[HN Gopher] Bad behavior is almost always good politics (2021)
___________________________________________________________________
Bad behavior is almost always good politics (2021)
Author : mooreds
Score : 183 points
Date : 2022-03-07 13:46 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fs.blog)
(TXT) w3m dump (fs.blog)
| antattack wrote:
| Thankfully not all bad behavior: Congressional candidate Martin
| Hyde thretened cop's career during traffic stop. He later
| apologized and stopped his campaign.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SunGGUktKok
| plazmatic wrote:
| evan_ wrote:
| Nope. He's still running.
|
| https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/politics/2022/03/05...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| There's a performative art to being a leader. Trump and Reagan
| were both Actors. Trudeau was a drama teacher, and is famous for
| dressing up in all kinds of costumes.
|
| My PM Trudeau's "Bad Behaviour" List is kind of crazy:
|
| 1. Wore Blackface "More times than he can remember"
|
| 2. WE Charity was paying his family members for appearances.
|
| 3. Banned Unvaccinated Canadians from Flying or even getting on a
| Train
|
| 4. Elbowed a female opposition lawmaker in the Chest
|
| 5. Raised the national debt by 40%+ in one year
|
| 6. Invoked Emergency Act to quash a protest, during which some
| protestors were trampled by a police horse.
|
| It's probably a longer list than this. These are just the things
| I know about. But his inner circle still supports him. And the
| CBC which is partially funded by the government runs praise
| articles like he was the dear leader. So it must be good politics
| on some level if he can still get support after doing all that.
|
| If I was to analyze based on this article. The keys to his
| success are:
|
| 1. Raising the debt by Billions to have money to split to
| supporters.
|
| 2. Vilifying the unvaccinated and acting tough on them.
| raidicy wrote:
| >...some protestors were trampled by a police horse
|
| I was under the impression fox news admitted to this being
| false[0].
|
| [0]https://www.yahoo.com/video/fox-news-contributor-admits-
| crea...
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| She did not die but was taken to the hospital and treated for
| her injures. Video of the incident.
| https://rumble.com/embed/vsof48/?pub=b2cwm
| raidicy wrote:
| I had not seen this before. Thank you for helping to
| improve my accuracy of the events.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| Some of these seem like real cases of bad behavior (if true--I
| don't know). But others are clearly just political
| disagreements.
| namlem wrote:
| The Dictator's Handbook should be mandatory in HS civic, imo. I
| have not seen a better explanation of how politics works.
| jmyeet wrote:
| While I agree on the premise of gaining and retaining power and
| the importance of a loyal base to that end, I think reducing
| loyalty to wealth redistribution is overly simplistic and
| insufficient.
|
| Humans like any social creatures are prone to _tribalism_. Social
| cretures crave a sense of belonging and that means defining who
| you are, what you want and what you stand for and finding
| similarly minded individuals. Maintaining that group involves
| signaling one 's "belonging". Tribalism can be along racial,
| cultural, religious or language grounds but it can also be more
| ephemeral than that.
|
| Take the popularity of Trump, particularly among evangelicals and
| other "values" voters. Now for anyone familiar with even a
| modicum of Christian orthodoxy, Trump seen through the lens of
| Christian morals is objectively a horrible human being. Many of
| us find this hypocrisy perplexing but seen through the lens of
| tribalism I think it makes more sense. Trump, through carefully
| chosen wedge issues like guns and abortion, provides and
| reinforces that sense of belonging to that group. It reinforces
| the "us and them" and "we are warriors for Christ" world views
| that are deeply-ingrained and pervasive.
|
| Beyond Trump, you have Putin. Some evangelicals believe God is
| working through Putin [1]. Tucker Carlson last week went on a
| rant about Putin never did [insert imagine liberal sin here], a
| video that is oddly hard to find now and Carlson has been forced
| to backtrack on given the invasion.
|
| Nationalism is another common road to tribalism.
|
| But none of this really involves the transfer of material goods
| as this post focuses on.
|
| [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/retired-evangelist-pat-robertson-
| sa...
| syshum wrote:
| Ignoring the economic aspects Trump is foolish as well. Trump
| either due to action or circumstance also directly lead to
| better conditions for the Working Class via low inflation low
| employment, and reducing environmental regulations that allowed
| increasing in many blue collar jobs.
|
| to be clear these effects are likely not a result of anything
| trump did directly but mere circumstance of timing, however is
| credited by the very people you are calling "values voters"
| with improving their economic position while at the same time
| supporting their values
|
| In contrast, again correctly or not, the Actions of Democrats
| led by Joe Biden are seen as directly increasing inflation, gas
| prices, and worsing their economic situation.
|
| I still firmly believes elections are always about economics,
| if you believe person A will make you better off economically
| you vote for them, or if you believe Person A will make you
| worse off economically you vote against them..
|
| 2020 was probably the first election in a long time that upends
| that mold where it was not about economics...
| daniel-cussen wrote:
| No man has been slandered more than Trump, in his own country,
| while he is alive and in power. Among the most slandered by any
| reckoning, largely because of telecommunications advances and
| the impunity with which slander can be carried out since the
| last Supreme Court ruling during the civil rights movement of
| the 1960s.
|
| Believing the most slander in history leads directly to the
| belief he is the worst person in history.
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| I think "Rules for Rulers" should be mandatory viewing as part of
| any good education. :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
| namlem wrote:
| I would go further and say that everyone should read the whole
| book. Rules for Rulers is a great primer, but The Dictator's
| Handbook has a ton of great content that isn't in the video.
| lupire wrote:
| Also 48 Laws of Power
|
| https://wikisummaries.org/48-laws-of-power/
| motohagiography wrote:
| That video is a summary of the book in the post (Dictator's
| Handbook). I'd say that when combined with the works of
| Pfeffer, Cialdini, and some negotiations theory, you can get a
| pretty good framework for navigating organiztions and create
| predictive models for political outcomes. However, the map is
| not the territory, and you can't prevail in a game when your
| opponents see you strategizing, so having opinions about this
| stuff essentially disqualifies you from winning at it.
|
| I use these authors' models in my consulting work to effect
| change in large tech orgs. Most people say they are playing
| chess and think they are secretly playing poker, but really
| they're trapped in a a game of musical chairs during an
| outbreak of cooties, where people are watching for signs of the
| music slowing down and angling for a diminishing number of
| seats. As a consultant, I solve problems and collect my fees
| move on as I don't value the things they struggle for, but
| having a metamodel from books like those for what's going on
| can unblock organizations with some small influential changes.
| gbuk2013 wrote:
| In my experience, trying too hard or being attached to
| opinions is certainly a limitation with just about anything.
|
| For me the perspective offered in that video was simply to be
| aware of this perspective existing, i.e. a paradigm shift. I
| don't consciously try to use it - I am aware that I don't
| have the talent for it - but it has proven a useful tool when
| reflecting on situations and experiences. Certainly made me
| put a lid on some of the hot-headed idealism I had in my
| even-younger days. :)
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| "The 48 Laws of Power" is a fun read, and very related to this
| topic. There's also a Youtube animation summary for the busy.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLB4UrCXOq0
| throwaquestion5 wrote:
| I thought this was going to be an article with some historical
| examples of leaders bad behavior against the general populace
| that actually helps them keep power and the effects on it.
| Instead is more of a tips and tricks on how to accrue long
| lasting power.
|
| Also I disagree about "democratic leaders have to dole out public
| goods to maintain their power". At least I think public goods
| here is too flimsy of a phrase to use here. It is alluded later
| that one of the problems of a leader is bankruptcy. This implies
| most favours to the 'winning coalition' and doling up public good
| being just monetary compensation. I don't think is a good way to
| phrase it. Bread and circus goes more to the point, the former
| seems an anesthetic, harder to understand way to say drop some
| money to keep the masses happy. And I don't consider that a
| 'public good'.
| batrachos wrote:
| > Also I disagree about "democratic leaders have to dole out
| public goods to maintain their power".
|
| Disagree all you want. This is why certain ideologies that tend
| to be rule-following and cast aspersion on the spoils system
| often have trouble holding power. Such as centrists,
| libertarians and greens.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| Wow. I think you're being very kind.
|
| I'm having a hard time seeing how any ideology opposed to the
| freebies and pork barrels gets into power at all? Let alone
| getting to the point of having "trouble _holding_ power ". In
| our system you're simply forced to give out freebies to your
| voters. There really is no choice. In fact, there are some
| freebies that all ideologies would be required to give out to
| all voters. I'm American, in my system an example of that
| kind of freebie would be something like social security
| maybe? or the mortgage credit? However, if you're not from
| the US, but rather from another democratic nation, I'm sure
| you could name the freebies that are mandatory in your system
| too.
| re6fae5Wied5tha wrote:
| JohnBooty wrote:
| In democracies, the opposite is true: the winning
| coalition is large, and the real selectorate is almost
| as large as the nominal selectorate. This means that
| dictators can keep their jobs by handing out private
| goods to their cronies, whereas democratic leaders have
| to dole out public goods to maintain their power. That
| seems to square pretty well with observations in the
| real world.
|
| I'm not sure how to square this with recent US elections, where
| poorer folk increasingly vote for the party that openly pledges
| to give them the least, at least in tangible terms.
|
| I suppose that "dole out public goods" doesn't necessarily have
| to apply to tangible goods, of course. A lot of Republicans are
| happy to vote for Republicans simply because they have promised
| to ban things they find objectionable, like abortion. If
| preventing women from having abortions is one's biggest personal
| issue, then I suppose a guarantee to curb abortion rights would
| be seen as "public goods."
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| This framing carries the kind of contempt that propels poorer
| people to vote Republican. They consistently feel contempt from
| democrats. Should it be surprising why?
| JohnBooty wrote:
| I observed that many voters value their morals/values (for
| example, Republicans who place a high value on preventing
| abortions) more highly than they value tangible goods.
|
| Many would consider that a compliment.
|
| I _am_ such a person, or at least I strive to be.
|
| I understand well that there's a "poor Republicans are so
| dumb that they consistently vote against their own interests"
| narrative out there. It appears to me that's plainly
| something _you_ brought to the table here. That trope wasn 't
| present in my observation, either explicitly or implicitly.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| The fundamental misunderstanding is thinking that people vote
| to implement their wishes as opposed to express their values.
| Why don't people vote for policies that help them-- the rich as
| well as the poor btw? Working class people vote against social
| welfare programs, professionals vote for tax hikes.
|
| The reality is that people know that their individual vote has
| a tiny chance of changing policy so the material reward for it
| is very small. The psychic reward for expressing your values is
| greater. So the working class person may vote to reduce social
| welfare, but won't tear up a child tax credit. The professional
| who votes for higher taxes won't donate an extra $5k to the
| government. In both cases when those people vote they are
| expressing their values, not their interests.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| While to a large extent that is true, I think a larger part
| of the issue is that people actually have different
| foundational mental models of how the world "really" works.
|
| Conservatives, for the most part, believe that a hierarchy of
| haves and have-nots is not only natural, but _inevitable_. It
| is consistent for them to therefore extrapolate that anyone
| _claiming_ to work on flattening the hierarchy (by giving to
| the have-nots) must _really_ be trying to get their in-group
| further up the hierarchy, at the expense of those currently
| benefitting from it.
|
| That's why "He's not hurting the people he needs to be" _can_
| be rationalized as in their self interest. In their view,
| there is some constant, immutable amount of "hurt" that
| _some_ demographic has to bear. "No such thing as a free
| lunch" and such. So deep down, conservatives interpret any
| calls to reduce that harm as instead being an existential
| threat to redirect that harm to _their_ group.
|
| I really recommend Ian Danskin's videos on the subject, they
| explain it better than I can in one HN comment, with plenty
| of scholastic sources:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMabpBvtXr4&list=PLJA_jUddXv.
| ..
|
| (Linked is "Always a Bigger Fish". Many of the historical
| sources justifying the argument are discussed in the
| "endnote" video that follows, but this video is the one that
| lays out this particular argument, along with the later video
| "I Hate Mondays")
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > If an autocrat's "inner circle" feels that their future is
| insecure, they will be incentivized to improve the lot of the
| nominal selectorate in case they someday find themselves on
| the outside.
|
| "The professional who votes for higher taxes" probably fears
| that someday they won't be a professional, much like the
| autocrat who fears they will someday be on the outside.
| cpopw wrote:
| I think it's more nuanced than that. People are just skeptical
| of government especially in rural areas. Aside from access to
| healthcare, I don't think many poor people have faith in
| government help.
|
| And living in a major city like Los Angeles is even worse. The
| government's spending billions of dollars for 600-800k
| apartments for the homeless, when the cost of living for
| regular people goes up and up. And with little support for
| small businesses.
|
| The trope that poor Republicans are just "too stupid" to vote
| for Democrats to save them, or are blinded by social issues,
| seems largely false. They view the government as causing their
| problems via cheap labor, "free trade", unfair regulation and
| inflation.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| The trope that poor Republicans are just "too
| stupid" to vote for Democrats to save them, or are
| blinded by social issues, seems largely false.
|
| I know a lot of Republicans who are very smart, but they
| value _vastly_ different things than I do (to put it mildly)
| and vote accordingly, thus my observation.
| 8note wrote:
| Free trade and cheap labour are republican policies though.
| That's what the republican god Reagan was all about
| brimble wrote:
| Republicans and Democrats alike bought into neo-liberalism
| entirely, no later than 1990 (though, yes, it did start on
| the R side). The leaders and presidential candidates of the
| big two parties have consistently been on board with it,
| with the only big exception being... Trump.
|
| Meanwhile, neo-liberalism has been and remains unpopular
| with the electorate on "both sides" (which is why Trump was
| able to leverage that gap between voter preferences and the
| standard party platform)
| rurp wrote:
| > People are just skeptical of government especially in rural
| areas.
|
| I would be more convinced of this if rural and conservative
| areas weren't net takers of federal funds. In the US at
| least, urban areas subsidize rural ones by quite a lot of
| money.
|
| In addition, take a look at the federal deficit under each
| partie's leadership for the last 100 years. It's quite a coup
| that Republicans get to pretend that they are the party for
| small government and fiscal responsibility.
| namelessoracle wrote:
| In almost Urban area, the rural voters know about this
| company or that company that is on a government contract
| and fails to deliver the goods and services, while the
| companies owners are living like Kings of the rural area.
|
| The narrative you are using is the opposite side of the
| same coin that Republicans use about how wealthy people who
| vote for paying for more taxes should just donate money to
| the government. If the government is giving out money,
| you'd be a fool to refuse to take it because it's going to
| get dispersed either way and the voters arent getting their
| taxes back.
| Arainach wrote:
| >poorer folk increasingly vote for the party that openly
| pledges to give them the least, at least in tangible terms.
|
| One of the keys is that they pledge to give other groups _even
| less_.
|
| As LBJ said, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's
| better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're
| picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on,
| and he'll empty his pockets for you"
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| You are completely missing the point as to why people voted
| Republican recently, and of course, doing it with an air of
| smug superiority and vague references to racism. LBJ's quote
| ironically applies in reverse to the democrats of today,
| especially and including some minority communities. He might
| have said:
|
| "If you can convince the lowest person that his situation is
| not his fault, he won't notice that you're making it harder
| for him to rise up. Hell, give him welfare and a system to
| blame, and he'll happily and loyally stay down forever."
| Arainach wrote:
| >give him welfare and a system to blame, and he'll happily
| and loyally stay down forever.
|
| So.....farmers?
|
| The welfare tropes are so exhaustingly played out,
| especially when all data shows that red voters get far more
| welfare.
|
| https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-
| federal...
|
| This applies in most states at the local level too:
|
| https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/why-
| are-w...
|
| Also, you're ignoring the voters who explicitly tell us why
| they're voting that way: "he's not hurting the people he
| needs to be": https://www.vox.com/policy-and-
| politics/2019/1/8/18173678/tr...
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| If you trust Vox to give you insight into Republican
| voters, then I cannot take you any more seriously than if
| I cited a Federalist article to tell you why people voted
| for Biden. My trust for the Guardian is only slightly
| higher than for Vox, but I find this article at least
| seems far more balanced: https://www.theguardian.com/us-
| news/2016/nov/09/why-did-peop...
|
| It includes things like:
|
| * Voters felt Trump was more genuine than Hillary. That's
| not hard to believe. Trump is raw and real to a fault.
| Hillary is a corrupt career politician.
|
| * Make America prosperous again. Democrats like to ignore
| history that shows that conservative presidents bring far
| more prosperity; leftist presidents destroy prosperity.
|
| * Trump was the best or only conservative option. In
| general, the best reason to vote for a candidate is
| simply that the other candidate is worse.
|
| * A reaction to Obama. Thomas Sowell at the time believed
| Obama was the U.S. worst president ever. While not a
| historian myself, I am inclined to take the opinion
| seriously: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UpiNiaak18&li
| st=WL&index=1&...
|
| And, if you are sick of the welfare tropes, you probably
| need more Sowell in your life:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdwXoKTW3Ew
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > Democrats like to ignore history that shows that
| conservative presidents bring far more prosperity;
| leftist presidents destroy prosperity.
|
| Oh man, this was my 8th grade understanding in a
| Republican household.
|
| However it's not very hard to look at the US economy and
| debt under Clinton, then Bush, then Obama as recent,
| alternating, and stark differences. Clinton had one of
| the best US economies in history with a budget surplus,
| Bush squandered that on wars and the 08 recession. Obama
| picked up the pieces of a recession and brought us back
| to economic strength from the brink.
|
| Then there's the crucial point in history where the three
| consecutive conservative presidencies, Harding, Coolidge,
| Hoover led us to the Great Depression vs. FDR's birth of
| the modern American middle class...
|
| (Yes, I read and appreciate Sowell. And when I say the
| president's names, I mean their administration's
| policies.)
| jonfw wrote:
| The data shows that states with red voters also have high
| welfare rates. That's very different than showing that
| red voters get more welfare.
|
| Given that welfare recipients are among the minority in
| every single state, it's very possible that the welfare
| recipients are voting majority blue and still losing
| their state elections
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| To support what you are saying, I found this article:
| https://wallstreetpit.com/89671-are-welfare-recipients-
| mostl...
|
| "Hardly surprising, we see that in a two-party split,
| 60-80% of welfare recipients are Democrats, while full
| time Workers are evenly divided between parties."
| rexpop wrote:
| > give him welfare... and he'll... stay down
|
| Are you sure it's not: he'll fare... well?
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| No, I meant "stay down":
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdwXoKTW3Ew
|
| Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDwDRGtvDrQ
|
| Also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCVnydB3bj0
| avs733 wrote:
| Its all well and good to take people at face value when you
| ask them a direct question, but when the data consistently
| bears out that that is not the truth you have a
| responsibility to look at reality.
|
| Response bias is well studied:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Response_bias
|
| Especially when one has been fed a narrative specifically
| to _cover_ underlying beliefs in something that has more
| social acceptability.
|
| "The democrats are smug" okay...lets ask the follow-up
| question. Why? how? please explain? Taking people at their
| literal word for why they do something is basically the
| worst possible version of any social sciences research.
| PathOfEclipse wrote:
| > but when the data consistently bears out that that is
| not the truth you have a responsibility to look at
| reality.
|
| I have to admit you've lost me. What reality are we
| talking about?
|
| > "The democrats are smug" okay...lets ask the follow-up
| question. Why? how? please explain?
|
| Thomas Sowell has written entire books about the
| arrogance of leftism. This one I've read personally:
| https://www.amazon.com/Quest-Cosmic-Justice-Thomas-
| Sowell/dp...
|
| This one I would like to find time to read:
| https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Anointed-Self-
| Congratulation-S...
|
| From my own personal experience, it takes a certain
| arrogance to believe in authoritarianism, that a few
| elite should be making all the decisions for the unwashed
| masses. This describes the current democrat party to a
| tee.
|
| Similarly, it takes a certain arrogance to believe you
| have all the answers, and similarly, to ignore all the
| evidence that disproves your assumptions. This describes
| most so-called progressives.
|
| In contrast, it takes humility to be a conservative,
| recognize that you don't have all the answers, that
| things are the way they are for a reason, and that the
| world is complex with more far tradeoffs than pure
| solutions.
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > it takes a certain arrogance to believe in
| authoritarianism, that a few elite should be making all
| the decisions for the unwashed masses. This describes the
| current democrat party to a tee.
|
| I see you got the names of the Democrat and Republican
| parties confused. As the 2020 election showed a minority
| of the country tried to throw out the results of an
| election to usurp power for their authoritarian...
| KerrAvon wrote:
| It's simpler than that: Fox News has been inculcating fascism
| in the USA for 20 years. We are transitioning rapidly from
| democracy into a dictatorship.
| rossjudson wrote:
| Joss Fong investigated "How American Conservatives Turned
| Against Vaccines":
|
| https://twitter.com/JossFong/status/1496525152598777856
|
| It is really good.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Perhaps you can't resolve that contradiction because it doesn't
| exist. By income, Democrats won the lower third and middle
| third income groups by 55-45 in 2020.
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| This trend has been changing over time, though. Democrats are
| losing poorer voters and gaining among highly educated, and
| higher earning voters.
| jeffbee wrote:
| Data? Pew poll says that trump won non-college-educated
| white men 4:1 in 2016 and only 3:1 in 2020. Isn't that
| going the opposite direction of your claim?
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| I think that's more an effect of the gender of the
| opposing candidate than anything else. You can't deny
| that sexism played a huge role in the public opposition
| to Hillary Clinton's campaign. It was plain to see if you
| followed any of the discussion online, often becoming
| openly misogynistic.
|
| Edit: also, this source seems to disagree with you:
| https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/11/11/once-
| aga...
| jeffbee wrote:
| That source seems to agree with me. The graph shows less-
| educated white voters with a 10% swing to democrats
| between 2016 and 2020. Also I completely agree that
| irrational animus towards HRC was a big cause in 2016.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Poorer, less-educated _white_ voters overwhelmingly favored
| Trump.
| bsedlm wrote:
| the way I think about what's happened in the USA is that
| primarily by means of "lobbying" it happened that the public
| (i.e. the citizenry) stopped being made out of human
| individuals and became corporations and other large businesses.
|
| this implies that giving out public goods is actually about
| giving tax breaks and subsidies to campaign donnors and
| lobbyists both of which are really for-profit companies.
|
| ...or something like that.
| JohnBooty wrote:
| Yeah, that makes sense. There's kind of a dance our
| politicians have to do. They have to keep the corporations
| and PACs happy first and foremost, but they also have to...
| well, not necessarily keep the people _happy,_ but say the
| right things so that people will actually go vote for them.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Basically yes. About 20% of the population is highly
| politically engaged and partisan (mostly the upper-middle
| class). The rest are neutral or lean Republican or
| Democrat, but are really more concerned with day to day
| things. If you piss of your ideological base in the 20%,
| you will get primaried. If you screw something up so badly
| that it affects the day to day life of the other 80%, you
| will be destroyed in the general election. So the winning
| strategy is to go as far as you can to please your base
| without pissing off the main population too much. An
| example of this is "defund the police." Perfect for the
| Democratic base, but absolutely toxic to the unengaged
| middle watching SF shoplifting videos on Youtube. See how
| quickly they backed off that?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > See how quickly they backed off that?
|
| The Democratic Party never adopted it at all. The
| activists that did were largely outside of the Party and
| opposed by the elected Party officials from day one.
| [deleted]
| andi999 wrote:
| This quote also suggests a failure mode: if the people expect
| more than the people are willing to give plus maximum debt
| increase. Like you want low tax/social security payments and
| retirement age of 50.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Poor _white people_ vote Republican. If you actually look at
| the entire population, Democrats consistently win the lower
| class.
| cosmojg wrote:
| Just to add to your comment, here's a chart showing how
| college education (probably a good proxy for socioeconomic
| class) correlates with Democrat/Republican leanings across
| racial groups: https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-
| uploads/2020/09/1618431...
| glitchc wrote:
| This has to do with immigration and equity among races more
| so than a direct transfer of wealth.
| UnpossibleJim wrote:
| In one of the most contentious elections in the last 100
| years, the racial voting lines were not quite as stark as I
| expected. While black voters voted in the ratio I expected,
| I honestly expected this type of ratio along all racial
| lines except white given the Republican rhetoric in the
| latest presidential election:
|
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/1184425/presidential-
| ele...
|
| TBH, this was an election for the Democrats to lose, when
| it came to non-white voters and the ball was dropped. I'm
| not sure why they keep chasing these edge-case voters and
| ignoring the lower and middle class, base. They assume
| they're "gimme's" I assume - but voter turn out will, and
| does, drop =[
|
| Full disclosure, I live in the Seattle area, so the
| rhetoric bubble here is _strong_
|
| EDIT: typo
| 0xCMP wrote:
| I would square it by looking at the rhetoric which often
| focuses on "big government paying cronies and the 'swamp'".
| It's important to distinguish what they're actually doing from
| what they're saying to get support.
|
| Also see a huge amount of research that _who_ gets part of the
| public goods is almost important as the fact that they 're
| giving out public goods. Which often falls along nationalistic
| and racial lines.
|
| I personally doubt that _most_ in GOP vote along those value
| lines, but there are very vocal and organized segments that do
| which I think explains why it 'd seem that way.
|
| Source: personal experiences and anecdotal evidence (e.g. take
| with a grain of salt)
| synergy20 wrote:
| Crying baby got more milk, politics is no exception.
| anm89 wrote:
| I bought this book and remember giving up on it pretty quickly
| because I hated the style of the writing. Don't even recall why.
|
| Years later I heard this youtube essay which I'm just connecting
| the dots now is basically just a recap of that book. I personally
| liked the 20 minute essay way more and I think it gives a pretty
| good summary of the key points:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
| javajosh wrote:
| The question HN should be asking: Why aren't there more
| technologists in politics? Why is the will-to-power so often
| absent in us?
|
| Personally, I think we've all grown up _assuming_ a safe, stable,
| neo-liberal capitalist environment that gives us a space to play
| with our toys, and indeed, strongly encourages it. This is not a
| position of power, but the position of a bright child.
| vondur wrote:
| Aren't a larger number of politicians in China formerly
| scientists/engineers? I'm not sure if tech people do any better
| than others in this regard.
| javajosh wrote:
| I've heard that, but I don't know. Other counter-examples:
| Angela Merkel is a scientist. But the only ones I can think
| of in the US are few. Andrew Yang. Zuckerberg is also rumored
| to have desire for political power. Carla Fiorina was CEO of
| HP and ran for CA governor, but I'm not sure if she was tech-
| wise or not.
| vondur wrote:
| Carly Fiorina was some sort of history or literature major
| I believe, and she was an ineffective CEO of HP. You are
| correct about Angela Merkel, she was a physical chemist,
| but I believe many of the energy problems that Germany is
| currently facing have to do with her policies.
| leetcrew wrote:
| I don't think the "will-to-power" is absent at all. rather, the
| private sector is a better path to power for someone with
| technical chops, influencing through money instead of formal
| political authority. of course by the time you have this much
| money, your interests tend to diverge from the frontline
| engineers.
| javajosh wrote:
| It's only a theoretical path to political power, though.
| There are no examples that I know of, at least in the US, of
| a tech entrepreneur or scientist successfully running for
| office. I think Woodrow Wilson was a professor, and he was a
| disastrous president (and notably very racist).
|
| Yes, the money can buy influence over power, but not obtain
| power itself. And if Citizen's United is ever legislated
| against (and it should be) even that influence will be
| limited.
| zby wrote:
| If a behaviour is beneficial for an agent - then we don't need
| any moral rules to pressure him to do that.
|
| Also the set of all possible bad behaviours is very big and it
| would be absurd if all of that would be good politics. The title
| only makes sense if we somehow restrict that set of all possible
| bad behaviours.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| I think _good_ is a bad _word_ for this. A better word would be
| _effective_.
| bitexploder wrote:
| Superman does good. Politicians don't.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I wish people wouldn't joke like this about "all politicians"
| because it is a key part of precisely the kind of nihilism
| and cynicism that leads to the outcomes we're seeing in
| Europe right now: a textbook example of what happens when a
| President has cowed the entire political mechanism around him
| by manipulating just this kind of cynicism.
|
| Many politicians absolutely do good. Politics itself is not
| about doing good, it is about working towards the possible.
| Clubber wrote:
| "Many politicians absolutely do good"
|
| I mean if you look at them with an uncritical eye, sure.
| The system is corrupt, at least in the US. Just look at
| what corporations pay in taxes.
|
| Can you name some US politicians that "do good," and what
| do you define as good? Talk is cheap, they all tell you
| what they think you want to hear. Think of all the corrupt
| systems in play that are detrimental to the us population:
| NAFTA, globalization, policing, qualified immunity, civil
| asset forfeiture abuse, mass surveillance, over-
| prosecution, ungodly military spending, school defunding,
| many more. Things these "do good" politicians just ignore.
| Doesn't that taint them at all in your mind?
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| "Doesn't that taint them at all in your mind?"
|
| Sit back and think about how leaving that thought
| unchallenged -- not looking for and appealing to the good
| in politicians -- leads inexorably to the kind of
| collapse of democracy that you nearly experienced less
| than a year ago.
| Clubber wrote:
| But ignoring it leads to perpetuating an even more
| corrupt system, no? Bad politicians need to be held
| accountable, yet we keep reelecting the same ones with
| the same self serving interests.
|
| Apply the same logic to other organizations. Are there
| good police? Sure. Are they still good if they ignore
| police brutality and cover it up? I would argue that
| would make them bad police.
|
| Currently if you drive with cash, police can pull you
| over and take it. They split it up with the federal
| government. You are left with no cash and are now
| responsible for hiring a lawyer to try to get it back.
| That is literally theft from the government. Which
| politicians are trying to stop this? How does legally
| stealing from citizens reenforce the faith in the rule of
| law? It doesn't. Rather than trying to blame the person
| pointing this stuff out for the decline of democracy,
| maybe put some blame on the people who write unjust laws.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > But ignoring it leads to perpetuating an even more
| corrupt system, no?
|
| I guess it would but I said nothing about ignoring it.
| Clubber wrote:
| >not looking for and appealing to the good in politicians
|
| So what are you saying then? What does that even mean?
| Sounds like the feel good rhetoric politicians have been
| feeding us for decades. I can look for the good all I
| want but that doesn't magically make it appear or make
| the "do good" politicians effective. I've been giving
| politicians of both parties the benefit of the doubt for
| 20+ years, and without fail, they disappoint. Most of us
| are a lot worse off than we were in 1995.
|
| Be optimistic? Is that what you are saying?
|
| How's our life expectancy looking? Worse. How's the drug
| war going? Worse. How does the average person's prospect
| of retirement look? Worse. How's the prospect of home
| ownership looking? Worse. How's our freedoms looking?
| Worse. Remember that whole net neutrality thing that the
| Ds were pushing? What happened to that now that they have
| power? The politicians are controlled by the parties, the
| parties are controlled by the donors. Our futures are
| being sold down the river to the highest bidder. What's
| good? Give me some optimism.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| It is not "feel-good rhetoric". It's a suggestion that it
| would be better to do the hard, consistent work to
| humanise the opposition so that their decisions can be
| criticised without writing them all off as people.
|
| But if I must spell it out to you -- I'll get downvoted
| for it -- I am saying that, essentially, "othering"
| politicians as inherently not doing good, or saying that
| they are _all_ tainted by the actions of some of them, is
| the precise sentiment that was exploited to allow a
| corrupt, amoral, malignant narcissist and populist into
| the White House, who deliberately tried to overthrow the
| democratic process.
|
| Very few of the politicians tarred in that way are
| anything like as dangerous as the man this enabled. And
| the most dangerous of them take part in the tarring.
|
| If you cannot look at politicians and seek to find the
| good and the common ground in them, you're doing the
| nihilistic groundwork of future fascists. Don't do that.
| Clubber wrote:
| >It's a suggestion that it would be better to do the
| hard, consistent work to humanise the opposition so that
| their decisions can be criticised without writing them
| all off as people.
|
| I'm not dehumanizing anybody, I'm just calling them
| corrupt. Politicians have been doing a lot of
| dehumanizing though. "Socialists," "basket of
| deplorables," "anti-vaxxer," "thugs," "racists," etc. You
| know the routine.
|
| >I am saying that, essentially, "othering" politicians as
| inherently not doing good, or saying that they are all
| tainted by the actions of some of them, is the precise
| sentiment that was exploited to allow a corrupt, amoral,
| malignant narcissist and populist into the White House,
| who deliberately tried to overthrow the democratic
| process.
|
| Don't you feel the corruption of the existing system was
| what allowed him to get elected in the first place? Would
| we have Trump if we didn't have the bank bailouts in 2008
| while letting grandmas get their house foreclosed on?
| Doubt it. Would we have Trump if we hadn't insisted on
| staying in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years, then barely
| help vets when they came home? Doubt it. Would we have
| Trump if Occupy Wall Street made a difference rather than
| get jackbooted? Probably not. Would we have Trump if
| politicians didn't wholly allow globalization at the
| expense of the US worker? No. Would we have Trump if
| politicians didn't almost exclusively pass legislation to
| the benefit of their donors while ignoring the citizenry?
| No. Trump absolutely wiped the floor with GOP darlings at
| the GOP debates and he largely did it from the left of
| GOP dogma, at least economically.
|
| I see Trump as a symptom of our current predicament. He
| was popular because he pointed out the corruption of the
| existing system. The irony of course is he was just as
| corrupt. Make no mistake, unless things improve, there
| will undoubtedly be another, who is more politically and
| bureaucratically expedient. If you are concerned with
| that at all, the status quo is almost a guarantee it will
| happen.
|
| Anyway I gave you a couple upvotes incase someone comes
| along and tries to downvote you. I'm enjoying this
| discussion.
| lupire wrote:
| People don't understand the difference between "good" and
| "better", or the idea of marginal/incremental
| improvement.
|
| "Good" is almost never the solition to "bad -- it's
| usually impractical for pragmatic or political reasons.
| The solution is "better" aka "less bad" and iterate.
| Progressive ideas, and ideas that can get some semblance
| of consensus, work much better than Revolutionary ideas.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| Politicians who focus on doing good are at an disadvantage
| to politicians who focus on getting elected. So we end up
| with mostly the latter.
| fulafel wrote:
| Yes, you need to try to get elected. But getting elected
| is often connected with credibility in substance.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| I can see the point.
|
| One side of the US system is consistently better at
| getting elected than the other, and used to ideologically
| prefer the concept of a weaker form of governance.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| The honest politician is limited to telling the truth.
|
| The pragmatic one can say whatever maximizes their chance
| of winning.
| peteradio wrote:
| Politics is a necessary evil to surface all the backstabbing
| before money is spent on policy.
| gumby wrote:
| Superman is a vigilante and doesn't appear to investigate the
| background, instead he merely acts. Write ups of his exploits
| ignore side effects (e.g. jumping into a pressurized plane in
| flight will rain debris down on innocent people below -- not
| to mention kill all the passengers).
|
| Politicians do and have done plenty of good things, from
| getting bridges built, to Medicare, to fighting a war to stop
| slavery.
| gestttgf wrote:
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| Lack of government would have allowed slavery
| indefinitely.
| gestttgf wrote:
| sudhirj wrote:
| This is debatable. One of the problems with slavery is
| the institution supporting it - the laws against slaves
| that were enforced by the government. If there wasn't a
| government the slaves could simply kill the master and
| take the land.
|
| While it was the government that ultimately abolished
| slavery, it was also the government that held it in place
| until that time.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| > If there wasn't a government the slaves could simply
| kill the master and take the land.
|
| And then take your land too, or perhaps enslave you.
| There is no reason to believe that slaves are inherently
| more moral than their masters. With no government it's
| every man for himself and the strongest or most ruthless
| will come out on top.
|
| The fact that some governments at some times enabled
| slavery to continue does not mean that not having
| government would cause it to end.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Politicians do and have done plenty of good things, from
| getting bridges built, to Medicare, to fighting a war to
| stop slavery.
|
| Aside from bridges, all the politicians who did what you
| said are long dead. How long do current politicians get to
| rest on the laurels of long dead ones?
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| It's important to understand that Superman (as with some
| other superheroes) is fundamentally a profoundly Jewish
| figure, an exploration of universal ideas from the Hebrew
| bible and the Talmud, hitched to US national pride and
| universal parallels from other cultures.
|
| Every single Superman story is at some level like it could
| be something from the Talmud about the costs and benefits
| of Jehovah's day-to-day involvement in the lives of his
| faithful. The writers were steeped in this culture.
|
| He's not a vigilante. He's more like an actively-involved
| angel (or avatar in the Hindu sense).
|
| The stories ultimately build into parables about
| intervention in human free will, and the costs and
| responsibilities of accepting that intervention.
|
| The reason I say this is to point out the impossibility of
| this comparison.
|
| Superman does not do "good", he does "god".
|
| Politicians can do "good".
|
| _I am not by any means a comic book aficionado. Or Jewish!
| I 'm the son of an RE teacher who was fascinated by
| subconscious cultural expressions of universal religious
| themes in sci-fi and comics. (She was really a Star Wars
| fan, read the books even!)_
| staticman2 wrote:
| That's a little reductive since the character of Superman
| is inspired by contemporary science fiction of its day
| and Nietzsche, among other things.
|
| What you are presenting is a "reading" and not "wrong",
| but there are alternative readings.
|
| I guess what I'm saying is you can read the character in
| a very secular way.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| It would be reductive to _ignore_ the Jewishness of it
| all, at least as a millieu, particularly considering the
| shared heritage of its co-creators. The entire comic book
| industry of its time was (like Hollywood of the time)
| largely the work of refugees, emigres and their
| descendants.
|
| There are definitely riffs on Nietsche in there, course.
| Not least in the name gag.
|
| But it's just one example of the extraordinary amount of
| hidden/telegraphed Jewishness in US culture of the time.
| And because it is so well-hidden, people are often
| surprised when you point it out.
|
| (Like, can you name a really popular Christmas pop song
| that was not written or co-written by a Jewish person?)
| staticman2 wrote:
| The character of Superman isn't used to explore ideas
| from the Talmud or religious ideas, as far as I know.
|
| Sure his having a secret identity as Clark Kent can be
| seen as mirroring a Jew trying to assimilate among
| gentiles.
|
| His having fled a dead planet can be seen as mirroring
| Jews fleeing from pogroms.
|
| There's a lot of messianic symbolism, but the moral issue
| he has to solve is "Lex Luther wants to blow up the west
| coast of the U.S." not some parable of Talmidic law.
|
| The moral conundrums Superman faces are simple inarguable
| concepts like "genocide is bad" or "that guy on death row
| is innocent and somebody should find the real killer and
| save him". Or "law and order."
|
| If he struggles whether to "interfere" with society it's
| obviously because the formula of a Superman story is
| about restoring the status quo to society after a villain
| tries to disrupt society or blow it up, to be repeated in
| the next adventure. Superman deciding not to "interfere"
| is just an in story explanation for the repeated formula
| of a low brow pulp serial.
|
| The people who make the comics do not and did not even
| have creative freedom to stray too far from this formula.
| Superman is not owned by the men and women who write and
| draw the comics.
| unfocussed_mike wrote:
| > The character of Superman isn't used to explore ideas
| from the Talmud or religious ideas, as far as I know.
|
| I guess _exploration_ was not quite the right word, and
| this is a fair point for sure. I didn 't mean it to sound
| quite as explicit.
|
| What I suppose I mean is that there's a sort of narrative
| exposition of it. It's not subconscious, I think is what
| I mean, even if it is not explicit. Growing up the way
| Siegel did it would have been difficult to ignore a whole
| set of stories and cultural associations and dialogues.
|
| The parallels about Superman himself are telegraphed, as
| you say. He's a refugee, he partially assimilated, and
| the main brake on his ability to get involved is a very
| explicit understanding that he cannot break cover without
| risk (though this is much more evident in the cinema
| Superman films I think). Both Siegel and Shuster were
| from families who had changed their names to avoid
| discrimination.
|
| The stories are simple but I am not sure they start off
| from anything more than that experience. And the notion
| of justice and injustice is as I understand it very much
| something the Talmud concerns itself with. As well as at
| least one story about whether a largely absent Hebrew god
| should be allowed to to interfere.
| undecisive wrote:
| Given that the author doesn't use the word anywhere else (apart
| from the title of the book that shares this article's title) I
| suspect the author is fully aware of this.
|
| Might be worth pointing out the word politics is, for many, a
| pejorative. In that worldview, this statement is more akin to
| "Good thievery" or "Good fraud" in which the implication is
| obvious that it is describing ways of being better at that act,
| not that you are working towards any moral aims.
|
| But yes, the word "Good" is clearly intended as poetic
| counterpoint to the "Bad" in behaviour.
| mrtksn wrote:
| Yet another piece that chooses the KPI by ignoring the existence
| of the individual. It's essentially human resources management
| theory where units of human are fungible.
|
| All this machiavellian stuff is definitely effective for people
| in power.
|
| I hoped that people would notice that in the Game of Thrones all
| that clever politics and noble fights were irrelevant to the
| people who don't have aspirations of governing other people. If
| you are aspiring to uncover the secrets of the universe, if you
| have talent for music or maybe you just want a simple life - that
| is still irrelevant unless you can structure your output to feed
| into the power of a person who holds a title. Why? Because in the
| eyes of these sociopaths you are a unit of HR management and
| nothing more.
|
| Unfortunately, an awful lot of people are fascinated with the
| throne games and are willing to give their lives for it.
|
| For example, according to these people Putin is right because EU
| and NATO were expanding and Putin had to invade. Actual human
| beings dreaming to join a society with low corruption and big
| prospects(In contrast to Russian sphere of influence) is
| irrelevant for them, they will tell you that Ukrainians should
| have remained a buffer. Go you live your life as buffer.
| fallingknife wrote:
| Ukraine will be a buffer one way or another, for NATO or for
| Russia. It is very clear that the Ukrainian people would much
| rather be a buffer for NATO, but that doesn't change the
| fundamental nature of the situation. Recognizing that Putin's
| interests are the same as ours, just in reverse, is not saying
| that he is "right." And if you think these fights are
| irrelevant to ordinary people, you are obviously not thinking
| it through. What about all of the Russians whose money has just
| lost 30% of its value? What about all of the Germans who need
| Russian gas to heat their homes? And the Ukrainians who no
| longer have homes.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > For example, according to these people Putin is right because
| EU and NATO were expanding and Putin had to invade. Actual
| human beings dreaming to join a society with low corruption and
| big prospects(In contrast to Russian sphere of influence) is
| irrelevant for them, they will tell you that Ukrainians should
| have remained a buffer. Go you live your life as buffer.
|
| IMHO, what you describe is often just a special case of not
| thinking very holistically, zooming in on too few things while
| ignoring the whole, then reasoning about the whole based on
| those too few things. Oftentimes that leads to prioritizing
| something that's morally wrong, or otherwise getting priorities
| mixed up by elevating some less important thing over a more
| important thing. Those kinds of errors are also easily
| exploitable by controlling attention. E.g. if you attend
| narrowly enough to Putin's grievances, his actions will seem
| justified no matter how awful they are.
|
| Another area where I often see this is economics.
| pphysch wrote:
| First of all, Game of Thrones isn't real.
|
| > Actual human beings dreaming to join a society with low
| corruption and big prospects(In contrast to Russian sphere of
| influence) is irrelevant for them
|
| I encourage you to look into who actually came into power
| following Ukraine's 2014 coup (hint: look up the founders and
| accomplices of the "Yalta European Strategy") and what its
| economy has looked before and after.
| mrtksn wrote:
| A Christmas Carol is also not a real story but it is a great
| masterpiece helping us think about life.
|
| PS. I'm Bulgaria born, I know very well what it is like being
| under Russian influence or Western influence but thanks for
| the reading material.
| pphysch wrote:
| > A Christmas Carol is also not a real story but it is a
| great masterpiece helping us think about life.
|
| Sure, if your audience is literally children.
|
| Using a series of (violent) smut novels as a guide for
| complex human dynamics is not something that serious people
| do.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >Using a series of (violent) smut novels as a guide for
| complex human dynamics
|
| That's a straw man argument. I don't suggest for guidance
| of society by Lord of the Rings novels.
|
| I don't know if I should reply to you, that's very low
| quality conversation here. What's next? Name calling?
| Maybe you should consider the possibility that you are
| not one of those serious people and try reading a book by
| Charles Dickens.
| iratewizard wrote:
| No, Game of Thrones is a series of violent smut novels
| and a television series based on said novels.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >No?
|
| No to what? Can you be more specific? What are you
| objecting to?
| manholio wrote:
| > All this machiavellian stuff is definitely effective for
| people in power.
|
| As an engineer by trade who turned to politics and government
| for a while, I find your perspective very simplistic. People
| are hardwired to seek recognition and social respect - also
| known as "power" - and build hierarchies around it. Politics
| exists in every profession and walk of life, as soon as you
| have people trying to achieve some common goal, you will have
| competition for decision making.
|
| In professional politics, the grab for power is naked and
| participants understands the game, so the field tends to
| attract sociopaths effective at persuading others. That's all a
| good politician does at the end of the day, convinces people
| around them that acting in the interest of the politician is
| good for them too. Professionals cannot afford the luxury of
| ideology or vision, since any effort earnestly spent on those
| is time not spent furthering their own power, a weakness a
| better politician will surely exploit. Politicians will claim
| values and virtues, they will fish around in society for
| popular themes they can champion to increase their reach, but
| the only real project of any successful politician is
| themselves.
|
| In other fields, reality tends to get in the way of pure
| politics, and you can't talk your way out of a brain surgery or
| spaghetti codebase. This tends to leave many naive people with
| the impression that politics is marginal and things are decided
| on technical merit, personal talent, work etc. This is not the
| case.
|
| Every CEO, inventor, Nobel-prize winner, famous author and
| journalist is first and foremost a skilled politician. They
| were able to convince others to work in their lab or company,
| to publish them, to fund them, to support and promote them.
| Every step on the ladder to greatness required accumulating
| some form of political power - get a well funded lab supporting
| their research, an investment, a scholarship, a small team of
| friends to work on their idea.
|
| At every step they competed with other politicians aiming for
| the same resources, because nobody can make it alone, and
| everyone would like an army supporting their own dreams. And
| throughout this process, successful climbers distributed booty
| to their supporters to keep them on their side.
|
| Politics is not just for rulers, it's for anyone who wants to
| matter in any sense in society.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't know why you wrote this wall of text as an opposing
| argument, I don't recall claiming that politics don't exists
| somewhere. Sure politics exists, let's just say individuals
| exists too.
|
| What I say is that the problems caused by politics emerge
| when politicians forget that other people are individuals.
| That doesn't mean that there are no politics in science, in
| music, in work or even in intimate relationships.
|
| Are you suggesting that the only way to be a politician is to
| be sociopath? It is a cliche that I find too simplistic,
| honestly.
| manholio wrote:
| > That doesn't mean that there are no politics in science,
| in music, in work or even in intimate relationships.
|
| I'm saying a bit more: that there's exactly the same kind
| of kind of politics that Mesquita and Smith talk about, and
| that, contrary to your dismissal, their insights are far
| from irrelevant to people who "uncover the secrets of the
| universe" or "have talent for music".
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't think I dismissed the value of anything.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Yeah, it turbo sucks, but what matters is what we can actually
| do about it.
|
| Power hungry people are always going to seek power, and they're
| always going to be better at it than people who aren't likewise
| driven. Democracy helps, but it still plainly falls under
| "Rules for Rulers" with extra keys. I wonder if the
| gamesmanship can't be addressed directly: elect a large body of
| "acceptable" candidates and randomly choose the ones that
| actually get power. This way, randomness dilutes the climbing
| incentive.
|
| Of course, one needs power to implement any kind of change...
| :>
| gameswithgo wrote:
| We can do plenty about it, kill the evil people, quit being a
| fucking pawn.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| In addition to what dang said: Can you kill a bunch of them
| without _you_ becoming evil? Are you sure?
| dang wrote:
| Posting like this will get you banned here, regardless of
| how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. Perhaps you
| don't owe evil people better, but you owe this community
| better if you're participating in it.
|
| If you'd please review
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick
| to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
| willcipriano wrote:
| > Power hungry people are always going to seek power, and
| they're always going to be better at it than people who
| aren't likewise driven.
|
| From this Republicanism draws it's power. The powerful want
| to rule over other people, so devide the nation into many
| small states, give each a leader and let the people choose
| where they want to live. This forces leaders to compete with
| each other for head count. These socal climbers are naturally
| competitive with one another so they will go to great lengths
| to gain more population.
|
| You have the benefits of a large country for things like
| national defence and natural disasters, but without the
| strong federal government that ends up homogenizing the
| states.
|
| [0]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| <snip>
| ok_dad wrote:
| The poster you replied to was not talking about
| Republicans, "the party", but of Republicanism, "the
| political structure". See:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republicanism
| TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
| Haha, shit. Thanks <face palm>.
| hn_go_brrrrr wrote:
| Intellectually, I enjoy the idea of the states competing as
| a free market, but the system has enough friction to
| prevent that being generally true in practice. For
| instance, it's very difficult to uproot your life and move
| to a different state.
|
| * Many people want to live near their family, and moving
| means either leaving them or convincing multiple other
| people to leave as well.
|
| * Most people won't be able to work remotely so they'll
| need a new job.
|
| * Moving means you won't see your friends in person so you
| need a new social circle.
|
| * Maybe you need to sell your house and buy a new one.
|
| The state has to to something pretty egregious to convince
| someone to move. It's not like switching brands of
| toothpaste.
| lupire wrote:
| yeah it's not a free market, but it is an
| "(semi-)independent laboratory" system where one state
| can try an idea and others may copy it if it works well.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| > Intellectually, I enjoy the idea of the states
| competing as a free market
|
| I believe one of the core value propositions of the state
| is addressing perverse incentives that emerge _from_
| competition. Untaxed externalities, for example. Due to
| race-to-the-bottom dynamics, "let's compete on the
| matter" is equivalent to "let's ignore the perverse
| incentives." Not great.
| rprospero wrote:
| As someone who did all of those things (except I didn't
| have a house to sell), I feel you've left out one of the
| biggest barriers: Immigration laws.
|
| Imagine if, to switch from AT&T to Verizon, you had to
| shell out ten grand to Verizon and wait six years, with
| Verizon being able to add extra hoops and fees at any
| point in the process? If you fail at any point, Verizon
| will sign you back up for a contract under AT&T's worst
| terms. On top off all of this, you still have to pay
| Verizon's worst rates until the six year period is up.
|
| AT&T could probably send someone to your house every
| month to punch you in the face and you still wouldn't
| switch. After all, for the first six years after you
| switch, Verizon will do the same.
| liminvorous wrote:
| We're talking about a theoretical federal republic where
| states aren't allowed to restrict immigration, but the
| federal government isn't strong enough to homogenise the
| laws here.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| The EU is such an entity.
| re6fae5Wied5tha wrote:
| gwright wrote:
| > For instance, it's very difficult to uproot your life
| and move to a different state.
|
| Even harder to uproot your life and move away from a
| powerful national government.
| rjbwork wrote:
| This likewise ignores the individual. "Oh you don't like
| the politics where you live? You want human rights? Leave
| your family and friends and everything you've ever known
| and move a thousand miles away."
| willcipriano wrote:
| The alternative is: "Oh you don't like the politics where
| you live? You want human rights? 51% of your "peers"
| decided you don't get that. Here's my boot on your neck,
| stop resisting!"
| lupire wrote:
| I dunno, maybe there is another alternative?
| willcipriano wrote:
| I've read a lot of history and I haven't seen one. I can
| go as far back as Aristotle to see my same observation
| being made: "Republics decline into democracies and
| democracies degenerate into despotisms."
|
| The founding fathers designed the US as a republic to
| avoid the issues we see today.
|
| > There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the
| Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was
| approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of
| government the delegates had created. His answer was: "A
| republic, if you can keep it."[0]
|
| [0]https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-
| resources/h...
| MarkPNeyer wrote:
| Faster transportation technology can lower the cost of
| moving. If you can travel 600mph reliably and cheaply,
| you can move 200 miles from your job and still enjoy a 20
| minute commute. Families could relocate to a shared
| community without people changing jobs.
| liminvorous wrote:
| I suspect you might be aware of this, but Ada Palmer's
| _Terra Ignota_ serries takes this idea as a very
| significant part of its world building, and I highly
| recommend it if you 're willing to sit though 4 doorstops
| of books for things to pay off. Reading just the first
| book for the worldbuilding is probably worthwhile on its
| own even if you're not going to commit to the serries.
| fho wrote:
| Yep ... especially fast, cheap public transport ... I had
| the "pleasure" to commute about 86 km for five years. In
| Germany that took me about 1,5 hours with most of the way
| a regional train that took about 40 minutes between two
| cities.
|
| I would not do that again, but it was feasible.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Competition doesn't address the problem of "the people who
| are ultimately given power will be the ones who craved it
| and were willing to do anything to obtain it." It
| exacerbates the problem, if anything.
| gwright wrote:
| I think the point is that the power is also decentralized
| making it harder (not impossible) for those type of
| people to gain control over others.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Republicanism still selects for scoundrels.
|
| Yes, it pits them against each other and thereby reduces
| their power -- in theory -- but it still selects for
| them. It doesn't even claim to be good at keeping them
| away. It only claims to reduce their power.
|
| I don't think it's particularly good at reducing their
| power either, but these are two orthogonal issues.
| moltke wrote:
| This is why intact culture, and a moral imperative, are far
| more important than ideology. It's why "spreading democracy"
| by destroying culture and people results in worse outcomes.
| lupire wrote:
| what does "intact culture" mean?
| Mezzie wrote:
| I'd consider an intact culture to be one that's capable
| of transmitting its knowledge and traditions to the next
| generation, and one that permits some kind of social
| learning [1]: It should be possible for a child or novice
| in the culture to be able to figure out how they are
| expected to behave, consistent parameters should exist
| for interactions, etc.
|
| A broken culture in this case would be one which:
|
| - Lacks a next generation/dies out (e.g. the Shakers
| because of their disdain for sex)
|
| - There is a lack of agreement on foundational rules
| which make the culture impossible to enter, change, or
| expand (because the culture is crisis). Think managers
| giving you completely opposite instructions. One example
| would be say, attending the religious services of a
| friend/colleague. If the rules are clear and consistent
| and conveyed, it's possible to act in a respectful way.
| "This is how a Catholic wedding works." If you just have
| to _guess_ what 's offensive or what the taboos are, or
| you get contradicting answers, that's a broken culture.
| Even insular cultures need to teach children/new members,
| if they can't, they die.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_learning_theory
| mrtksn wrote:
| I'm not that pessimistic. If you notice, when structured
| properly, the previously blood shedding monarchs cease to
| exist as the time goes.The USA and Europe were once
| battlegrounds just like most countries that once had smaller
| warlords that kept machiavelling all the times.
|
| The the USA has many horrible sins but Pax Americana is a
| huge win in my opinion. I guess, local sociopaths are
| fighting their wars much more civilly when they don't dare to
| challenge higher powers, thus leaving people like artists,
| scientists, musicians, writers, kids, fathers, mothers etc.
| alone.
|
| I'm usually very worried when someone challenges the position
| of the US instead of the methods and wrongdoings of the US.
| It usually means a local warlord will rally huge amount of
| human resources(which are actually individuals, but not this
| time) in a bid for power.
| Folcon wrote:
| What about smaller effects? I'm not saying don't work on
| large scale solutions, but figuring out / iterating on
| smaller scale problems could give useful information around
| where problems crop up and how to go about tackling them.
|
| Also trying to figure out what mechanisms are hard to
| individually subvert?
|
| I do sometimes think that people who spend time building
| competitive multiplayer games would have some useful input to
| these questions.
| Swenrekcah wrote:
| I once thought about what would be the best way to fill the
| seats in a legislative body.
|
| My conclusion was that each person should get to choose up to
| two people from a randomly shuffled list of candidates. The
| list would be 2*N long where N=(num candidates/ num seats).
|
| That way everyone can carefully vet their choice if they so
| desire without being overwhelmed. Pandering to your base also
| becomes much less effective, unless perhaps the base is very
| large.
| baybal2 wrote:
| > Yet another piece that chooses the KPI by ignoring the
| existence of the individual. It's essentially human resources
| management theory where units of human are fungible.
|
| Check the about page.
|
| > Farnam Street
|
| > Founded and led by Shane Parrish, Farnam Street is run by a
| small but exceptional team.
|
| I am on the same page with you.
|
| Western elites associate themselves with Randist idea of
| natural right, or natural virtue, and very questionable take on
| the rationalistm.
|
| When you let these people "rationalise," and "develop
| flexibility" long enough, they can be forced into rationalising
| just anything, including fascism. The new new creed of Harward
| degree totalitarianism apologists in the spotlight today is a
| great example of this.
|
| The West got stuck in this very questionable mental framework,
| and is running in circles. The decision makers talk themselves
| unto death for very petty, hollow arguments, so strong is this
| "elite conditioning."
|
| In reality, there is little for them to really choose. It's
| either right, common sense, and sound, or it is this "trying to
| rationalise." It's morally hollow people trying to find out
| smart ways to not being pointed on as such basically.
| lazide wrote:
| Well, it's irrelevant for 'normal' folks until the inevitable
| wars crush them under the tank treads of the ones doing the
| power manipulation (and/or they get laid off, or can't pay the
| bills with their ever inflating currency, or crushed under
| unrealistic workloads and burn out...).
|
| In a society, it's never actually irrelevant for anyone. 'No
| man is an island' and all. Even someone who checked out so
| completely they moved into a cabin into the woods can get hit
| by errant bombs or shot by invading soldiers.
|
| What I've learned over the years is that most people prefer to
| focus on the fun thing right in front of them rather than the
| larger mechanics of the environment they are in. That
| fundamentally makes them easier to manipulate for those trying
| to get control of the larger mechanics for their own benefit.
|
| Sometimes, you get folks doing that where most everyone's
| benefits and their benefit aligns.
|
| Often, especially if people aren't paying attention or there is
| a broken system that incentivizes it (which is typical) you get
| people whose idea of 'benefit' is pathological for others.
|
| Figuring out how this all works, AND being able to influence
| the overall mechanics and systems so evil folks don't get into
| power is very difficult and often thankless. Most people can't
| handle it, so most people check out.
|
| Bad actors like to encourage this, as it makes their life
| easier.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I don't think that I suggested not to focus on larger things.
|
| My argument is actually about focusing on the larger and
| important things instead of being a device in the fight of
| the political class.
|
| Oh and understanding how society works is definitely of great
| value, what I find great waste of human life and resources is
| to participate in the fight of sociopaths who try to
| interfere with the workings of the society to skew it in
| their favour.
| lazide wrote:
| How do you propose to keep an eye on and participate in
| steering the larger things without 'participating in the
| fight of sociopaths'?
|
| Even if somehow you have no sociopaths on 'your side'
| (whichever it is), fighting a sociopath by definition
| requires participation?
| mrtksn wrote:
| Steering large things doesn't need to be about fight of
| sociopaths. Having a governmental system with checks and
| balances also helps with keeping the sociopaths
| inefficient, by the time they assume any significant
| power they run out of energy, people catch up with the
| situation.
|
| Nothing of these are original problems, some societies
| managed to build quite robust machines where sociopaths
| can't really cause huge damage.
| lazide wrote:
| I've never seen or heard of any society that has pulled
| it off for long. Where you see it even in the short term,
| that is more likely due to extreme effort put forward on
| a day to day basis by people both in the machine and
| outside it.
|
| If you care to put forward some examples, I'm happy to
| try to provide more concrete information on what I mean.
|
| It's easy to write off leaders as sociopaths - but very
| few seem to check the boxes, if you pull yourself out of
| the politics.
|
| More often often you see someone acting with a set of
| incentives and a problem that you don't understand,
| making a decision you don't agree with. Which sucks. Add
| on top that the extreme pressure, visibility, power, and
| wealth can cause some unique looking (but all too common)
| pathologies at those levels, and it gets even easier to
| us vs them them.
|
| Someone can't make hard decisions if their heart bleeds
| (for real) for every bad situation. No group will survive
| long with no one able to make hard decisions leading it.
|
| No matter what anyone does, if the group size is large
| enough bad situations will happen no matter how good a
| system is, or how perfect anyone attempts to make it. For
| anyone to be able to be effective at that level, they
| have to be able to make decisions somewhat free of
| emotional affect, and to be good, they need to do that
| without completely losing it. Which is incredibly
| difficult.
|
| It's easier to just go 'meh', make the decision that's
| better for them right now and move on.
|
| And being an experienced leader - emotional
| contagion/forcing empathy as a manipulation tool is super
| common, and commonly used to try to 'should' someone into
| making a decision that is terrible for everyone.
|
| We all do it (hopefully positively) - give a smile
| (regardless of how we're actually feeling) to the boss,
| or try to relay how terrible it feels to them when a
| family emergency happens, etc. hoping they'll empathize
| and treat us nicer.
|
| And good bosses do, but also know how to draw the line if
| someone is abusing it.
|
| A sociopath (by definition) acts anti-socially, and they
| won't be at the head of any social group for long, if
| ever.
| fbalr wrote:
| I think the last paragraph is a bit off. I have heard from
| multiple Ukrainian sources that there is corruption and
| oligarchy in the Ukraine. See also:
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-o...
|
| Then there was U.S. involvement in the coup in 2014 (Nuland and
| associated neoconservatives who think he world is a
| chessboard). Then there was talk about joining NATO and
| Zelensky hinting at getting nuclear weapons in the February
| Munich conference just before the invasion (nice escalation
| strategy).
|
| People like Mearsheimer are realists: They know that _both
| Putin and neoconservatives are playing Game of Thrones_ and
| advise the best strategy for the countries that are the pawns
| in that game.
| fallingknife wrote:
| If you think Putin and the neocons are the only ones playing
| chess, I have a bridge in NY to sell you.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >have heard from multiple Ukrainian sources that there is
| corruption and oligarchy in the Ukraine
|
| I never claimed that Ukraine was not corrupt and Russia
| corrupted it. In fact, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt
| countries out there. Very long way down the road in joining
| the EU(maybe it can be accelerated due to the war).
|
| What I'm talking about is the desire of people not to be part
| of the Russian way of governance and adopt the western
| practices.
|
| Anyway, let's not turn the discussion into another Russia VS
| Ukraine thread.
| EGreg wrote:
| This book is spot on, except it should also mention the role
| centralized mass media and government education plays in
| brainwashing the public into echo chambers that support the
| leaders' agenda and military apparatus -- in times of conflict,
| the war effort. People believe "us" is their country's people
| while "them" is the people who "voted" for the other side of the
| conflict they're in. When in reality "us" is the civilians and
| "them" are the policians and military industrial apparatus, and
| top down mass media and education systems that try to pit us
| against each other.
|
| Case in point: the war in Ukraine. At the moment there are
| perhaps _hundreds of thousands_ of people fighting, either in
| armed forces or deputized civilians. But do they represent the
| _millions_ of people who will be affected by starvation and bombs
| by their decisions to keep fighting? Weapons have been pouring in
| from all sides since 2015, and was localized into a proxy war in
| Donbass, but now the coflict has spread into all cities around
| Ukraine.
|
| Civilians are told every day by their local mass media about
| atrocities committed by the other side, and little is said about
| why, say, a school was bombed or some other war crime was
| committed. People can't personally witness everything, they get
| all their news digested and fed to them by their news networks.
|
| As a result, many people want to fight to the last. They've been
| told that the enemy is close to laying down their arms and
| surrendering. This is especially true for able-bodied men whose
| country has been invaded.
|
| The trouble is, that reality is far more complex and no one is
| about to stop fighting. Meanwhile, cities like Kherson are about
| to be without food due to supply chain disruption. Mundane, non-
| dramatic breakdowns like that is how millions of people enter a
| humanitarian crisis.
|
| I have seen it before -- Afghanistan, Yemen, Syria ... neither
| the host country's government nor the rebels are "defeated",
| because weapons are funneled into the country endlessly by
| proxies, funded by countries where citizens sit in comfortable
| armchairs and post their thoughts on the Internet, while their
| politicians say things like "better the Russians fight them over
| there, than over here" (Schiff).
|
| The object of my frustration is how the governments are
| conducting "peace talks". While the blame for invasion lies
| squarely with Putin, the "leadership" in Kiev seems to be one of
| the most incompetent at negotiations I have ever seen. It is
| their job to negotiate peace, but first they venue shopped for a
| few days, then they came with zero demands "just to listen", then
| the next time they came for a mere 2.5 hours and disbanded, only
| negotiating "humanitarian corridors". Is it incompetence or
| malice? They are likely waiting for more weapons to arrive so
| homegrown fighters can defend the country some more. These
| fighters (and their national pride) have been radicalized by how
| the war in Donbas was reported over the years and are ready to
| fight, some might even asassinate their government if they made
| any peace deal. The problem is that they are vastly outnumbered
| by a "silent majority" of peaceful civilians who will have to
| starve and live in a war torn region because of all this.
|
| Even Hamas and Israel regularly make peace. And they have a ton
| less in common than Russians and Ukrainians.
|
| This war could have gone almost exactly like the Russo-Georgian
| war except in that one, a truce was negotiated by France and the
| Russians withdrew their armies a couple months into the conflict.
| Now Georgia continues to be an independent country.
|
| Sometimes it gets dangerous for the whole world when nukes are
| involved. The nationalists want a no-fly zone. Zelensky appeals
| for it all the time. Russian television hosts like Kiselyiv
| almost embrace nuclear war and elimination of the humanrace to
| defend Russia and its territory. This is collective insanity.
| These people are prepared to start World War 3 before their
| nation is "humiliated" in any way, even if the way is largely
| symbolic.
|
| When Khrustchev was able to "gift" Crimea from Russia to Ukraine
| with the stroke of a pen, everyone understood it mostly a
| formality. That's because the two republics could simply come to
| an agreement about vacationing, employment, dual passports or
| whatever else. Visiting your relatives wasn't even an issue.
| Planes flew direct flights between everywhere, and people had
| tons of ties. Those are the ties that bind. A decade of no direct
| flights and severed ties has taken its toll and even Zelensky
| complains about losing friends and business partners in Russia.
| This is a gradual process and the inexperienced politicians who
| can't bridge the gap wind up sliding us civilians more and more
| into war. But the role of mass media and education is crucial for
| enabling these echo chambers and support for conflict between
| people who were not too long ago quite close.
| notahacker wrote:
| I think this might be the most egregious example of victim
| blaming I've seen yet. Dictator marches in tanks and starts
| shelling cities a week after announcing his troops weren't
| going to war and days after announcing neighbour isn't a real
| country whilst bellowing an incoherent set of demands and it's
| the _Ukranians '_ faith in negotiations which must be
| questioned (even though Russians immediately reneged on the one
| thing they did manage to agree on). If the people living under
| literal bombardment disagree about the imperative of giving in
| to Russia no matter what their terms are (which worked so well
| last time...) its because they're "brainwashed", and not
| because the _best_ case scenario of acceding to a demand to
| "demilitarise" is he leaves them enough time to pack their bags
| before his army comes back for a third helping.
|
| One of the main reasons why bad behaviour is almost always good
| politics is the queue of people willing to argue that if they
| behave badly, one should simply give them what they demand.
| EGreg wrote:
| Let me equally forcefully condemn the Russians' faith in
| negotiations. The problem is how opaque all of these
| negotiations are. Those of us who follow the proceedings have
| to read tea leaves and grasp at straws listening to houe-long
| Lukashenko videos to find where he says something about the
| talks.
|
| Luckily, we just have the negotiators like Arakhamia and
| Podolyak come out and discuss what happened. Looks like the
| Russians were not empowered to decide anything without
| consultation with Moscow, and the conversations were stilted.
| Of course, I personally condemn Putin for refusing to meet
| with Zelensky. For invading when Macron was about to organize
| the next Normandy format meeting in March. But also, no one
| on the Ukrainian side taking this seriously to begin with.
| Because millions of lives are at stake, that is either
| incompetence or malice.
|
| Arakhamia is a DJ who wears a baseball cap to show how much
| disdain he has for Russia and how much faith he has in the
| proceedings. One of the people sent by Zelensky to the talks
| was assassinated by Ukrainian special forces. They say he had
| been under investigation for a while for being a Russian spy.
| Well, in that case what kind of incompetence is it to put him
| on such a team? This _should be_ the most important team in
| the country! If they get a peace agreement they can be the
| heroes of Ukraine!
|
| The political system is broken in many ways, and the fact
| that closed door negotiations and lack of transparency by
| elected officials is tolerated, is a huge problem.
|
| I am mad at the political class in general, for refusing to
| truly listen to each other. It would have been better if
| Donetsk and Lugansk had surrendered like Kharkiv did, and try
| to resolve their grievances through peaceful diplomatic
| channels. None of this would be happening. I apply the same
| consistent reasoning everywhere.
| titzer wrote:
| > Our starting point is the realization that any leader worth her
| salt wants as much power as she can get, and to keep it for as
| long as possible. Managing the interchangeables, influentials,
| and essentials to that end is the act, art, and science of
| governing.
|
| What a cynical starting point. It's just basic Machiavelli, but
| gussied up with modern-sounding language and fairly basic
| Realpolitik thinking thrown in.
|
| It's incredibly narrow-minded too. There were _actual_
| philosopher kings and political thinkers and democracies outside
| our current zeitgeist. Nevermind that some systems actually have
| term limits, constitutional limitations on power, and lo and
| behold, some people actually leave office when voted out or their
| term ends.
|
| Maybe the book is better, but I have trouble reading this with
| such a fumbling start.
| kbelder wrote:
| Washington himself was such a man, who gave up power to
| inculcate the tradition of peaceful transition in the United
| States.
|
| "Give the last word to Washington's great adversary, King
| George III. The king asked his American painter, Benjamin West,
| what Washington would do after winning independence. West
| replied, 'They say he will return to his farm.'
|
| 'If he does that,' the incredulous monarch said, he will be the
| greatest man in the world.'"
| jollybean wrote:
| 1) This does not explain 'bad behaviour' it explains 'selfish
| behaviour'.
|
| 2) People are moral and have a sense of fairness. This is
| actually far more common than not. While it's hard to get people
| to talk with their pocket book - guess what - they _do_ want to
| spend money on social things, so long as they don 't feel it and
| of course, people hate corruption. So transparency there is
| helpful.
|
| I was expecting a thing about how the most ragged, boorish
| politicians make a name for themselves. We all know the names of
| the 'loudmouths' in Congress, but most of us do not know the
| reasonable Senators who actually do a lot of work. I think that
| deserves a story.
| jessaustin wrote:
| Would you be thinking of any particular senator(s) "who
| actually do a lot of work"? I would appreciate a reason to have
| some hope...
| pfisherman wrote:
| Ron Wyden
| pmyteh wrote:
| I briefly interned for Sherrod Brown (D-OH) when he was a
| congressman. His political positions were not always mine,
| but I found him honest and competent. I think he's done good
| work, at least within the constraints of what's possible in a
| deadlocked legislative system.
| jollybean wrote:
| It's not the quantity, it's the quality, and I would suggest
| that over 1/2 of Senators are actually mostly reasonable, and
| 85% would be reasonable if they didn't get pulled into the
| abyss by populism.
| waterheater wrote:
| The work of reasonable Senators certainly does deserve
| recognition. That said, the article is talking about political
| leadership and holding that power. Those in the background are
| important but are not the leadership.
| jollybean wrote:
| No, the article assumes that most people don't have power,
| and they offer no evidence for it.
|
| I believe that we live in a 'bureaucratic autocracy' i.e.
| where the things we argue about on the News and in Congress
| are only a tiny, tiny slice of governance, but that there is
| generally enough transparency in the system to cause change,
| driven by voting, public sentiment.
|
| In particular - think about how so many people in power are
| 'really sensitive' on a lot of issues.
|
| Literally, if almost anyone in the USA uttered the 'n word'
| in public - they would be 'out'.
|
| Just consider that: a single word - and 'gone'.
|
| That's due to sensitivities.
|
| Overt corruption usually amounts to the same thing.
| api wrote:
| > He was addressing a debate over how leaders should act--whether
| they should follow their citizens' wishes or act in the interests
| of future generations, against current pressures.
|
| There's a third option and a fourth option that are both more
| frequent under autocracy: leaders acting against current
| pressures in accordance with ideologies that in reality have
| terrible outcomes in both the present in the future (e.g.
| authoritarian communism and fascism), and just being kleptocrats.
|
| The dichotomy isn't between wise autocratic leadership and
| democracy. The dichotomy is between democracy and horrible
| autocratic leadership most of the time with only very occasional
| periods of wise leadership.
| slibhb wrote:
| In democracies, leaders act according to some ideology too. One
| of the advantages of democracy is that it's not always the same
| ideology, i.e. sometimes you get FDR and sometimes you get
| Margaret Thatcher, and this is good.
| frostwarrior wrote:
| "Terrible" is relative, according to the article's logic.
|
| A leadership can be terrible for the populace, but beneficial
| to him and his cronies. To the dictator, that may count as
| "good for the future".
| gameswithgo wrote:
| They make think so, but often it seems not really so. Many of
| these people end up "rich and powerful" but also hiding in a
| bunker their whole lives, or not able to trust anyone. They
| could have a better life by being "good" leaders.
| Ensorceled wrote:
| This brings to mind the recent pictures of Putin meetings
| where he's across the room or at the end of a loooong
| table...
| jollybean wrote:
| Western governments are bureaucratic autocracies.
|
| (Edit: I'm not even being cynical here, it's just a bit of
| reality, the word 'autocracy' makes it sound harsh but it is
| what it is - most important things happened behind closed doors
| and not even by politicians)
|
| Public sentiment and elections have little influence over most
| things unless there is 'outrage' or some kind of 'focus' on an
| issue.
|
| A 'few key issues' drive public narrative and votes, but the
| gears are run by the bureaucracy.
|
| What we get in democracy is mostly just the ability to pull the
| plug on groups, and the ability to outrage over some new bit of
| information about the system. Much less so setting the overall
| direction. Or rather, we 'kind of influence that' by having a
| 'rough idea over who is in charge, politically'.
|
| The cronyism problem is mostly solved with transparency and
| making sure the general public understands.
|
| There are a handful of very 'standard ways' that corruption
| happens - frankly we should be teaching this in school.
|
| A certain 'recent former president' bought a home in Florida
| for $20M, then sold it 2 years later for $90M to a Russian
| oligarch. (Before this person was president).
|
| That is 'perfectly legal' - however, regular people should
| understand that transactions that happen above or below market
| value signal something. It's like a 'gift'.
|
| A better way to look at that, is a 'Russian oligarch' gave
| someone who is now a 'former President' a 'gift' of $50M
| dollars.
|
| It's irrational for people to just hand over huge sums to other
| people for no reason.
|
| Ergo - there's probably a quid-pro-quo, which can come in many
| forms.
|
| It can be to influence policy directly, softly, in a specific
| direction, a general direction.
|
| Insider Trading is another example. It's not obvious why or how
| that works, but it's not complicated.
|
| How the 'Art World' can be a big fraud/scam (in an illegal
| way).
|
| Teenagers can be taught this, and frankly I think it would be
| an entertaining course that they would really pay attention to.
| Jiro wrote:
| Also, add that acting against current pressures in accordance
| with terrible ideologies often invokes the interest of future
| generations, or present generations in future years. Because
| it's a lot easier to justify your ideology and cronyism with
| reference to people we can't see yet because they're in the
| future, rather than people we can.
|
| Going against the public for the benefit of future peoplke is
| something that in practice is worse than it sounds, because if
| you ignore the feedback of the general public, it's much easier
| to act in self-serving or blindly reckless ways, even if "the
| public is wrong this time".
| namlem wrote:
| Cultural capital is just another type of capital. That's one
| element that I think the book missed a little. Rewards can take
| the form of financial capital or cultural capital.
| brabel wrote:
| That's the best argument I've ever found for my own theory that
| says "leadership" is an outdated concept we humans inherit from
| our ancient past where there were many levels of people
| (slaves/servants, workers, warriors, leaders, kings) which should
| no longer exist in an equalitarian society where all have access
| to the same education (most of the Western world, with the
| notable exception of the USA, and many other less developed
| countries as well). We should make decisions based on consensus
| and the scientific method, not on the whims of a dictator.
| ciphol wrote:
| Pretty much all large organizations still have hierarchies,
| even in competitive marketplaces where the most effective model
| can be expected to win out.
|
| I don't know all the reasons for this, but I imagine one reason
| is that someone needs to get credit for successes and blame for
| failures. When decisions are made by consensus, there is no
| clear way to assign credit or blame, so the incentives to
| create success are weaker.
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