
Burn the Fucking System to the Ground - MaysonL
http://www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-the-fucking-system-to-the-ground/
======
DanielBMarkham
_Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be
reformed._

One does not imply the other.

 _The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working_

I think this is the thing that most people miss. It's not that the system is
malfunctioning in terms of being self-inconsistent. It's working perfectly
fine. So when people defend the various governmental abuses in the U.S. by
saying "but we've decided that this is legal" they're right: we have decided
that. And those things shouldn't be legal. So the system is being perfectly
self-consistent. It just doesn't address the needs of the governed effectively
anymore.

Governments, like every other manmade system involving people from development
teams to civic groups, need to be refactored on a regular basis. There has to
be some self-correction mechanism built-in, because the participants will
actively game the system in hopes of gaining a slight advantage.

All we're really seeing is hundreds of years of this at work. Various
participants have gamed the system to the degree that it's obviously way out
of whack from where it started, even though many of the participants refuse to
see it.

No need to burn it down. Politely supporting reforms in the primary process
and 2-party-lock would probably do wonders in the U.S. There are lots of
options open aside from the flame thrower. The important thing to remember is
that the parts needing fixing are the auto-correcting parts, not all the other
stuff like the high-court, low-court stuff. Focusing on that stuff is only a
distraction -- and only serves to keep true reform from happening because it
diverts needed reform energy elsewhere.

Having said that, the things that this author lists (and others) sure fret the
hell out of me most days.

~~~
ballard
First thing to start with is getting public financing of campaigns because
that's the source of influence aka corruption... the money. It's the biggest
problem, by far.

~~~
ams6110
Anywhere there is money there is corruption. The source doesn't matter.

------
elliptic
An odd rant. The judge in question appears to be an alcoholic, and came to the
court drunk. Surely this is professional misconduct (and to my mind warrants
firing), but it really doesn't justify the author's charges of system-rigging.
Seems to me that Clark is trying to mislead people into thinking that Pollack
was under the influence of e.g heroin. Pretty despicable.

Also, the smallest bit of Googling shows that Pollack heads was responsible
for the creation of some sort of special "marijuana court" which expressly
sent users to rehab, not jail.

I don't know much about this Clark guy (girl?), and I agree with some of the
points in the article, but he/she seems pretty close to a flat-out liar.

~~~
ams6110
It reads like a classic stir-the-pot rant fueled by cherry-picking a few
extreme examples of misconduct, which can always be found.

So he wants to burn it to the ground. Then what? What will replace it? How
will it be better? Most revolutions produce tyrants. Only a few have produced
anything arguably better than what was in place before.

~~~
Zelphyr
"...burn it to the ground. Then what? What will replace it?"

This is what I keep coming back to. Even if he/she is 100% correct, suggesting
we burn it down without offering suggestions for how to make it better
afterwards is nothing more than a rant.

Which is fine, if they have something to get off their chest. But this should
be recognized as such.

~~~
vadiml
The alternative is very simple and was already tried in Ancient Greeks:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition)

~~~
HarryHirsch
How about campaign finance reform? At the moment it's like "one dollar, one
vote".

There's also the issue that becoming a politician takes money, free time and a
degree from somewhere where the College Republicans/Democrats have a really
active chapter. I have no idea how to fix this problem.

------
scarmig
Although I've got quibbles with some of his points and emphases, I can tell
his heart is in the right place. So now what?

There's reforming the system, but we've been reforming the system for decades,
and it's gotten worse consistently since the 1970s. We elect a professed civil
libertarian as President, and he brings the State to unimaginable and exciting
new heights of violence against individual liberty.

Burn the system to the ground? Okay, sure. But we all know how most
revolutions turn out. Which is to say, in the usual and best case they fizzle
out, despite the strong emotions of would-be revolutionaries. Worst case
scenario: well, look up any revolution, and let me know if you've got a
solution beyond "Well I'm a good guy, I wouldn't be like every other
revolutionary!"

I've settled on something in the space that's occupied by ideas about
"counterpower" or "dual power" (using a Left-frame) and Konkinite agorism
(using a Right-frame). We need to build up alternative institutions to
government power to rebuild the civil society. Many institutions--certainly
all the major media, corporations, unions, nonprofits, and universities--are
so closely integrated in the network of State power that attempts at reforming
them are pointless. Instead we should development alternative, parallel
structures that we can live and operate in, trying to limit the amount we
interact with and serve the government.

Doing that, and figuring out how to do that, is the hard part that requires
lots work. As technologists, I think we're in an ideal position, as the
technological frontier is relatively unexplored compared to other ways of
doing this. Research decentralized manufacturing: simpler supply chains and
homogeneous production facilities means more fault-tolerant production, which
means fewer opportunities for the State to exert control. Support open source:
software is going to eat the world, and code that anyone can access disperses
power from large entities incorporated by the State to anyone who's able to
use it. Be thoughtful supporters of structures like Bitcoin: despite their
flaws, they have the potential to make large portions of the economy illegible
to the State.

This approach also doesn't ask us to relinquish the right to interact with the
government if it suits our ends, particularly in legal cases and occasionally
electorally.

~~~
sparkie
I agree that we need new solutions that are distinct from the existing power
structures. The idea of voting for "representatives" seems completely absurd
when almost everyone is "connected" now - we could build systems which allow
us to vote on issues directly, rather than people - and using distributed,
anonymous cryptographic protocols with public ledgers, we could be sure there
is no vote fraud. I'd envision a system where you can decide exactly how your
tax money is distributed too, rather than a single central power structure, so
we could literally put our money where our mouths are.

The big elephant is the existing tax system though. Alternative structures
will never have anywhere near the resources governments have, and the
government will always retain power for as long as it has the perceived
legitimacy to tax by force. A new model would not be able to trump the
government unless it makes the government seem illegitimate, or obsolete, to
the point where people consciously decide where to put their money.

Pay-as-you-earn schemes are perhaps one of the biggest obstacles. Most earners
have no control of where their money goes, so can not consciously object to
state power without potentially losing their jobs and livelihoods. Most people
would live on the breadline than take such risks, which is really the purpose
of the welfare state - to ensure than the poverty threshold is just high
enough for the majority of people to cope - because any lower would activate
the switch people have, where they overcome that fear and say "enough".

Cryptocurrencies are very interesting, but I think we need to have stronger
anonymity in transactions, and in the means of connecting into the network
(via meshnets, or whatnot). This is the potential Achilles heel for the state,
which is why they are building such vast surveillance and censorship platforms
to try and prevent these from ever taking off.

Of course, we always have the problem that the existing government can simply
declare any new structure we create as "illegal," with some poor propaganda
spread through their MSM mouthpieces to justify those decisions, which will be
effective while the majority of the population remains a bunch of gullible
sycophants. Unless there is a big change in perception, and soon, it's more
likely we'll have a bloody revolution, or boot stamping on our faces.

 _“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”_ \- R.
Buckminster Fuller

~~~
superuser2
>The idea of voting for "representatives" seems completely absurd when almost
everyone is "connected" now

The classic counterexample is California's direct democracy. People constantly
vote for spending and against raising revenue, driving the state government to
financial ruin. At this point Congress doesn't seem to be doing any better,
but there is something to be said for people who are at least _supposed_ to
govern responsibly.

They're failing now, but that's a noteworthy failure. The masses will always
behave like the masses and there's nothing you can do about it.

Not sure I agree with this line of argument, but "completely absurd" is a
stretch.

~~~
sparkie
Most people probably have no idea what they're voting for, which is a shame,
but they are given the option to decide their own fates, and they can only
blame themselves if things go to shit. Direct democracy can be self-correcting
- if people realize things are going to shit they can change it - this can't
happen with a government of rogue politicians taking bribes left and right,
and where these elite groups live under a separate rule of law to the rest.

What I find absurd is the belief of some that we live in a _free_ or _equal_
society, when the whole concept is based on _" You're too stupid to decide for
yourself, serf"_. The obvious undemocratic thing about our alleged democracies
is the absence of "None of the above" on the ballot, or the failure to count
non-votes as a legitimate position - of not supporting any party or person,
but oneself.

I honestly don't expect many people to elect themselves are their own
representative - most people will not have the time, nor the patience to do
research (like any politician, really), in order to make informed decisions.

I'd expect instead, a system where one can delegate their own decision making
power to some third-party representative they can trust will use those votes
in a sane way, but the most important requirement for such delegation of
voting power is revocation ability (effective immediately rather than in 4-5
years or through violence), so that if said representative is taking bribes,
or backpedaling on their promises, they can switch to someone else. We could
probably build something like this with public-key crypto.

------
swombat
Burning the system to the ground is not very constructive (duh). In fact, this
article - well, it's not clear what it advocates, but it sounds like it
advocates some kind of violent "line the bastards against a wall and shoot
them" revolution or civil war.

The "system" certainly is corrupt and flawed (particularly in the US), but
I'll pick this flawed system any day if given the choice between it and a
bloody revolution with millions of dead and wealth destruction on a gigantic
scale.

~~~
glesica

      > wealth destruction on a gigantic scale.
    

Who gives a damn about destroying the master's wealth if you're a slave?
That's the problem.

To be clear, I'm not saying it's that bad, but things sure seem to be moving
in that direction.

~~~
swombat
As others have pointed out, it's not just the master's wealth, but everyone's
wealth.

If anything, I'd suspect the "masters" would be better at protecting their
relative wealth in such a "burn it to the ground" scenario than the slaves. At
least they have the wealth to move out of the country when it erupts. Most
people don't, and would just lose everything - possessions, family, life...

Burning things to the ground doesn't leave much above the ground. Best be able
to afford an airship.

~~~
BrandonMarc
Exactly. Wealth, if you're smart, see what's coming, and know how to prepare,
brings you options others simply don't have. I'm not talking in the SHTF /
survivalist sense, either, though it's true there, too ... simply stating that
wealth allows you to do things you couldn't without it.

This is similar to how every time politicians salivate over some new scheme to
"tax the rich", the rich - being smart, motivated, and having the option to do
so - find ways to avoid paying more than they have to. The middle & lower
class, on the other hand, are either no better off, or are actually screwed.

------
cognivore
The System better get wise because eventually enough "reasonable" people like
me will start to agree with this sentiment and we'll have ourselves executions
in the street because I'll be looking the other way because the solution is
less worse than the problem.

Don't say it can't happen. Governments much more entrenched than the US have
fallen due to mistreatment of their populace.

~~~
jeremiep
The system _can 't_ get right because it is fundamentally corrupt. It was
carefully designed for this very purpose from the beginning. Too many smart
and intelligent people are in charge for the system to get this fucked up by
accident.

Just like mediocre software architectures, sometimes a full rewrite is the
only way to go. No amount of refactoring will cleanse a self-corrupting
system.

Just like a Windows installation after a while, nothing will help but a fresh
reinstall with a blank slate.

However, it is the nature of our institutions to try and stay alive, even when
they are outdated ideas, have been proven inneffective time and time again.
Above all, they want to survive, even if the cost for this is a massively
decreased quality of life for virtually everyone not holding the reins.

~~~
brasky
Most people dont realize the fact that every government collapses eventually.
Every single one. You would think that gee maybe something is inherently wrong
with the concept after so much epic fail.

~~~
jeremiep
Computing made this evident, decentralized systems are almost always superior
to centralized ones.

The current government hierarchy is littered with single points of failures. I
never believed the action of voting to be relevant in any way whatsoever. This
is the biggest illusion of power to the people.

It's like having a faulty production system filling its error log where you
can only blindly deploy a fix every four years and hope things get better. All
while accumulating user complaints and deferring your customer service
offshore.

------
schappim
I would comment on this, but I am afraid it would be brought up by a TSA agent
when trying to enter the US.

~~~
undoware
I'm a TSA agent. After reading your comment, I'm commanding you to take off
your clothes, wherever you are, and subject yourself to a full pat-down.

What, that legislation hasn't passed yet? Got my super-PAC on super-speed
dial....

~~~
aric
Turn on your cam, citizen.

~~~
alxjrvs
...Pick up that can.

------
schappim
Text:

Burn the Fucking System to the Ground

Dec 23, 2013 By Clark. Effluvia "I'm a good judge" … said by government
employee and judge Gisele Pollack who, it seems, sentenced people to jail
because of their drug use…while she, herself, was high on drugs.

But, in her defense, "she’s had some severe personal tragedy in her life".

And that's why, it seems, she's being allowed to check herself into rehab
instead of being thrown in jail.

…because not a single poor person or non government employee who gets caught
using drugs ever "had some severe personal tragedy in her life".

I'm reminded of something I read earlier today:

techdirt.com

We've discussed the whole "high court/low court" concept here a few times
before — in that those who are powerful play by one set of rules, while the
rest of us have to play by a very different set of rules.

…

The end result seems clear. If you're super high up in the political chain,
you get the high court. Reveal classified info to filmmakers? No worries. Not
only will you not be prosecuted or even lose your job, the inspectors will
scrub your name from the report and, according to the article, the person in
charge of the investigation will "slow roll" the eventual release of the
report until you switch jobs.

But if you're just a worker bee and you leaked the unclassified draft report
that names Panetta and Vickers? Well, you get the low court. A new
investigation, including aggressive pursuit by the government, and
interrogations of staffers to try to find out who leaked the report.

Twenty years ago I was a libertarian. I thought the system could be reformed.
I thought that some parts of it "worked"… whatever that means. I thought that
the goals were noble, even if not often achieved.

The older I get, the more I see, the more I read, the more clear it becomes to
me that the entire game is rigged. The leftists and the rightists each see
half of the fraud. The lefties correctly note that a poor kid caught with
cocaine goes to jail, while a Bush can write it off as a youthful mistake
(they somehow overlook the fact that their man Barrack hasn't granted clemency
to any one of the people doing federal time for the same felonies he
committed). The righties note that government subsidized windmills kill
protected eagles with impunity while Joe Sixpack would be deep in the crap if
he even picked up a dead eagle from the side of the road. The lefties note
that no one was prosecuted over the financial meltdown. The righties note that
the Obama administration rewrote bankruptcy law on the fly to loot value from
GM stockholders and hand it to the unions. The lefties note that Republicans
tweak export rules to give big corporations subsidies. Every now and then both
sides join together to note that, hey! the government is spying on every one
of us…or that, hey! the government stole a bunch of people's houses and gave
them to Pfizer, because a privately owned for-profit corporation is apparently
what the Constitution means by "public use".

What neither side seems to realize is that the system is not reformable. There
are multiple classes of people, but it boils down to the connected, and the
not connected. Just as in pre-Revolutionary France, there is a very strict
class hierarchy, and the very idea that we are equal before the law is a
laughable nonsequitr.

Jamal the $5 weed slinger, Shaneekwa the hair braider, and Loudmouth Bob in
the 7-11 parking lot are at the bottom of the hierarchy. They can, literally,
be killed with impunity … as long as the dash cam isn't running. And, hell,
half the time they can be killed even if the dash cam is running. This isn't
hyperbole, mother-fucker. This is literal. Question me and I'll throw 400
cites and 20 youtube clips at you.

Next up from Shaneekwa and Loudmouth Bob are us regular peons. We can have our
balls squeezed at the airport, our rectums explored at the roadside, our cars
searched because the cops got permission from a dog (I owe some Reason intern
a drink for that one), our telephones tapped (because terrorism!), our bank
accounts investigated (because FinCEN! and no expectation of privacy!). We
don't own the house we live in, not if someone of a higher social class wants
it. We don't own our own financial lives, because the education accreditation
/ student loan industry / legal triumvirate have declared that we can never
escape – even through bankruptcy – our $200,000 debt that a bunch of adults
convinced a can't-tell-his-ass-from-a-hole-in-the-ground 18 year old that (a)
he was smart enough to make his own decisions, and (b) college is a time to
explore your interests and broaden yourself). And if there's a "national
security emergency" (defined as two idiots with a pressure cooker), then the
constitution is suspended, martial law is declared, and people are hauled out
of their homes.

Next up from the regular peons are the unionized, disciplined-voting-blocks.
Not-much-brighter-than-a-box-of-crayolas teachers who work 180 days a year and
get automatic raises. Firefighters who disproportionately retire on disability
the very day they sub in for their bosses and get a paper cut.

A step up from the teachers and firefighters are the cops: all the same
advantages of nobility of the previous group, but a few more in addition: the
de facto power to murder someone as long as not too many cameras are rolling.
The de facto power to confiscate cameras in case the murder wasn't well
planned. A right to keep and bear arms that far exceeds that of the serf
class: 50 state concealed carry for life, not just just for actual cops, but
even for retired cops.

At the same level of privilege as cops, but slightly off to one side is
different class of nobility: the judiciary and the prosecutors. Judges and
prosecutors can't execute citizens in an alley, a parking lot, or their own
homes ("he had a knife! …and I don't care what the lying video says."), but
they can sentence people to decades in jail for things that any clear-minded
reading of the Constitution and the 9th and 10th amendments make clear are not
with in the purview of the government. They have effectively infinite
resources. They orchestrate perp walks. They selectively leak information to
shame defendants. They buy testimony from other defendants by promising them
immunity. By exercising their discretion they make sure that the bad people
are prosecuted while the good people (i.e. members of their own clan) are not.

Above the cops, the prosecutors, and the judiciary we have the true ruling
class: the cabal of (most) politicians and (some) CEOs, conspiring both
against their own competitors and the public at large. If the public is
burdened with a $100 million debt to pay off a money losing stadium, that's a
small price to pay if a politician gets reelected (and gets to hobnob with
entertainers and sports heroes via free tickets and backstage passes). If new
entrants into a market are hindered and the populace ends up overpaying for
coffins, or Tesla cars, or wine that can't be mail ordered, then that's a
small price to pay if a connected CEO can keep his firm profitable without
doing any work to help the customer. If the Google founders want to agitate
for Green laws that make Joe Sixpack's daily commute more expensive at the
same time that they buy discount avgas for their private flying fuck palaces,
then isn't that their right? They donated to Obama's campaign after all!

I could keep myself up all night and into tomorrow by listing different groups
of royalty and the ways they scam the system.

…except "scam the system" is a misnomer. I am not listing defects in a
perfectable system. I am describing the system.

It is corrupt, corrupt, corrupt. From Ted Kennedy who killed a woman and yet
is toasted as a "lion of liberalism", to George Bush who did his share of
party drugs (and my share, and your share, and your share…) while young yet
let other youngsters rot in jail for the exact same excesses instead of waving
his royal wand of pardoning, to thousand of well-paid NSA employees who put
the Stasi to shame in their ruthless destruction of our rights, to the Silicon
Valley CEOs who buy vacation houses with the money they make forging and
selling chains to Fort Meade, to every single bastard at RSA who had a hand in
taking the thirty pieces of silver, to the three star generals who routinely
screw subordinates and get away with it (even as sergeants are given
dishonorable discharges for the same thing), to the MIT cops and Massachusetts
prosecutor who drove Aaron Swartz to suicide, to every drug court judge who
sends 22 year olds to jail for pot…while high on Quaalude and vodka because
she's got some fucking personal tragedy and no one understands her pain, to
every cop who's anally raped a citizen under color of law, to every other cop
who's intentionally triggered a "drug" dog because the guy looked guilty, to
every politician who goes on moral crusades while barebacking prostitutes and
money laundering the payments, to every teacher who retired at age 60 on 80%
salary, to every cop who has 50 state concealed carry even while the serfs are
disarmed, to every politician, judge, or editorial-writer who has ever used
the phrase "first amendment zone" non-ironically: this is how the system is
designed to work.

The system is not fixable because it is not broken. It is working, 24 hours a
day, 365 days a year, to give the insiders their royal prerogatives, and to
shove the regulations, the laws, and the debt up the asses of everyone else.

Burn it to the ground.

Burn it to the ground.

Burn it to the ground.

Merry Christmas.

~~~
pdonis
Burn it to the ground and replace it with what?

~~~
coldtea
If you have a growth and the doctor advises you to remove it, do you ask him
what will he replace it with?

In any case, replace it with a system that doesn't do all that stuff.

~~~
aidenn0
If I have an unsalvageable organ and the doctor advises me to remove it, then
I certainly will ask him what he will replace it with.

As messed up as the system is, it does work marginally better than anarchy.

~~~
okaram
Marginally ? Have you seen anarchy ? You get warlords, feudalism, that kind of
stuff (see Somalia).

I'm assuming the writer lives in the US; I think he greatly exaggerates the
issues; the system works; most people live with enough food, enough
necessities and without the threat of violence; we CAN make it better, but I'd
much rather improve on it than try to come up with a new one.

BTW, I haven't seen ANY system that works wholesale better than ours; have
y'all ?

~~~
scarmig
Low standards. The post Stalin Soviet Union also provided everything you
mentioned. But I'm not happy to be a serf, even if a serf who is likely to
have enough gruel for a comfortable existence.

What's better? I don't presume to be able to build a new society from the
fount of my head. But relentless, diverse experimentation, and creating the
space for that experimentation, seems like a solid approach to me.

~~~
pdonis
_The post Stalin Soviet Union also provided everything you mentioned._

No, it didn't, at least not on its own. Even post-Stalin, the Soviet Union
couldn't feed its people from its own resources; it relied on large food
imports from other countries (including the US). And it still relied on
violence to keep people in line, just not as overtly as Stalin did.

~~~
scarmig
It couldn't feed people on its own, except by manufacturing goods and trading
them for food? That's hardly damning of the USSR (though it certainly is
worthy of damnation, for other reasons); other countries do the same thing
now, for both agricultural and manufactured goods. The point is, people had
enough food to survive, which is the point I was addressing. Similarly, you
could avoid state violence by accepting the system without complaint. A
terrible way to eke out an existence, but not a difficult one if you have low
expectations of human dignity.

~~~
pdonis
_It couldn 't feed people on its own, except by manufacturing goods and
trading them for food?_

Where did I say it got food from the US (and other countries) by trading
manufactured goods? How many Soviet manufactured goods do you remember seeing
in Western countries?

What the Soviet Union actually "traded" for food was concessions on treaty
issues like nuclear weapons. Which was particularly convenient for them since
most of what they conceded was not actually verifiable, so the "concessions"
amounted to making promises they had no intention of keeping, in exchange for
actual stuff.

 _The point is, people had enough food to survive, which is the point I was
addressing._

No, the point you were addressing was that the system in which the people
lived was able to provide for them, which was not true of the Soviet Union. If
the West had not agreed to play the USSR's con game of trading non-verifiable
concessions for actual stuff for decades, the USSR would have collapsed a lot
sooner than it did.

~~~
scarmig
You have a very mistaken view of Soviet trade, if you think "we promise not to
develop nuclear weapons, if you give us grain!" It's wishful thinking, akin to
a leftist claims that the USA gets all its manufactured goods by enslaving
developing countries.

The Soviet Union imported large amounts of grain due to a deeply broken
agricultural system, which I believe we're in full agreement on. But this
wasn't in exchange for merely making unverifiable promises to the West (why
would the United States have agreed to that, even?). Much trade was with other
socialist countries, for one. And although Western countries received few
Soviet manufactured goods, they, then as now, imported large quantities of
Soviet commodities, particularly oil and natural gas.

Indeed, its reliance on oil for hard cash is what led in part to its downfall,
as oil prices collapsed in the 80s, putting significant strains on the system
as the pie got much smaller while more and more resources were needed to
satisfy rising consumer demands and ill-conceived land wars in Asia.

~~~
pdonis
_It 's wishful thinking_

I'll admit such a view is simplistic, yes. However, I think it played more of
a role than you appear to believe it did.

 _Much trade was with other socialist countries, for one._

I'm not sure this makes much difference, since those other countries were just
as messed up. (I also have a hard time taking any numbers that can be found
for this at face value anyway, just as I am skeptical of pretty much any
numbers that were internally generated by Eastern Bloc countries. Not that
Western countries' numbers are miracles of accuracy either, but at least they
get a lot more independent checking because the underlying data is more easily
available.)

 _And although Western countries received few Soviet manufactured goods_

In other words, you agree with me that this was not a significant factor. Ok.

 _they, then as now, imported large quantities of Soviet commodities,
particularly oil and natural gas_

I agree that the West got large quantities of oil and natural gas from the
USSR; the question is, at what prices? And at what prices did we sell them
grain and other foodstuffs in return? I suspect that the respective answers
are "high prices" and "low prices"; the trades were not ordinary free market
trades because of the political factors involved.

~~~
versale
I don't know what are you talking about (obviously not about the USSR), but
I'd love to return to the Soviet Union if that was possible.

------
seanalltogether
Regarding these issues specifically are we better off today then we were 100
years ago? 500 years ago? Sometimes I feel like society has increasingly less
problems to worry about, and therefore more time to spend looking under the
microscope.

~~~
maxk42
A lesser evil is still evil.

------
joewrong
If popehat.com is still down, I was able to find it re-posted on this site:
[http://www.occupylv.org/blogs/burn-fucking-system-
ground](http://www.occupylv.org/blogs/burn-fucking-system-ground)

------
DonGateley
An equivalent rant could be written about any system of government that has or
does exist. Establishing such hierarchies of privilege is intrinsic to the
governing class. Always has been and always will be.

------
lubujackson
David Simon (creator of The Wire) also recently talked about our hell-in-a-
handbasket situation, a bit less ragefully:
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-
cap...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/david-simon-capitalism-
marx-two-americas-wire)

~~~
PavlovsCat
And even when The Wire was made:

"[The Wire] is a treatise on the end of the American empire and who we are as
a people and what we’ve come to and why we can no longer solve or even
seriously address our own problems." -– David Simon

------
Luff
Cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PVM0SXo...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:PVM0SXowLx4J:www.popehat.com/2013/12/23/burn-
the-fucking-system-to-the-ground/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk)

------
Pacabel
Is the "Error establishing a database connection" message that's currently
showing an actual error message? Or is it just a play on the "Burn the Fucking
System to the Ground" theme in the supposed article's title?

------
danielweber
I'm a popehat fan from long before most HN before heard of it, but this
doesn't have anything to do with HN at all.

~~~
coldtea
The thing about real hackers is that their thinking (and reading) is not
compartamentalized.

~~~
PavlovsCat
Sadly, whenever something is remotely important, it seems to get killed...
discussing the viabilities and alternatives of violent revolution is too real
for some. Let's discuss font sizes!

History will have very unfriendly things to say about this: people swap
temporary comfort for eternal shame, and they should at least be aware of
this.

------
pirateking
"All political problems can be solved by the correct application of power."

\- _Childhood 's End_ by Arthur C. Clarke

------
cordite
We could all just move to Nigeria, but then there's a lot of things we'd lose
out on.

------
daphneokeefe
Site has stopped responding.

------
1945
Very relevant to hackernews </s>

------
blahbl4hblahtoo
Used to be a libertarian? Still a right winger, though.

Obama rewrote the bankruptcy laws to help a union? Speaking of union's,
firefighters are a problem now? Since when?

Ted Kennedy the murderer. The serfs are being disarmed? How about "cabal of
(most) politicians and (some) CEOs"...because (to the right wing mind) it's
more likely that politicians are pulling the strings than business
people...they make are jerbs! Plus one drudge point for saying that the Google
guys are hypocrites (shocking) that voted for Obama.

RSA, a company that makes money, took money from a customer to do something
that benefited the customer? That doesn't rise to the level of tragedy as the
problems in the justice system.

Let's see the NSA is the Stasi...he also mentioned pre-revolutionary
France...the right wing mind loves dreaming that we might have a
revolution...and then all the "serfs" that haven't been "disarmed" will throw
off their shitty jobs and fight fer freedum!

Here's a gem: "to every politician who goes on moral crusades while
barebacking prostitutes and money laundering the payments, to every teacher
who retired at age 60 on 80% salary, "

Hypocritical politicians who commit crimes are like retired teachers? Fuck
you. You wormy douchebag.

~~~
bzbarsky
> firefighters are a problem now?

To some extent, yes.

The number of fires that need responding to is down significantly (almost 2x
over the last 3 decades). Over the same time, number of firefighters is _not_
down significantly; in fact it's up by a factor of 1.4 or so. So now they're
partially a solution looking for a problem (e.g. doing medical emergency first
response using fire trucks, which is just daft).

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/fir...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/07/firefighters-
dont-fight-fires.html) has some graphs, links to data, etc that you may want
to look at.

This is not even entirely a US-specific problem; Toronto is having similar
issues; see
[http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/08/06/toronto_paramedic...](http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/08/06/toronto_paramedics_and_firefighters_at_odds_over_medical_calls.html)

