Obama on Sony Hack: "Sony made a mistake," internet needs "more regulation and control"

[euansmith]

It is a good thing they are totally without an agenda then.

[nungesser]

I think you and I have completely different definitions of what constitutes “The Media”, so I’ll just withdraw from this.

[euansmith]

All the best and Happy Holiday Season.

[some_guy]

@Chris_May

The government can NEVER be trusted. It must ALWAYS be considered the most evil and untrustworthy institution in any society.

So when Americans created a government of the people, by the people, for the people, they were just being as cluelessly malevolent as the monarchies of Europe they were escaping? You can run for office right now, and if you are elected does that mean you can no longer trust yourself?

In a democracy government is a compact between citizens to try and work things out to satisfy the aims and needs of everyone as best we all can. The fact that our government has strayed from those goals doesn’t mean government is by definition bad. The federal government, the state/provincial government, the municipal or county government, the neighborhood association, these are all the same kind of thing just of different magnitudes.

@Chris_May

to spread contempt for it and resistance to it among their friends and fellow citizens.

Citizens of what? On one hand you’re making a broad anti-government statement, on the other you’re still discussing “citizenship”, which is tough without a country to be citizen of.

If you can’t play well with other children well then take your ball and go home, but don’t insist we all have to do the same.

[some_guy]

@Chris_May

Let me expound on this. Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, or the Koch Brothers have no power over me except 1) persuasion and 2) favors and privileges that may have been granted to them by the armed might of the government.

And without a government, these very wealthy men would be in charge of private armies necessary to protect their wealth. And our only recourse to protect ourselves from them would be to raise our own army, and perhaps some form of shared donation to pay for that army, and an organization to make sure everyone who pays has equal say in the how we are to be protected . . . oh wait, that sounds like a government.

[retchdog]

exactly. “the government has a monopoly on the use of force” is a great catch-phrase until you realize that the alternative is a robust, competitive market in the use of force by unregulated actors.

it still might be preferable, but i think most people don’t even get to the consideration.

[retchdog]

in his defense, they’d been wishing to do all that for ages; the attack was just an opportunity.

[the_borderer]

Thank you for saying what I managed to mess up earlier.

I don’t believe that’s the only alternative to statism, but it is what the libertarian-capitalists are offering.

[generic_name]

@Chris_May

Governments killed 200 million of their own citizens in the past century

Yes, good point. And if there were no governments, how many would have died? Somehow I don’t see an absence of governments being a magical paradise where nobody gets killed. Most of those who died at the hands of their own governments were in totalitarian states like Nazi Germany, the USSR, Pol Pot’s Kampuchea, Pinochet’s Chile, etc. All governments are not autocratic totalitarian nightmares.

[HMSGoose]

The very idea of “no government” is a fantasy that can only be sustained on the outskirts of society, lobbing insults inward at the people trying to find the freest and fairest way to govern. There is no vacuum nature abhors more than a power vacuum. When truly hardcore anarchist/libertarian comments get rolling, it just makes me think of the incredible amount of highly tuned infrastructure it would take to prevent government from forming organically again and again…