[etherael]

The state has for as long as I can remember disgusted me, amongst many other things, exactly due to behaviour like this. Murdering thuggish religious zealots are a lot less sympathetic than anti authoritarian information crusaders, but the hysteria pitch here is eye opening to me at least from the perspective of people being so incensed by the fact that their government could be involved in such a thing.

Look around; the state is not your friend and it never has been, look at the statistics for democide in the previous century if you need any more proof. It's mindboggling to me that with all that goes on, when the blowback of business as usual in a modern western nation state hits closer to home people are actually shocked and amazed.

Look at the representatives of the law here on HN bleating about the nature of the offense in question as within the strictures of the law and thus beyond reproach and simply a symptom of a system that needs further tuning; This is how the state operates, this is what it runs on. Changing this fact doesn't require a simple tuning of a few dials here and there, it requires a fundamental re-examining of the central role of the westphalian nation state and the gears and levers upon which it operates in the modern world.

To be fair and admit my biases, yes, I believe castrating the beast is necessary, and this is just one more on a practically endless list of bullet points that demonstrate this.

As important as what happened here is and as much as it is nice to see people actually appearing to finally notice what is being done in their names and with their tacit consent, I simply can't see that actually happening. In a few weeks people will become resigned to the fact that they have no actual power and cannot make any actual change.

The depressing fact of the violent and compulsory nature of state authority coupled with it's extreme innate resistence to any kind of actual, real change are simply too entrenched for just this event to actually make any more difference than the millions of others just like it that ended up hitting some other tribe instead of ours.

Pity.

[rprasad]

The state is not a person, and ergo cannot be your friend. However, the state is a collection of persons, both elected, appointed, and hired, and many of those persons can be your friend. Indeed, I count a number of such persons among my friends.

In a democracy, the state is what you make of it--it is your family, friends, and neigbhors. It is not some monolithic evil construct.

[etherael]

That the state is an organisational structure and thus that it is "composed of people" is no more an innate hedge against corruption than any other organisational structure. That plenty of the people which make the machine are otherwise good is precisely the problem; evil people will do evil things, but evil people are rare.

A much larger problem is when otherwise good people can be convinced that evil is good, and are wholesale conscripted into the commissioning thereof. Look at the statist lawyer pack currently continuously stating that this is just business as usual in this case. They're absolutely right, but that they can accept that state of affairs purely because it is done under color of law should be telling.

Any organisational structure given unlimited power and no direct oversight by market forces will historically trend toward this kind of behaviour, that is why I believe as I do that it is an innate characteristic of a state. The ability to write your own rules and modify them at will and without effective limit to power, coupled with the ability to levy compulsory fees on your "customers" is put simply a recipe for disaster. Democracy is a laughable hedge on that of power, the subversion of which on a daily basis ought to be evidence enough that this is true.

I am aware of the traditional refrain that the solution is better educated voters and less money in politics and a whole raft of other prescriptions, but I am similarly aware that they never come to pass and all attempts are made to keep the violent, psychopathic machine chugging along as it was before with nary a sideways glance for other possibilities.

The reaction from the subjects when this is pointed out to them is disappointing, but telling. I apologise if I sound overly shrill on the topic, it's not my intent, I am simply tired of seeing this pattern repeated over and over again only to have people utterly unwilling to examine the real root of the problem.

[temphn]

  Any organisational structure given unlimited power and no 
  direct oversight by market forces will historically trend 
  toward this kind of behaviour,

Exactly. Absolutely right. The bureaucracy is like middle management gone berserk. The founders were onto something, they built something with incredible revenue potential, and were both the executives AND the workers. Then some middle management layers had to arise for coordination. Over time the separation between the executives and the workers grew to become a yawning gulf, and the middle managers captured the asylum.

Lacking any inherent ability to create value (like actual producers) nor any ability to be bold and take risks (like good executives), the legal bureaucracy/middle management just consumes more and more resources.

It can go on for quite sometime when you have a company producing as much revenue as USG. But in this case it won't go on forever, as China is now rising beyond USG.

  Look at the statist lawyer pack currently continuously 
  stating that this is just business as usual in this case.

Yeah, this seemed weird to me too. The best way to understand it is that they were taught in law school that extralegal methods (whether Lincoln suspending habeas corpus or 60s sit-ins) are allowed if and only if they are in service of fighting racism, sexism, homophobia, or something similarly Nazi/KKK-ish. And for those who are not straight white males, which is the majority of today's new lawyers, they also believe (and are repeatedly told) that they owe their current positions/status to the federal government's past extralegal activities.

So they combine hatred for pre-1960s America with reverence for the 60s revolution and absolute fealty to the modern US federal government. Insofar as they ever critique it, it is almost always to strengthen it (more taxes, more laws, more regulations, more government). They used to push to weaken criminal penalties for actual criminals (Miranda) and to defund defense, but here too there's been kind of a recent change; the new breed of Sotomayor/Holder/Bloomberg/Obama types (along with the lawyers here) are actually pretty hardcore on both of those points. They are all about mandatory maximums and drone strikes.

The result is something similar to the first class of students raised after the 1917 revolution. Extralegal methods for the Great October Revolution were completely justified. But after that point complete obedience to the state was required; the only exception were extralegal methods that tended to increase the power of the state and be directed against various libertarians, reactionaries, dissidents, or running dogs. When they felt they were still fighting against Russian culture, they pushed to reduce penalties against criminals; but once they felt they were fully in command the harshness of everything ramped way up beyond where it was pre-Revolution.