[sudosysgen]

Why are we assuming that the private sector is any better?

If you want to see what violence the private sector is capable of, look up the Nisour Square massacre : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nisour_Square_massacre

Anyone acquainted deeply with American history would be aware that yes, the government can tend towards authoritarianism, and often goes fully into it. But the American private sector is even more enthusiastic to commit atrocities and enforce the authority of the few on the many.

[xvector]

Why are you assuming that I want the private sector to grow in power? These aren't mutually exclusive.

> But the American private sector is even more enthusiastic to commit atrocities and enforce the authority of the few on the many.

Shows a keen misunderstanding of American history. The US government commits far more atrocities on a yearly basis than the private sector ever has. I could fill up this whole page with links describing absurd infringements on our constitutional rights by the US government, many of them ongoing to this day.

[sudosysgen]

How, practically, do you want to limit government power in a way that doesn't increase the power of the private sector?

I spoke of enthusiasm, not volume. The private sector commits less atrocities insofar as the government prevents them to. If you want a good historical example, recall that one of the main reasons for the American Revolution was that the private sector was angry at the Crown that they couldn't commit as much atrocities and steal as much land from the natives as they wanted to.

[elefanten]

>the private sector was angry at the Crown that they couldn't commit as much atrocities and steal as much land from the natives as they wanted to.

Never heard that one. Sources?

[btilly]

Playing Devil's advocate, the Declaration of Independence does include the phrase, "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

Also during the Revolution, the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sullivan_Expedition lead to atrocities against the natives and the later acquisition of a large amount of land for American settlers.

I wouldn't consider this in the top 10 motivations for the American Revolution. (In fact that complaint was the 27th of 27 complaints.)

But as a motivation, it was not exactly absent either. And the economic consequences of this particular item did prove, in hindsight, to be immense.

[kortilla]

It’s a joke.

[inglor_cz]

What are the measuring units for enthusiasm?

[busymom0]

Not arguing against your point, I would like to add that the current treatment of Assange was a responsibility of multiple countries working together to take him down - US, Sweden, Ecuador and Australia.

The espionage act which got used against Daniel Hale is also what the US is using in Assange's case.

[boomboomsubban]

>The US government commits far more atrocities on a yearly basis than the private sector ever has

This is one of those claims that's basically impossible to prove. I have no doubt you could link hundreds of constitutional infringements, but at the same time some reports suggest ~25% of workers regularly encounter some form of wage theft.

Or let's use this stories drone strikes as an example. Hale's revelation was that the military vastly underreported the number of civilian deaths to drone strikes. But I don't think private contractors would even be required to publish a bs number of casualties caused (I can't find any reporting requirements, but my search was hardly thorough.) Many private injustices can be very effectively hidden.

[xvector]

> This is one of those claims that's basically impossible to prove.

This is one of those claims that is self-evident after taking a highschool or college level US history class.

Also, wage theft is not nearly on the same scale as literal war crimes.

[boomboomsubban]

>This is one of those claims that is self-evident after taking a highschool or college level US history class

It really isn't. That class should also bring up the Pinkerton's, which is just an example of what shady shit the private sector engages in.

I brought up two examples, wage theft and private military contractors. One of the two very much is the same scale as literal war crimes.

[briantakita]

> The US government commits far more atrocities on a yearly basis than the private sector ever has.

Let's not compare which class of entities is more evil than the other.

We can't ignore that East India Company which ran drugs worldwide or I.G. Farben (maker of Nazi weaponry & Zyklon B), which later became Monsanto (maker or Agent Orange, DDT, etc.), Bayer, BASF. How about Corporate Sponsored "Tobacco Science" extolling the virtues of smoking? What about the various industrial complexes supporting the even more evil government?

With the Government infiltrated by agents who are connected with corporations & vice versa, is there any difference anyways? Are corporations & government inherently evil or are there contexts of corporations & government that are more evil than other contexts? Can criminal factions gain power over the government & corporations? Would corporations & government be less evil if honest people ran them instead of criminals?

Perhaps it's social phenomena, that we all participate in. Of course much if this phenomena is instigated by various cartels managing systems and hacking human consciousness & desire to consolidate power & curtail individual freedom & rights.

[vagrantJin]

Dont know why you opinion/ theory is being downvoted as much. Its well within the realms of probability.

Im sure a lot of Americans have no idea what their government has been doing to other sovereign nations. Even Obama went on a world tour to disarm smaller nations like South Africa of their Nuclear Weapons. He certainly didn't go to Russia or China or North Korea. After South Africa made that deal about 2011~2012 - an influx of American imported food ravaged the local food production industries bringing one of the biggest poultry producers in the SADEC region to it's knees. Thats not a conspiracy theory. Thats just politics.

[briantakita]

> Dont know why you opinion/ theory is being downvoted as much. Its well within the realms of probability.

If you have 3 hours to spare, this is a good Epistemological explanation...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAqOMGnJ2MQ

[busymom0]

The whole private sector censorship reminds me of a very good piece by Matt Taibbi:

> "People in the U.S. seem able to recognize that China’s censorship of the internet is bad. They say: “It’s so authoritarian, tyrannical, terrible, a human rights violation.” Everyone sees that, but then when it happens to us, here, we say, “Oh, but it’s a private company doing it.” What people don’t realize is the majority of censorship in China is being carried out by private companies.

> Rebecca MacKinnon, former CNN Bureau chief for Beijing and Tokyo, wrote a book called Consent of the Network that lays all this out. She says, “This is one of the features of Chinese internet censorship and surveillance—that it's actually carried out primarily by private sector companies, by the tech platforms and services, not by the police. And that the companies that run China's internet services and platforms are acting as an extension of state power.”

> The people who make that argument don’t realize how close we are to the same model. There are two layers. Everyone’s familiar with “The Great Firewall of China,” where they’re blocking out foreign websites. Well, the US does that too. We just shut down Press TV, which is Iran’s PBS, for instance. We mimic that first layer as well, and now there’s also the second layer, internally, that involves private companies doing most of the censorship."

https://taibbi.substack.com/p/meet-the-censored-matt-orfalea

[xvector]

Only if tools like Tor had greater visibility. And communication without exchange of value is pointless (since any real movement needs exchange of $$ to organize), so throw Monero in there too.

[busymom0]

I haven't dug deep enough into it but the top comment on this Ask HN post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28011353

> Tor Browser might help with mass data collection by businesses like Google, but it's the worst choice for threats by government or by others who have extra-legal powers: First, it signals that you are hiding something; it attracts attention: not everyone using Tor Browser is a dissident, but the proportion of dissidents among the Tor Browser population is much higher than among the Chrome and Safari populations. Second, it is based on a relatively insecure browser, Firefox, and then it is modified by a team that simply lacks the resources to design and implement proper security. Again, security is complex, expensive, and difficult. The obvious tactic for the attacker is to infect every Tor Browser visiting dissident resources.

> Seeing as how can very obvious to your ISP when you use Tor, I would take this advice with caution. I agree that you should download Tor Browser and get used to using it, but also think hard about whether it would be a problem if you were found to be using it, say from home.

So not sure how good the Tor advice is?

[warkdarrior]

> communication without exchange of value is pointless

Agreed. If only HN collected a fee to read comments... /s

[kortilla]

The private sector doesn’t have the monopoly of violence to enforce its views.

Linking to a private company that was killing for the government isn’t really a great example.

[roenxi]

> ...private military company contracted by the US government...

Damn the private sector and their evil ... of wait the government was stumping up the cash. Was the government perhaps acting in its private capacity when hiring mercenaries to "support democracy" in oil rich nations?

This is not even particularly a private-public thing (look to the East India company for what a private company is capable of, although the situation was complicated). The invasion of Iraq wasn't a private enterprise. There were private interests involved, but I think most people would agree that is curruption.

[sudosysgen]

The US Government didn't ask Blackwater to kill 17 civilians in Iraq, they decided to do so themselves.

Obviously foreign invasions were not purely private enterprises. But American history is full of private interests pushing for war, the American Revolution itself was caused in large parts by the American private sector being much more enthusiastic to ethnically cleanse the land from natives and steal their land than the crown.

Private interests lobbying the US Government isn't really corruption, it is the way things are sadly intended to work.

My point is that the reason these atrocities are made by the government and not private companies is only that the government prevents the private sector from committing them. So giving power to the private sector instead of the government in general is not a good course of action despite these events because there is no reason to believe it is any less enthusiastic to do atrocious things.

[roenxi]

Sorry, I'm not quite following the argument here. We're in a comment thread about it being illegal to reveal the amount of corruption in the US military, how they are not being particularly discriminating in who they are droning over in the Middle East.

You're putting up evidence that they are also hiring vetted thugs and sending them over to massacre people - also indiscriminately. Again, it is probably illegal at some level to report on how many massacres actually happen so presumably this case is more common than people think.

And the take away here is that the government is protecting us from private sector malfeasance? The private sector would never get funding for this sort of insanity! The only reason money is going to this is because paying taxes is mandatory. A tiny minority of people support this bloodshed. They just happen to have plum positions in DC. And even then, only because it isn't their money being used to vaporise brown people.

[Retric]

> and sending them over to massacre people - also indiscriminately.

That doesn’t follow, if the private sector decides to do something of it’s own volition then that’s on the private sector.

[lmm]

You might just as well say that the drone strikes are the fault of the individual operators. If a private operator does something in their capacity as a government contractor, then that's the government's responsibility.

[Retric]

If a fedex employee runs someone over while drunk, that employee is responsible. The company might also be responsible if they know the employee was drinking on the job.

It’s the same deal here, the company is 100% at fault, the government might also share some responsibility or not depending on the specifics. As to drone operators, “I was only following orders” isn’t a free pass though I was given bad information might be, the government can also be responsible at the same time.

Which isn’t to say these drone operators are going to end up at The Hague, but they and their superiors should at least be invested.

[Aerroon]

But somebody's paying them to do it. They weren't hired by McDonald's in this case, they were hired by the US government.

[roenxi]

> On December 22, 2020, U.S. President Donald Trump granted full presidential pardons to Slatten, Slough, Liberty, and Heard.

Did Trump pardon them in his capacity has a private sector businessman?

It doesn't look like these are rogue agents. It looks a lot like the government (and, specifically, the military) is supporting their actions at the highest levels.

[Retric]

They where also tried and convicted by the US government, Trump pardoning them was a political stunt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_granted_executi...

[rjzzleep]

I remember seeing an interview or a report about the founder of Blackwater being upset about the backlash, because he specifically said that the US government sends them in to do jobs they don't want to do themselves.

To not put any blame on the US government for giving these companies the reach that they have is to turn a blind eye to the source of the problem. Not to mention that these mercenary companies are made up to a huge degree by ex military.

When you hire a Hitman to do your dirty work, sure, the Hitman is responsible, but the guy who hired him at least shares some blame.

[lostlogin]

> But American history is full of private interests pushing for war

It is, but this isn’t a US trait. Look at the UK and it’s record. The British East India company were truely outrageous and set the standard for centuries of brutality and immense profit. Pretty much everything else is small fry in comparison.

[sethc2]

Lol. Did you even read what you linked. The government hired mercenaries and they were brutally evil. That must’ve been because the government doesn’t have enough power.

Let’s just say Amazon and the government are both equally evil. You get to pick one to have more power. Are you going to pick the one who has given us the wonderful invention called the dmv, or the one who will let me order whatever I want and get it to me in a reasonable time at a reasonable price. Amazon does a better job at serving the populace than the government does. They both act like rulers, but at least one gives you something worthwhile for it.

[ekianjo]

the private sector provides alternatives. government is exactly the opposite. one size fits all and you cant get rid of it.