5 ms·

There is no such thing like "bad government" and "good government". I mean - it really depends on people's views, therefore we must not blissfully put our data

There is no such thing like "bad government" and "good government". I mean - it really depends on people's views, therefore we must not blissfully put our data into govt hands because "they will protect us from terrorists and child rapists". What they will do, actually, is that for sure they will abuse innocent citizens at some point of time. They will. Even if they don't, they will. Or maybe they are doing it right now and they need more control to make it easier

marcofloriano 1y ago
No. When the government fails to delivery what people need (not necessarily wants), you have a bad government. When gangs and bandits (or drugs, or diseases, or whatever) takes on the street, it's not about people's view, it's just bad stuff that the government need to address or there's no point on having a government.
- pona-a 1y ago
  The 50s~70s are idealized by many as an American golden age, despite higher reported crime. Law enforcement back then did not have AI-powered surveillance camera networks, widely deployed IMEI stingrays, private data-brokers, or the ability to remotely activate any phone's microphone with 0-click RCE.
  - crumpled 1y ago
    What's the 0-click RCE thing?
    - dns_snek 1y ago
      A type of exploit (Remote Code Execution) that can be used to secretly infect your device with spyware without requiring any interaction from you (0-click).
    - pona-a 1y ago
      Pegasus [0] and the like — commercial spyware updated with the latest exploit chains, developed in-house or purchased from markets like Zerodium, sold as terrorism-prevention tools to such trustworthy states as Russia, UAE, and Hungary. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  Agreed. There are problems that governments solve and if a government can't solve them it's a bad one. Maybe consensus shifts (or goes away) about which problems are the domain of government, buy ultimately it's about efficacy against those. The rest is a distraction.
- jbstack 1y ago
  Aside from the fact that there's a subjective definition problem here (how do we decide what people "need"?), I think this an unrealistic view. By this definition, every government that has ever existed or ever will exist is a "bad" government because no government can ever tackle every single problem 100% of the time. Many problems are extremely difficult to solve (e.g. global warming), and others simply cannot be solved without creating other problems. For example, people "need" access to healthcare, but there's essentially an unlimited amount of money you could spend to keep improving healthcare (e.g. opting for increasingly expensive treatments with diminishing returns on health outcomes). The more money you allocate to healthcare, the less you have available to spend on other things that people "need". Sure, you can tax more up to a point, but eventually that tap runs dry and you're forced to reallocate existing resources. As another example, people "need" criminals to be punished in order to be able to live in a safe a crime-free society. People also "need" to not be put in prison when they are innocent. But you can never be 100% sure that a convicted criminal actually committed the crime. Locking up criminals implies by necessity that you will also lock up some innocent people. No government can solve both of these problems simultaneously which means they are all "bad". Even the most competent "good" government ultimately has to select among which "bad" things it is going to allow to continue and which it will solve.
  - danans 1y ago
    > Sure, you can tax more up to a point, but eventually that tap runs dry and you're forced to reallocate existing resources. Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less. If the tap is dry, it isn't because of over-taxation - it's because there's a reservoir of wealth hoarded by the relatively few. A even cursory glance at the trajectory of wealth distribution will make that clear.
    - jbstack 1y ago
      > Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less Who is "we"? We're talking about governments in general ("good" vs "bad" ones), and I have no idea what jurisdiction you are referring to. In any case, I didn't say the tap is dry. I said if you keep raising taxes it will eventually run dry. Or to put it another way, taxes are not an unlimited resource that you can keep increasing as much as you'd like. At some point you'll hit a ceiling where raising taxes any further doesn't produce additional tax revenue. For example, as you raise income tax rates, people have less incentive to advance their careers (e.g. by chasing promotions or improving their skills), and people have more incentive to leave the jurisdiction and go somewhere with lower taxes. Up to a point, the increase in tax rates produces a net extra revenue for the government. Above a certain point, the number of people who stop paying taxes (e.g. by leaving or by working less) outweighs the gains from those who continue to pay. This is why you'll rarely see any government with excessively high top-bracket tax rates (e.g. 60 - 100%), because it results in tax losses.
- dizhn 1y ago
  "people" being their own citizens. Many governments do not limit their activities to their own people and they have almost opposite rules for their own people vs others. Not that the picture is so clear for their own people either.
- jMyles 1y ago
  > there's no point on having a government Can we just use this as our point of agreement?
- netdevphoenix 1y ago
  This sounds extremely simplistic. Countries are isolated universes. Actions of a government in a country affect other countries. Some problems require multiple governments to work together (see global warming and supply chain issues). Different governments have different priorities at any given time even if they all have roughly the same absolute list of issues
Rygian 1y ago
> therefore we must not blissfully put our data into govt hands Extending this reasoning, we should not blissfully put our data into anyone's hands. Government mission at least have a veneer of public servants, as opposed to private hands whose only real motivation is fiduciary obligations towards the shareholders.
- WinstonSmith84 1y ago
  it's about the interests of each party. The interest of a government is to control its citizen, either now or at some point in the future. The interest of a private company is to make more money. Between the two, I certainly prefer a private company attempting to monetize my data rather than a government trying to control me either now or in the future. And let's stop the bs about "public servants", even in the EU which is maybe the most democratic bloc in the world, governments are trying to impose a chat control (among other laws restricting freedom). It's just in the nature of governments to control its population
  - Rygian 1y ago
    You missed a spot: In most situations, private companies will share any data they have about you with the government anyway. And can be compelled by law to do it. So going private is net loss.
IlikeKitties 1y ago
> There is no such thing like "bad government" and "good government". Of course there is, compare the government of Finland to that of North Korea. Just because there are shades of grey and human institutions are generally susceptible to corruption greed an power politics doesn't mean there aren't governments that are different not only in degree but in kind.
- codys 1y ago
  It is strange how folks are refusing to admit they can even _evaluate things_ in a bunch of cases. We're seeing that here, but I've also noticed it in other posts on HN: a disagreement with the position of the article is framed not as a distinct examination which comes to different conclusions, but instead commenters claim the post author was foolish in even attempting to evaluate the thing the post is about. To some degree it feels like bits and pieces of anti-intellectualism getting into folks brains: rejecting the idea that folks can think about things at all.
  - themaninthedark 1y ago
    It feels like a nihilistic take partnered with the view that everyone has a valid viewpoint.
- isaacremuant 1y ago
  Finland will approve shit like chat control, age verification or covid lockdowns against civil rights. Whataboutism is bullshit. Power corrupts. It doesn't matter if you idealize a government, it's still composed of people who get compromised by money, power and general corruption.
squigz 1y ago
I think this sort of thinking is symptomatic of something very problematic: that if a government doesn't align with your views, it's a bad one. We've forgotten that, in order for a civilization to survive, with many, many viewpoints, we must compromise sometimes.
Anonyneko 1y ago
It's an interesting argument in theory, but in practice the government in my country of origin actively searches through people's phones to find evidence of wrongthink (e.g. donations or incriminating social media activity), for which they sentence people to incredibly long prison terms. The latest example: https://en.zona.media/article/2025/08/27/irin https://en.zona.media/article/2025/08/27/irin That said, no matter how secure GrapheneOS may be, for this particular threat a permanently clean phone is a necessity.
- IlikeKitties 1y ago
  If the reaction to "I'm not unlocking my phone" is being beaten and put into a gulag, no technical solution will help. But countries that have fallen that far off the path are not worth saving anyway.
mordnis 1y ago
Maybe we should have no government, because they always have some information on us which can be abused
rangerelf 1y ago
You're being willfully dense, I do not believe it's up for debate. Governments that public force to kidnap, torture, murder, "disappear" their own citizens, are bad. Plenty of examples to go around, both historically and currently: China, Russia, México, North Korea, Belarus, the balcans, plenty of African governments, etc. It shouldn't matter that "34% of my neighbors" want me sent to a concentration camp, personally I wouldn't want to end up there. The example you're giving, the whole "it really depends on people's views, ..." is a bad government. And the truth is that it's easy to be a good government: don't be bad. Edit: fixed a word.
- chuckSu 1y ago
  You’ve got quite a list of examples there. In 2025 that list of examples should include the US and Israel
  - themaninthedark 1y ago
    Try earlier than that for the US: >In 2015, the Guardian revealed Chicago Police had allegedly employed torture and days-long unlawful detention at the secretive “black site”-like Homan Square facility And the federal government knew and participated. >“When we’re doing joint operations with the federal government, it’s generally — it’s under the supervision of an Assistant U.S. Attorney and they’re merely using our facility because it’s more convenient." https://thegrayzone.com/2025/03/15/feds-used-chicago-black-site/ https://thegrayzone.com/2025/03/15/feds-used-chicago-black-s...
- jbstack 1y ago
  Ok, so how do you categorise a country like Norway (typically viewed as a "good" country by most people) which knowingly invests money from its sovereign fund into companies which are linked to the Israeli military which (in many people's view) is currently causing genocide and widespread starvation? At what point does the "good" cross over into the "bad"? Is it ok that having a highly regarded government comes at the price of dead children? How about the sizeable group of people (e.g. in the US and Israel) who don't believe there is any genocide at all? Doesn't that make the whole thing subjective?
KyleBerezin 1y ago
Or more likely, regardless of intentions, they will accidentally let it fall into a bad actors hands.
tomtomistaken 1y ago
Time for a Bitcoin moment, but for governments.
- DANmode 1y ago
  DAOs?
  - tomtomistaken 1y ago
    DAO based maybe, yes.
foofoo12 1y ago
> it really depends on people's views. No it does not. It depends on peoples morals.
- dragonwriter 1y ago
  > > it really depends on people's views. > No it does not. It depends on peoples morals. Morals are a kind of views.
  - foofoo12 1y ago
    It's the fundamental principles of right and wrong. Morals. It's not just views or kind of.
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      Beliefs about what is fundamentally right and wrong are, in fact, views.
      - attila-lendvai 1y ago
        then child rape is just a clash of views... you sure you really want to go down that road?
        dragonwriter 1y ago
        > then child rape is just a clash of views Who said “just”? I'm arguing against minimizing conflicts of views as inherently insignificant, low consequence things.
      - foofoo12 1y ago
        You can call them views, and you can call your tap water a solution of dihydrogen monoxide with contaminants. It isn't helpful.
breppp 1y ago
Only someone who never lived under a bad government would claim all governments are equally bad. Only someone who never has seen war would think they need no defense
Razengan 1y ago
In the past, whenever I read someone say stuff like what I myself say down below, I put them down as a crackpot: But as time goes by and I travel the world, I find it's hard to deny that there are and always were distinct classes within human civilization, though the lines may be blurred here and there, and almost everything within every human society serves to preserve those classes, whether as the direct intentional goal or as a convenient side effect. "Govern" is to "rule" Other commenters mention the lack of government, and pockets of chaos where gangs/bandits/warlords/disasters run rampant, but those too are different classes versus each other, or vacuums where classes have yet to [re]form.

marcofloriano 1y ago

No. When the government fails to delivery what people need (not necessarily wants), you have a bad government. When gangs and bandits (or drugs, or diseases, or whatever) takes on the street, it's not about people's view, it's just bad stuff that the government need to address or there's no point on having a government.

pona-a 1y ago
The 50s~70s are idealized by many as an American golden age, despite higher reported crime. Law enforcement back then did not have AI-powered surveillance camera networks, widely deployed IMEI stingrays, private data-brokers, or the ability to remotely activate any phone's microphone with 0-click RCE.
- crumpled 1y ago
  What's the 0-click RCE thing?
  - dns_snek 1y ago
    A type of exploit (Remote Code Execution) that can be used to secretly infect your device with spyware without requiring any interaction from you (0-click).
  - pona-a 1y ago
    Pegasus [0] and the like — commercial spyware updated with the latest exploit chains, developed in-house or purchased from markets like Zerodium, sold as terrorism-prevention tools to such trustworthy states as Russia, UAE, and Hungary. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
Agreed. There are problems that governments solve and if a government can't solve them it's a bad one. Maybe consensus shifts (or goes away) about which problems are the domain of government, buy ultimately it's about efficacy against those. The rest is a distraction.
jbstack 1y ago
Aside from the fact that there's a subjective definition problem here (how do we decide what people "need"?), I think this an unrealistic view. By this definition, every government that has ever existed or ever will exist is a "bad" government because no government can ever tackle every single problem 100% of the time. Many problems are extremely difficult to solve (e.g. global warming), and others simply cannot be solved without creating other problems. For example, people "need" access to healthcare, but there's essentially an unlimited amount of money you could spend to keep improving healthcare (e.g. opting for increasingly expensive treatments with diminishing returns on health outcomes). The more money you allocate to healthcare, the less you have available to spend on other things that people "need". Sure, you can tax more up to a point, but eventually that tap runs dry and you're forced to reallocate existing resources. As another example, people "need" criminals to be punished in order to be able to live in a safe a crime-free society. People also "need" to not be put in prison when they are innocent. But you can never be 100% sure that a convicted criminal actually committed the crime. Locking up criminals implies by necessity that you will also lock up some innocent people. No government can solve both of these problems simultaneously which means they are all "bad". Even the most competent "good" government ultimately has to select among which "bad" things it is going to allow to continue and which it will solve.
- danans 1y ago
  > Sure, you can tax more up to a point, but eventually that tap runs dry and you're forced to reallocate existing resources. Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less. If the tap is dry, it isn't because of over-taxation - it's because there's a reservoir of wealth hoarded by the relatively few. A even cursory glance at the trajectory of wealth distribution will make that clear.
  - jbstack 1y ago
    > Since the 1980s, we have been consistently taxing less Who is "we"? We're talking about governments in general ("good" vs "bad" ones), and I have no idea what jurisdiction you are referring to. In any case, I didn't say the tap is dry. I said if you keep raising taxes it will eventually run dry. Or to put it another way, taxes are not an unlimited resource that you can keep increasing as much as you'd like. At some point you'll hit a ceiling where raising taxes any further doesn't produce additional tax revenue. For example, as you raise income tax rates, people have less incentive to advance their careers (e.g. by chasing promotions or improving their skills), and people have more incentive to leave the jurisdiction and go somewhere with lower taxes. Up to a point, the increase in tax rates produces a net extra revenue for the government. Above a certain point, the number of people who stop paying taxes (e.g. by leaving or by working less) outweighs the gains from those who continue to pay. This is why you'll rarely see any government with excessively high top-bracket tax rates (e.g. 60 - 100%), because it results in tax losses.
dizhn 1y ago
"people" being their own citizens. Many governments do not limit their activities to their own people and they have almost opposite rules for their own people vs others. Not that the picture is so clear for their own people either.
jMyles 1y ago
> there's no point on having a government Can we just use this as our point of agreement?
netdevphoenix 1y ago
This sounds extremely simplistic. Countries are isolated universes. Actions of a government in a country affect other countries. Some problems require multiple governments to work together (see global warming and supply chain issues). Different governments have different priorities at any given time even if they all have roughly the same absolute list of issues

Rygian 1y ago

> therefore we must not blissfully put our data into govt hands Extending this reasoning, we should not blissfully put our data into anyone's hands. Government mission at least have a veneer of public servants, as opposed to private hands whose only real motivation is fiduciary obligations towards the shareholders.

WinstonSmith84 1y ago
it's about the interests of each party. The interest of a government is to control its citizen, either now or at some point in the future. The interest of a private company is to make more money. Between the two, I certainly prefer a private company attempting to monetize my data rather than a government trying to control me either now or in the future. And let's stop the bs about "public servants", even in the EU which is maybe the most democratic bloc in the world, governments are trying to impose a chat control (among other laws restricting freedom). It's just in the nature of governments to control its population
- Rygian 1y ago
  You missed a spot: In most situations, private companies will share any data they have about you with the government anyway. And can be compelled by law to do it. So going private is net loss.

IlikeKitties 1y ago

> There is no such thing like "bad government" and "good government". Of course there is, compare the government of Finland to that of North Korea. Just because there are shades of grey and human institutions are generally susceptible to corruption greed an power politics doesn't mean there aren't governments that are different not only in degree but in kind.

codys 1y ago
It is strange how folks are refusing to admit they can even _evaluate things_ in a bunch of cases. We're seeing that here, but I've also noticed it in other posts on HN: a disagreement with the position of the article is framed not as a distinct examination which comes to different conclusions, but instead commenters claim the post author was foolish in even attempting to evaluate the thing the post is about. To some degree it feels like bits and pieces of anti-intellectualism getting into folks brains: rejecting the idea that folks can think about things at all.
- themaninthedark 1y ago
  It feels like a nihilistic take partnered with the view that everyone has a valid viewpoint.
isaacremuant 1y ago
Finland will approve shit like chat control, age verification or covid lockdowns against civil rights. Whataboutism is bullshit. Power corrupts. It doesn't matter if you idealize a government, it's still composed of people who get compromised by money, power and general corruption.

squigz 1y ago

I think this sort of thinking is symptomatic of something very problematic: that if a government doesn't align with your views, it's a bad one. We've forgotten that, in order for a civilization to survive, with many, many viewpoints, we must compromise sometimes.

Anonyneko 1y ago

It's an interesting argument in theory, but in practice the government in my country of origin actively searches through people's phones to find evidence of wrongthink (e.g. donations or incriminating social media activity), for which they sentence people to incredibly long prison terms. The latest example: https://en.zona.media/article/2025/08/27/irin https://en.zona.media/article/2025/08/27/irin That said, no matter how secure GrapheneOS may be, for this particular threat a permanently clean phone is a necessity.

IlikeKitties 1y ago
If the reaction to "I'm not unlocking my phone" is being beaten and put into a gulag, no technical solution will help. But countries that have fallen that far off the path are not worth saving anyway.

mordnis 1y ago

Maybe we should have no government, because they always have some information on us which can be abused

rangerelf 1y ago

You're being willfully dense, I do not believe it's up for debate. Governments that public force to kidnap, torture, murder, "disappear" their own citizens, are bad. Plenty of examples to go around, both historically and currently: China, Russia, México, North Korea, Belarus, the balcans, plenty of African governments, etc. It shouldn't matter that "34% of my neighbors" want me sent to a concentration camp, personally I wouldn't want to end up there. The example you're giving, the whole "it really depends on people's views, ..." is a bad government. And the truth is that it's easy to be a good government: don't be bad. Edit: fixed a word.

chuckSu 1y ago
You’ve got quite a list of examples there. In 2025 that list of examples should include the US and Israel
- themaninthedark 1y ago
  Try earlier than that for the US: >In 2015, the Guardian revealed Chicago Police had allegedly employed torture and days-long unlawful detention at the secretive “black site”-like Homan Square facility And the federal government knew and participated. >“When we’re doing joint operations with the federal government, it’s generally — it’s under the supervision of an Assistant U.S. Attorney and they’re merely using our facility because it’s more convenient." https://thegrayzone.com/2025/03/15/feds-used-chicago-black-site/ https://thegrayzone.com/2025/03/15/feds-used-chicago-black-s...
jbstack 1y ago
Ok, so how do you categorise a country like Norway (typically viewed as a "good" country by most people) which knowingly invests money from its sovereign fund into companies which are linked to the Israeli military which (in many people's view) is currently causing genocide and widespread starvation? At what point does the "good" cross over into the "bad"? Is it ok that having a highly regarded government comes at the price of dead children? How about the sizeable group of people (e.g. in the US and Israel) who don't believe there is any genocide at all? Doesn't that make the whole thing subjective?

KyleBerezin 1y ago

Or more likely, regardless of intentions, they will accidentally let it fall into a bad actors hands.

tomtomistaken 1y ago

Time for a Bitcoin moment, but for governments.

DANmode 1y ago
DAOs?
- tomtomistaken 1y ago
  DAO based maybe, yes.

foofoo12 1y ago

> it really depends on people's views. No it does not. It depends on peoples morals.

dragonwriter 1y ago
> > it really depends on people's views. > No it does not. It depends on peoples morals. Morals are a kind of views.
- foofoo12 1y ago
  It's the fundamental principles of right and wrong. Morals. It's not just views or kind of.
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    Beliefs about what is fundamentally right and wrong are, in fact, views.
    - attila-lendvai 1y ago
      then child rape is just a clash of views... you sure you really want to go down that road?
      - dragonwriter 1y ago
        > then child rape is just a clash of views Who said “just”? I'm arguing against minimizing conflicts of views as inherently insignificant, low consequence things.
    - foofoo12 1y ago
      You can call them views, and you can call your tap water a solution of dihydrogen monoxide with contaminants. It isn't helpful.

breppp 1y ago

Only someone who never lived under a bad government would claim all governments are equally bad. Only someone who never has seen war would think they need no defense

Razengan 1y ago

In the past, whenever I read someone say stuff like what I myself say down below, I put them down as a crackpot: But as time goes by and I travel the world, I find it's hard to deny that there are and always were distinct classes within human civilization, though the lines may be blurred here and there, and almost everything within every human society serves to preserve those classes, whether as the direct intentional goal or as a convenient side effect. "Govern" is to "rule" Other commenters mention the lack of government, and pockets of chaos where gangs/bandits/warlords/disasters run rampant, but those too are different classes versus each other, or vacuums where classes have yet to [re]form.