Reply #: You have a different tradition. [View All]

[Julien Sorel]

The unions are stronger, the corporations are weaker, and people will get out in the streets and fight. There's more of an adversarial relationship between government, corporations, and the people, I think, which means power is more diffuse. Here, the line between corporations and government is blurred, which means there is overlap in power sharing. It creates an entirely different dynamic with regards to how people view their government, and to what degree they trust it.

For some reason, the idea that the rank-and-file military there actually sympathizes with the lower classes would make me feel safer; here the military, if it came down to it, would definitely side with what I will call the "ruling elite," the big institutions that run the country. There's nothing to counter the power of big institutions except their good will, which is an ephemeral thing. Under those circumstances, I want to give those institutions as little of my privacy as I can get away with.