Poor Mr. Heston, IMHO, deserves an ass-beating, however old he is.
Ahh... but if you tried to beat Poor Mr. Heston's ass, he would put a cap in yours. A perfect example of the Second Amendment being used to protect the First Amendment.
The only people whose ass you will give a beating for exercising freedom of speech will be those who are unarmed... which just goes to show you the importance of the right to bear arms. Mr Heston will say whatever the fuck he wants, thank you.
Having enemies of the state in a cuban prison is bad now?
Because in Cuba, you can be declared "enemy of the state" for making fun of government officials, trying to organize a labor union, trying to start a gay-pride newspaper, or taking pictures of homeless kids as part of a UNICEF mission for the U.N... Basicly, if your country was run like Cuba, most likely you would be considered an "enemy of the state" and be sitting in a prison cell!
What exactly was the intent? To politicize a human tragedy, because that's exactly what the NRA's unscheduled appearance in the surrounding area of a town days after a tragedy is doing, and to think otherwise is to buy someone else's propaganda. If a black man murdered a white woman in Denver, and then the NAACP had a conference 10 days later in that city, saying they were politicizing the murder would only makes sense if you accept the logic of racism - that there was a cause and effect relationship between black people and murder. A normal, non-racist person would see no connection between the murder and the NAACP at all. And you can bet if the mayor was trying to stop the NAACP from speaking, "out of respect for the tragedy", the NAACP would be rightly outraged.
If there was an especially terrible fatal auto accident, and 10 days later there was an automobile convention in Detroit, no-one would say that the auto makers were politicizing the tragedy... the only people who would accuse the auto companies of "politicizing a tragedy" would be people who already have a beef with the auto companies and are using it as a pretense to attack them.
Likewise, saying the NRA was politicizing a tragedy because they had their NRA conference in Denver, a conference they planned a year before the tragedy, only makes sense if you accept the gun-control ideology. Only a gun-control nut or someone with a beef against the NRA would make the connection between the two.
Yeah, like we do Fox News. Bah-ZING! We do hold Fox News accountable. Fox News has no credibility as serious journalism, hence your snarky comment. And neither does Michael Moore have credibility as a serious documentary maker, hence my snarky comment. Holding someone accountable doesn't mean we ban something, or shut them down (although it probably does in your political beliefs). It is just that no-one except the most brainwashed idiots take what those people say at face value. Fox News is for the brainwashed idiots on the American Right, Michael Moore is for the brainwashed idiots on the American Left. There is plenty of stupidity to go around.
But, please, don't expect me to be any more sensitive to you, if you happen to be one of Michael Moore's brainwashed idiots, than you would be towards a Fox News brainwashed idiot.
Not the point. The point is that you can be apprehended - a body can be associated with its speech. Posting anonymously on the Internet is more like leaving a boom box with a slanderous recording in the public square: while the speaker may ultimately be identified, it's immeasurably harder. But how do you propose to stop anonymous postings on the internet? It is all fine and dandy to say how bad it is, but without fundamentally changing the technology of the internet to allow global tracking of individuals (something that would be hard to achieve, and would have other undesirable effects), and also creating a global law enforcement body with the power to go after people over "bad speech" (which is pretty damn scary), there is nothing that can be done to stop it.
It is up to people doing hiring at a law firm to understand that everything on the internet isn't true or reliable.
So do you suggest a global ban on anonymous web postings? You can complain about the damaging effects of people posting anonymously online, but short of some pretty draconian China style technology controls, there is nothing you can do to stop it.
he was also a liberal in the most meaningful and classic sense.
You mean that he suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned 18,000 "suspected" enemies of the state without trial, shut down newspapers that were critical of his presidency and arrested the reporters.
Add to that Lincoln never really opposed slavery... Lincoln did everything to preserve the institution of slavery, and "freed the slaves" simply as a pragmatic measure to harm the Southern economy.
Look, while Lincoln probably has a lot in common with the modern fascist who call themselves "liberal", Lincoln was a power hungry pro-slavery dictator whose one single good thing he did (freeing the slaves) was an accident. He has very little to do with classical liberalism.
I'm pretty sure that FDR would still be welcome in today's Democratic Party. Lincoln wouldn't last 5 minutes in today's GOP.
You mean the FDR that imprisoned 20,000 Japanese-Americans without trial because of their race? The power hungry FDR that granted the government unlimited spy powers, and gave the government unlimited power to censor movies, radio, and even private mail? The FDR that ordered massive bombing of civilians? The FDR that threatened to bomb neutral countries like Argentina unless they joined the Allies?
Once again, I am sure that FDR would find a home with the modern day fascists that like to call themselves "liberals", but there is no link between classical liberalism and FDR. FDR was a pretty blatent right-wing fascist.
Do you know what classical liberalism means? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism Most people who call themselves "liberals" nowadays are either nationalist socialists or internationalist socialists, and have nothing in common whatsoever with classical liberalism.
Not that it makes a difference... You already know Chavez is a brutal dictator... you just don't have a problem with mass-murder and totalitarianism when it is being perpetrated by those who share your political views. You will think of some sort of excuse why thousands of people being murdered by death squads doesn't count.
The real cure is electoral reform, including campaign financing.
No, the real cure is not having the government spend most of our money. When the U.S. government is the worlds biggest consumer, then it is inevitable that corporations will lobby the U.S. government to continue to sell the government product.
Just like the drug trade, when the stakes are as high as they are, you are not going to stop corruption. We have been fighting a 30 billion dollar a year war on drugs, and it hasn't done anything to prevent the sale of illegal drugs in the U.S.... because if there is big money to be made, people will risk life in prison (or a bullet to the head from another drug dealer) to smuggle packets of drugs stuffed up their asshole.
Since government in the U.S. spends more than 50% of GDP (hundreds of times what people spend on illegal drugs), do you think that there is any hope whatsoever of stopping corruption. Even if you had the death penalty for bribing a government official, when the potential profits are trillions of dollars, it is definitly worth the risk. You can't even stop corruption with a totalitarian police state (Communist governments like the Soviet Union had rampant corruption, despite having a total lack of any civil liberties or human rights when it came to hunting down corrupt officials).
The only way to reduce government corruption, is to reduce government spending to the kind of unsustainable and insane levels of 30-40 years ago, as opposed to the "Jesus will come in 5 years and take us all to heaven so there is no need to worry about budgets" suicide levels we are at today. Not only will it help reduce corruption, but there might be a slim chance to avoid total economic collapse.
There are massive violations of human rights going on (over 5000 extra-judicial killings, for example - More people killed than under Pinochet), in addition to essentially eliminating the right to free press, elimination of independant judiciary, and ruling by decree, etc.
Like I said, when extremly lefty groups like the French Socialist Party are condeming the guy, it isn't some "Right Wing Capitalist Conspiracy" like you want to pretend. Unfortunatly, most people don't have a problem with political violence and totalitarianism so long as the people commiting the crimes hold acceptable political views. You like Chavez, so you are willing to look the other way when the police machine gun down Chavez critics in the street, or when the military puts entire universities under house arrest in order to suppress political protests.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Hugo Chavez is a brutal dictator that refuses to cave into the bullying of the United States. Just because the U.S. might be a bad guy in this situation, it doesn't mean that Hugo Chavez is a good guy. When even solid anti-American left-wing groups like the French Socialist Party are calling the guy a dictator, I think it is safe to assume that his dictator-like tendencies aren't American propoganda. Not to mention Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc.
Unfortunatly, most people (like yourself), are willing to forgive brutal dictators so long as they approve of the dictator's politics.
But the solution to this problem would be to revoke government funding... not to continue to subsidize basketball with tax dollars and let people blog.
Wrong. The monsters you named did not believe they were making the world better, they just used that as propaganda. No... All of the people I mentioned fully believed they were making the world a better place, at least according to their own twisted system of morality. Neither Mao, nor Lenin, nor Hitler lived in particular luxury or opulence... None of them had any particular personal hunger for material wealth. All of them took huge personal risks in terms of physical safety. Their actions were monsterous, their ideologies were monsterous, but these were not greedy men in any conventional sense of the word.
You make it sound as if there are no rational and good politicians, as if every selfless politician will become a monster. A truly selfless person would most likely never become a politician. They would become a doctor, or a scientist, or activist, and quietly struggle for what they believe is right, without the need for power and glory that comes with being a government leader. However, the selfless person who does manages to play the type of Machiavellian power games in order to rise to political power, is most likely a psychopath.
That is patently false, as a cursory glance at (for instance) the biographies of some of our most successful presidents will show. Name these great selfless presidents you speak about.
Change for the better has never come from selfish thieves, it has come from selfless people working to make the world better. "Change for the better" is an evolutionary process that comes from material progress. "Historical force" as Marx would call it (if Marxism floats your boat). For example, equality of the sexes is a product of industrialization and modern medicine (work activies are no longer based on physical strength, household items are easily manufactured and purchased and no longer need to be produced by dedicated labor in the home, child mortality is low requiring less childbirth). People who seem to do "great things" are simply people who happen to be in the right place at the right time when historical forces come to a head (for example, Lincoln who is given credit for "freeing the slaves" in America, was completly indifferent towards slavery, and only freed the slaves because it helped the war effort of the North. It was the evolution from a static agrarian economy to a more flexible industrialized economy that made the plantation/slavery system outmoded. Lincoln simply happened to be president when those historical forces hit the tipping point.).
Here's a clue, people: when you see someone trying to glorify selfishness and denigrate selflessness, RUN. That person is a very selfish person, and will likely not think twice before hurting you if it profits them. For the most part, it does not profit anyone to hurt other people. In general, helping others helps one self. This is called enlightened self-interest. The exceptions to this rule are few and far between. That is why the Mafia is far, far less inclined to use violence than the police are.
Violence is a self-destructive behavior, which is why selfless people are far more likely to commit acts of violence than those who are self-interested.
Now we just need to develop a reliable test for this, and make it a requirement for public office. Actually, the worst monsters in history are the true believers on some grand crusade. Selfish politicians are just looking to make a quick buck. They are basicly gangsters. The truly aweful things like wars, genocide, police states, etc., are done by crusaders who are willing to do anything to "make the world a better place" according to their grand vision, or to "destroy evildoers", or whatever.
For example, compare Al Capone or Manuel Noriega to monsters like Mao or Lenin or Hitler.
Locking your front door at night is more secure than leaving your door unlocked. That is like Linux vs. Windows. Linux is the closed door, Windows leaves the door wide open.
However, keeping the door locked, while it might protect you from a malicious neighbor, or a crack head robbing your house to buy drugs, isn't going to do anything to stop an elite CIA infiltration team. A locked door on your home just isn't going to be a problem for someone who has dedicated their lives to infiltrating places. Understand?
Likewise, Linux is more secure in many ways than Windows... that doesn't mean that Linux is any sort of protection against the hacking attempts by highly skilled professionals with lots of resources. Someone with only very limited knowledge, could do a search for zero-day linux exploits, and you could compromise quite a decent chunk of Linux servers on the net. If someone with very little knowledge can compromise vast numbers of servers, think of what the Chinese government can do.
WW2 was a special time in the history of the public service. Projects were approved and built at a pace that embarrasses us today. Sure, the military had a bureaucracy but there was a war to be won. Everyone focused on being effective. Petty bureaucrats with petty bureaucratic concerns were swept aside. And Stalin made the trains run on time, too!
The Illuminatus Trilogy is a humorous work of fiction. It doesn't try to explain anything. It is a comedy novel, like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, except about conspiracies instead of space-travel. It finds an audience in the post-LSD era, because it is still funny.
If you say that ISPs should not advertise "unlimited" internet access, then I agree. That is correct. The ISPs are definitly engaging in deceptive practices, and should stop.
But there isn't some big conspiracy by ISPs to kill internet video. There is actually SCARCE BANDWIDTH!!! There simply isn't enough bandwidth for everyone to be watching high-def streaming video, or sharing multi-gig video files, legit or not. Thus far, people have gotten away with that sort of thing because only a handful of users actually used that kind of bandwidth... it was easy enough for the ISP to allow a few "power users" to hog the bandwidth, because the vast majority of people used so little. With the popularity of video with common users, that is all changing.
While ISPs should be more honest about their policies to restrict bandwidth, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't restrict bandwidth. If the ISPs don't intentionally throttle bandwidth on hogs like P2P and streaming video, it means that bandwidth will be restricted randomly (like when you need to send an important email, or when you are trying to telnet into your server).
The government does have an awful lot more to do than the average corporation though. That is kind of like saying "Microsoft does have an awful lot more to do than the average software company". Yeah, only because they are a near-monopoly.
While it is true, that the government has siezed a virtually unending list of powers... It controls education, it regulates the media, it plans the economy, it provides and regulates health care, it decides who can marry each other or not, it decides what foods people can consume, it determines who you are allowed to donate money to, it determines what you are or aren't allowed to say politically... that does not mean the government SHOULD do those things, or is the only institution that is able to do those things. It simply means that an opportunist political elite can extract that much more profit and power by absorbing those activities into the government.
Who says it would wreck the economy? Automakers cried wolf in the same fashion in the 70's and 80's when rasied MPG requirements and imposed the environmental standards that required catalytic converters and cleaner fuels. "Oh," said they, "it will cause the collapse of the industry as we know it and cause irreparable harm to the US economy." Do you know anything about the sorry state the U.S. auto industry is in?
Rather, they believe that it is the only institution currently extant in which all citizens are equally enfranchised just by virtue of being citizens. Really? So if a multi-millionare buisness owner, and an unemployed homeless person, both requested to meet with their local MP, the MP would be just as quick to schedule a meeting with the homeless guy as the buisness owner, right? If the millionare and the homeless person were both to call the police at the same time, the police would respond just as quickly to the homeless guy's cardboard box as the millionare's penthouse? If the millionare and the homeless guy endorsed a candidate, the government-funded media would give equal coverage to the homeless guy's endorsement?
The disparity of government services between rich and poor neighborhoods is far greater than the disparity between private services. The Ford dealer in a poor neighborhood is pretty much the same as a Ford dealership in a rich neighborhood. The hospital in the rich neighborhood is much much better than the poor neighborhood. The grocery store in the poor neighborhood isn't that different than the grocery store in the rich neighborhood (they differ only in the availability of a handful of luxury items), but you can bet the rich neighborhood has much much better schools.
So, no, government doesn't enfranchise everyone equality. More than any other institution, the government works for the sole benifit of the rich and powerful.
And then we have ballots to keep the political elite obedient to the will and whim of the population. Except that the political elite decide how the election is funded, the political elite decide how and when and where candidates are allowed to speak, the political elite decide who and how the votes should be counted, the political elite control the education system and regulate the media, and the political elite control who gets on the ballot.
Voting is essentially selecting one of a handful of candidates or parties that the political elite have already pre-approved for our consumption. Voting is pure theater. Nothing more. The government is not obedient to the people.
There's an advantage in government: they are less. Do you know why there are computer firewalls? Because we cannot trust on the security of all the computers on a LAN. But then, we cannot trust the security of the firewalls either -but at least, they are less to have an eye on. In the United States, government of some type or another consume over 50% of the GDP. Government is actually larger than the private sector, at least in the U.S.. So there is actually more to watch with the government.
We need to demand from our politicians that they start a new project on this matter akin to the Manhattan project. What about the first Manhattan project? The U.S. could reduce CO2 emmissions by something like 20-40% depending on who you listen to, by simply adopting French style nuclear power. And, it would actually save the U.S. money.
Slashdot Mirror
Poor Mr. Heston, IMHO, deserves an ass-beating, however old he is.
Ahh... but if you tried to beat Poor Mr. Heston's ass, he would put a cap in yours. A perfect example of the Second Amendment being used to protect the First Amendment.
The only people whose ass you will give a beating for exercising freedom of speech will be those who are unarmed... which just goes to show you the importance of the right to bear arms. Mr Heston will say whatever the fuck he wants, thank you.
Having enemies of the state in a cuban prison is bad now?
Because in Cuba, you can be declared "enemy of the state" for making fun of government officials, trying to organize a labor union, trying to start a gay-pride newspaper, or taking pictures of homeless kids as part of a UNICEF mission for the U.N... Basicly, if your country was run like Cuba, most likely you would be considered an "enemy of the state" and be sitting in a prison cell!
If there was an especially terrible fatal auto accident, and 10 days later there was an automobile convention in Detroit, no-one would say that the auto makers were politicizing the tragedy... the only people who would accuse the auto companies of "politicizing a tragedy" would be people who already have a beef with the auto companies and are using it as a pretense to attack them.
Likewise, saying the NRA was politicizing a tragedy because they had their NRA conference in Denver, a conference they planned a year before the tragedy, only makes sense if you accept the gun-control ideology. Only a gun-control nut or someone with a beef against the NRA would make the connection between the two.
But, please, don't expect me to be any more sensitive to you, if you happen to be one of Michael Moore's brainwashed idiots, than you would be towards a Fox News brainwashed idiot.
It is up to people doing hiring at a law firm to understand that everything on the internet isn't true or reliable.
So do you suggest a global ban on anonymous web postings? You can complain about the damaging effects of people posting anonymously online, but short of some pretty draconian China style technology controls, there is nothing you can do to stop it.
he was also a liberal in the most meaningful and classic sense.
You mean that he suspended habeas corpus, imprisoned 18,000 "suspected" enemies of the state without trial, shut down newspapers that were critical of his presidency and arrested the reporters.
Add to that Lincoln never really opposed slavery... Lincoln did everything to preserve the institution of slavery, and "freed the slaves" simply as a pragmatic measure to harm the Southern economy.
Look, while Lincoln probably has a lot in common with the modern fascist who call themselves "liberal", Lincoln was a power hungry pro-slavery dictator whose one single good thing he did (freeing the slaves) was an accident. He has very little to do with classical liberalism.
I'm pretty sure that FDR would still be welcome in today's Democratic Party. Lincoln wouldn't last 5 minutes in today's GOP.
You mean the FDR that imprisoned 20,000 Japanese-Americans without trial because of their race? The power hungry FDR that granted the government unlimited spy powers, and gave the government unlimited power to censor movies, radio, and even private mail? The FDR that ordered massive bombing of civilians? The FDR that threatened to bomb neutral countries like Argentina unless they joined the Allies?
Once again, I am sure that FDR would find a home with the modern day fascists that like to call themselves "liberals", but there is no link between classical liberalism and FDR. FDR was a pretty blatent right-wing fascist.
Do you know what classical liberalism means? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_liberalism
Most people who call themselves "liberals" nowadays are either nationalist socialists or internationalist socialists, and have nothing in common whatsoever with classical liberalism.
Amnesty International:
http://web.amnesty.org/report2006/Ven-summary-eng
Not that it makes a difference... You already know Chavez is a brutal dictator... you just don't have a problem with mass-murder and totalitarianism when it is being perpetrated by those who share your political views. You will think of some sort of excuse why thousands of people being murdered by death squads doesn't count.
The real cure is electoral reform, including campaign financing.
... because if there is big money to be made, people will risk life in prison (or a bullet to the head from another drug dealer) to smuggle packets of drugs stuffed up their asshole.
No, the real cure is not having the government spend most of our money. When the U.S. government is the worlds biggest consumer, then it is inevitable that corporations will lobby the U.S. government to continue to sell the government product.
Just like the drug trade, when the stakes are as high as they are, you are not going to stop corruption. We have been fighting a 30 billion dollar a year war on drugs, and it hasn't done anything to prevent the sale of illegal drugs in the U.S.
Since government in the U.S. spends more than 50% of GDP (hundreds of times what people spend on illegal drugs), do you think that there is any hope whatsoever of stopping corruption. Even if you had the death penalty for bribing a government official, when the potential profits are trillions of dollars, it is definitly worth the risk. You can't even stop corruption with a totalitarian police state (Communist governments like the Soviet Union had rampant corruption, despite having a total lack of any civil liberties or human rights when it came to hunting down corrupt officials).
The only way to reduce government corruption, is to reduce government spending to the kind of unsustainable and insane levels of 30-40 years ago, as opposed to the "Jesus will come in 5 years and take us all to heaven so there is no need to worry about budgets" suicide levels we are at today. Not only will it help reduce corruption, but there might be a slim chance to avoid total economic collapse.
There are massive violations of human rights going on (over 5000 extra-judicial killings, for example - More people killed than under Pinochet), in addition to essentially eliminating the right to free press, elimination of independant judiciary, and ruling by decree, etc.
Like I said, when extremly lefty groups like the French Socialist Party are condeming the guy, it isn't some "Right Wing Capitalist Conspiracy" like you want to pretend. Unfortunatly, most people don't have a problem with political violence and totalitarianism so long as the people commiting the crimes hold acceptable political views. You like Chavez, so you are willing to look the other way when the police machine gun down Chavez critics in the street, or when the military puts entire universities under house arrest in order to suppress political protests.
The two aren't mutually exclusive. Hugo Chavez is a brutal dictator that refuses to cave into the bullying of the United States. Just because the U.S. might be a bad guy in this situation, it doesn't mean that Hugo Chavez is a good guy. When even solid anti-American left-wing groups like the French Socialist Party are calling the guy a dictator, I think it is safe to assume that his dictator-like tendencies aren't American propoganda. Not to mention Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, etc.
Unfortunatly, most people (like yourself), are willing to forgive brutal dictators so long as they approve of the dictator's politics.
But the solution to this problem would be to revoke government funding... not to continue to subsidize basketball with tax dollars and let people blog.
If the law is that convoluted and unclear that the vendors are able to exploit it for FUD, it is a bad law.
At that point, the government will simply outlaw encryption.
Violence is a self-destructive behavior, which is why selfless people are far more likely to commit acts of violence than those who are self-interested.
For example, compare Al Capone or Manuel Noriega to monsters like Mao or Lenin or Hitler.
Locking your front door at night is more secure than leaving your door unlocked. That is like Linux vs. Windows. Linux is the closed door, Windows leaves the door wide open.
However, keeping the door locked, while it might protect you from a malicious neighbor, or a crack head robbing your house to buy drugs, isn't going to do anything to stop an elite CIA infiltration team. A locked door on your home just isn't going to be a problem for someone who has dedicated their lives to infiltrating places. Understand?
Likewise, Linux is more secure in many ways than Windows... that doesn't mean that Linux is any sort of protection against the hacking attempts by highly skilled professionals with lots of resources. Someone with only very limited knowledge, could do a search for zero-day linux exploits, and you could compromise quite a decent chunk of Linux servers on the net. If someone with very little knowledge can compromise vast numbers of servers, think of what the Chinese government can do.
The Illuminatus Trilogy is a humorous work of fiction. It doesn't try to explain anything. It is a comedy novel, like Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, except about conspiracies instead of space-travel. It finds an audience in the post-LSD era, because it is still funny.
If you say that ISPs should not advertise "unlimited" internet access, then I agree. That is correct. The ISPs are definitly engaging in deceptive practices, and should stop.
But there isn't some big conspiracy by ISPs to kill internet video. There is actually SCARCE BANDWIDTH!!! There simply isn't enough bandwidth for everyone to be watching high-def streaming video, or sharing multi-gig video files, legit or not. Thus far, people have gotten away with that sort of thing because only a handful of users actually used that kind of bandwidth... it was easy enough for the ISP to allow a few "power users" to hog the bandwidth, because the vast majority of people used so little. With the popularity of video with common users, that is all changing.
While ISPs should be more honest about their policies to restrict bandwidth, that doesn't mean that they shouldn't restrict bandwidth. If the ISPs don't intentionally throttle bandwidth on hogs like P2P and streaming video, it means that bandwidth will be restricted randomly (like when you need to send an important email, or when you are trying to telnet into your server).
While it is true, that the government has siezed a virtually unending list of powers... It controls education, it regulates the media, it plans the economy, it provides and regulates health care, it decides who can marry each other or not, it decides what foods people can consume, it determines who you are allowed to donate money to, it determines what you are or aren't allowed to say politically... that does not mean the government SHOULD do those things, or is the only institution that is able to do those things. It simply means that an opportunist political elite can extract that much more profit and power by absorbing those activities into the government.
The disparity of government services between rich and poor neighborhoods is far greater than the disparity between private services. The Ford dealer in a poor neighborhood is pretty much the same as a Ford dealership in a rich neighborhood. The hospital in the rich neighborhood is much much better than the poor neighborhood. The grocery store in the poor neighborhood isn't that different than the grocery store in the rich neighborhood (they differ only in the availability of a handful of luxury items), but you can bet the rich neighborhood has much much better schools.
So, no, government doesn't enfranchise everyone equality. More than any other institution, the government works for the sole benifit of the rich and powerful.
Voting is essentially selecting one of a handful of candidates or parties that the political elite have already pre-approved for our consumption. Voting is pure theater. Nothing more. The government is not obedient to the people. There's an advantage in government: they are less. Do you know why there are computer firewalls? Because we cannot trust on the security of all the computers on a LAN. But then, we cannot trust the security of the firewalls either -but at least, they are less to have an eye on. In the United States, government of some type or another consume over 50% of the GDP. Government is actually larger than the private sector, at least in the U.S.. So there is actually more to watch with the government.