[0xbadcafebee]

That's the genius of having states, counties, cities, towns and villages that are almost entirely decentralized. When an evil force takes over the government and wants to rule the whole country, they can't, because nobody even knows how a single tiny village is organized. Complete disorganization and inefficiency as a defense against tyrrany. (or, well, at least, slowing it down)

[mschuster91]

> When an evil force takes over the government and wants to rule the whole country, they can't, because nobody even knows how a single tiny village is organized.

As we're seeing right now this isn't true. Everyone is afraid because the current federal executive doesn't give a flying f..k about norms, including telling people "comply with what DOGE wants or get fired" or drawing up lists of "Government Gangsters" [1]. And so, everyone is bending over in fear of getting in the crosshairs, getting government spending contracts cut, getting fired, getting death threats like Fauci, or getting extorted to buy ads on Twitter [2].

Side rant: where are all the "don't tread on me" gun nuts that have arsenals rivaling what would be a special forces unit in smaller countries?

[1] https://rollcall.com/2024/12/09/trumps-pick-to-lead-fbi-iden...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-linda-yaccarino-x-...

[formerly_proven]

> Side rant: where are all the "don't tread on me" gun nuts that have arsenals rivaling what would be a special forces unit in smaller countries?

They won the election?

[Retric]

Gun nut and republicans have overlap but aren’t the same group.

Quite a few are really into Libertarian values and hate Republican stances on a wide range of issues.

[mschuster91]

> Quite a few are really into Libertarian values and hate Republican stances on a wide range of issues.

Mostly abortion and to a lesser extent the "war on drugs". The rest is seeing especially Musk's blatant self-dealings [1] and teardown of "big gubmint" as something laudable.

"So This is How Liberty Dies, With Thunderous Applause"

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43127819

[Retric]

There’s far more fundamental disagreement between the parties than that.

Libertarians strongly oppose government intervention in the economy like farm subsidies or specific tax cuts for specific industries. The Reputation party says it believes in free markets, but it doesn’t act that way.

The gap between Republican stated goals and actual policies is really stark. I think it mostly works because so few people dig into the details, but some people get really disillusioned.

[orblivion]

Yeah, it's not "Don't tread on the executive branch". Quite the opposite.

[massysett]

> As we're seeing right now this isn't true.

It's absolutely true. My county and state government has not changed. My kid goes to the public school, which has not changed. Indeed some of my state officials are suing the federal government.

State and local governments provide many services of enormous importance: schools, police, fire, roads. The President is not ruling all of that.

[bombcar]

The problem isn't who provides it, it's where the funding comes from.

If the local school is 90% funded by local taxes, they can ignore the state and federal government for quite awhile.

But if it's only 10% funded directly by local taxes, and the rest (even if coming from the locality!) is funneled through the state and/or federal government, then they can be squeezed on the money side.

[xp84]

Fair point.

For the past few decades, though, it feels like we’ve been locked in a permanent war between two opposing factions that barely admit each other’s right to exist, let alone to disagree, with the goal of forcing federal government policy to agree with, alternatingly, the “left” or the “right” orthodoxy and for the feds to force those ideas on the whole country.

Wouldn’t it be more productive to just massively cut federal taxes and obligations, and let Republicans live in Republican controlled states and let Democrats live in Democrat controlled states? Then the state governments can raise taxes and be able to use their taxpayers’ money as they see fit.

This way, if you want any category of government goodies, from single-payer healthcare to fixing the roads, you only need to convince your fellow state residents to pay for and tolerate it, and the people you don’t trust from far away can’t block you.

The federal government has only shown any particular skill at operating the military (no one’s dared to invade us since 1812!). Maybe we just let them handle that, plus uncontroversial standards and maybe make trade agreements. Let states handle the rest.

[bombcar]

That’s close to the original plan (even more so if you look at the articles of confederation) and is actually quite present in many things (look at the ACA for example).

But it should be more explicit in many cases. As we see routing everything through the federal government gives it more power than “expected” - like how it regulates drinking age via federal highway funds.

[mschuster91]

> State and local governments provide many services of enormous importance: schools, police, fire, roads. The President is not ruling all of that.

A lot of that hinges closely on cooperation with the feds, and the Trump admin has repeatedly said they will go and target "sanctuary cities" - so much for states rights.

In doubt, the federal government will pull off another drinking ban - the age for drinking is 21 because the federal government threatened to retract highway funding many decades ago, and that was explicitly ruled to be constitutional [1].

Do not think even for a single second that you are safe from the impact of the Trump admin even if you live in a deep blue city in a deep blue state.

In doubt, your daughter might not be able to access plan B any more (or your son stuck paying child support) because, of course, that one is on the target list as well, or your trans kid might not receive the care they need because the federal government plans to ban that as well, and if it's just by banning federally active insurances from covering the cost for such treatment. Or if you're Black and your kid needs to take ADHD meds? Say goodbye to your kid [2].

You all are anything but safe, but by the time you realize it because it starts finally affecting you and your loved ones, it will be too late. Take that warning from a German and heed it because we actually lived through that and learn about the time of 1933-45 and the years leading up to it in school!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Minimum_Drinking_Age_...

[2] https://wordinblack.com/2025/02/rfk-jr-black-kids-adhd-drugs...

[Mountain_Skies]

Probably out celebrating the shrinking of government, which is one of their core desires, if not their top desire.

[brookst]

…while uploading their ID’s to government mandated databases in order to watch the trans porn they want to completely outlaw, in the same of small government?

Nah, they just dropped the pretense. Small government was always code for “leave me alone and make those people suffer.”

[foobarian]

Luckily they are not the only ones with guns.

[cjs_ac]

I swear 'defence against tyranny' is the justification for every ridiculous thing the US does.

[JustExAWS]

Have you been following US politics lately? Right now there is an election denier in a cabinet position. It’s partially a good thing that elections are controlled by states as some protection.

[cjs_ac]

That just proves my point. All that obsessing about preventing tyrants, and you still end up with one. Maybe if, as a culture, you spent less time poring over quotes from eighteenth-century political thinkers to divine the best possible theoretical form of government, and more time solving concrete problems faced by real-world people, this wouldn't have happened.

The Westminster system is looking very 'worse is better' at the moment.

[palmotea]

> The Westminster system is looking very 'worse is better' at the moment.

The same one that just today got Apple to remove E2E encryption from iCloud, so it could get backdoor access to people's data?

I beg to differ. Centralization is bad. IIRC, it's what's enabling Musk to do so much damage so quickly, and the UK has more of it.

[0xbadcafebee]

Culture's a funny thing. Extremely hard to change, very hard to predict or control. Based on my understanding of history, almost all cultures fail.

The ones that have lasted the longest have been taken over by foreign empires and despots, but persisted nonetheless. Others were taken over and converted to some other culture, or died entirely.

Want a really long-lived culture? Look at Egypt, India, Persia, China. Want a culture that resists outside influence? Probably Egypt, maybe next India, and then Rome - but the former were conquered, and the latter died.

(I'm a shit lay-historian so please somebody correct me)

If you look at the evolution of life on this planet, it's never really clear what's a "superior" lifeform until you look at it for a few hundred million years. Crocodiles looked like the dominant lifeform for a pretty long time, but even that ended. Our cultures are absolutely infantile in the grand scheme. We can come up with ideas and try them out, but there's no telling what works long-term. Only future generations can judge.

[JustExAWS]

The majority of the people in the US want the current situation. Between the fear of the country becoming minority-majority,losing “traditional American values”, and protecting pets from being eaten by Haitians, they see Trump/Musk as their last hope.

Admittedly, it didn’t help that the DNC re-enacted “Weekend at Bernie’s” with Biden for two years.

[saulpw]

No, a plurality of people voted for the current situation. Not a majority of people, not a majority of voters (many of whom didn't vote, or weren't able to vote), and not even a majority of people who voted (49.8%, and no you can't round up).

Also, voting for slate of candidates on one day in the middle of a billion-dollar multi-year misinformation campaign, does not equal "want the current situation". I agree that an egregious number of people are actively cheering for the current chaos, but let's not give them more psychic power than the institutional power they are already wielding.

[xp84]

The DNC keeps itself alive on a steady diet of fantasy that the bloc of nonvoters agrees with them and hates the Republicans, which if true would make the Democrat orthodoxy a robust majority in opinion, even if not in actual elections. Yet everyone outside the DNC echo chamber knew Trump would likely sail to victory over their hilariously unpopular candidate, yet the nonvoters didn’t lift a finger to try to prevent it. I think most of them don’t think either party is serious about anything actually important to them. Of the people who have an opinion, a lot more wanted the current outcome than wanted whatever the Dems were selling last year.

A little chaos is probably healthy at this point — we can’t grow government forever, and now the ideas that actually have popular support will have to be enshrined in actual permanent law instead of operating solely by the old gentleman’s agreement that we never cut any government program ever, since that agreement has been torn up and thrown out now.

[JustExAWS]

Why do people keep trying to use this as copium? This is exactly what the majority of the US wanted. If you lived in a deep blue state of deep red state, because of the way that the electoral college works, it doesn’t matter if you voted or not as far as the presidential election.

Unlike what Michelle Obama says, this is exactly who we are.

[DeepSeaTortoise]

> Maybe if, as a culture, you spent less time poring over quotes from eighteenth-century political thinkers to divine the best possible theoretical form of government

The problem being the founders having been anti-tyranny extremists.

E.g. the founders' opinion on whether everyone should be able to own his private tanks and warships is crystal clear: Absolutely. It's literally why they didn't just write "The right to bear arms shall not be infringed" but also "A well regulatef militia, being necessary to the security of a free state".

And nowadays the left screetches about noone needing to carry a butter knife with a blade length above 3inches and the right is divided over whether Soros should be able to buy Minuteman missiles with USAID money.

The only reason the right is disagreeing with the founders at all, is because the founders thought if a few immoral entities, not under the control of the people, became obscenely powerful, the people would just make use of their militias to get rid of them (see declaration of independence).

And that's also why the selfdeclared elite keeps trying to restrict the 2nd amendment. Because it protects the first. And why they keep trying to restrict the 1st amendment (hate speech, micro-aggressions, control over all the media, online censorship, "fact checking", trillion dollar judgements against journalists for minor offenses, ...). Because it protects the 2nd and all others.

[__MatrixMan__]

Are you proposing we create a government position for Musk and promote him into it so he can officially have no power? I think I'm on board.

How does it work, does one have to consent to become king or can we just sort of make it happen?

[xienze]

> Right now there is an electric denier in a cabinet position.

There's a whole lot more than one. Remember that when Republicans win, the results aren't "denied" but the Democrats sure do cast a whoooole lot of doubt on the proceedings (i.e., "well yes they won but voter suppression, I'm just saying...", "well yes they won but Russian Facebook propaganda, I'm just saying...", "well yes they won, but hanging chads, I'm just saying...").

I'd say "election denial" comes in degrees...

[JustExAWS]

Newt Gingrich outright chastised the Republican governor of GA for making voting more convenient in minority neighborhoods was going to increase the chance of Democrats winning. He said the quiet part out loud.

Not to mention that in Texas, student IDs issued by public colleges aren’t legal IDs to vote. But gun permits are.

Of course there is Russian interference on social media. Not that I think it makes a difference.

Complaining about any of those things though and saying that’s why Trump won is crazy looking at the numbers. He won fair and square. Both of those things can be true.

[xienze]

> Not to mention that in Texas, student IDs issued by public colleges aren’t legal IDs to vote. But gun permits are.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and assume one of those IDs can be obtained by non-citizens and the other can't, not sure what your point is here.

[xp84]

The ID presented when voting doesn’t have to itself prove citizenship if things are being operated in a sane fashion. Voters have to already be on the voter rolls to vote, and if they’re letting noncitizens register that’s the real bug. You should be able to vote with any ID that proves you look like a certain person named on the rolls. Someone who isn’t a partisan hack would probably want to just give poll workers pictures of all acceptable* “local” IDs issued by trustworthy institutions to be sure that people aren’t DIYing IDs. Banning school IDs is just trying to suppress the young vote, as people 18-22 are far less likely than older people to drive than they used to be, especially in urban areas.

And I say this as an independent who has walked away from the Democratic Party because I hate the DNC, not an “immigrants rights activist” or something.

*acceptable should mean they are real cards with at least a basic security feature, not a laminated thing you could print at home.

[JustExAWS]

https://www.dps.texas.gov/section/handgun-licensing/faq/appl...

> Note: Individuals who are not US Citizens will need to provide their lawful presence documentation to the Department prior to renewal of their LTC.

[ncallaway]

> I'm going to take a wild guess here and assume one of those IDs can be obtained by non-citizens

100% not relevant. Think about it: a driver's license is a valid form of ID for voting in Texas (https://www.votetexas.gov/voting/need-id.html).

A Texas driver's license can be obtained by non-citizens (https://www.dps.texas.gov/sites/default/files/documents/driv...).

So, I'm not sure what your point is, here.

[cbozeman]

Yeah... and it's largely worked. That's the reason it's employed in the first place.

[rvnx]

In that world, we should store that in a blockchain for more efficiency, rather than a csv file.

[0xbadcafebee]

The whole point is for it to be disorganized and flexible. A blockchain is way too organized and rigid

[adolph]

otoh, a blockchain is also immutable unless you take out the entire thing, you can't just alter previous transactions without invalidating subsequent ones

[mannyv]

You can't access the blockchain when the power + internet are gone.

[adolph]

Very true, and also true for the compared technology, csv. In a larger sense, the two are complementary and wouldn't be mutually exclusive.