Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

Re:Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerpri... by jessaustin on Sunday October 16, 2016 @10:35PM (#12722363)

Do you claim here that elections (who votes, where, how often, in what conditions, for whom, for what, etc.) aren't part of "the system"? That probably isn't your intention, but you seem to hold the parenthesized conditions blameless, offering instead some sort of caricature of a Trump voter for criticism. Incidentally, if the participation of all those apparent cretins is "democracy working exactly as intended", how should we characterize previous elections in which they did not take part?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerpri... by lisper on Monday October 17, 2016 @02:10AM (#12722975)

I was referring specifically to this:

> The 'actual problem' seems to be in the selection/delegation process.

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Re:Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerpri... by jessaustin on Monday October 17, 2016 @08:44PM (#12731134)

ISTM there are problems in that process. Even if there aren't, there could be, and preemptively declaring such out of scope certainly wouldn't help solve those.

One has long suspected the insidious idea that the Founders etc. did such a Good Job that we mustn't criticize any current incarnation of the institutions and traditions they created. One used to hear this silly idea from "strict constructionists", but recently it seems to come mostly from devoted supporters of the status quo.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerpri... by lisper on Monday October 17, 2016 @09:01PM (#12731197)

Of course there are problems in the process, but they pale in comparison to the fact that there are vast and fundamental differences in people's quality metrics, and even in what they mean by words like "freedom" and "equality" (e.g. is allowing gay marriage "equal rights" or is it "special treatment"?) So the whole premise of electing reasonable people to run the government is doomed from the start because Americans don't agree on what "reasonable" means. No amount of tinkering with the process is going to fix that.

[ Parent | on HN ]