14 ms·

Burn the Fucking System to the Ground

187 points by MaysonL 13y ago

Luff 13y ago
Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PVM0SXowLx4J:www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to-the-ground/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PVM0SXo...
DanielBMarkham 13y ago
Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be reformed. One does not imply the other. The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working I think this is the thing that most people miss. It's not that the system is malfunctioning in terms of being self-inconsistent. It's working perfectly fine. So when people defend the various governmental abuses in the U.S. by saying "but we've decided that this is legal" they're right: we have decided that. And those things shouldn't be legal. So the system is being perfectly self-consistent. It just doesn't address the needs of the governed effectively anymore. Governments, like every other manmade system involving people from development teams to civic groups, need to be refactored on a regular basis. There has to be some self-correction mechanism built-in, because the participants will actively game the system in hopes of gaining a slight advantage. All we're really seeing is hundreds of years of this at work. Various participants have gamed the system to the degree that it's obviously way out of whack from where it started, even though many of the participants refuse to see it. No need to burn it down. Politely supporting reforms in the primary process and 2-party-lock would probably do wonders in the U.S. There are lots of options open aside from the flame thrower. The important thing to remember is that the parts needing fixing are the auto-correcting parts, not all the other stuff like the high-court, low-court stuff. Focusing on that stuff is only a distraction -- and only serves to keep true reform from happening because it diverts needed reform energy elsewhere. Having said that, the things that this author lists (and others) sure fret the hell out of me most days.
- ballard 13y ago
  First thing to start with is getting public financing of campaigns because that's the source of influence aka corruption... the money. It's the biggest problem, by far.
  - ericd 13y ago
    I think this is the biggest thing too - no personal money allowed either. I don't know why any congress would pass this, though, because their existing fundraising infrastructure gives them an advantage over any new challengers who would have to build that up from scratch.
  - ams6110 13y ago
    Anywhere there is money there is corruption. The source doesn't matter.
- ericd 13y ago
  Yeah, I think a change in how the voting process works, including something like point based voting would do wonders to shake things up. The problem I've seen is that most people have no idea how to begin to contribute to making a change like that happen without getting into politics themselves, and doing that successfully seems to require getting completely entangled in the existing way things are done. Anyone have any suggestions besides donating to various advocacy groups?
- bostik 13y ago
  A friend has been tossing around the idea of "null vote" for quite some time. Basically, to encourage a bigger proportion of constituency to vote, add a new bracket: "none of the above". And then start to visibly track that figure. (Note: this is in Finland, not US) The problem with general elections is that there is no meaningful choice. You can vote for the shade of your representative, but you can't vote against putting an invertebrate lizard in position of power. Adding a valid "none of the above" choice to the ballot would be a way to track just how big a fraction of population disagree with ALL of the available representative options. Currently we lump "invalid" votes together with disqualified votes, so protest votes do not count. They are treated as empty ballots. Personally I would be very much interested in seeing the results after a few years of "N/A" votes. Once the fraction of the votes to go against all of the available choices starts to gain and approach any of the potentially winning entries in the ballot, you might just see a reaction against the uselessness of current political system. At least that's what I hope.
Pacabel 13y ago
Is the "Error establishing a database connection" message that's currently showing an actual error message? Or is it just a play on the "Burn the Fucking System to the Ground" theme in the supposed article's title?
joewrong 13y ago
If popehat.com is still down, I was able to find it re-posted on this site: http://www.occupylv.org/blogs/burn-fucking-system-ground http://www.occupylv.org/blogs/burn-fucking-system-ground
swombat 13y ago
Burning the system to the ground is not very constructive (duh). In fact, this article - well, it's not clear what it advocates, but it sounds like it advocates some kind of violent "line the bastards against a wall and shoot them" revolution or civil war. The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.
- undoware 13y ago
  Not what I got out of it. Ever hear of 'poetic barbarism'?
- skylan_q 13y ago
  The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale. The American revolution?
  - curtis 13y ago
    It sounds like this guy is advocating something more like the French Revolution.
  - swombat 13y ago
    More like the civil war. Would you like to live in that period? There were 31 million americans then. 600k died during the war - 2%. There are 10 times as many americans, now, it's a fair extrapolation that there could be 10 times as many deads. Maybe the system is so corrupt that it's worth butchering 6 million people to change it, but if so, I think you guys (I'm not american myself) are owed more of a concrete plan than just "this sucks, let's burn it to the ground".
- pyalot2 13y ago
  While undesirable, bloody revolutions happen pretty much all by themselves once some hard to estimate pain limit is crossed. I tend to believe, most western civilizations are pretty far from that limit of pain. But, at the same time, they're far closer to the limit today than a few mere decades ago. So there's ample reason to worry, and ample reason to speak out that the course we're staying will not end at a happy place.
schappim 13y ago
I would comment on this, but I am afraid it would be brought up by a TSA agent when trying to enter the US.
- undoware 13y ago
  I'm a TSA agent. After reading your comment, I'm commanding you to take off your clothes, wherever you are, and subject yourself to a full pat-down. What, that legislation hasn't passed yet? Got my super-PAC on super-speed dial....
  - aric 13y ago
    Turn on your cam, citizen.
    - alxjrvs 13y ago
      ...Pick up that can.
schappim 13y ago
Text: Burn the Fucking System to the Ground Dec 23, 2013 By Clark. Effluvia "I'm a good judge" … said by government employee and judge Gisele Pollack who, it seems, sentenced people to jail because of their drug use…while she, herself, was high on drugs. But, in her defense, "she’s had some severe personal tragedy in her life". And that's why, it seems, she's being allowed to check herself into rehab instead of being thrown in jail. …because not a single poor person or non government employee who gets caught using drugs ever "had some severe personal tragedy in her life". I'm reminded of something I read earlier today: techdirt.com We've discussed the whole "high court/low court" concept here a few times before — in that those who are powerful play by one set of rules, while the rest of us have to play by a very different set of rules. … The end result seems clear. If you're super high up in the political chain, you get the high court. Reveal classified info to filmmakers? No worries. Not only will you not be prosecuted or even lose your job, the inspectors will scrub your name from the report and, according to the article, the person in charge of the investigation will "slow roll" the eventual release of the report until you switch jobs. But if you're just a worker bee and you leaked the unclassified draft report that names Panetta and Vickers? Well, you get the low court. A new investigation, including aggressive pursuit by the government, and interrogations of staffers to try to find out who leaked the report. Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be reformed. I thought that some parts of it "worked"… whatever that means. I thought that the goals were noble, even if not often achieved. The older I get, the more I see, the more I read, the more clear it becomes to me that the entire game is rigged. The leftists and the rightists each see half of the fraud. The lefties correctly note that a poor kid caught with cocaine goes to jail, while a Bush can write it off as a youthful mistake (they somehow overlook the fact that their man Barrack hasn't granted clemency to any one of the people doing federal time for the same felonies he committed). The righties note that government subsidized windmills kill protected eagles with impunity while Joe Sixpack would be deep in the crap if he even picked up a dead eagle from the side of the road. The lefties note that no one was prosecuted over the financial meltdown. The righties note that the Obama administration rewrote bankruptcy law on the fly to loot value from GM stockholders and hand it to the unions. The lefties note that Republicans tweak export rules to give big corporations subsidies. Every now and then both sides join together to note that, hey! the government is spying on every one of us…or that, hey! the government stole a bunch of people's houses and gave them to Pfizer, because a privately owned for-profit corporation is apparently what the Constitution means by "public use". What neither side seems to realize is that the system is not reformable. There are multiple classes of people, but it boils down to the connected, and the not connected. Just as in pre-Revolutionary France, there is a very strict class hierarchy, and the very idea that we are equal before the law is a laughable nonsequitr. Jamal the $5 weed slinger, Shaneekwa the hair braider, and Loudmouth Bob in the 7-11 parking lot are at the bottom of the hierarchy. They can, literally, be killed with impunity … as long as the dash cam isn't running. And, hell, half the time they can be killed even if the dash cam is running. This isn't hyperbole, mother-fucker. This is literal. Question me and I'll throw 400 cites and 20 youtube clips at you. Next up from Shaneekwa and Loudmouth Bob are us regular peons. We can have our balls squeezed at the airport, our rectums explored at the roadside, our cars searched because the cops got permission from a dog (I owe some Reason intern a drink for that one), our telephones tapped (because terrorism!), our bank accounts investigated (because FinCEN! and no expectation of privacy!). We don't own the house we live in, not if someone of a higher social class wants it. We don't own our own financial lives, because the education accreditation / student loan industry / legal triumvirate have declared that we can never escape – even through bankruptcy – our $200,000 debt that a bunch of adults convinced a can't-tell-his-ass-from-a-hole-in-the-ground 18 year old that (a) he was smart enough to make his own decisions, and (b) college is a time to explore your interests and broaden yourself). And if there's a "national security emergency" (defined as two idiots with a pressure cooker), then the constitution is suspended, martial law is declared, and people are hauled out of their homes. Next up from the regular peons are the unionized, disciplined-voting-blocks. Not-much-brighter-than-a-box-of-crayolas teachers who work 180 days a year and get automatic raises. Firefighters who disproportionately retire on disability the very day they sub in for their bosses and get a paper cut. A step up from the teachers and firefighters are the cops: all the same advantages of nobility of the previous group, but a few more in addition: the de facto power to murder someone as long as not too many cameras are rolling. The de facto power to confiscate cameras in case the murder wasn't well planned. A right to keep and bear arms that far exceeds that of the serf class: 50 state concealed carry for life, not just just for actual cops, but even for retired cops. At the same level of privilege as cops, but slightly off to one side is different class of nobility: the judiciary and the prosecutors. Judges and prosecutors can't execute citizens in an alley, a parking lot, or their own homes ("he had a knife! …and I don't care what the lying video says."), but they can sentence people to decades in jail for things that any clear-minded reading of the Constitution and the 9th and 10th amendments make clear are not with in the purview of the government. They have effectively infinite resources. They orchestrate perp walks. They selectively leak information to shame defendants. They buy testimony from other defendants by promising them immunity. By exercising their discretion they make sure that the bad people are prosecuted while the good people (i.e. members of their own clan) are not. Above the cops, the prosecutors, and the judiciary we have the true ruling class: the cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs, conspiring both against their own competitors and the public at large. If the public is burdened with a $100 million debt to pay off a money losing stadium, that's a small price to pay if a politician gets reelected (and gets to hobnob with entertainers and sports heroes via free tickets and backstage passes). If new entrants into a market are hindered and the populace ends up overpaying for coffins, or Tesla cars, or wine that can't be mail ordered, then that's a small price to pay if a connected CEO can keep his firm profitable without doing any work to help the customer. If the Google founders want to agitate for Green laws that make Joe Sixpack's daily commute more expensive at the same time that they buy discount avgas for their private flying fuck palaces, then isn't that their right? They donated to Obama's campaign after all! I could keep myself up all night and into tomorrow by listing different groups of royalty and the ways they scam the system. …except "scam the system" is a misnomer. I am not listing defects in a perfectable system. I am describing the system. It is corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. From Ted Kennedy who killed a woman and yet is toasted as a "lion of liberalism", to George Bush who did his share of party drugs (and my share, and your share, and your share…) while young yet let other youngsters rot in jail for the exact same excesses instead of waving his royal wand of pardoning, to thousand of well-paid NSA employees who put the Stasi to shame in their ruthless destruction of our rights, to the Silicon Valley CEOs who buy vacation houses with the money they make forging and selling chains to Fort Meade, to every single bastard at RSA who had a hand in taking the thirty pieces of silver, to the three star generals who routinely screw subordinates and get away with it (even as sergeants are given dishonorable discharges for the same thing), to the MIT cops and Massachusetts prosecutor who drove Aaron Swartz to suicide, to every drug court judge who sends 22 year olds to jail for pot…while high on Quaalude and vodka because she's got some fucking personal tragedy and no one understands her pain, to every cop who's anally raped a citizen under color of law, to every other cop who's intentionally triggered a "drug" dog because the guy looked guilty, to every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, to every cop who has 50 state concealed carry even while the serfs are disarmed, to every politician, judge, or editorial-writer who has ever used the phrase "first amendment zone" non-ironically: this is how the system is designed to work. The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to give the insiders their royal prerogatives, and to shove the regulations, the laws, and the debt up the asses of everyone else. Burn it to the ground. Burn it to the ground. Burn it to the ground. Merry Christmas.
cognivore 13y ago
The System better get wise because eventually enough "reasonable" people like me will start to agree with this sentiment and we'll have ourselves executions in the street because I'll be looking the other way because the solution is less worse than the problem. Don't say it can't happen. Governments much more entrenched than the US have fallen due to mistreatment of their populace.
- smtddr 13y ago
  I'm already at that point. If I start hearing about the general public going after corrupt law enforcement & government officials with lethal force... I will not condemn them. I'll just be like "Well, they just kept pushing & squeezing on people; something had to give. It's just human nature. Maybe the populace has finally woken up." BTW, as much as I am anti-firearm... the eventual uprising of the public against the government is the only reason I want the public to be well armed. I can count on all those pro-gun people to have a solid stockpile when the need arises. I actually think those in power know this too. >>There is a saying that "A well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny." --- http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Second_Amendment http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Second_Amendment
  - collyw 13y ago
    European here.... I am very anti-firearm as well, and the only decent justification for them is that it gives more power to the people against the government in the event of some kind of revolution. But as an outsider, it does seem that all your pro-gun people in the US seem like a bunch of right wing nutters. Certainly the vocal ones come across that way. What are your opinions on this?
    - smtddr 13y ago
      I definitely see them as mostly Republican/Conservatives, but because of them even democrats can always legally obtain guns. The USGov can never remove the right to bare arms, or the pro-gun people will flip out. So a semi-unknown number of guns remain in the public's possession preventing the USGov from ever trying to really take over. Best chance is for USGov to slowly erode privacy/rights as they're doing, but I think the NSA leaks have messed that up and put all kinds of people, even republicans, on guard. If a civil war actually happened, I think the pro-gun people are a wildcard that the USGov cannot depend on. I think they'll actually split up and a significant amount of them would side with democrats because of their desire to "protect the nation & what the USA flag stands for". With the NSA leaks, I think a lot of them feel like they've been fooled and are now just "pretending" to be republicans, but deep down inside they wouldn't defend the USGov in a civil war. I also think there are a bunch of military personnel who are "just following orders" for now but would defect in the event of a civil war too. Someone(s) just has to be the martyr to get the ball rolling.
seanalltogether 13y ago
Regarding these issues specifically are we better off today then we were 100 years ago? 500 years ago? Sometimes I feel like society has increasingly less problems to worry about, and therefore more time to spend looking under the microscope.
- vezzy-fnord 13y ago
  We are, primarily due to technological advancements. The logistics of government have not changed that drastically. In fact, I would say the political climate today is among the worst and absolutely most surreal. Largely because sophisticated technology enables rights violations on scales that were once only a dream. Most of the world still writhes in poverty, but as per Dunbar's number, it is simply impossible for the average human to care. What has happened in the Western world is that, while we may have toned down the medieval barbarism, the structures and social machinations that build up our society, are profoundly sick and volatile on so many layers, both implicitly and explicitly, like never before. That said, there will always be time to spend looking under the microscope. Conflict necessitates innovation and discovery.
- maxk42 13y ago
  A lesser evil is still evil.
daphneokeefe 13y ago
Site has stopped responding.
wissler 13y ago
I don't see how the "burn it to the ground" solution works, given that the reason why the system has the nature it does, is that people think the way they do, and so it seems inevitable to me that if you "burn it to the ground" it will simply rise from the ashes the very next day, and arguably, in an even worse form.
elliptic 13y ago
An odd rant. The judge in question appears to be an alcoholic, and came to the court drunk. Surely this is professional misconduct (and to my mind warrants firing), but it really doesn't justify the author's charges of system-rigging. Seems to me that Clark is trying to mislead people into thinking that Pollack was under the influence of e.g heroin. Pretty despicable. Also, the smallest bit of Googling shows that Pollack heads was responsible for the creation of some sort of special "marijuana court" which expressly sent users to rehab, not jail. I don't know much about this Clark guy (girl?), and I agree with some of the points in the article, but he/she seems pretty close to a flat-out liar.
- ams6110 13y ago
  It reads like a classic stir-the-pot rant fueled by cherry-picking a few extreme examples of misconduct, which can always be found. So he wants to burn it to the ground. Then what? What will replace it? How will it be better? Most revolutions produce tyrants. Only a few have produced anything arguably better than what was in place before.
  - Zelphyr 13y ago
    "...burn it to the ground. Then what? What will replace it?" This is what I keep coming back to. Even if he/she is 100% correct, suggesting we burn it down without offering suggestions for how to make it better afterwards is nothing more than a rant. Which is fine, if they have something to get off their chest. But this should be recognized as such.
    - vadiml 13y ago
      The alternative is very simple and was already tried in Ancient Greeks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
      - HarryHirsch 13y ago
        How about campaign finance reform? At the moment it's like "one dollar, one vote". There's also the issue that becoming a politician takes money, free time and a degree from somewhere where the College Republicans/Democrats have a really active chapter. I have no idea how to fix this problem.
lubujackson 13y ago
David Simon (creator of The Wire) also recently talked about our hell-in-a-handbasket situation, a bit less ragefully: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-cap...
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  And even when The Wire was made: "[The Wire] is a treatise on the end of the American empire and who we are as a people and what we’ve come to and why we can no longer solve or even seriously address our own problems." -– David Simon
danielweber 13y ago
I'm a popehat fan from long before most HN before heard of it, but this doesn't have anything to do with HN at all.
- coldtea 13y ago
  The thing about real hackers is that their thinking (and reading) is not compartamentalized.
  - PavlovsCat 13y ago
    Sadly, whenever something is remotely important, it seems to get killed... discussing the viabilities and alternatives of violent revolution is too real for some. Let's discuss font sizes! History will have very unfriendly things to say about this: people swap temporary comfort for eternal shame, and they should at least be aware of this.
scarmig 13y ago
Although I've got quibbles with some of his points and emphases, I can tell his heart is in the right place. So now what? There's reforming the system, but we've been reforming the system for decades, and it's gotten worse consistently since the 1970s. We elect a professed civil libertarian as President, and he brings the State to unimaginable and exciting new heights of violence against individual liberty. Burn the system to the ground? Okay, sure. But we all know how most revolutions turn out. Which is to say, in the usual and best case they fizzle out, despite the strong emotions of would-be revolutionaries. Worst case scenario: well, look up any revolution, and let me know if you've got a solution beyond "Well I'm a good guy, I wouldn't be like every other revolutionary!" I've settled on something in the space that's occupied by ideas about "counterpower" or "dual power" (using a Left-frame) and Konkinite agorism (using a Right-frame). We need to build up alternative institutions to government power to rebuild the civil society. Many institutions--certainly all the major media, corporations, unions, nonprofits, and universities--are so closely integrated in the network of State power that attempts at reforming them are pointless. Instead we should development alternative, parallel structures that we can live and operate in, trying to limit the amount we interact with and serve the government. Doing that, and figuring out how to do that, is the hard part that requires lots work. As technologists, I think we're in an ideal position, as the technological frontier is relatively unexplored compared to other ways of doing this. Research decentralized manufacturing: simpler supply chains and homogeneous production facilities means more fault-tolerant production, which means fewer opportunities for the State to exert control. Support open source: software is going to eat the world, and code that anyone can access disperses power from large entities incorporated by the State to anyone who's able to use it. Be thoughtful supporters of structures like Bitcoin: despite their flaws, they have the potential to make large portions of the economy illegible to the State. This approach also doesn't ask us to relinquish the right to interact with the government if it suits our ends, particularly in legal cases and occasionally electorally.
- okaram 13y ago
  Are you seriously saying the system has become consistently worse since the 70's ? In what respects ? I think we have (in the USA) a better safety net (especially now with Obamacare), a lot more respect for gays, a lot less racism, a lot more controls on the police, plus the internet which somewhat decentralizes power. I'd say it's had its ups and downs, but has been getting better overall
pirateking 13y ago
"All political problems can be solved by the correct application of power." - Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke
1945 13y ago
Very relevant to hackernews </s>
blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago
Used to be a libertarian? Still a right winger, though. Obama rewrote the bankruptcy laws to help a union? Speaking of union's, firefighters are a problem now? Since when? Ted Kennedy the murderer. The serfs are being disarmed? How about "cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs"...because (to the right wing mind) it's more likely that politicians are pulling the strings than business people...they make are jerbs! Plus one drudge point for saying that the Google guys are hypocrites (shocking) that voted for Obama. RSA, a company that makes money, took money from a customer to do something that benefited the customer? That doesn't rise to the level of tragedy as the problems in the justice system. Let's see the NSA is the Stasi...he also mentioned pre-revolutionary France...the right wing mind loves dreaming that we might have a revolution...and then all the "serfs" that haven't been "disarmed" will throw off their shitty jobs and fight fer freedum! Here's a gem: "to every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, " Hypocritical politicians who commit crimes are like retired teachers? Fuck you. You wormy douchebag.
- mcphage 13y ago
  > Hypocritical politicians who commit crimes are like retired teachers? Fuck you. You wormy douchebag. AMEN
- anonymoushn 13y ago
  Hypocritical politicians who commit crimes are like retired teachers? Fuck you. You wormy douchebag. Pension spiking is theft. Thieves are like thieves.
- bzbarsky 13y ago
  > firefighters are a problem now? To some extent, yes. The number of fires that need responding to is down significantly (almost 2x over the last 3 decades). Over the same time, number of firefighters is _not_ down significantly; in fact it's up by a factor of 1.4 or so. So now they're partially a solution looking for a problem (e.g. doing medical emergency first response using fire trucks, which is just daft). http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/firefighters-dont-fight-fires.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/fir... has some graphs, links to data, etc that you may want to look at. This is not even entirely a US-specific problem; Toronto is having similar issues; see http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/08/06/toronto_paramedics_and_firefighters_at_odds_over_medical_calls.html http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/08/06/toronto_paramedic...
DonGateley 13y ago
An equivalent rant could be written about any system of government that has or does exist. Establishing such hierarchies of privilege is intrinsic to the governing class. Always has been and always will be.
cordite 13y ago
We could all just move to Nigeria, but then there's a lot of things we'd lose out on.

187 points by MaysonL 13y ago

Luff 13y ago

Cached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PVM0SXowLx4J:www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to-the-ground/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PVM0SXo...

DanielBMarkham 13y ago

Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be reformed. One does not imply the other. The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working I think this is the thing that most people miss. It's not that the system is malfunctioning in terms of being self-inconsistent. It's working perfectly fine. So when people defend the various governmental abuses in the U.S. by saying "but we've decided that this is legal" they're right: we have decided that. And those things shouldn't be legal. So the system is being perfectly self-consistent. It just doesn't address the needs of the governed effectively anymore. Governments, like every other manmade system involving people from development teams to civic groups, need to be refactored on a regular basis. There has to be some self-correction mechanism built-in, because the participants will actively game the system in hopes of gaining a slight advantage. All we're really seeing is hundreds of years of this at work. Various participants have gamed the system to the degree that it's obviously way out of whack from where it started, even though many of the participants refuse to see it. No need to burn it down. Politely supporting reforms in the primary process and 2-party-lock would probably do wonders in the U.S. There are lots of options open aside from the flame thrower. The important thing to remember is that the parts needing fixing are the auto-correcting parts, not all the other stuff like the high-court, low-court stuff. Focusing on that stuff is only a distraction -- and only serves to keep true reform from happening because it diverts needed reform energy elsewhere. Having said that, the things that this author lists (and others) sure fret the hell out of me most days.

ballard 13y ago
First thing to start with is getting public financing of campaigns because that's the source of influence aka corruption... the money. It's the biggest problem, by far.
- ericd 13y ago
  I think this is the biggest thing too - no personal money allowed either. I don't know why any congress would pass this, though, because their existing fundraising infrastructure gives them an advantage over any new challengers who would have to build that up from scratch.
- ams6110 13y ago
  Anywhere there is money there is corruption. The source doesn't matter.
ericd 13y ago
Yeah, I think a change in how the voting process works, including something like point based voting would do wonders to shake things up. The problem I've seen is that most people have no idea how to begin to contribute to making a change like that happen without getting into politics themselves, and doing that successfully seems to require getting completely entangled in the existing way things are done. Anyone have any suggestions besides donating to various advocacy groups?
bostik 13y ago
A friend has been tossing around the idea of "null vote" for quite some time. Basically, to encourage a bigger proportion of constituency to vote, add a new bracket: "none of the above". And then start to visibly track that figure. (Note: this is in Finland, not US) The problem with general elections is that there is no meaningful choice. You can vote for the shade of your representative, but you can't vote against putting an invertebrate lizard in position of power. Adding a valid "none of the above" choice to the ballot would be a way to track just how big a fraction of population disagree with ALL of the available representative options. Currently we lump "invalid" votes together with disqualified votes, so protest votes do not count. They are treated as empty ballots. Personally I would be very much interested in seeing the results after a few years of "N/A" votes. Once the fraction of the votes to go against all of the available choices starts to gain and approach any of the potentially winning entries in the ballot, you might just see a reaction against the uselessness of current political system. At least that's what I hope.

Pacabel 13y ago

Is the "Error establishing a database connection" message that's currently showing an actual error message? Or is it just a play on the "Burn the Fucking System to the Ground" theme in the supposed article's title?

joewrong 13y ago

If popehat.com is still down, I was able to find it re-posted on this site: http://www.occupylv.org/blogs/burn-fucking-system-ground http://www.occupylv.org/blogs/burn-fucking-system-ground

swombat 13y ago

Burning the system to the ground is not very constructive (duh). In fact, this article - well, it's not clear what it advocates, but it sounds like it advocates some kind of violent "line the bastards against a wall and shoot them" revolution or civil war. The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.

undoware 13y ago
Not what I got out of it. Ever hear of 'poetic barbarism'?
skylan_q 13y ago
The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic scale. The American revolution?
- curtis 13y ago
  It sounds like this guy is advocating something more like the French Revolution.
- swombat 13y ago
  More like the civil war. Would you like to live in that period? There were 31 million americans then. 600k died during the war - 2%. There are 10 times as many americans, now, it's a fair extrapolation that there could be 10 times as many deads. Maybe the system is so corrupt that it's worth butchering 6 million people to change it, but if so, I think you guys (I'm not american myself) are owed more of a concrete plan than just "this sucks, let's burn it to the ground".
pyalot2 13y ago
While undesirable, bloody revolutions happen pretty much all by themselves once some hard to estimate pain limit is crossed. I tend to believe, most western civilizations are pretty far from that limit of pain. But, at the same time, they're far closer to the limit today than a few mere decades ago. So there's ample reason to worry, and ample reason to speak out that the course we're staying will not end at a happy place.

schappim 13y ago

I would comment on this, but I am afraid it would be brought up by a TSA agent when trying to enter the US.

undoware 13y ago
I'm a TSA agent. After reading your comment, I'm commanding you to take off your clothes, wherever you are, and subject yourself to a full pat-down. What, that legislation hasn't passed yet? Got my super-PAC on super-speed dial....
- aric 13y ago
  Turn on your cam, citizen.
  - alxjrvs 13y ago
    ...Pick up that can.

schappim 13y ago

Text: Burn the Fucking System to the Ground Dec 23, 2013 By Clark. Effluvia "I'm a good judge" … said by government employee and judge Gisele Pollack who, it seems, sentenced people to jail because of their drug use…while she, herself, was high on drugs. But, in her defense, "she’s had some severe personal tragedy in her life". And that's why, it seems, she's being allowed to check herself into rehab instead of being thrown in jail. …because not a single poor person or non government employee who gets caught using drugs ever "had some severe personal tragedy in her life". I'm reminded of something I read earlier today: techdirt.com We've discussed the whole "high court/low court" concept here a few times before — in that those who are powerful play by one set of rules, while the rest of us have to play by a very different set of rules. … The end result seems clear. If you're super high up in the political chain, you get the high court. Reveal classified info to filmmakers? No worries. Not only will you not be prosecuted or even lose your job, the inspectors will scrub your name from the report and, according to the article, the person in charge of the investigation will "slow roll" the eventual release of the report until you switch jobs. But if you're just a worker bee and you leaked the unclassified draft report that names Panetta and Vickers? Well, you get the low court. A new investigation, including aggressive pursuit by the government, and interrogations of staffers to try to find out who leaked the report. Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be reformed. I thought that some parts of it "worked"… whatever that means. I thought that the goals were noble, even if not often achieved. The older I get, the more I see, the more I read, the more clear it becomes to me that the entire game is rigged. The leftists and the rightists each see half of the fraud. The lefties correctly note that a poor kid caught with cocaine goes to jail, while a Bush can write it off as a youthful mistake (they somehow overlook the fact that their man Barrack hasn't granted clemency to any one of the people doing federal time for the same felonies he committed). The righties note that government subsidized windmills kill protected eagles with impunity while Joe Sixpack would be deep in the crap if he even picked up a dead eagle from the side of the road. The lefties note that no one was prosecuted over the financial meltdown. The righties note that the Obama administration rewrote bankruptcy law on the fly to loot value from GM stockholders and hand it to the unions. The lefties note that Republicans tweak export rules to give big corporations subsidies. Every now and then both sides join together to note that, hey! the government is spying on every one of us…or that, hey! the government stole a bunch of people's houses and gave them to Pfizer, because a privately owned for-profit corporation is apparently what the Constitution means by "public use". What neither side seems to realize is that the system is not reformable. There are multiple classes of people, but it boils down to the connected, and the not connected. Just as in pre-Revolutionary France, there is a very strict class hierarchy, and the very idea that we are equal before the law is a laughable nonsequitr. Jamal the $5 weed slinger, Shaneekwa the hair braider, and Loudmouth Bob in the 7-11 parking lot are at the bottom of the hierarchy. They can, literally, be killed with impunity … as long as the dash cam isn't running. And, hell, half the time they can be killed even if the dash cam is running. This isn't hyperbole, mother-fucker. This is literal. Question me and I'll throw 400 cites and 20 youtube clips at you. Next up from Shaneekwa and Loudmouth Bob are us regular peons. We can have our balls squeezed at the airport, our rectums explored at the roadside, our cars searched because the cops got permission from a dog (I owe some Reason intern a drink for that one), our telephones tapped (because terrorism!), our bank accounts investigated (because FinCEN! and no expectation of privacy!). We don't own the house we live in, not if someone of a higher social class wants it. We don't own our own financial lives, because the education accreditation / student loan industry / legal triumvirate have declared that we can never escape – even through bankruptcy – our $200,000 debt that a bunch of adults convinced a can't-tell-his-ass-from-a-hole-in-the-ground 18 year old that (a) he was smart enough to make his own decisions, and (b) college is a time to explore your interests and broaden yourself). And if there's a "national security emergency" (defined as two idiots with a pressure cooker), then the constitution is suspended, martial law is declared, and people are hauled out of their homes. Next up from the regular peons are the unionized, disciplined-voting-blocks. Not-much-brighter-than-a-box-of-crayolas teachers who work 180 days a year and get automatic raises. Firefighters who disproportionately retire on disability the very day they sub in for their bosses and get a paper cut. A step up from the teachers and firefighters are the cops: all the same advantages of nobility of the previous group, but a few more in addition: the de facto power to murder someone as long as not too many cameras are rolling. The de facto power to confiscate cameras in case the murder wasn't well planned. A right to keep and bear arms that far exceeds that of the serf class: 50 state concealed carry for life, not just just for actual cops, but even for retired cops. At the same level of privilege as cops, but slightly off to one side is different class of nobility: the judiciary and the prosecutors. Judges and prosecutors can't execute citizens in an alley, a parking lot, or their own homes ("he had a knife! …and I don't care what the lying video says."), but they can sentence people to decades in jail for things that any clear-minded reading of the Constitution and the 9th and 10th amendments make clear are not with in the purview of the government. They have effectively infinite resources. They orchestrate perp walks. They selectively leak information to shame defendants. They buy testimony from other defendants by promising them immunity. By exercising their discretion they make sure that the bad people are prosecuted while the good people (i.e. members of their own clan) are not. Above the cops, the prosecutors, and the judiciary we have the true ruling class: the cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs, conspiring both against their own competitors and the public at large. If the public is burdened with a $100 million debt to pay off a money losing stadium, that's a small price to pay if a politician gets reelected (and gets to hobnob with entertainers and sports heroes via free tickets and backstage passes). If new entrants into a market are hindered and the populace ends up overpaying for coffins, or Tesla cars, or wine that can't be mail ordered, then that's a small price to pay if a connected CEO can keep his firm profitable without doing any work to help the customer. If the Google founders want to agitate for Green laws that make Joe Sixpack's daily commute more expensive at the same time that they buy discount avgas for their private flying fuck palaces, then isn't that their right? They donated to Obama's campaign after all! I could keep myself up all night and into tomorrow by listing different groups of royalty and the ways they scam the system. …except "scam the system" is a misnomer. I am not listing defects in a perfectable system. I am describing the system. It is corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. From Ted Kennedy who killed a woman and yet is toasted as a "lion of liberalism", to George Bush who did his share of party drugs (and my share, and your share, and your share…) while young yet let other youngsters rot in jail for the exact same excesses instead of waving his royal wand of pardoning, to thousand of well-paid NSA employees who put the Stasi to shame in their ruthless destruction of our rights, to the Silicon Valley CEOs who buy vacation houses with the money they make forging and selling chains to Fort Meade, to every single bastard at RSA who had a hand in taking the thirty pieces of silver, to the three star generals who routinely screw subordinates and get away with it (even as sergeants are given dishonorable discharges for the same thing), to the MIT cops and Massachusetts prosecutor who drove Aaron Swartz to suicide, to every drug court judge who sends 22 year olds to jail for pot…while high on Quaalude and vodka because she's got some fucking personal tragedy and no one understands her pain, to every cop who's anally raped a citizen under color of law, to every other cop who's intentionally triggered a "drug" dog because the guy looked guilty, to every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, to every cop who has 50 state concealed carry even while the serfs are disarmed, to every politician, judge, or editorial-writer who has ever used the phrase "first amendment zone" non-ironically: this is how the system is designed to work. The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, to give the insiders their royal prerogatives, and to shove the regulations, the laws, and the debt up the asses of everyone else. Burn it to the ground. Burn it to the ground. Burn it to the ground. Merry Christmas.

cognivore 13y ago

The System better get wise because eventually enough "reasonable" people like me will start to agree with this sentiment and we'll have ourselves executions in the street because I'll be looking the other way because the solution is less worse than the problem. Don't say it can't happen. Governments much more entrenched than the US have fallen due to mistreatment of their populace.

smtddr 13y ago
I'm already at that point. If I start hearing about the general public going after corrupt law enforcement & government officials with lethal force... I will not condemn them. I'll just be like "Well, they just kept pushing & squeezing on people; something had to give. It's just human nature. Maybe the populace has finally woken up." BTW, as much as I am anti-firearm... the eventual uprising of the public against the government is the only reason I want the public to be well armed. I can count on all those pro-gun people to have a solid stockpile when the need arises. I actually think those in power know this too. >>There is a saying that "A well-armed populace is the best defense against tyranny." --- http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Second_Amendment http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Second_Amendment
- collyw 13y ago
  European here.... I am very anti-firearm as well, and the only decent justification for them is that it gives more power to the people against the government in the event of some kind of revolution. But as an outsider, it does seem that all your pro-gun people in the US seem like a bunch of right wing nutters. Certainly the vocal ones come across that way. What are your opinions on this?
  - smtddr 13y ago
    I definitely see them as mostly Republican/Conservatives, but because of them even democrats can always legally obtain guns. The USGov can never remove the right to bare arms, or the pro-gun people will flip out. So a semi-unknown number of guns remain in the public's possession preventing the USGov from ever trying to really take over. Best chance is for USGov to slowly erode privacy/rights as they're doing, but I think the NSA leaks have messed that up and put all kinds of people, even republicans, on guard. If a civil war actually happened, I think the pro-gun people are a wildcard that the USGov cannot depend on. I think they'll actually split up and a significant amount of them would side with democrats because of their desire to "protect the nation & what the USA flag stands for". With the NSA leaks, I think a lot of them feel like they've been fooled and are now just "pretending" to be republicans, but deep down inside they wouldn't defend the USGov in a civil war. I also think there are a bunch of military personnel who are "just following orders" for now but would defect in the event of a civil war too. Someone(s) just has to be the martyr to get the ball rolling.

seanalltogether 13y ago

Regarding these issues specifically are we better off today then we were 100 years ago? 500 years ago? Sometimes I feel like society has increasingly less problems to worry about, and therefore more time to spend looking under the microscope.

vezzy-fnord 13y ago
We are, primarily due to technological advancements. The logistics of government have not changed that drastically. In fact, I would say the political climate today is among the worst and absolutely most surreal. Largely because sophisticated technology enables rights violations on scales that were once only a dream. Most of the world still writhes in poverty, but as per Dunbar's number, it is simply impossible for the average human to care. What has happened in the Western world is that, while we may have toned down the medieval barbarism, the structures and social machinations that build up our society, are profoundly sick and volatile on so many layers, both implicitly and explicitly, like never before. That said, there will always be time to spend looking under the microscope. Conflict necessitates innovation and discovery.
maxk42 13y ago
A lesser evil is still evil.

daphneokeefe 13y ago

Site has stopped responding.

wissler 13y ago

I don't see how the "burn it to the ground" solution works, given that the reason why the system has the nature it does, is that people think the way they do, and so it seems inevitable to me that if you "burn it to the ground" it will simply rise from the ashes the very next day, and arguably, in an even worse form.

elliptic 13y ago

An odd rant. The judge in question appears to be an alcoholic, and came to the court drunk. Surely this is professional misconduct (and to my mind warrants firing), but it really doesn't justify the author's charges of system-rigging. Seems to me that Clark is trying to mislead people into thinking that Pollack was under the influence of e.g heroin. Pretty despicable. Also, the smallest bit of Googling shows that Pollack heads was responsible for the creation of some sort of special "marijuana court" which expressly sent users to rehab, not jail. I don't know much about this Clark guy (girl?), and I agree with some of the points in the article, but he/she seems pretty close to a flat-out liar.

ams6110 13y ago
It reads like a classic stir-the-pot rant fueled by cherry-picking a few extreme examples of misconduct, which can always be found. So he wants to burn it to the ground. Then what? What will replace it? How will it be better? Most revolutions produce tyrants. Only a few have produced anything arguably better than what was in place before.
- Zelphyr 13y ago
  "...burn it to the ground. Then what? What will replace it?" This is what I keep coming back to. Even if he/she is 100% correct, suggesting we burn it down without offering suggestions for how to make it better afterwards is nothing more than a rant. Which is fine, if they have something to get off their chest. But this should be recognized as such.
  - vadiml 13y ago
    The alternative is very simple and was already tried in Ancient Greeks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
    - HarryHirsch 13y ago
      How about campaign finance reform? At the moment it's like "one dollar, one vote". There's also the issue that becoming a politician takes money, free time and a degree from somewhere where the College Republicans/Democrats have a really active chapter. I have no idea how to fix this problem.

lubujackson 13y ago

David Simon (creator of The Wire) also recently talked about our hell-in-a-handbasket situation, a bit less ragefully: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-marx-two-americas-wire http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-cap...

PavlovsCat 13y ago
And even when The Wire was made: "[The Wire] is a treatise on the end of the American empire and who we are as a people and what we’ve come to and why we can no longer solve or even seriously address our own problems." -– David Simon

danielweber 13y ago

I'm a popehat fan from long before most HN before heard of it, but this doesn't have anything to do with HN at all.

coldtea 13y ago
The thing about real hackers is that their thinking (and reading) is not compartamentalized.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  Sadly, whenever something is remotely important, it seems to get killed... discussing the viabilities and alternatives of violent revolution is too real for some. Let's discuss font sizes! History will have very unfriendly things to say about this: people swap temporary comfort for eternal shame, and they should at least be aware of this.

scarmig 13y ago

Although I've got quibbles with some of his points and emphases, I can tell his heart is in the right place. So now what? There's reforming the system, but we've been reforming the system for decades, and it's gotten worse consistently since the 1970s. We elect a professed civil libertarian as President, and he brings the State to unimaginable and exciting new heights of violence against individual liberty. Burn the system to the ground? Okay, sure. But we all know how most revolutions turn out. Which is to say, in the usual and best case they fizzle out, despite the strong emotions of would-be revolutionaries. Worst case scenario: well, look up any revolution, and let me know if you've got a solution beyond "Well I'm a good guy, I wouldn't be like every other revolutionary!" I've settled on something in the space that's occupied by ideas about "counterpower" or "dual power" (using a Left-frame) and Konkinite agorism (using a Right-frame). We need to build up alternative institutions to government power to rebuild the civil society. Many institutions--certainly all the major media, corporations, unions, nonprofits, and universities--are so closely integrated in the network of State power that attempts at reforming them are pointless. Instead we should development alternative, parallel structures that we can live and operate in, trying to limit the amount we interact with and serve the government. Doing that, and figuring out how to do that, is the hard part that requires lots work. As technologists, I think we're in an ideal position, as the technological frontier is relatively unexplored compared to other ways of doing this. Research decentralized manufacturing: simpler supply chains and homogeneous production facilities means more fault-tolerant production, which means fewer opportunities for the State to exert control. Support open source: software is going to eat the world, and code that anyone can access disperses power from large entities incorporated by the State to anyone who's able to use it. Be thoughtful supporters of structures like Bitcoin: despite their flaws, they have the potential to make large portions of the economy illegible to the State. This approach also doesn't ask us to relinquish the right to interact with the government if it suits our ends, particularly in legal cases and occasionally electorally.

okaram 13y ago
Are you seriously saying the system has become consistently worse since the 70's ? In what respects ? I think we have (in the USA) a better safety net (especially now with Obamacare), a lot more respect for gays, a lot less racism, a lot more controls on the police, plus the internet which somewhat decentralizes power. I'd say it's had its ups and downs, but has been getting better overall

pirateking 13y ago

"All political problems can be solved by the correct application of power." - Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke

1945 13y ago

Very relevant to hackernews </s>

blahbl4hblahtoo 13y ago

Used to be a libertarian? Still a right winger, though. Obama rewrote the bankruptcy laws to help a union? Speaking of union's, firefighters are a problem now? Since when? Ted Kennedy the murderer. The serfs are being disarmed? How about "cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs"...because (to the right wing mind) it's more likely that politicians are pulling the strings than business people...they make are jerbs! Plus one drudge point for saying that the Google guys are hypocrites (shocking) that voted for Obama. RSA, a company that makes money, took money from a customer to do something that benefited the customer? That doesn't rise to the level of tragedy as the problems in the justice system. Let's see the NSA is the Stasi...he also mentioned pre-revolutionary France...the right wing mind loves dreaming that we might have a revolution...and then all the "serfs" that haven't been "disarmed" will throw off their shitty jobs and fight fer freedum! Here's a gem: "to every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, " Hypocritical politicians who commit crimes are like retired teachers? Fuck you. You wormy douchebag.

mcphage 13y ago
> Hypocritical politicians who commit crimes are like retired teachers? Fuck you. You wormy douchebag. AMEN
anonymoushn 13y ago
Hypocritical politicians who commit crimes are like retired teachers? Fuck you. You wormy douchebag. Pension spiking is theft. Thieves are like thieves.
bzbarsky 13y ago
> firefighters are a problem now? To some extent, yes. The number of fires that need responding to is down significantly (almost 2x over the last 3 decades). Over the same time, number of firefighters is _not_ down significantly; in fact it's up by a factor of 1.4 or so. So now they're partially a solution looking for a problem (e.g. doing medical emergency first response using fire trucks, which is just daft). http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/firefighters-dont-fight-fires.html http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/fir... has some graphs, links to data, etc that you may want to look at. This is not even entirely a US-specific problem; Toronto is having similar issues; see http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/08/06/toronto_paramedics_and_firefighters_at_odds_over_medical_calls.html http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/08/06/toronto_paramedic...

DonGateley 13y ago

An equivalent rant could be written about any system of government that has or does exist. Establishing such hierarchies of privilege is intrinsic to the governing class. Always has been and always will be.

cordite 13y ago

We could all just move to Nigeria, but then there's a lot of things we'd lose out on.