[throwawaykf05]

Are you saying the government does not do "vigorous enforcement of drug laws, long punishments for criminals"? These are topics that are the source of perennial complaints on HN. I think rayiner's point is that outside the HN echo chamber, there is a lot of implicit support for all kinds of empowerment of government and law enforcement agencies to "keep people in line". These same people may possibly even condone surveillance if it helps catch some small fry drug dealers.

I see the same thing when it comes to TSA threads. I know people who actually want the TSA around, and when stories of TSA ineffectiveness come out, their reaction is not "security theatre!", it's "fund them more!"

The point is, the government is literally doing what most of the populace wants it to do. The opinions on HN are in the minority.

[jflatow]

The original point was that people should fear corporations more than the government, because the government is the instrument of the people, whereas corporations have other less savory motives.

But its not true - the government is not to be trusted. It has a monopoly on military / police force, which it abuses incessantly. Moreover, it is effectively controlled by a private duopoly (Democrats + Republicans), with the same motives as any corporate coalition. What's more, corporations effectively control the duopoly. Just look at what happened with TTIP (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/04/secrets...).

And it is not doing what most of the populace wants, if that's not clear from the current election, look at the Congress approval ratings (http://www.gallup.com/poll/1600/congress-public.aspx). It's barely gone above 20% in the last 6 years. And has only once briefly gone above 50% in the past 30 years.

[dfraser992]

And if we view the government as a type of corporation? The populace ("founders"?) theoretically are still on the board of directors (if they ever were, really, but for the sake of argument...) but the "venture capitalists" using their usual bag o' tricks have watered down the shares and kicked most of the directors off the board.

America needs a down round, perhaps... or how does one kick VCs off the board? Dissolve the company and start another one?