> There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them.

I guess it’s true that some people in positions of power view themselves as rules over others, but I always thought that most people here in the western world held the view that the government exists to serve the people, not the other way around. Is this not the case?

There is plenty of things the government can spend their time on that is actually beneficial to its people, including:

- Regulating industry where necessary to protect employees and the public from harm; physical, economical, psychological, privacy, or otherwise.

- Negotiate with other countries so that mutually beneficial agreements are reached with regards to import and export of goods, as well as immigration, emigration and travel relating to the exchange of labor forces.

- Creating and enforcing laws for how the public is allowed to act so as not to cause harm. Things like laws that prohibiting DUI etc.

- Coming up with ways to protect and help people that get sick or have permanent illnesses or handicaps, to ensure that everyone can have quality of life.

That is what government should be about, not about control for the sake of control itself.

I appreciate the Dr. Ferris quote. It's pretty scary to see so much of Atlas became reality.

>The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals.

This just isn't true. The rest is garbage in, garbage out.

Such an unrelated libertarian quote that gets blindly posted and blindly upvoted. The EU is having a problem with the US companies running the show over their internet space. They don't intend to lock ordinary people up with this law. So you think it' be better for the companies to hold unlimited power and control people? That'd be much worse than moderate and sensible government regulations.

An apt quote indeed.

- Ayn Rand.

Not in the same way as in the US, and I don't think campaign contributions are a thing, at least not at the same level as in the US.

But there are many, many lobbyists active in the EU, and some of them have a surprising amount of influence over politicians. There has even been a case where two different parties, independently from each other, introduced the exact same bill, which had been written by a lobbyist.

Everywhere has this phenomenon in some guise, it's only the US that's self absorbed enough to think it is unique.

Don’t know how common it is, but it has happened

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_cash_for_influence_scan...

Not quite as brazenly corrupt as it is in the US but it is still a huge problem.

I imagine that Google Europe and Facebook Europe will just slice themselves up into a swarm of subsidiaries that each have less than 50 employees and less than €10m turnover.