[dr_dshiv]

The belief in competent government would seem to be a logical flaw -- or at least inconsistency -- in most conspiracy theorizing. I'm sometimes shocked by how competent people think the government can be -- especially people with so little faith in government.

[bcraven]

Adam Curtis: Bugger, Maybe The Real State Secret Is That Spies Aren't Very Good At Their Jobs And Don't Know Very Much About The World

https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/entries/3662a707-0af9...

[patrec]

> The belief in competent government would seem to be a logical flaw

Only to someone ideologically blinkered or completely ignorant of history. There are countless examples of governments achieving all sorts of highly non-straightforward things both for good and for bad. Even the CIA, which will probably not make it onto many shortlists of history's most competent governmental organizations had its successes.

[Nasrudith]

The real qualifer of signficance is depending upon perfect competence. Which is utterly unrealistic like the "car which runs on water being covered up". Although that example has ample other logical flaws including the fact that it would be a great thing for logistics if possible.

[jondubois]

I keep seeing this idea of an incompetent government come up repeatedly.

What people don't understand is that it is precisely this incompetence which allows corporations to manipulate the government so well. Laws and regulations do not originate within governments. They originate from lobbyists who are working in the interest of corporations and other large financial interests.

When discussing the economy, some people will keep insisting that capitalism is the most intelligent collective system possible, yet when it comes to politics, they will make it seem like capitalism is the dumbest system in the world, utterly incompetent at implementing perverse economic agendas... So I guess the view must be that capitalism maximizes the extraction of value from every kind of activity except when those activities relate to the government?

Clearly this makes no sense. Why would capitalism's efficiency at leveraging the collective intelligence stop at politics?