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by bsanr2 2055 days ago
Taking the meta-view: the cynical take is that you only care because you and people you know are in the crosshairs. If you feel that there's a role for government here, perhaps you should be more considerate of a role for government in areas you'd previously thought it unwarranted; clearly, it's impossible for any one person to have personal experience for all the ways people can be screwed over, and for which the only real recourse is intervention by the public-at-large (i.e., the government, at least in a representative democracy).

There's always a bigger fish, you just met yours. I'm all for serious reform (and even dissolution) at Google et al., but I also don't think everything will be hunky-dory just because America's entrepreurial upper middle class gets their satisfaction. While we're swinging the antitrust hammer, might want to take a look at retail and gig "employers" too.

1 comments

I am not personally impacted, I just know of people who are.

Government isn’t the solution to every problem. Caring or not caring is irrelevant. Reaching for a government-level solution isn’t a good thing, just have a look at nations where government plays a much larger role.

Sweden?

The issue is that so many of the people who say "government isn't the solution to every problem," really mean, "government isn't the solution to any problems except the ones I personally can't buy myself out of." At some point we have to realize that issues that are substantially widespread or entrenched and mature/understood should probably be nationalized at their core, with the opportunity for innovation left to the margins. Trying to extract profit from healthcare or infrastructure in particular seems quite cynical and prone to unfortunate consequences in the name of chasing lower costs.

Sweden is far from a government-controlled society.

The problem with people in the US who have convinced themselves that more government is a good thing is simple: Ignorance.

I mean that as a statement of fact, not a pejorative.

Nobody who has ever lived under heavy government control supports these ideas. The only way they gain support is by pushing the fantasy of big government vs. the reality.

Context: I have lived under those conditions. The average American has no clue.