Hacker News Reader

Comment by deepfriedbits | Hacker News Reader

It's wild how in America at least, the people have to relearn the same lessons every generation or two. It turns out, some regulations are actually beneficial to a society. Maybe don't take a chainsaw to the groups who implement and look after these regulations.

View on HN

The destruction is the whole point. In a way we are in the shock therapy era of the US, experiencing what Russia went through post-USSR, which resulted in massive corruption, wealth inequality, and development of an authoritarian regime.

Definitely feels very ironic

> At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer. If it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. - Lincoln.

From the same speech where Lincoln then warned that a tyrant could overtake the U.S. political system from within...

Not American but some of your 19th century politicians where spectacular orators.

https://fs.blog/chestertons-fence/

“Do not remove a fence until you know why it was put up in the first place.”

Quoting Eric Schlosser: "there's shit in the meat"

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/2207547-fast-food-nati...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_Food_Nation

We don't have to relearn the concept, we just have a bunch of dumb idiots who we have to fight off every couple years and we often lose because a critical segment of people cannot remember what happened last time, don't understand anything, or are evil.

This isn’t a relearning it’s a power struggle. We’ve known this the whole time but a bunch of people who value power over the health of the nation want it the other way. They have power now so the rest of us have to suffer. This is what they mean when they say empathy is weakness — without empathy they can count their money and not have to feel bad about how they came by it. They just make a proclamation, move some data on a spreadsheet, and more money starts flowing in. That poors in some backwater consequently start shitting blood is of no concern.

You're missing the point. The efficacy of these regulatory bodies are not a concern for those controlling them. Those individuals have the means to isolate themselves from anything that might negatively affect the rest of us hogs, and they get to collect the spoils. They're just ripping the copper wiring out of the walls.

Hell, it's not even as long as every generation or two. Its every four or eight years

> some regulations are actually beneficial to a society.

Another word for "regulations" is "protections".

Americans don’t bother to read or learn from history

Americans are not uniquely ignorant. American ignorance is just blasted out to the entire world to see.

That's true. They are uniquely proud of their ignorance though. It is, as they say, the best -- the greatest. No one does it better. I mean, did you know that dumb was spelled with a -b at the end?

Am American; have always been.

I'm not proud of this stupid fucking bullshit, at all.

I don't know any who are. You sure you haven't just seen a few videos that were circulated online specifically because of how insane they were, or something?

I try to walk a tricky path with foreign critics: Yes, your criticism is mostly valid, but please please do not think "it can't happen in my country", because I remember when I thought that too.

This infection on the body politic can and has jumped to infect others, and does not require an abnormally weak host to attack, and overconfidence is a kind of weakness.

This is true, although it’s true for most if not all developed societies. People read less and less. We live in a post-literate, hyper-visual era. I am not sure if short form video is effective at educating people on why we have public health and food inspection agencies, but I confess I’m not optimistic.

Video seems spectacularly promising, especially for those that cannot read, which has been a pretty high percentage historically. But it's not being done right. Nobody would rather watch a video called Food Regulations in the US when they could watch 100 Minecraft Players Compete for A Bar of Literal Gold or whatever

We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.

Could gone to some great parties.

Did that instead.

— Elon Musk

Reply on news.ycombinator.com