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> But this government [...] I'm hearing a lot of this kind of thing. "Oh if only it was a different government". I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government

> But this government [...] I'm hearing a lot of this kind of thing. "Oh if only it was a different government". I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. This is the whole problem with government involvement! I don't think that message is getting through, but it's the real lesson that should be learned here.

kristjansson 4mo ago
It’s actually ok to be more critical of a government that’s capricious than one that merely advances polices one disagrees with
FunHearing3443 4mo ago
I agree. This situation was created in the first place because both parties and their constituents have been OK giving the executive branch more and more power as long as it benefits “their team”.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- Guvante 4mo ago
  The left has been complaining about the executive branch over reach for quite a long time. Hell as much as the drone strikes get simplified down to "Obama killed people without trials" the main complaint at the time was that he was acting without Congressional approval. Democrats shouldn't have responded to Congress getting blocked up by Republicans realizing that they could make "ineffective government" a self fulfilling prophecy but pretending everyone is okay with it isn't accurate either.
- jmyeet 4mo ago
  Saying "both sides" doesn't make you enlightened. It's either intellectual laziness or intentional dishonesty. I absolutely abhor "bothsidesism". One party is rounding up people and putting them into concentration camps while doing a mass deportation. That same party is trying to end birthright citizenship. That same party set the world order ablaze with a completely pointless tariffs regime. That same party started a war in Iran to please their donors and the Israeli PM, a war that is going to (IMHO) go down as the biggest strategic blunder in US history. One party doesn't want half the population to have bodily autonomy. In fact some of them have openly said they want to hand out the death penalty for getting an abortion. One party has doubled the national debt in a decade to hand out massive tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and also gutting essential services. One party has a president credibly implicated with Jeffrey Epstein. That entire party bar a handful of individuals (who have been punished for their "disloyalty") have gone to great lengths to hide the evidence of that malfeasance. One party is killing people essentially to manipulate the market with repeated lies about an "imminent deal". One party is wholesale engaged in voter suppression and election rigging. It's the same party for all of these things. What the other party is guilty of is being complicit in all of the above by refusing to oppose it. Still bad but nowhere near the same.
  - rozal 4mo ago
    [dead]
JimsonYang 4mo ago
When you get big enough, the govt is always going to want to get involved. We've seen how social media sites have always been in contention with govs regarding free speech even tho theyre fundamentally a way for other people to socialize with one another
evilturnip 4mo ago
Of course the tired follow-up: “But if the government was functioning properly it would only do the things I want”.
- Cookingboy 4mo ago
  And the logical interpretation of that statement would be "if a government doesn't do things I want, it's not functioning properly".
  - 9dev 4mo ago
    Seems a little slippery-slopey to me
schrototo 4mo ago
But in democracy you do get to say which government you want.
- flanked-evergl 4mo ago
  US is in almost no way democratic. There is not enough unity for that. The idea and reasoning behind Democracy was that a people (i.e. a demos) rules itself. But in US there is no longer one people, and it's fracturing even faster and more.
  - prasadjoglekar 4mo ago
    All the more reason to let states and local governments do more. Rather than a unitary congress or executive that only 1/2 the people (+/-) like.
    - 9dev 4mo ago
      The only way to fix things would be proportional representation and moving away from the two party system.
      - Guvante 4mo ago
        On the one hand giving parties more power sounds a little gross. On the other hand I don't know a solve for every bill having less than a handful of votes that are bipartisan...
        wffurr 4mo ago
        3 or 5 member multi-member voting districts determined by a geographic clustering algorithm using approval voting.
        Guvante 4mo ago
        Honestly I am surprised that tackling a method of easily collecting approval votes hasn't been done yet. Like even in the abstract "here is what a voting sheet would look like" that isn't meaningfully more complex. To be clear I think it is a hard problem and so far is the biggest detractor to alternative voting schemes. However given all that I agree with your point that it is a meaningful path forward.
dxuh 4mo ago
I think it should be noted that the current government, which did this silly thing, belongs to a party that is pretty much advertising on wanting to be a smaller government that gets involved less. That is a large part of why people vote for them.
- seattle_spring 4mo ago
  Despite advertising themselves as such, the party hasn't been for actual small government at least during my entire lifetime (40+ years).
  - rustcleaner 4mo ago
    [flagged]
    - hmry 4mo ago
      US still has the second amendment and the most guns per person of any country in the world (more than 10x the average), yet I don't see anybody "fight back against the benefactors"
      - YeahThisIsMe 4mo ago
        The people who are really into guns and the second amendment are somehow on the side of their oppressors.
        Yiin 4mo ago
        few years ago they weren't
        ffsm8 4mo ago
        Ffs, Trump is not an oppressor. You're not helping by pointlessly exaggerating things, you'll only derail the discussion.
grey-area 4mo ago
American hostility to the whole concept of government has led you to Trump’s brand of gangster capitalism (which will lead you to fascism if you let it). Government intervention is good and useful and keeps a markets free and society fair, preventing things like monopolies, robber barons and insider trading. When those constraints are removed, when government becomes the source of corruption, we end up wheee the US has arrived today - where companies that bribe government officials get preferred treatment and the law is used selectively as a weapon. This is a very dangerous moment for the US.
- temporaryacc2 4mo ago
  Agreed. HN perceives America as a temporarily embarrassed Libertarian state. Crony capitalism, media echo-chambers and inequality have fomented an unshakeable disbelief in positive government intervention, thus the only thing left politically tenable is flagrant corruption (drain the swamp). I'm vey grateful for the Australian federal government; their actions have steered us to a much better 2025/2026 than many other countries.
- naturalmovement 4mo ago
  > where companies that bribe government officials get preferred treatment Do you think lobbying did not exist prior to two years ago?
  - grey-area 4mo ago
    Lobbying is bad, open corruption, grift and bribery at the highest level is even worse.
Guvante 4mo ago
Reductionist "if only the government didn't get involved" doesn't work unless you presume no government is beneficial (it is not since you just recreate all the bad parts of government anyway) You can be critical of the policy of export controls and the meaning of them in modern day but saying it is a problem with the government in general is nonsensical.
- slopinthebag 4mo ago
  You can reverse it. "If the government gets involved" doesn't work unless you presume government is beneficial (it is not since you just recreate all the bad parts of no government anyway).
  - dns_snek 4mo ago
    > unless you presume government is beneficial That's the constitutional bedrock of our societies. That doesn't mean it's always true but if you denounce that as a legitimate and achievable goal then you don't have a society anymore.
    - graemep 4mo ago
      The alternative is worse. No government at all implies anarchy which is worse that all but the very worst governments, and from which IMO some form of government will emerge anyway.
      - deleted 4mo ago
        [deleted]
      - coldtea 4mo ago
        >No government at all implies anarchy* No government at all can just imply anarchism, ie. a kind of self-governing that doesn't ascribe to our conventional ideas about government, presidents, pms, members of parliament, senators, etc.
        4mo ago
stult 4mo ago
[flagged]
- modeless 4mo ago
  I'm enjoying imagining that this comment was typed by Dario. It sure sounds like him. I mean, he's not usually this profane, but maybe on an alt account...
Aeolun 4mo ago
I’m pretty certain that most of my issues are with a specific kind of government, not with government in general. Government is fine if it’s done by people that aren’t in it only for themselves. Actually it is often still fine if it’s done by people only in it for themselves. It’s just that the people in it right now will burn the world down to enrich themselves.
- pembrook 4mo ago
  > "Government is fine if it’s done by people that aren’t in it only for themselves." Academic studies consistently show that people attracted to a career in politics (regardless of affiliation) score higher on "Dark Triad" personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). And even for the non-sociopaths, the problem with humans is instinctively we ARE only in it for ourselves and our family. Anyone claiming otherwise, ironically, is probably attempting to signal virtue for...personal gain...yet again.
  - RealityVoid 4mo ago
    I think it's reductionist to say politicians are psychopaths.and it's completely dependent on how you structure your society. And, regardless, social coordination is absolutely necessary and you won't be able to do it without the state.
    - carlosjobim 4mo ago
      You have to be either a psychopath or a conspirator to get anywhere in politics. The former for a dictator style "cult of personality". The latter for a technocratic/bureaucratic "rules based" parliament rule. Rule by parliament by the very way it is set up becomes a snake pit of betrayals, horse dealing and back stabbing, when alliances are made. Look into any European political discourse online and offline, and it's all about which parties should ally with which parties after the elections. A million rules are made and routinely circumvented to try to maintain a non-existent "system" of governance which isn't tied to any person, but some abstract paper construct. Rule by strong man attracts psychopaths and narcissists for obvious reasons, and if not, at least the most ruthless people you can imagine. >"how you structure your society" How who structures your society? Now you're back to step one where either the psycho or the snake conspirators rule. Any change has to first come from within. People have to personally as individuals decide to not pay taxes and decide to not follow the law when the law is unfair. These things are doable, and when enough people do it, the power starts returning to them. Social coordination has been done for thousands of years before anybody had ever heard of the concept of "a state". In the future - maybe in our lifetimes - the idea of a state will be irrelevant and forgotten by most. People will laugh at the idea that people revered and feared and even worshipped that paper tiger. It will collapse and disappear into obscurity just like so many other false ideologies through history. Just like the Soviet Union went from being a super power striking terror into the hearts of the world into becoming just a meeting room with a few powerless men with no country and no people to rule.
coldtea 4mo ago
Each government just adds shit on the previous, with small optics differences, anyway. Like, in the US, Trump might do the ICE show for his voters, but Obama's deportated 3 million just fine in his time.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- wongarsu 4mo ago
  ICE does a lot of objectionable things no matter what you think about deporting illegals
gspr 4mo ago
Nonsense. That's like saying that the concept of government in general is bad because a particular government might be bad. It's perfectly reasonable to want government involvement that for sane governments is OK, even when you don't like that government. The current US government is a completely insane outlier. You cannot expect everything to adjust for the most insane outlier.
atoav 4mo ago
If no government ever got involved we would all be slaves to a family of inbred kings.
tao_oat 4mo ago
I agree with the point, but I think it's fair to acknowledge that the current US government is not a "normal" one in any sense.
lelanthran 4mo ago
> I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. I've pointed this out so many times when enforced DEI and cancellation culture was rife, and was asked, basically, why I wanted to be a nazi :-/
BrenBarn 4mo ago
> I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. This is the whole problem with government involvement! That is not the problem with government involvement, it is the problem with bad governments.
eps 4mo ago
This government is corrupt to the core, with individuals in it wanting a piece of the pie for themselves. Anthropic wouldn't share, hence the reprecussions. It is an extreme edge case and the argument for a sane government oversight is still perfectly valid. No oversight makes corporations dump waste into the water supply and market asbestos-lined cigarettes. It's naive to think that no oversight is needed.
- thinkingtoilet 4mo ago
  Agreed. It feels intellectually childish to say we can never have any government because of corruption. This government is flagrantly corrupt, has publicly ignored the courts, and weaponized the DOJ. This is not normal.
namdnay 4mo ago
That’s a strange argument. If my postman shits in my letterbox, is that proof that the whole concept of postmen is a bad idea?
roysting 4mo ago
It’s the insidious dualistic emotional trap that so many people are in, “my team is good and your team is bad”. People scoff at things like WWE but it’s really no different if you have a “my team” in sports (look around your space) or a side/team in the political theater where you vote really hard, pulling levers that have even categorically been shown are not connected to anything [1]. Please control the urge to respond or even think that your political team the controllers gave you siding with is somehow better. Your political WWE wrestler is not better than any others, it’s still all “scripted”, only actions and activities within system accepted bounds are permitted. Sure, there are some differences and it’s not as scripted, just like how professional sports is not as scripted as WWE or other things people see in their rectangle called a phone/tv (even though people still debate, e.g., which super hero is better), but it’s still controlled by an overarching control harness. It’s why regardless of voting or party in power, we always get the sane direction of movement even if one is flavored blue and another time it’s flavored red or the March forward has a left or right lean. Just like the manipulation of emotions in WWE or and soap opera drama, the manipulation works best when there’s cycles of tension and conflict to move people. That’s how narcissistic manipulators work. It’s one of the ways in which you can tell they’re behind it all when you can take a step back and realize that there’s always this tension and constant conflict and drama, but somehow everything always works out in the narcissist’s interest and desired direction. It’s insidious. Grok and ChatGpT are more in line with the narcissistic system’s interest of world domination by a cabal of psychopathic and extremely narcissistic and supremacist people … so Anthropic that may not want to participate in murder and mayhem and could be used by people who oppose murder, mayhem, and world domination needs to be kneecapped … ideally into submission. That’s all that this is, the constant evil that controls America doing what it has always done, rapaciously consume and abuse. [1] https://stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu/files/2022/09/Hertel-Fernandez-5.pdf https://stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu/files/2022/09/Hertel-Fernand...
robrain 4mo ago
Do you not see the difference between Trumpian dictator-level “involvement” and regular day-to-day steering of legislation in a party-friendly manner? This is laughable “both parties are as bad” thinking. By reasonable standards your current government has gone through involvement, passed straight through tampering and is now into nation-destruction mode. It’s a new thing for the rest of the world to see.
ycombinary 4mo ago
[dead]
Certhas 4mo ago
We should demand and work towards good public institutions that do their job. It's perfectly consistent to say "this is a job that legitimate democratic institutions should perform" and complain that currently the legitimacy of institutions is undermined. Let's take your argument to it's extreme point: The state should never regulate anything because the state might be bad! This is structurally the same fallacy as "people shouldn't be allowed to do anything, because some people are bad!".
- franktankbank 4mo ago
  Avoid walls when walking in hallways.
- derangedHorse 4mo ago
  > Let's take your argument to it's extreme point: The state should never regulate anything because the state might be bad! I'm not convinced you understand the sentiment of the parent comment. It's that one should consider all possible scenarios of one's actions when making requests of a powerful entity they can't control. The mechanics of government make it such that once something is under their control, it'll be more effort to remove those controls than what it took to initially add them. It should also be expected that legitimate regime changes can put people in power that current lobbyists may disagree with. Lobbyists should then be conscious that by lobbying for regulation, they implicitly trust that the will of the people will always align with what they think is best for the industry being regulated in the long term (otherwise they wouldn't be lobbying or would do so in a way that confines the power to the current administration).
  - Certhas 4mo ago
    I can control government more than I can control Google or Anthropic. Also your argument is along the lines of thinking I argue for: You say I shouldn't lobby for regulation I believe is beneficial because a future government might change the regulations to make them not beneficial. This implicitly assumes that the future government wouldn't implement the non-beneficial regulations if the current government doesn't do the beneficial ones. Possibly! But this is arguing that we should firmly establish principles, values and precedents that future administrations will feel bound by. And that I would agree with: Regulations and governance should arise from principles (practical details and grey areas will always require a ton of messy detailed negotiations, but within the confines of principles!). One of the things the current US administration has done is to show that it is possible to disregard principles if you are powerful with no consequences. You can lie about elections being fraudulent, watch your supporters storm parliament and get reelected a few years later. But if principles don't matter to those in power then the conclusion is actually the opposite of what you say. While your allies are in power you should use power however you can to further your interests, because when others are in power they will not feel bound by your restraint, and at least they first have to undo your work.
unclebucknasty 4mo ago
>it's the real lesson that should be learned here I believe the real lesson is that we need to fix government. Too many things that people assumed to be codified were actually only ever enforced by social contract. Until now, we've largely operated within a band of norms that served us fairly well, if imperfectly. However, we're now seeing what's possible when the social contract is shattered. We need to codify in ways that insulate government from wide variances in the reasonable operation of our form of government. And, we need to root out regulatory capture while we're at it. Government involvement should be the people's voice. We need to restore that in earnest versus eliminate government involvement; else we're merely a corporatocracy.
blini-kot 4mo ago
not really, the problem here is not that the government is involved per se, but that there is practically no involvment at all as the government is directly controlled by a clique of businessmen so instead of involvment proper there is leverage somebody tries to pass onto competitors
_heimdall 4mo ago
I have been surprised how few people seem to gave taken the lesson from Trump that creating federal authority today empowers all future leaders. Courts have slapped down some of Trump's actions thankfully, but a lot of what he has done that many disagree with simply shouldn't be legal and only are because in the past we had what may have been good reason to solve a short term problem. Trump shouldn't have been legally allowed to enact a war without congressional approval before it began. As it stands he was able to sneak through with the war powers act, congress is completely unwilling to enforce their own oversight authority, and Trump eventually redefined how to interpret the war powers act and again congress rolled their eyes and didn't challenge it.
te_chris 4mo ago
Great, so nihilism
HarHarVeryFunny 4mo ago
Right - this government has it's own problems, and Trump is of course entirely transactional so will be looking for something in return for rescinding this order (as he of course will). But of course Anthropic has been lobbying hard for this, for government regulation, and finally they've (at least temporarily) got what they want. Maybe they are actually happy with the outcome, who knows. They get to IPO and all get rich, they get to sell current level models, and future development gets heavily regulated. It was always going to happen anyway - just a matter of time. At some point (whether that is today is beside the point) AI/AGI will become powerful enough to have national security implications and of course the government is going to regulate who can have access or not, put in place export controls, require clearance for developers, etc.
tracerbulletx 4mo ago
We're truly lost when we can't see that there is such a thing as good government and bad government. That there is a difference between corruption and modern liberal regulation that follows fair rules. That we can't see that it's ok to regulate CFCs to prevent ozone catastrophe, and not ok to use back room deals to pick favorites. It's not about sides or teams, but there is still right and wrong even in the administration of nation states. And we fluctuate along a gradient with our governments, sometimes its better, sometimes its worse, never perfect, but sometimes much better.
- pheaded_while9 4mo ago
  You are correct: there is a right and wrong. Rights are actions which do not initiate harm in the form of murder, assault, rape, theft, trespass, coercion, or deception. Wrong actions are the initiation of harm. What is truly lost is the ability to assess on first principles. You are afraid of an outcome, and think "good government" is going to protect you from that risk. A better master who will gaurd you instead of whip you is your end point. It is actually reflective of your character.
- Aurornis 4mo ago
  I think everyone does see that there is good government and bad government. They just disagree about which one is the good one and which is the bad one. The real problem is when people demand heavy government involvement but don’t think about what could go wrong if an administration decided to misuse the regulation. They just assume it’s going to be used perfectly as they imagined it, usually to punish the companies they dislike while completely sparing the companies they like. A good example is the usual chorus of people demanding heavy regulations or bans of social media, who always imagine that the regulator won’t touch their websites. They imagine surgical laws hitting Facebook and TikTok because they don’t use those websites, but they imagine the law won’t touch their Discords or require them to do any age verification on their phone or PC for the sites they use. Then we get the intrusive age and ID checking law proposals that everyone hates.
  - EvanAnderson 4mo ago
gilbetron 4mo ago
Ah yes, so we should have corporations controlling it? Because they can't be corrupt or evil? The whole point of government control is at least everyone has some say in it, if we build the government decently. It has to be controlled by one or more human institutions, so choose your poison: government, nonprofits, forprofits, ... ?
Balinares 4mo ago
Whenever someone wants "small government" I assume they mean "a government that does not prevent me from shackling you" and hoo boy does that end up correct a lot.
- notahacker 4mo ago
  There were certainly self-styled libertarians who were very keen on this particular US administration and its laissez-faire approach to rules, especially rules binding on the executive... Turns out the alternative to bureaucracy and regulation (good and bad) is executive fiat, which is a lot less predictable and trustworthy even if their reasoning is good (which in this case it theoretically might be) and often is bad
bradley13 4mo ago
This. There really is no such thing as an entirely good government. Government is composed of people. From politicians to clerks, it's people all the way down. Some people are good, most are just trying to get through the day, and some are evil. Seriously: in any government, some of the bureaucrats and politicians will be corrupt or power hungry or sadistic or whatever. When you give a government power, there are people in place who can and will abuse that power. If not now, then next year, or in five years. After all, power granted to the government rarely goes away. This is the reason that you should always consider the worst case, when governments gain power. The power to ban a specific technology? What could go wrong? How could that be abused? Let me count the ways...
- TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago
  I'm curious if you apply the same logic to speculation markets and corporate profits.
incangold 4mo ago
Mmm. Same argument for any seat of power though. “It’s not always going to be the (oligo|mono)polistic corporation you personally wanted” either. So we invent democracy, term limits, anti-trust, branches of government, environmental safety regulations, the SEC etc. etc. Whether in the public or private sphere we have created social technologies to make power more diffuse and constrained, and corruption and misalignment less likely (never impossible). One feature of the last decade is the steady erosion of these safety rails.

kristjansson 4mo ago

It’s actually ok to be more critical of a government that’s capricious than one that merely advances polices one disagrees with

FunHearing3443 4mo ago

I agree. This situation was created in the first place because both parties and their constituents have been OK giving the executive branch more and more power as long as it benefits “their team”.

deleted 4mo ago
[deleted]
Guvante 4mo ago
The left has been complaining about the executive branch over reach for quite a long time. Hell as much as the drone strikes get simplified down to "Obama killed people without trials" the main complaint at the time was that he was acting without Congressional approval. Democrats shouldn't have responded to Congress getting blocked up by Republicans realizing that they could make "ineffective government" a self fulfilling prophecy but pretending everyone is okay with it isn't accurate either.
jmyeet 4mo ago
Saying "both sides" doesn't make you enlightened. It's either intellectual laziness or intentional dishonesty. I absolutely abhor "bothsidesism". One party is rounding up people and putting them into concentration camps while doing a mass deportation. That same party is trying to end birthright citizenship. That same party set the world order ablaze with a completely pointless tariffs regime. That same party started a war in Iran to please their donors and the Israeli PM, a war that is going to (IMHO) go down as the biggest strategic blunder in US history. One party doesn't want half the population to have bodily autonomy. In fact some of them have openly said they want to hand out the death penalty for getting an abortion. One party has doubled the national debt in a decade to hand out massive tax cuts to the ultra-wealthy and also gutting essential services. One party has a president credibly implicated with Jeffrey Epstein. That entire party bar a handful of individuals (who have been punished for their "disloyalty") have gone to great lengths to hide the evidence of that malfeasance. One party is killing people essentially to manipulate the market with repeated lies about an "imminent deal". One party is wholesale engaged in voter suppression and election rigging. It's the same party for all of these things. What the other party is guilty of is being complicit in all of the above by refusing to oppose it. Still bad but nowhere near the same.
- rozal 4mo ago
  [dead]

JimsonYang 4mo ago

When you get big enough, the govt is always going to want to get involved. We've seen how social media sites have always been in contention with govs regarding free speech even tho theyre fundamentally a way for other people to socialize with one another

evilturnip 4mo ago

Of course the tired follow-up: “But if the government was functioning properly it would only do the things I want”.

Cookingboy 4mo ago
And the logical interpretation of that statement would be "if a government doesn't do things I want, it's not functioning properly".
- 9dev 4mo ago
  Seems a little slippery-slopey to me

schrototo 4mo ago

But in democracy you do get to say which government you want.

flanked-evergl 4mo ago
US is in almost no way democratic. There is not enough unity for that. The idea and reasoning behind Democracy was that a people (i.e. a demos) rules itself. But in US there is no longer one people, and it's fracturing even faster and more.
- prasadjoglekar 4mo ago
  All the more reason to let states and local governments do more. Rather than a unitary congress or executive that only 1/2 the people (+/-) like.
  - 9dev 4mo ago
    The only way to fix things would be proportional representation and moving away from the two party system.
    - Guvante 4mo ago
      On the one hand giving parties more power sounds a little gross. On the other hand I don't know a solve for every bill having less than a handful of votes that are bipartisan...
      - wffurr 4mo ago
        3 or 5 member multi-member voting districts determined by a geographic clustering algorithm using approval voting.
        Guvante 4mo ago
        Honestly I am surprised that tackling a method of easily collecting approval votes hasn't been done yet. Like even in the abstract "here is what a voting sheet would look like" that isn't meaningfully more complex. To be clear I think it is a hard problem and so far is the biggest detractor to alternative voting schemes. However given all that I agree with your point that it is a meaningful path forward.

dxuh 4mo ago

I think it should be noted that the current government, which did this silly thing, belongs to a party that is pretty much advertising on wanting to be a smaller government that gets involved less. That is a large part of why people vote for them.

seattle_spring 4mo ago
Despite advertising themselves as such, the party hasn't been for actual small government at least during my entire lifetime (40+ years).
- rustcleaner 4mo ago
  [flagged]
  - hmry 4mo ago
    US still has the second amendment and the most guns per person of any country in the world (more than 10x the average), yet I don't see anybody "fight back against the benefactors"
    - YeahThisIsMe 4mo ago
      The people who are really into guns and the second amendment are somehow on the side of their oppressors.
      - Yiin 4mo ago
        few years ago they weren't
      - ffsm8 4mo ago
        Ffs, Trump is not an oppressor. You're not helping by pointlessly exaggerating things, you'll only derail the discussion.

grey-area 4mo ago

American hostility to the whole concept of government has led you to Trump’s brand of gangster capitalism (which will lead you to fascism if you let it). Government intervention is good and useful and keeps a markets free and society fair, preventing things like monopolies, robber barons and insider trading. When those constraints are removed, when government becomes the source of corruption, we end up wheee the US has arrived today - where companies that bribe government officials get preferred treatment and the law is used selectively as a weapon. This is a very dangerous moment for the US.

temporaryacc2 4mo ago
Agreed. HN perceives America as a temporarily embarrassed Libertarian state. Crony capitalism, media echo-chambers and inequality have fomented an unshakeable disbelief in positive government intervention, thus the only thing left politically tenable is flagrant corruption (drain the swamp). I'm vey grateful for the Australian federal government; their actions have steered us to a much better 2025/2026 than many other countries.
naturalmovement 4mo ago
> where companies that bribe government officials get preferred treatment Do you think lobbying did not exist prior to two years ago?
- grey-area 4mo ago
  Lobbying is bad, open corruption, grift and bribery at the highest level is even worse.

Guvante 4mo ago

Reductionist "if only the government didn't get involved" doesn't work unless you presume no government is beneficial (it is not since you just recreate all the bad parts of government anyway) You can be critical of the policy of export controls and the meaning of them in modern day but saying it is a problem with the government in general is nonsensical.

slopinthebag 4mo ago
You can reverse it. "If the government gets involved" doesn't work unless you presume government is beneficial (it is not since you just recreate all the bad parts of no government anyway).
- dns_snek 4mo ago
  > unless you presume government is beneficial That's the constitutional bedrock of our societies. That doesn't mean it's always true but if you denounce that as a legitimate and achievable goal then you don't have a society anymore.
  - graemep 4mo ago
    The alternative is worse. No government at all implies anarchy which is worse that all but the very worst governments, and from which IMO some form of government will emerge anyway.
    - deleted 4mo ago
      [deleted]
    - coldtea 4mo ago
      >No government at all implies anarchy* No government at all can just imply anarchism, ie. a kind of self-governing that doesn't ascribe to our conventional ideas about government, presidents, pms, members of parliament, senators, etc.
      - 4mo ago

stult 4mo ago

[flagged]

modeless 4mo ago
I'm enjoying imagining that this comment was typed by Dario. It sure sounds like him. I mean, he's not usually this profane, but maybe on an alt account...

Aeolun 4mo ago

I’m pretty certain that most of my issues are with a specific kind of government, not with government in general. Government is fine if it’s done by people that aren’t in it only for themselves. Actually it is often still fine if it’s done by people only in it for themselves. It’s just that the people in it right now will burn the world down to enrich themselves.

pembrook 4mo ago
> "Government is fine if it’s done by people that aren’t in it only for themselves." Academic studies consistently show that people attracted to a career in politics (regardless of affiliation) score higher on "Dark Triad" personality traits (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy). And even for the non-sociopaths, the problem with humans is instinctively we ARE only in it for ourselves and our family. Anyone claiming otherwise, ironically, is probably attempting to signal virtue for...personal gain...yet again.
- RealityVoid 4mo ago
  I think it's reductionist to say politicians are psychopaths.and it's completely dependent on how you structure your society. And, regardless, social coordination is absolutely necessary and you won't be able to do it without the state.
  - carlosjobim 4mo ago
    You have to be either a psychopath or a conspirator to get anywhere in politics. The former for a dictator style "cult of personality". The latter for a technocratic/bureaucratic "rules based" parliament rule. Rule by parliament by the very way it is set up becomes a snake pit of betrayals, horse dealing and back stabbing, when alliances are made. Look into any European political discourse online and offline, and it's all about which parties should ally with which parties after the elections. A million rules are made and routinely circumvented to try to maintain a non-existent "system" of governance which isn't tied to any person, but some abstract paper construct. Rule by strong man attracts psychopaths and narcissists for obvious reasons, and if not, at least the most ruthless people you can imagine. >"how you structure your society" How who structures your society? Now you're back to step one where either the psycho or the snake conspirators rule. Any change has to first come from within. People have to personally as individuals decide to not pay taxes and decide to not follow the law when the law is unfair. These things are doable, and when enough people do it, the power starts returning to them. Social coordination has been done for thousands of years before anybody had ever heard of the concept of "a state". In the future - maybe in our lifetimes - the idea of a state will be irrelevant and forgotten by most. People will laugh at the idea that people revered and feared and even worshipped that paper tiger. It will collapse and disappear into obscurity just like so many other false ideologies through history. Just like the Soviet Union went from being a super power striking terror into the hearts of the world into becoming just a meeting room with a few powerless men with no country and no people to rule.

coldtea 4mo ago

Each government just adds shit on the previous, with small optics differences, anyway. Like, in the US, Trump might do the ICE show for his voters, but Obama's deportated 3 million just fine in his time.

deleted 4mo ago
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wongarsu 4mo ago
ICE does a lot of objectionable things no matter what you think about deporting illegals

gspr 4mo ago

Nonsense. That's like saying that the concept of government in general is bad because a particular government might be bad. It's perfectly reasonable to want government involvement that for sane governments is OK, even when you don't like that government. The current US government is a completely insane outlier. You cannot expect everything to adjust for the most insane outlier.

atoav 4mo ago

If no government ever got involved we would all be slaves to a family of inbred kings.

tao_oat 4mo ago

I agree with the point, but I think it's fair to acknowledge that the current US government is not a "normal" one in any sense.

lelanthran 4mo ago

> I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. I've pointed this out so many times when enforced DEI and cancellation culture was rife, and was asked, basically, why I wanted to be a nazi :-/

BrenBarn 4mo ago

> I'm sorry, but when you cry out for government involvement, it's not always going to be coming from the government you personally wanted. This is the whole problem with government involvement! That is not the problem with government involvement, it is the problem with bad governments.

eps 4mo ago

This government is corrupt to the core, with individuals in it wanting a piece of the pie for themselves. Anthropic wouldn't share, hence the reprecussions. It is an extreme edge case and the argument for a sane government oversight is still perfectly valid. No oversight makes corporations dump waste into the water supply and market asbestos-lined cigarettes. It's naive to think that no oversight is needed.

thinkingtoilet 4mo ago
Agreed. It feels intellectually childish to say we can never have any government because of corruption. This government is flagrantly corrupt, has publicly ignored the courts, and weaponized the DOJ. This is not normal.

namdnay 4mo ago

That’s a strange argument. If my postman shits in my letterbox, is that proof that the whole concept of postmen is a bad idea?

roysting 4mo ago

It’s the insidious dualistic emotional trap that so many people are in, “my team is good and your team is bad”. People scoff at things like WWE but it’s really no different if you have a “my team” in sports (look around your space) or a side/team in the political theater where you vote really hard, pulling levers that have even categorically been shown are not connected to anything [1]. Please control the urge to respond or even think that your political team the controllers gave you siding with is somehow better. Your political WWE wrestler is not better than any others, it’s still all “scripted”, only actions and activities within system accepted bounds are permitted. Sure, there are some differences and it’s not as scripted, just like how professional sports is not as scripted as WWE or other things people see in their rectangle called a phone/tv (even though people still debate, e.g., which super hero is better), but it’s still controlled by an overarching control harness. It’s why regardless of voting or party in power, we always get the sane direction of movement even if one is flavored blue and another time it’s flavored red or the March forward has a left or right lean. Just like the manipulation of emotions in WWE or and soap opera drama, the manipulation works best when there’s cycles of tension and conflict to move people. That’s how narcissistic manipulators work. It’s one of the ways in which you can tell they’re behind it all when you can take a step back and realize that there’s always this tension and constant conflict and drama, but somehow everything always works out in the narcissist’s interest and desired direction. It’s insidious. Grok and ChatGpT are more in line with the narcissistic system’s interest of world domination by a cabal of psychopathic and extremely narcissistic and supremacist people … so Anthropic that may not want to participate in murder and mayhem and could be used by people who oppose murder, mayhem, and world domination needs to be kneecapped … ideally into submission. That’s all that this is, the constant evil that controls America doing what it has always done, rapaciously consume and abuse. [1] https://stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu/files/2022/09/Hertel-Fernandez-5.pdf https://stonecenter.gc.cuny.edu/files/2022/09/Hertel-Fernand...

robrain 4mo ago

Do you not see the difference between Trumpian dictator-level “involvement” and regular day-to-day steering of legislation in a party-friendly manner? This is laughable “both parties are as bad” thinking. By reasonable standards your current government has gone through involvement, passed straight through tampering and is now into nation-destruction mode. It’s a new thing for the rest of the world to see.

ycombinary 4mo ago

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Certhas 4mo ago

We should demand and work towards good public institutions that do their job. It's perfectly consistent to say "this is a job that legitimate democratic institutions should perform" and complain that currently the legitimacy of institutions is undermined. Let's take your argument to it's extreme point: The state should never regulate anything because the state might be bad! This is structurally the same fallacy as "people shouldn't be allowed to do anything, because some people are bad!".

franktankbank 4mo ago
Avoid walls when walking in hallways.
derangedHorse 4mo ago
> Let's take your argument to it's extreme point: The state should never regulate anything because the state might be bad! I'm not convinced you understand the sentiment of the parent comment. It's that one should consider all possible scenarios of one's actions when making requests of a powerful entity they can't control. The mechanics of government make it such that once something is under their control, it'll be more effort to remove those controls than what it took to initially add them. It should also be expected that legitimate regime changes can put people in power that current lobbyists may disagree with. Lobbyists should then be conscious that by lobbying for regulation, they implicitly trust that the will of the people will always align with what they think is best for the industry being regulated in the long term (otherwise they wouldn't be lobbying or would do so in a way that confines the power to the current administration).
- Certhas 4mo ago
  I can control government more than I can control Google or Anthropic. Also your argument is along the lines of thinking I argue for: You say I shouldn't lobby for regulation I believe is beneficial because a future government might change the regulations to make them not beneficial. This implicitly assumes that the future government wouldn't implement the non-beneficial regulations if the current government doesn't do the beneficial ones. Possibly! But this is arguing that we should firmly establish principles, values and precedents that future administrations will feel bound by. And that I would agree with: Regulations and governance should arise from principles (practical details and grey areas will always require a ton of messy detailed negotiations, but within the confines of principles!). One of the things the current US administration has done is to show that it is possible to disregard principles if you are powerful with no consequences. You can lie about elections being fraudulent, watch your supporters storm parliament and get reelected a few years later. But if principles don't matter to those in power then the conclusion is actually the opposite of what you say. While your allies are in power you should use power however you can to further your interests, because when others are in power they will not feel bound by your restraint, and at least they first have to undo your work.

unclebucknasty 4mo ago

>it's the real lesson that should be learned here I believe the real lesson is that we need to fix government. Too many things that people assumed to be codified were actually only ever enforced by social contract. Until now, we've largely operated within a band of norms that served us fairly well, if imperfectly. However, we're now seeing what's possible when the social contract is shattered. We need to codify in ways that insulate government from wide variances in the reasonable operation of our form of government. And, we need to root out regulatory capture while we're at it. Government involvement should be the people's voice. We need to restore that in earnest versus eliminate government involvement; else we're merely a corporatocracy.

blini-kot 4mo ago

not really, the problem here is not that the government is involved per se, but that there is practically no involvment at all as the government is directly controlled by a clique of businessmen so instead of involvment proper there is leverage somebody tries to pass onto competitors

_heimdall 4mo ago

I have been surprised how few people seem to gave taken the lesson from Trump that creating federal authority today empowers all future leaders. Courts have slapped down some of Trump's actions thankfully, but a lot of what he has done that many disagree with simply shouldn't be legal and only are because in the past we had what may have been good reason to solve a short term problem. Trump shouldn't have been legally allowed to enact a war without congressional approval before it began. As it stands he was able to sneak through with the war powers act, congress is completely unwilling to enforce their own oversight authority, and Trump eventually redefined how to interpret the war powers act and again congress rolled their eyes and didn't challenge it.

te_chris 4mo ago

Great, so nihilism

HarHarVeryFunny 4mo ago

Right - this government has it's own problems, and Trump is of course entirely transactional so will be looking for something in return for rescinding this order (as he of course will). But of course Anthropic has been lobbying hard for this, for government regulation, and finally they've (at least temporarily) got what they want. Maybe they are actually happy with the outcome, who knows. They get to IPO and all get rich, they get to sell current level models, and future development gets heavily regulated. It was always going to happen anyway - just a matter of time. At some point (whether that is today is beside the point) AI/AGI will become powerful enough to have national security implications and of course the government is going to regulate who can have access or not, put in place export controls, require clearance for developers, etc.

tracerbulletx 4mo ago

We're truly lost when we can't see that there is such a thing as good government and bad government. That there is a difference between corruption and modern liberal regulation that follows fair rules. That we can't see that it's ok to regulate CFCs to prevent ozone catastrophe, and not ok to use back room deals to pick favorites. It's not about sides or teams, but there is still right and wrong even in the administration of nation states. And we fluctuate along a gradient with our governments, sometimes its better, sometimes its worse, never perfect, but sometimes much better.

pheaded_while9 4mo ago
You are correct: there is a right and wrong. Rights are actions which do not initiate harm in the form of murder, assault, rape, theft, trespass, coercion, or deception. Wrong actions are the initiation of harm. What is truly lost is the ability to assess on first principles. You are afraid of an outcome, and think "good government" is going to protect you from that risk. A better master who will gaurd you instead of whip you is your end point. It is actually reflective of your character.
Aurornis 4mo ago
I think everyone does see that there is good government and bad government. They just disagree about which one is the good one and which is the bad one. The real problem is when people demand heavy government involvement but don’t think about what could go wrong if an administration decided to misuse the regulation. They just assume it’s going to be used perfectly as they imagined it, usually to punish the companies they dislike while completely sparing the companies they like. A good example is the usual chorus of people demanding heavy regulations or bans of social media, who always imagine that the regulator won’t touch their websites. They imagine surgical laws hitting Facebook and TikTok because they don’t use those websites, but they imagine the law won’t touch their Discords or require them to do any age verification on their phone or PC for the sites they use. Then we get the intrusive age and ID checking law proposals that everyone hates.
- EvanAnderson 4mo ago

gilbetron 4mo ago

Ah yes, so we should have corporations controlling it? Because they can't be corrupt or evil? The whole point of government control is at least everyone has some say in it, if we build the government decently. It has to be controlled by one or more human institutions, so choose your poison: government, nonprofits, forprofits, ... ?

Balinares 4mo ago

Whenever someone wants "small government" I assume they mean "a government that does not prevent me from shackling you" and hoo boy does that end up correct a lot.

notahacker 4mo ago
There were certainly self-styled libertarians who were very keen on this particular US administration and its laissez-faire approach to rules, especially rules binding on the executive... Turns out the alternative to bureaucracy and regulation (good and bad) is executive fiat, which is a lot less predictable and trustworthy even if their reasoning is good (which in this case it theoretically might be) and often is bad

bradley13 4mo ago

This. There really is no such thing as an entirely good government. Government is composed of people. From politicians to clerks, it's people all the way down. Some people are good, most are just trying to get through the day, and some are evil. Seriously: in any government, some of the bureaucrats and politicians will be corrupt or power hungry or sadistic or whatever. When you give a government power, there are people in place who can and will abuse that power. If not now, then next year, or in five years. After all, power granted to the government rarely goes away. This is the reason that you should always consider the worst case, when governments gain power. The power to ban a specific technology? What could go wrong? How could that be abused? Let me count the ways...

TheOtherHobbes 4mo ago
I'm curious if you apply the same logic to speculation markets and corporate profits.

incangold 4mo ago

Mmm. Same argument for any seat of power though. “It’s not always going to be the (oligo|mono)polistic corporation you personally wanted” either. So we invent democracy, term limits, anti-trust, branches of government, environmental safety regulations, the SEC etc. etc. Whether in the public or private sphere we have created social technologies to make power more diffuse and constrained, and corruption and misalignment less likely (never impossible). One feature of the last decade is the steady erosion of these safety rails.