Chris Grayson No, I’m not holding up China as a model to emulate. What I’m saying is that it seems inevitable that the US will emulate them, which is why we need to work hard as a nation to create a government that is worthy of our trust, and that doesn’t use the data it collects against us. I know that may be a utopian dream, but it’s one we need to work towards. I’ll amend the story to try to make this clearer.

Andrew Kemendo I agree that the US system of government was founded on distrust of government. That is another way of saying that it was designed in such a way as to make it more accountable to its people than previous forms of government such as monarchies. I’m not calling for blind trust, but for conscious design (and updating the design) of our institutions in quest of systems that we can trust.