On 10/13/09 17:34, andrel wrote:
>> In the end, though, it's a question of rights. The government doesn't
>> have the right (at least here), to know all the details of what type
>> of stuff I'm buying.
>
> Neither does my government, even if a bank knows something about my
> behaviour does not mean that the government does. Or probably more

	Yeah, but the government can get access to those records easily over 
here. A bit *too* easily in recent times.

	Also, I don't know what the rules are regulating how those private 
companies use the data. In some cases, I believe they're allowed to sell 
some information about you to others (which you formally agree to in the 
terms of service).

> It is not about accepting cash. Of course I can pay cash. It is simply
> not convenient.

	Oh, you'll find it similar here. Lots of people (at least those that 
have good jobs) rarely carry cash or pay in it. Most of my friends are 
that way. Lots of others do pay cash, though. Don't know which is in the 
majority.

>> Elections don't quite fix that. Just because I elected certain "good"
>> people doesn't mean the system will change for the better. The
>> president can't just change everything if he wants to.
>>
>> I'm guessing that in your country, those kinds of abuses have probably
>> been a lot rarer - hence more trust for the government.
>
> I am still in the dark what kind of abuse you are talking about.

	I've kind of forgotten the whole context of this discussion:

1. Government getting access to your phone records without warrants.

2. Government getting access to your financial records (with or without 
warrants, but perhaps for dubious reasons).

3. Government seeing that you buy lots of stuff from Middle Eastern food 
stores and putting you on the no fly list. OK - that may be a bit of a 
stretch, but in California some years ago, it was revealed that law 
enforcement agencies were planning to monitor those kinds of stores for 
very similar reasons - someone quashed it before it got put into 
practice. And people have been put on no-fly lists for pretty weak 
reasons (anti-war activist, name sounds too Middle Eastern, etc).

4. Government knowing what kinds of books you read (library, etc).

5. If you want historical reason, they've done all kinds of fun stuff to 
various minorities. Look up the Tuskegee experiments.


>> (as well as good politicians). Did you think they rigged the elections
>> to get there?
>
> No, what I think is that for at least the level of senator, but probably
> even some levels below that, the big companies decide who you can vote for.

	I think it's in the opposite direction. The *higher* the office, the 
more the influence of big companies. Perhaps that's what you meant?

>> We're straying from the original topic, but as lots of people say, the
>> key to a good democracy is an informed population. And most people
>> here are really, really uninformed about most things. Chances are if
>> they read the news moderately, they're even more uninformed.
>
> Why don't you try the BBC model? Oh yes, because someone will pay the
> senators to prevent that.

	Well, we do have NPR & PBS. And they're fairly good in their limited 
scope. I haven't investigated what's preventing them from going full out 
the way BBC does. Probably because the people don't want to spend a lot 
of money and they would get a lot of flak from the private news agencies 
stating that it's unfair competition (which it kind of is...).

	If you've been following the BBC lately, you'll know that little 
Murdoch just leveled that exact same accusation against the BBC. in the 
past few weeks. The BBC will probably survive those kinds of attacks 
because it has been big historically. Over here there's no historic 
precedent, so it's hard for government run news agencies to justify 
themselves growing large.

>> In the US, there's a general belief that if a person wants to screw
>> himself, the government should stay out of it. Of course, they may
>> have stuff like suicide hotlines, etc.
>
> I noticed a tendency to assume that everybody fully controls his or her
> own destiny. Well, that is a complete fiction. You can pretend that is
> so as long as it does not involve you or your loved ones. Of course
> *your* house will not burn down, it has never done so, hence it won't
> happen.

	And if it does, it's your fault for not having insurance.

	Yes, it's a silly notion. But deep rooted here. In the end, it's like 
the C/C++ analogy I gave. For *some* categories of successes, I think 
the US _does_ allow you to be mostly in control. For many others, the 
"freedom" likely works against it. Few want to realize that, and many 
others are happy with the tradeoff.

>> So you want a huge loan for your house that you can't reasonably pay
>> off? The government won't stop you.
>
> In the case of the bank here the bank sold products that looked solid,
> had people trained to sell them, avoiding all nasty details and paid the
> people that sold them a more if they sold dodgy mortgages than for solid
> ones. There is no way that any John Doe could figure that out for
> himself. It was probably the same in the US. You can not claim that
> someone who wants to buy something and somebody with great authority
> shows them that they can afford it, is wanting to shoot himself in the
> foot. It may be the ground state for some people in the US to assume so,
> but just wait until misfortune hits them.

	Similar story here.

	I haven't been following it, so I don't know if they plan on or already 
have passed legislation to address this issue. A lot of people want some 
regulation on it, and perhaps are justified in asking for it because the 
government had to bail them out. If they had let them collapse, then 
perhaps there wouldn't be legislation.

>> And since we don't have universal health care paid for by taxes, and
>> perhaps many other tax supported benefits that you may have, the cost
>> to the community is not big (financially).
>
> I am convinced our system will cost less on average than yours.

	Health care? I bet it already is costing less per capita than what we 
currently have. I think the US has the highest per capita health costs.

>> Finally, you have to realize that the US population is much, much
>> bigger than your country's. So there's a lot of inertia, and it has to
>> get quite bad before things can change. Something small may cost your
>> community pretty quickly and pretty noticeably. Over here it has to be
>> that much bigger before people notice the problems.
>
> No. 16 million has the same sort of inertia as 300 million.

	I'd really dispute that. If your country had the obesity levels that we 
do, people would worry. Over here, it's still not a big concern. Also, I 
suspect your country is more densely populated. Bad stuff results in bad 
news that travels fast and is in your neighborhood. Over here, people 
could get laid off in large numbers in nearby cities and most people in 
this city wouldn't know about it unless they read that part of the news.

>> Well, either way is democratic, if the people supported it. Not sure
>> what your point is.
>
> It was an answer to Darren. Why I can not live everywhere that I want to
> and why I think that is OK.

	Fair enough.

>> Also, there's history behind this. Such laws over here would be viewed
>> as intending to keep "people we don't like" out (race, religion, etc).
>> Although perhaps they find legal ways to do that already.
>
> What makes you think we don't have such a history?

	I don't know.<G> Maybe we're a lot more sensitive about our history 
than people over there are with yours. Or perhaps when such legislation 
was passed on your side, plenty of provisions were provided to ensure it 
wouldn't be used to exclude certain groups.

	

-- 
Ground yourself, THEN hug your motherboard!

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