s not considered enough to simply make it legal and move on. Suddenly they replace one law with hundreds by micro managing exactly what’s allowed and what hoops people are forced through. In effect it’s an extension of government power into a previously unregulated though illegal industry.
daenz 5y ago
Why doesn't it seem like the government scales with the population? It seems to always require more resources. In fact, I don't think I've heard of a case where some government initiative requires less resources and downsizes itself (I would welcome being proven wrong). There is a perverse incentive in government to use all of the "resources" (tax dollars) that they have access to. Normally this kind of incentive is counter balanced by competition (the competitor that can do more with less has a better chance of winning), but in this case, the government is a monopoly. They have no competitor threatening to usurp their role. And where is the accountability? When things aren't getting accomplished with tax dollars, the answer is always "more." Who is holding the spenders accountable for us?
- patcon 5y ago
  > Why doesn't it seem like the government scales with the population? My take on this is that it's because government doesn't scale in a simple way with the biological population size, unless we understand government as simply serving the biological needs of the population. The government serves the noosphere: kinda like a biosphere, but the sum of all ideas, reason, language, memes, thought and innovation of the society. The noosphere just happens to live [mostly] in the biological minds of the population, but it's not growing linearly like population is, and is probably becoming more complex and higher dimensional in a nonlinear way. The world doesn't just accrue humans, but rather it accrues (often via tech augmentations) the capacity of each human to process more, and so the world complexifies (is that a word? ha) Anyhow, not saying this is how it should be, or needs to be, but I def am not personally surprised or indignant about government failing to see scaling benefits we see elsewhere. I also suspect this is related to how government's in charge of many more things than corporations, which often can't be re-classified as externalities I dunno maybe I'm wrong-headed here * shrug *
- trident1000 5y ago
  Theoretically there will be a point (if not already) where its govt employees and contractors vs private citizens not tied into the system in a monetary way. If you work for the govt in one way or another and your salary depends on it, or you're getting a handout, you're more likely to vote in a way that supports big government, programs, and the political body that enabled it. A natural mechanism of taxing more, printing more, and handing that money to payrolls, contractors, and handout recipients who vote for it is a persistent trend and probably a systemic risk for a functioning private sector. And we see this in countries like Russia for instance where working for the govt means you have, while being a private citizen with no ties means you're most likely a have not.
throewr4u234 5y ago
The Indian kleptocracy has been stealing from people ever since its inception as the East India Company, or indeed as the Delhi sultanate - once the capital was moved from the Company HQ in Kolkata to Delhi we got a chimera that inherits the properties of both - an insane kleptocracy, with astonishing propaganda apparatus, and a strange politically Islamic inclination derived from nominally Hindu 'elite' retainers of the brutal Mughals and the British regimes. That people consider it a democracy is itself a joke - I can't wait for Delhi to fall (which it inevitably will, once the thieving babus and judges have nothing left to suck dry and flee to Europe and US, like Pakistan's generals). Democracy in India sucks - I pay thousands of dollars of taxes all so as to wade through sewage filled roads and for these morons to invoke communal hatred for votes day in-day out, all while nothing changes and everything becomes worse and more electronically controlled. Worse still, I can't even move to the other English-speaking countries, considering the level of visceral hatred there for Hindus. (Forgive the rant.)
karaterobot 5y ago
It's worth noting that this measure is almost entirely meaningless, and created in large part as a way to get people to subscribe to The Economist. That's not to say that it isn't worth monitoring people's trust in government, civil liberties, political culture, etc., just that there's no really good way to do that.
ryandrake 5y ago
I don't trust the government because it's not really representative. The founders put so much effort into making sure congress was regionally representative, where states have their representatives and districts have representatives, etc. But nothing ensures that congress is demographically representative. Congress is 40% lawyers [1] whereas the national lawyer population os 0.2% [2]. This is actually much better than in the mid 19th century where 80% of Congress were lawyers. About 52% of Congress are millionaires, whereas only ~7% or so of the public are millionaires [3]. Even though a record number of women serve in Congress, it's still 27% compared to roughly 50% of the public. Around 61% of Congress is 50 years old or older [5], whereas the number for the US population is around 34%. The people who claim to represent us in Congress are not really representative of us at all. 1: https://thepractice.law.harvard.edu/article/declining-dominance/ https://thepractice.law.harvard.edu/article/declining-domina... 2: https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2018/05/new_aba_data_reveals/ https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2... 3: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/08/fact-check-meme-partly-false-millionaires-u-s-congress/7589391002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/08/fac... 4: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/15/a-record-number-of-women-are-serving-in-the-117th-congress/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/15/a-record-nu... 5: https://www.legistorm.com/congress_by_numbers.html https://www.legistorm.com/congress_by_numbers.html
_spduchamp 5y ago
If you are not versed in the benefits of electoral reform, you along with the majority of the population, are living in a delusion that politicians and political parties are the central problem. It's the voting system that is the central problem. First-Past-The-Post, or any winner takes all election deeply distorts election results and worse, it prevents many people from even running in the first place because of the accusations of vote splitting. There are better systems of voting used all around the world that create less divisive governments. The challenge is how to make electoral reform happen. Those who are elected with FPTP are in a conflict of interest with electoral reform, and referendums are often divisive and can be hijacked by people looking to maintain the status quo. Electoral reform is complicated and every system has its flaws, so ideally you convene a Citizens' Assembly (https://nationalcitizensassembly.ca/ https://nationalcitizensassembly.ca/) to have an informed and deliberative process to make the recommendations on electoral reform. This process works for local, state/provincial, and federal levels. If you wanted this in your city, you could get people to call on your city councillors to make this happen locally, and eventually once people have more experience with things like Single Transferable Vote, or whatever variant works best for your constituency, then people will want it for other levels of government. BTW, this also works for other small elections like condo boards, school council, etc. Anything is better than First-Past-The-Post.

37 points by isaacimagine 5y ago

fallingknife 5y ago

How does a drop in trust if the government make a country less democratic? Those things aren't necessarily related.

xwolfi 5y ago
What is an elector for ? If you dont trust the system you built and are reaponsible for as a voter, what is democracy? Not trusting them to execute the will of the majority means you dont believe you are a democracy. But I guess not trusting them "blindly"?
AlexTWithBeard 5y ago
Unclear, indeed. My interpretation would be that distrust in government usually causes a raise in cheap populism and many heavily populist leaders tend to be more authoritarian.
endisneigh 5y ago
How would not trusting the government not make the country less democratic? Isn’t democracy by definition a process in which trust is created via electors?
- kazinator 5y ago
  Hmm. OK, first of all, whether A trusts B has no bearing on whether B is trustworthy, which should only be based on facts and not what A thinks. A could be driven by fear and mislead by misinformation. Secondly, on the opposite end, is it democractic if there exists a widespread, blind trust in the government? The word for a healthy mistrust is skepticism. Maybe the citizens in a constitutional, parliamentary democracy should always be skeptical of what their elected and non-elected public servants are doing. If there is a widespread mistrust which is rationally based in too many government activities and decisions being behind closed doors, that does seem to point to a dent in democracy.
  - chii 5y ago
    > democractic if there exists a widespread, blind trust in the government? yes it is. Whether the trust is blind or based on reason, as long as the choice had been with the people's vote, it is democratic. For some reason, some people assume that democracy will somehow produce the best outcome for them. Democracy doesn't automagically produce good outcomes. Democracy requires that each voter to be rational and informed, and requires the voting system to not exhibit bias (which the USA certainly does - first-past-the-post sucks). And even then, those two requirements only produce an outcome which is representative of the will of the people, rather than a good outcome for all (such as good equality, wealth distribution, etc).
    - kazinator 5y ago
      The strictest logical interpretation of your statement is that since democracy requires various conditions X, Y, Z, as you say, then if any of those conditions are not met, then the phenomenon of democracy must not be present. In that sense, you are agreeing with me because what I wrote is also that democracy requires a rational constituency (that therefore doesn't exhibit blind faith in government). Though you thought you would be writing statements which disagree with mine, as you can see it is difficult to get away from the idea that democracy must be defined by the good outcome, and not the political motions and trappings that are supposed to cargo-cult it into existence. Dictatorships have pseudo-democratic "votes" also. Consider that the bulk of the power structure of a modern "free world" government is not elected. The elected cabinet is like a squad of midget toreadors armed with whips, where the government is a 50,000 pound bull.
- anoncake 5y ago
  No, democracy is the form of government in which the people (directly or indirectly) rules itself. I.e. ideally, everyone has the same amount of influence on the country's governance.
- fallingknife 5y ago
  Democracy just means that you get to choose. It doesn't mean you get to be happy with your choice.
fulafel 5y ago
Democratic governments are an instrument for people to provide services like a social safety net & healthcare to one another and to collectively engage in stuff like fighting climate change and acting collectively on the world stage by cooperation and treaties with other national governments. If people lose faith in their govenment, they no longer hold it to a high standard, believe in sincerity of government agents, and as a result are less engaged in democratic processes and aren't able to make high quality voting descisions. Sincere do-gooders won't run for office, and instead power-hungry people who can stomach the public distaste for government will run. A spiral of cynicism and distrust also enables actors with antidemocratic agendas like populist parties and strong-man leaders to capture power.
frankfrankfrank 5y ago
I think you are missing the point that it's not at all about that. The title is in essence a cypher or "speaking in code"; it means something rather different to people who have the correct key. I don't mean that in any condescending way, but that is what it is. Just read it as "Declining trust in {condition of control} is denting the {conditioning of control}" … "Declining trust in the rider is denting the obedience of the horse" It's essentially like when parents speak in euphemisms or use substitute words to convey the actual meaning. The difference being though that it's also a kind of activation phrase or trigger phrase to execute a certain preconditioned sequence in different audiences; e.g., "that person gives me stuff when I vote for him, therefore I need to keep being able to vote, which makes democracy a 'good' thing that I need to protect". It's something that certain people have long ago figured out and have a long history of using to manipulate people and things in their favor. Once you start understanding just how sophisticated it all is, it's hard to not be utterly impressed by it. THAT's the real nature of the "simulation" theory and also why the reaction to the "NPC" meme was so harsh and disproportionately swift. When you have people in mental Matrix pods living a life they are not even aware is controlled by outside forces, let alone is a ruse, and you are totally dependent on that system remaining in place to continue living a life of excess and decadence; you will do anything to keep it that way. I hope we will get to the point one day where people realize this … realize that the core that manifested itself as slavery and serfdom and feudalism really never ended, it just pivoted, as we call it here. It may make a lot more sense to people when you read the headline as "Declining trust in the divinity of/dependency on the ruling class is denting the system of psychological control over the serfs" … and you realize it is meant to activate the above sequences that concludes that democracy is "good" because it leads to free stuff.
- antifa 5y ago
  > and also why the reaction to the "NPC" meme was so harsh I don't know how you managed to weave in the private corporation Twitter banning an organized brigade of troll accounts as evidence of anything, but NPC Twitter accounts were used to basically say "people I disagree with aren't real people, they all say the same stuff!". Another way to look at it, the NPC meme is "if everyone is an asshole, it's probably just you" but told from the asshole's point of view.

rogerkirkness 5y ago

Too big, too ineffective. If it was a good use of capital. more people would pay voluntarily higher taxes. No one does because it's where value in the form of capital goes to die.

ravenstine 5y ago
It's essentially the same kind of alienation Marx talks about. Replace "workers" with "taxpayers" and it perfectly describes the situation. Even if taxes did go towards useful things, the average taxpayer is simply too detached from their rewards. There's a lot I don't agree with Marx on, but I think he was right on the aspect of alienation.
- jl2718 5y ago
  There is a difference. Capitalists are not allowed to arrest and/or kill for non-compliance. Well... (noting the date) not anymore at least.
  - lucian1900 5y ago
    Capitalists are in control of the state, so of course they do. Try taking over your workplace, the police will come for you.
    - chii 5y ago
      > Try taking over your workplace aka, try stealing, and you get arrested.
      - lucian1900 5y ago
        So the ruling class (capitalists) have defined what theft is and have armed bodies to enforce it. Profits aren’t somehow defined as theft, despite all value being produced by the labour of workers, who are paid a fraction of the value they produce.

Proven 5y ago

It's shocking that most people still believe public governments ought to exist. Why productive, able-bodied persons to live in a democracy is puzzling. Maybe they've never heard of private government, or think they can beat the system and steal through government redistribution more than they pay in taxes.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Sisiutl 5y ago
Personally I’d rather not turn the country into Somalia, the libertarian archetype.

tengbretson 5y ago

I don't care how high the "democracy score" of the country is. I care about how well people's rights are defended.

p1esk 5y ago
How do you measure that?
- frankfrankfrank 5y ago
  People's, i.e., human rights are rather well established at this point and it is also not a difficult task to monitor and track whether those people/human rights are respected. Even if it could become a rather labour intensive effort if one wanted to, possibly unnecessarily, monitor and track human rights protections and even defence down to the granular/individual level. The real challenge here is not at all a practical one, it's a power problem, those who have the power and control … at all the different levels … have absolutely no interest and jealously will combat the actual tracking and recording of things like whether they are protecting, violating, or defending human rights; because they very well would not fare well under the scrutiny of a truly objective evaluation. Those who have power have zero appreciation for anything that will weaken the perception of their power, because most power is a psychological thing.
frankfrankfrank 5y ago
I totally agree, especially since "democracy" has been perverted into little more than absolute meaningless and even in many ways into something that is the inverse of democracy. But that is also a rather loaded statement to make here, because this community and the stakeholders in particular are extremely invested in things that do not at all defend, let alone even respect humans' rights. And that's all I will say, because there is no expectation that the human right to free expression will be respected here, let alone defended.

ulucs 5y ago

"Declining trust in government" is such a gaslighty way to say "Governments being less trustworthy"

xeromal 5y ago
Gaslighting as a term is so en vogue right now. lol
tomjen3 5y ago
I don't disagree with you that the government is not trustworthy, but it is possible to both perceive it as not trustworthy and have it actually be trustworthy (if not flawless) and have it be totally horrible, but appear totally trustworthy. We should probably try to find the real measure - preferably one that isn't based on recency bias, because the news will always print the worst they can get[0]. [0]: It is important to face the discrimination African Americans feel, and deal with the US police problems, but I have no doubt those problems are a lot smaller today than they were in 1970.
- chii 5y ago
  > find the real measure why not outcomes based? After all, good outcomes are what people want. Directly measuring outcome, rather than indirect methods like "trustworthiness" means those should improve.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

A few examples, In Fort Collins CO the gov't owns 100% of parking. So if you have a parking violation that you haven't payed you are essentially blackballed from parking in the entire city. It's a government monopoly. And there are big brother parking enforcement trucks driving around that do mass readings of license plates with cameras and print tickets on the spot. My home: St Tammany parish LA, has the highest number of prisoners in the state, in a state that has the highest imprisonments in the country, in a country that has the highest imprisonments in the world. My home is the king of imprisonments. A commission was done years ago to determine how many LAWS are here are in the U.S. and they gave up! Google 'how many LAWS are there in the U.S....Meanwhile ignorance of the law is no excuse for citizens. Police everywhere are getting actual military gear. The ACLU has a whole section of their website on militarization of police. Student loans are by federal law unable to be bankrupted out of. (One of the very few loan types like this). And one of the main reasons college tuitions are so inflated compared to the CPI... is the easy availability of student loan money. It's a self re-enforcing problem caused by the government. The company I'm working for is gov't funded and is millions of dollars in the hole and years behind schedule on a project and still the money printer go brrrr. Property taxes are causing people who have lived in their house for generations to lose their house. Zoning controls peoples homes to the minutest detail. You can lose your house for not 'fitting the neighborhood character'... character that was established before ZONING existed to enforce it. Our law enforcement agencies are: the CIA, FBI, NSA, TSA, DEA, ATF, state police,county police, metro police, city police, etc. Just a few examples. The gov't is way out of control in this country in my opinion but we're boiling the frog so people don't notice the problems and gradual restriction of their freedoms. The govt also has the appearance of being 'for the people' because we vote for it.. meanwhile lobbying and private interest funding of politicians has increased massively after citizens united... and gerrymandering is so commonplace that politicians basically draw their own districts.

selimthegrim 5y ago
I might be staying in Bush for a while so I hope I don't run into the fascist Slidell police on the way (who one time made an acquaintance of mine jump up and down on a glass beer bottle on the side of the road until it broke just to torment her and threatened to charge her with theft for having a Waffle House menu in the back of her car even though she worked there as a waitress) Also heard some stories about Livingston PSO but can't repeat them online.

roenxi 5y ago

The real mystery for me that while trust in government remains very low & partisan fear of the other is presumably at all time highs ... at no point does anyone manage to make and carry the argument that the government is too powerful. Instead the US government keeps growing, both in the responsibilities it takes over and the share of the GDP it represents.

brightball 5y ago
Only Libertarians it seems
- mistermann 5y ago
  A few others here and there, like Curtis Yarvin: https://graymirror.substack.com/ https://graymirror.substack.com/
- karaterobot 5y ago
  I wonder why you're being downvoted. Sometimes HN is funny. I'm not a libertarian, but it seems like one of the things people criticize (and often make fun of) them for is consistently wanting smaller government. So, with certain marginal exceptions, your statement is essentially true, and I think it's worth pointing out in this case.
Retric 5y ago
Saying we want less government power generally means we want to change rules rather than actually reduce power. They don’t want to actually reduce governments ability to make war or jail people etc. Even in cases where total government power is theoretically reduced say outlawing municipal broadband it’s less about reducing overall power as it is leveraging control in one area and extending it to another. In effect it’s a power grab at the state level at the expense of local governments. The state can of course change their mind at any time. On the other side of the isle when legalizing pot, it’s not considered enough to simply make it legal and move on. Suddenly they replace one law with hundreds by micro managing exactly what’s allowed and what hoops people are forced through. In effect it’s an extension of government power into a previously unregulated though illegal industry.

daenz 5y ago

Why doesn't it seem like the government scales with the population? It seems to always require more resources. In fact, I don't think I've heard of a case where some government initiative requires less resources and downsizes itself (I would welcome being proven wrong). There is a perverse incentive in government to use all of the "resources" (tax dollars) that they have access to. Normally this kind of incentive is counter balanced by competition (the competitor that can do more with less has a better chance of winning), but in this case, the government is a monopoly. They have no competitor threatening to usurp their role. And where is the accountability? When things aren't getting accomplished with tax dollars, the answer is always "more." Who is holding the spenders accountable for us?

patcon 5y ago
> Why doesn't it seem like the government scales with the population? My take on this is that it's because government doesn't scale in a simple way with the biological population size, unless we understand government as simply serving the biological needs of the population. The government serves the noosphere: kinda like a biosphere, but the sum of all ideas, reason, language, memes, thought and innovation of the society. The noosphere just happens to live [mostly] in the biological minds of the population, but it's not growing linearly like population is, and is probably becoming more complex and higher dimensional in a nonlinear way. The world doesn't just accrue humans, but rather it accrues (often via tech augmentations) the capacity of each human to process more, and so the world complexifies (is that a word? ha) Anyhow, not saying this is how it should be, or needs to be, but I def am not personally surprised or indignant about government failing to see scaling benefits we see elsewhere. I also suspect this is related to how government's in charge of many more things than corporations, which often can't be re-classified as externalities I dunno maybe I'm wrong-headed here * shrug *
trident1000 5y ago
Theoretically there will be a point (if not already) where its govt employees and contractors vs private citizens not tied into the system in a monetary way. If you work for the govt in one way or another and your salary depends on it, or you're getting a handout, you're more likely to vote in a way that supports big government, programs, and the political body that enabled it. A natural mechanism of taxing more, printing more, and handing that money to payrolls, contractors, and handout recipients who vote for it is a persistent trend and probably a systemic risk for a functioning private sector. And we see this in countries like Russia for instance where working for the govt means you have, while being a private citizen with no ties means you're most likely a have not.

throewr4u234 5y ago

The Indian kleptocracy has been stealing from people ever since its inception as the East India Company, or indeed as the Delhi sultanate - once the capital was moved from the Company HQ in Kolkata to Delhi we got a chimera that inherits the properties of both - an insane kleptocracy, with astonishing propaganda apparatus, and a strange politically Islamic inclination derived from nominally Hindu 'elite' retainers of the brutal Mughals and the British regimes. That people consider it a democracy is itself a joke - I can't wait for Delhi to fall (which it inevitably will, once the thieving babus and judges have nothing left to suck dry and flee to Europe and US, like Pakistan's generals). Democracy in India sucks - I pay thousands of dollars of taxes all so as to wade through sewage filled roads and for these morons to invoke communal hatred for votes day in-day out, all while nothing changes and everything becomes worse and more electronically controlled. Worse still, I can't even move to the other English-speaking countries, considering the level of visceral hatred there for Hindus. (Forgive the rant.)

karaterobot 5y ago

It's worth noting that this measure is almost entirely meaningless, and created in large part as a way to get people to subscribe to The Economist. That's not to say that it isn't worth monitoring people's trust in government, civil liberties, political culture, etc., just that there's no really good way to do that.

ryandrake 5y ago

I don't trust the government because it's not really representative. The founders put so much effort into making sure congress was regionally representative, where states have their representatives and districts have representatives, etc. But nothing ensures that congress is demographically representative. Congress is 40% lawyers [1] whereas the national lawyer population os 0.2% [2]. This is actually much better than in the mid 19th century where 80% of Congress were lawyers. About 52% of Congress are millionaires, whereas only ~7% or so of the public are millionaires [3]. Even though a record number of women serve in Congress, it's still 27% compared to roughly 50% of the public. Around 61% of Congress is 50 years old or older [5], whereas the number for the US population is around 34%. The people who claim to represent us in Congress are not really representative of us at all. 1: https://thepractice.law.harvard.edu/article/declining-dominance/ https://thepractice.law.harvard.edu/article/declining-domina... 2: https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2018/05/new_aba_data_reveals/ https://www.americanbar.org/news/abanews/aba-news-archives/2... 3: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/08/fact-check-meme-partly-false-millionaires-u-s-congress/7589391002/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/06/08/fac... 4: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/15/a-record-number-of-women-are-serving-in-the-117th-congress/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/01/15/a-record-nu... 5: https://www.legistorm.com/congress_by_numbers.html https://www.legistorm.com/congress_by_numbers.html

_spduchamp 5y ago

If you are not versed in the benefits of electoral reform, you along with the majority of the population, are living in a delusion that politicians and political parties are the central problem. It's the voting system that is the central problem. First-Past-The-Post, or any winner takes all election deeply distorts election results and worse, it prevents many people from even running in the first place because of the accusations of vote splitting. There are better systems of voting used all around the world that create less divisive governments. The challenge is how to make electoral reform happen. Those who are elected with FPTP are in a conflict of interest with electoral reform, and referendums are often divisive and can be hijacked by people looking to maintain the status quo. Electoral reform is complicated and every system has its flaws, so ideally you convene a Citizens' Assembly (https://nationalcitizensassembly.ca/ https://nationalcitizensassembly.ca/) to have an informed and deliberative process to make the recommendations on electoral reform. This process works for local, state/provincial, and federal levels. If you wanted this in your city, you could get people to call on your city councillors to make this happen locally, and eventually once people have more experience with things like Single Transferable Vote, or whatever variant works best for your constituency, then people will want it for other levels of government. BTW, this also works for other small elections like condo boards, school council, etc. Anything is better than First-Past-The-Post.