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Indeed, government regulation is decried mostly because of all the cases where it got polluted by special interests, instead of following the interests of gener

• Gigachad 7mo ago
  This is mostly because Americans keep electing total morons.
  • nine_k 7mo ago
    Not that most other nations do dramatically better, alas.
    • Gigachad 7mo ago
      There's actually few that are this bad. Generally we refer to them as developing countries or war torn.
  • RajT88 7mo ago
    I would actually suggest this is symptomatic of the real problem: money in politics. Elected officials (and some appointed, like SCOTUS) keep changing laws and precedents to allow more and more money in politics. They can't quit all that dark money - without a lot of funding, you don't get elected. Usually the best funded candidate wins. There was an anonymous oped from a congressman some years back which bemoaned the reality - that 60% of their time was dedicated to meeting with donors for reelection campaigns instead of working on real problems.
    • alsetmusic 7mo ago
      When one party will violate every norm and law to the greatest extent that they can get away with it, it's pretty much impossible to compete with them. I want good things for people. I can't compete with fascists because they will cheat and lie and employ violence. My positive intent is almost impossible to out thwart their dirty deeds if they are willing to break laws / change laws and I won't.
      • deleted 7mo ago
        [deleted]
      • throwaway85825 7mo ago
        There's only one party and it's color is green. Donors know red or blue doesn't matter, so they give to both.
        • gcanyon 7mo ago
          That's just an unreal characterization that plays into the hands of the "red" team. One side has put up presidents and congressional leadership that worked (mostly, I'm not saying they're perfect) within the traditional framework of the system. The other has put up a president who literally does not understand the meaning of the word "no," expects that everyone will let him do pretty much anything he wants, and a congress that agrees with him. Notably, that side was different in 2000, 1988, 1980, etc. -- not perfect by any stretch, but not this. The difference matters.
        • hypeatei 7mo ago
          Do you want another authoritarian, corrupt, cult of personality leader like Trump? Proclaiming "both sides" and ignoring nuance like you're doing is how no one gets held accountable for the real harms that are taking place. Please stop holding water for the MAGAs/GOP.
          • throwaway85825 7mo ago
            America has had even more corrupt/authoritarian/cult of personality leaders than Trump. They were younger and their brains still worked so they did way more damage than trump too. Most Americans just don't learn much history so can't compare.
            • hypeatei 7mo ago
              > America has had even more corrupt/authoritarian/cult of personality leaders than Trump. Like who?
    • sehansen 7mo ago
      Part of the reason money has such a big influence on elections is that first-past-the-post election system you have over there in the US. When voters have to make a binary choice between two participants, low-information campaigns like hit-pieces are able to make a big difference and are cheap to communicate en-masse. When voters have a actual choice between four parties on the left and four parties on the right, hit-pieces will only make a voter switch from, say, one left-wing party to another. So since the return-on-investment on political advertising is much lower, much less money will be spent on it and there will be less of it. And what will be there will be of higher quality.
      • nandomrumber 7mo ago
        If any of what you just said was true in practice, Australia would be a gleaming example of how democracies with strong civil society organisations can be run. Instead, Australia is best described as pigs at the slops trough. A nation that seems to only want to vote for leaders who have a public humiliation kink.
    • MisterTea 7mo ago
      > that 60% of their time was dedicated to meeting with donors for reelection campaigns instead of working on real problems. This is the same story told by Tom Morello, guitarist of Rage Against the Machine (at the end of the early life section): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Morello#Early_life https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Morello#Early_life Key line: "He had to compromise his entire being every day."
    • sandworm101 7mo ago
      Yes yes yes. Dark money. Nepotism. Corrupt courts. Gerrymandering .... anything to deflect from the fact that so many voters still put thier mark beside the biggest idiot. And i mean that literally. American voters like tall people. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heights_of_presidents_and_presidential_candidates_of_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heights_of_presidents_and_pres...
      • ToucanLoucan 7mo ago
        They're all problems and they all contribute to the reality of our government being unable to actually do anything beyond tax cuts. * People elect morons because we have been slowly destroying our education system since the 50's and we can barely turn out anyone who can think worth a shit. That's by design, as local elections overwhelmingly swing Republican, and Republicans on balance gain from an ignorant electorate. * Additionally, we are now bombarded with "information" from wake to sleep every single day, and beyond the actual problems which are already stressful enough, we also have a whole bunch of made up culture war nonsense that mainstream and alternative media loves to discuss, both to fill airtime and because researching and covering nonsense is far less work, less legally actionable, and garners more attention overall. Information overload affects people too and makes them more likely to choose easy/quick things. * Dark money is also a HUGE issue because it permits capital to influence elections like never before. It's no coincidence all of this shit got turbocharged after Citizens United. * Gerrymandering is also a huge, huge issue wherein Democrat votes are simply disregarded or packed into single districts, which helps local elections shift further right constantly. * The courts are also hideously corrupt. The Supreme Court is utterly failing to reign in the Trump administration on everything short of wiping their asses with the constitution, and that's not shocking considering how many of them were appointed by Trump and confirmed by the inept Congress. And then any time Democrats do manage to acquire something resembling power, they have so many fires to put out that they can barely get us back to an even keel before another "outsider" dumbass comes in and starts screwing it up again.
        • raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
          People aren’t electing “morons” out of ignorance. They are electing people that hate the same people they hate. You are blaming ignorance where it is active malice.
  • gmerc 7mo ago
    … and legalized bribes as lobbying.
  • varispeed 7mo ago
    It is also because corruption is called lobbying in America. Corporate lobbying should be illegal and punished severely (including capital punishment for directors and confiscation of the corporation).
    • cromka 7mo ago
      This. Came here to say this. People completely forget about this supposed nuance when comparing US and Europe, but this is exactly what leads to fundamentally different outcomes in legislation and, by extension, people's expectations of their governments. That frog is long-time cooked. As an ex-expat to US, I never could stop smh over how Americans are not making it a number 1 issue for themselves. Private prison, private healthcare, gun industry, all types of small industries keep US government in their pockets and the society, as a whole, in a complete gridlock, unable to meet its actual expectations.
  • analog8374 7mo ago
    People believe whatever authority tells them. It's one of those bug/feature things.
    • autoexec 7mo ago
      People believe whatever they want to be true. If people were just slaves to authority the US would have far fewer covid deaths. Some people really are bootlickers, but even then they tend to choose whose boots they bend over for. It's rarely blind obedience to authority itself.
  • raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
    It’s not like “privacy first EU” didn’t just try to pass Chat Control
    • vrganj 7mo ago
      The EU did not pass Chat Control is the key message here. Your framing is strange.
      • raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
        And only 40% of people still support Trump. But the analogy is the same. If you have 10 friends and ask them where they want to eat for dinner and six say let’s go to an Italian restaurant and 4 say “let’s kill Bob and eat him”, you still have a shitty group of friends. It only takes one controversy to tip the scales. All governments have a propensity to want more power.
        • vrganj 7mo ago
          The analogy is not the same. Trump was elected. Chat Control failed its vote.
        • swiftcoder 7mo ago
          > All governments have a propensity to want more power. Some governments have more effective checks-and-balances than others. The EU is a much looser confederation than the US, with significantly more power still invested in the member states (many of whom themselves are also loose confederations of semi-autonomous provinces...)
          • raw_anon_1111 7mo ago
            And let terrorism happen to any number of the member states. They would demand Chat Control being passed
            • swiftcoder 7mo ago