2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Nobody Told Me [View all]Shandris
(3,447 posts)...hits home and does so very well. (Also, I was unaware of the whole Mafia/SEA thing, so I'm going to look more into that - anyone with resource links to start me off would be appreciated!)
I've long been of the belief that a vast majority of the organs of government are corrupted through and through. That so many have reached the point that they are more loyal to the organization than to anything it actually stands for anymore (there's a principle in tech that works much the same way) says that this system is nearing critical end simply due to accrued entropy. It's one of the reasons I'm such a committed anti-authoritarian.
I don't know if the corruption, or even an extant amount of it, can ever be purged from government anymore. What I do know is that until it, or a large amount of it, is cleansed, there is nothing but danger in supporting further federal* government control over any method of production (*and realistically, state in most cases too). Note that I'm not talking about government influence, just control.
It's times like these I'm reminded of just how right the Reverend Carlin was when he spoke about rapid fire capital punishment. You put a handful of bankers on a catapult into a brick wall at halftime of Monday Night Football for a few weeks and you'll start to see these problems disappear real quick.