Laws are just a consequence of an actual cultural change, and can only succeed (and not precede) the conversion of hearts and minds. Voting and democracy should not become a device to placate the dissatisfied masses into silence, make them lineup for ballot, to choose a lesser evil who, in most likelihood, will turn out to be a egotistical power-seeker. We shouldn't conflate voting with "will of the people."
There is this "damping" factor like a mechanical system, that takes the energy out of the people's hands and dampens it with lobbying, dishonesty, unaccountability and complete neglect for public interest. The response of the system is now steady state with little change. We need a public roster of each politician and their promises written in notarized documents, that can be used to strip them of relection and penalize them in some way so that future politicians cannot weasel their way out of promises.
I would also vote for public presentations with slides + data by each politician instead of these stupid debates and speeches. They should be documented and scrutinized for accuracy of data and their claims. We have startup decks, but yet politicians don't have to make presentations. Instead they trade blows on a debate stage with polished repertoire which has now become an entertainment show, at least at the presidential level.
Most laws making moderately dangerous things illegal or hard to get fall into that category.
What else should you expect when people are limited to only two political parties? It could be worse with only one political party.
I’m not sure what penalty would be appropriate that would be better than standing for re-election and having the people weigh in. Voters who were strict-Y or any-Z might choose to not vote to re-elect. Voters who care about and got more X than par and a little bit of Y would be inclined to re-elect.
We don't need more political parties, we need solutions to manage the incompatibility.
I realize that's a terrible idea, but not sure of any way of changing people's attitudes towards each other when they'd rather stick to their little groups and believe the worst about everyone else.
The most diverse places I've ever been are also the most visibly segregated and racially aware (but not in a good way). Meanwhile, I see the most tolerance for others in homogeneous places.
I wonder if this is borne out in any studies.
(paraphrased from Michael Malice)
Especially when races can be so close and you have to wait up to 6 years to vote someone out. 6 years is a much different time frame politically today than it was in the 18th century. A term that long doesn't shield senators from political pressure, but it allows lobbyists to get more bang for their buck and further the power imbalance between rich and the rest of us.
You can’t remove officials for not fulfilling their promises. They can also delay until it’s too late by saying, “I’m working on it.” Then once out of office, they are accountable for nothing.
Job safety is built into the position for good reason. However, it’s been perverted to allow officials to do whatever they want. Fixing this balance is not simple, but I believe would be a crucial step towards realizing a functional democratic system.
I am thinking that a "promise" is not a quantitative term. It needs to be ratified into specific data oriented actions that can go through a litmus test whether it was fulfilled or betrayed.
After that, one idea is to have an accountability score tracked by bureaucracy and have that printed on the ballot along with their principle accomplishments in the supplement. Another idea is to have a penalty score of not meeting prior promises as a dilution factor to the number of votes. If a politician only met 90% of the promises, they will lose 10% of the voting power of the public (like a 0.X multiplier to the votes). Just thinking out loud, there may be major issues with these ideas.
https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm
See the bit starting with: "Now there's another notion that gets out, it's around everywhere. It's in the South, it's in the North, it's In California, and all over our nation. It's the notion that legislation can't solve the problem, it can't do anything in this area. And those who project this argument contend that you've got to change the heart and that you can't change the heart through legislation."
To summarize it, he disagrees with you.
So I partially agree with you - there must be a certain culture change happening, but it can and it should be supported by law in order to happen faster.
But you end up in a situation of further tragedy where people start destroying property and assaulting others, and they screwed up by doing so. The message has been diluted, lost in all the noise. Expanding it nationwide hasn't broadcast the message positively.
It's juvenile and short sighted, the people are on their side, saying yes this was wrong, yes this has to stop, murder is unacceptable, etc. They are now looking at the situation with a different viewpoint, asking themselves if the police violence may be justified with this group, look at what they did to our community when WE AGREED with them and were willing to help.
That isn't a political thought, that is a rational thought. Destroying communities, rioting, looting, killing people, it never brings more people into your corner. America is a civil society that respects law and order. Much of America now is just happy they don't have to live around anywhere where this is happening, that is going to be the only takeaway from this tragedy now. The chorus on social media doesn't reflect that. The riots turned average Americans against this event.
A barrier, metaphorically, was quickly slammed up between people, and now it's just noise and chaos.
Sadly, no they didn't.
It took until the pictures of uninvolved white women bleeding from rubber bullets for a whole lot of people to say "Holy shit. That could happen to ME!"
In addition, you had videos of cops with their badge numbers covered and press getting arrested.
These protests threw the fact that the police do this all the time and expect to get away with it into the faces of people who don't normally see it.
It also showed that certain police departments can handle this and really do function better thus undermining the arguments of police departments who refuse to change.
The more institutions gravitate towards factionalism, populism, or consolidation the less I trust them. I don’t need political parties to represent me. I am fully capable of forming my own opinions. I only need political parties to represent a diverse candidate pool and put pressure on other political parties.
Six months from now, is the average white American small business owner going to be more or less likely to hire a black person? That's the fucked up shit that is going to last another decade. That's the stuff that maintains generational poverty. And there's a thousand other subtle, unspoken things like that which are going to broaden our divide.
The real pain - at least on the inter-generational poverty and deprivation side - is that in six months, the average American small business isn't going to exist in heavily-black neighbourhoods, and that probably won't change much in six years, and other businesses are probably going to be pretty thin on the ground there too. Apparently some places never recovered what they lost in the sixties race riots.
Though I expect that the consequences of the police actions to stop this will also be anything but temporary. It seems to take years of careful work to rebuild trust between police and the community they serve, and to restructure policing to be less hostile and dangerous.
Because the people who were on the "no" side of things weren't really affected by it (because the were never going to do those things anyway) and the sky didn't fall when other people did. You see this same thing happen every time a state loosens its abortion, gun, alcohol, drug, etc, laws. People say the sky is gonna fall and then it doesn't.
If I owned a company and the people I hired to manage it were playing games like this, and if I asked them for insight into what, specifically, is happening behind the scenes, and they told me "it is literally not possible for us to provide you with that information" (and wouldn't say why it is not possible), I would be immediately launching a side project with the intent to replace the whole lot of them.
Yes, I realize "it's complex", but complexity is a continuum, not a binary.
With respect to the article, is it not true that the President has some substantial ability to float ideas into the public consciousness, that would put the heat on the state and municipal politicians to come up with some better systems to manage law enforcement and officer interactions with the public? And if the federal level truly has no power whatsoever in instituting reform or enforcing federal laws (what's the FBI do again?), I don't see why a comprehensive framework with recommendations for operational reform and greater transparency couldn't come from the top down. If there's nothing to be held accountable to, and no one to do the holding, I don't see why people are surprised when law enforcement restraint is largely left up to the goodwill of individual officers.
This whole situation and the way it is discussed seems rather absurd to me, but maybe there's something I'm not seeing.
Perhaps if we had some serious, organized, factual discussions on some of these matters (as opposed to the all propaganda all the time approach we've become so accustomed to), people wouldn't continue to hold the same opinions they (supposedly) hold at the moment.
But now you'll get an unstable system where candidates get kicked out all the time and are too populist because they don't expect to live long.
So add a low-pass filter. When the moving average of the candidate's support falls below the threshold and a definite other candidate's support is high enough, replace the incumbent with that challenger.
You might even increase the duration of the moving average with time, like the doubling trick in multi-armed bandits. The logic is that a candidate who has shown that he can weather the initial period without getting voted out can be trusted with more long-term decisions, i.e. actions speak louder than words.
They make deals with each other to get some of what they represent their constituents want in exchange for some of what the others' constituents want. This is necessary (and I believe by and large healthy) behavior when you're trying to govern ~350 million people.
Switzerland, people can always overrule politicians decisions there, no need to wait until next election. This means that the opinions of politicians is no longer as important so this issue doesn't even come up. So you place more value on finding the politician best fit for running the country, not the politician with values most aligned to your own.
mandatory body cams rolling at all times unless they are in a bathroom.
turning off or a malfunctioning camera during the act of a police brutality event immediately pierces the qualified immunity defense and they are tried as citizens.
have an outside investigative body that has zero ties to the police department investigate any reports of abuse.
have another outside investigative body that has zero ties to the police department randomly sampling police stop footage to see if there are any instances of impropriety.
I am sure this list is non-exhaustive but it's a start. also, while we are here, fix the issue of civil asset forfeiture. the clear "we get to take your money because it looks suspicious and then keep it for the police department" is a huge conflict of interest.
Imagine that you get to hire 5 people to run the company on your behalf, and four other directors each also hire 5 people to further their interests. Some of those other four directors want things that are nearly enough exactly the opposite of what you want, and you can do nothing to expel them, and precious little to change their minds. Also, the best five people who are willing to fill the roles you control are not exactly the ones you would like to hire, but nevertheless, they're the best available and willing. Now what?
Well I hate to break it to you, most of the protests, and police abuse seem to originate in major cities that have largely been controlled by a single political party for longer than most people have been alive...
In a republic it’s much much harder. People run on platforms but that doesn’t mean the rest of the legislators agree with them. Often people in HOAs can’t agree on things... and that’s the lowest form of government (well regulation).
2. the strong majority of these 656 contracts have a similar disciplinary appeals process. Around 73% provide for appeal to an arbitrator or comparable procedure and nearly 70% provide that an arbitrator or comparable third party makes a final binding decision. About 54% of the contracts give officers or unions the power to select that arbitrator. About 70% of the jurisdictions give these arbitrators extensive review power, including the ability to revisit disciplinary matters with little or no deference to the decisions made by supervisors, civilian review boards or politically accountable officials. [2]
3. We look at the roll-out of collective bargaining rights for police officers at the state level from the 1950s to the 1980s. The introduction of access to collective bargaining drives a modest decline in policy employment and increase in compensation with no meaningful impacts on total crime, violent crime, property crime or officers killed in the line of duty. What does change? We find a substantial increase in police killings of civilians over the medium to long run (likely after unions are established) with an additional 0.026 to 0.029 civilians killed in a county each year of whom the overwhelming majority are non-white. [3]
4. Recent academic research further demonstrates that police disciplinary procedures established through union contracts obstruct accountability and (as I noted in this post) collective bargaining for police officers appears to increase police misconduct. This is not surprising. Through collective bargaining, police unions demand protections from disciplinary procedures that would not otherwise be approved, oppose consent decrees and other measures to increase police accountability, and (given the power of police unions in state and local politics) they receive relatively little pushback. [4]
[1] https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-poli...
[2] https://crim.jotwell.com/the-power-of-police-unions/
[3] https://twitter.com/robgillezeau/status/1266834185055956997
[4] https://reason.com/2020/05/30/police-unions-and-the-problem-...
I could provide more as well, that was just a real quick look up of my bookmarks
Edit: 1 more source for good measure
[5] https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
This Article empirically demonstrates that police departments’ internal disciplinary procedures, often established through the collective bargaining process, can serve as barriers to officer accountability.Unrelated side note: when you are talking about a hypothetical politician, be aware of your choice of pronoun.
You might be the type of person who picks between he/she with a precise 50/50 split but I'm going to assume you are not that type of person. Similar to the way you seem to have assumed that if a person is a politician they are also a man.
1) The people with the power over the police have almost no contact with the people being policed. Neighborhood schooling reinforces that problem. It ensures that ability to afford housing segregates black people from white people. (Note: it’s not a question of funding. Here in DC, most of the shiny new LEED Gold schools are 99% black. Therefore, white parents won’t send their kids there, notwithstanding the gleaming facilities and lower housing prices in the surrounding area.) School choice gives black people the power to create integrated schools, instead of waiting for statistically wealthier whites/Asians to get woke enough to want to do it. I think people would be much more sensitive to policing issues if they didn’t just hear about these things a couple of times a year on the news, but were faced with people in their PTA suffering the consequences of police brutality. I would add that, unsurprisingly, a decisive majority of black people support school choice.
2) With notion of black people being “the other” rooted since childhood, qualified immunity and police unions eliminate the near term, immediate consequences of acting on those instincts.
The two things that make people think before they act are empathy and self preservation. The libertarian approach is a double-barreled solution that could hit both.
If your police department sucks, but the one neighboring one is good, you could choose to move your funding to the other police department who would expand their operations to cover more territory.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/07/nyregion/a-manhattan-dist...
It touches on two NYC schools that share a building (The Earth School & PS64) but have remarkably different racial and socioeconomic makeups. I found it fascinating after touring Earth School earlier this year.
History shows that if a society is racist the absolute WORST thing you can do is have a strong government, as that government will likely be filled with racists who will pass racist laws. (See The War on Drugs and/or Jim Crow Laws)
The idea that more government is the solution to racism denies the entire history of this nation. Government is not now, nor has it ever been the solution to the problem of racism (nor any other problem), Government is like it always has been and always will be the problem...
the Classic Libertarian saying "Government: If you think you have problems, wait until you see our [government] solutions"
Can't take the mote out of your brother's eye until you remove the beam in your own. This applies to everyone, even anti-racists.
I'd really like to see some. I've been having some cognitive dissonance lately. Some portions of the media are telling me that the looters are white supremacists, but unless there are substantial amount of black/brown white supremacists in this country, the video evidence says otherwise...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quis_custodiet_ipsos_custodes%...
Notice MLK is talking about specific legislature, and the poster above was talking about electing officials. They are correct that merely electing politicians is neither necessary nor sufficient--the laws must change.
According to Pew, gay marriage was supported by more people than opposed it in 2010, a full five years before legalization.
Not even leaders for the liberal party, like Obama and Hillary Clinton supported it until a few years later.
https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/changing-attitudes-on-ga...
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War
Is there precisely nothing that our massive improvements in information technology and widespread connectivity of the public to the internet can do to improve the state of our political process?
Is this situation optimal, no possible improvements can be made whatsoever?
I am the owner of the company, and there's nothing I can do to expel them?
> Also, the best five people who are willing to fill the roles you control are not exactly the ones you would like to hire, but nevertheless, they're the best available and willing. Now what?
Well in the short term, you're screwed. But how plausible is this imaginary scenario? There is literally no one better available, in a country of 300 million people? Are the politicians we have now the best of the best?
Take the choices we have in the next presidential election for example: Donald Trump vs Joe Biden. Are these the best "available and willing" candidates out there? Not one single person in the country more qualified than either of these fellows?
Right here on HN posts about the protests were being flagged left and right because people are more concerned about the freedom to side load apps on iOS than minorities getting harassed.
Of course, there will be no shortage of overly enthusiastic (and absolutely confident) defeatism "We 'can't' do it because x, y, z" (complexities with security, ensuring the person casting the vote is indeed the actual person, excess amount of uninformed populism, etc.) So how about this: for the first <x> years, make it non-binding and simply observe the results. If the votes have no power, so much for the disingenuous claims that "we don't dare try it, and it won't work anyways", because it completely derisks the situation.
So then, when you have people still guaranteeing doom, I reckon there's a pretty good chance that would make a good shortlist of people who should no longer be allowed anywhere near the political process.
I would love to know why people are adamantly opposed to having a honest, transparent, and fact-checked public conversation on the idea.
One solution to this is more direct democracy. When people can propose initiatives and vote on them in referendums, it is harder for politicians to ignore that agenda. This works pretty well in Switzerland.
And the only place you're going to have a chance to see the truth on this is in conspiracy forums and on Twitter. How trustworthy is it? Well, it is typically video footage, and it is highly unlikely to be coordinated reporting, so judge for yourself how seriously you want to trust it. But I have watched and read lots on this, and anything I have seen is that the people stirring up shit and instigating violence or destruction, are white, and the people trying to stop them verbally or physically, are black or white.
Here is a good livestream that typically shows 5 to 9 streams simultaneously, depending on where the action is. This is as close to knowing reality as you are going to get. If you watch the "trustworthy" news media, you are maybe going to get some very small amount of truth, but you also run a very big chance of getting a framed version of reality that is often the opposite of what is true.
Look for yourself, think for yourself. Do not outsource these things to authorities who have well demonstrated that they are untrustworthy.
For what it is worth, I have not been questioned by a police officer for something I did or did not do. I do think that me having the mindset that I am always being watched in public helps me better police myself, so I think the more obvious and ever-present version might instill a similar feeling in others.
At the same time, I can see that having this footage available has a slippery-slope effect when it comes to privacy and authoritarian control. However, this issue of groups of people using technology to control or manipulate others is fundamentally a non-technical issue to me because these people exist irrespective of that technology's existence.
Not if we're building a metaphor for representative democracy here. If we're doing autocracy / absolutism then expel away!
> Not one single person in the country more qualified than either of these fellows?
Well, it seems like nobody better is able and desires to endure the grueling, ridiculous, perverse eligibility and interview process the hiring committee demands.
"I am the owner of this computer, yet I can't know whether it will run a certain problem in finite time?"
"We are the dominant species on this planet, yet we can't change its course towards Alpha Centauri?"
Ownership is more of a negative than positive good---that is, ownership means you own something more than other people, not that you're omnipotent regarding it.
A human can own a computer yet still be unable to get it to do something.
"Never attribute to scarcity what can be attributed to technical debt."
What about this: for most decisions, people elect their representative, and don't directly participate. The representative votes on decisions in gov't, but their vote is weighted by the number of people they represent (let's call this V).
However, if there is an issue that a person deems important to participate in, then that person gets to directly vote for said issue. Then, the elected representative's vote _for that issue_ drops by 1, and thus their vote only weights V-1.
Hence, by this method, most people who don't give a shit can continue not to, and allow their electoral representative to make decisions on their behalf. But direct democracy is available for those who care enough.
Democracy that works in a country of 8.6 million does not scale up to work for a country of 330 million.
Next ammendment: direct election of cabinet members.
Also, all changes to policies to be parameterized and adiabatic.
The place where women couldn't vote in federal elections until 1971, and in local elections as late as 1990?
Popular vote is a tool for demagogues and populists and will quickly lead to tyranny of the majority type situations.
Whenever I vote in local elections there are some ballot initiatives, and it's ALWAYS feelgood shit like "give elderly widows whos' husbands worked as a teacher a 25% property tax cut". I vote no for everything out of principle.
When there are sympathy protests outside the US, this is exactly what the sympathy protesters are attempting to remind you all. The US has nice ideals, eg "and justice for all"
Do you agree with Barack Obama on everything?
(It's a known fact, yes, in general, people do vote more socially conservatively in referendums, often backing up status quo. But that doesn't prevent progressive politicians to come up with better proposals.)
In any case, if we use your logic, US would be perfect country for this, being one of the last countries on Earth that doesn't have universal health care system.
Interestingly, many U.S. states do have some direct democracy provisions, courtesy of the progressive movement at the beginning of the 20th century. But what I heard it was sabotaged at federal level by the administration at the time, because U.S. wanted to get a bit involved in WW1 and it could potentially prevent that.
I guess some of that bleeds through: that I use "he" without reflecting on it because it wouldn't carry an implication of actual gender in my first language. I am definitely not assuming that politics is a men's only club.
"No heat, only work". I like that proposal :-)
First deployment (Dec 2003-Dec 2004, E6) I ran the operations floor during night shift in 335th Theater Signal Command, which put me in charge of up time and status for all voice and digital communications in Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Second (Jul 2009-Jul 2010, E6) I travel across Afghanistan performing information security audits of major and minor US Army bases. I was able to pick up my CISSP at the end of this.
Third (Dec 2012-Jan 2013, E7) I was NCOIC of Knowledge Management for 311th Sustainment Command in Afghanistan where I trained and coordinated with 24 staff sections to increase their information transparency and produce common/integrated products.
Fourth (Oct 2018-July 2019, CW2) I was chief of network operations for the 300th Sustainment Brigade in Kuwait.
Fifth, I will be there soon.
Have we? the current riots / protest seem to indicate not.
>Further much of that progress was driven by government mandate: The Civil Rights acts, anti-discrimination laws for employment, affirmative action, etc.
There is / was a double edge sword to many of those issues. For example more than 50% of the civil rights act was rolling back and repealing racist government laws and regulations. People seem to have this perception that the population was racist and the government saved the day when in reality the government was racist and then rolled back some (not all) of their racist policies.
So the 60's you have the Civil Rights acts, then what do we see in the 70's and 80's? The War on Drugs, and "Tough on Crime" laws that were disproportionately enforced and impacted poor and minority communities. This trend continues to today with continues sentencing disparity, mandatory minimums, and various other things that at a minimum are Class based enforcement if not outright racist enforcement of law
So I can easily reconcile my position that government is the problem because that is a factually accurate analysis of the history of law in this nation
"Even though it may be true that the law cannot change the heart, it can restrain the heartless"
I never read MLK much and just realized how awesome of an orater he was.
> Not if we're building a metaphor for representative democracy here.
This statement seems incorrect to me. I could provide many examples, but one should do.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recall_election
A recall election (also called a recall referendum, recall petition or representative recall) is a procedure by which, in certain polities, voters can remove an elected official from office through a direct vote before that official's term has ended. Recalls, which are initiated when sufficient voters sign a petition, have a history dating back to the constitution in ancient Athenian democracy[1] and feature in several current constitutions. In indirect or representative democracy, people's representatives are elected and these representatives rule for a specific period of time. However, where the facility to recall exists, should any representative come to be perceived as not properly discharging their responsibilities, then they can be called back with the written request of specific number or proportion of voters.
If you think about it a bit, you may also realize (or at least consider the possibility) that the variety of democratic implementations that currently exist (and have existed over time) were man-made, as opposed to being an artifact of nature. We can do whatever we want, in this domain - we are literally the masters of our own destiny. Or, we could be at least, but there seems to be significant rhetorical resistance to these ideas, from the strangest sources.
> Well, it seems like nobody better is able and desires to endure the grueling, ridiculous, perverse eligibility and interview process the hiring committee demands.
It may seem that way, but is it actually that way?
Both the Republicans and Democrats fielded numerous candidates - are you suggesting that Trump and Biden are the very best candidates from within those two lots (which implies that the processes by which they were chosen are perfect)?
And the "hiring committee" itself - is this literally the only possible approach that could be taken? Not one single improvement could be made there, or at any other stage within the entire electoral system?
I notice that rather than answering my question, you seem to have chosen to instead reply with two other questions, both of which are rather absurd examples of things that are literally not possible, and have little relevance to the question I actually asked.
May I ask why you chose to respond in this way? My (speculative) intuition is that it is a form of rhetoric, that is often used in conversation to persuade third party observers of a certain thing. But to be explicit, this is only my intuition, I am not making a formal accusation of any kind...I am simply curious about what is going on in this conversation.
So, having said all that: is my intuition incorrect? And if so, I would very much appreciate if you could explain what is going on here, as it seems to have become a very common writing technique here and elsewhere, but I am personally unable to understand it at all - to me, it only makes already complex conversations even more confusing.
> Ownership is more of a negative than positive good---that is, ownership means you own something more than other people, not that you're omnipotent regarding it.
> A human can own a computer yet still be unable to get it to do something.
> "Never attribute to scarcity what can be attributed to technical debt."
This seems to suggest that it is not possible for an owner of a company to expel substandard management, at least sometimes, because it requires omnipotence. Is this what you are actually saying, or is my interpretation flawed? If it is flawed, would you be able to restate your beliefs in clear, unambiguous, non-rhetorical terms? And if it is not flawed, could you possibly post at least one example where omnipotence is clearly required to accomplish the task (or something reasonably close to demonstrating that)?
And I suppose I should also point out that the underlying issue of my analogy is whether the current political process in the Unites States of America could be improved, at all.
Do you think it is not possible to make any improvements at all, however small? If it isn't too much trouble, I think an initial discrete "Yes" or "No" answer would help in maximizing communication effectiveness, and after that you can include any rhetorical narrative that you believe adds to that initial answer.
He throws a tantrum, screams, yell, slams his hand against the counter. Throws his toys, tells me he hates me.
It's noise and chaos. It doesn't go ignored, but it also isn't allowed. It isn't a compelling way to get me to give them what they want, unless I'm a bad parent with no direction and structure. Civility, good behavior, that gets noticed positively.
You don't understand the problem, you are emotionally invested in this, which is why you think harming innocent people is an avenue to positive change. You couldn't be more wrong if you tried.
In our system, you protest to raise awareness, to gain positive traction in the public awareness, you then vote and work within the system to enact the real mechanisms of change. When done with compassion, it brings everyone on board to your cause, even if a few bitch and moan about it.
Martin Luther King Jr. knew this. If you think physically harming others and their property, street mob justice, if you think this is an avenue to positive change, you don't understand our system.
Yes, I think it is possible to make improvements.*
>and have little relevance to the question I actually asked.
My point was that they are relevant, in the sense that inability doesn't necessarily imply malice.
My analogy is "off" in that it is not literal, hard barriers, as with Earth->Alpha Centauri---but then, so was yours, in the sense that the owner of a company is a single individual and doesn't have collective action problems, whereas an electorate has nothing but. But I'd contend that my analogy is more useful/relevant to the specific issue of "owner potency" than the company owner analogy--which was the point.
So no, this was not a display for third parties (not completely, anyway---who doesn't like upvotes?), but an honest attempt to communicate that yes, it is really hard, probably actually impossible, and certainly not easy or simple if approached naively, which the "company owner" analogy seems to do.
>This seems to suggest that it is not possible for an owner of a company to expel substandard management, at least sometimes, because it requires omnipotence.
No! A company owner can of course expel management any time they like. My point is that a country is not like a company, and more specifically, an electorate is not like an individual.
That last point is very important, and the crux of my argument. There are many many differences between working for a single owner, or even a board, vs an electorate:
- a company owner, as an individual, is less likely to make contradictory, impossible demands. For electorates impossible and contradictory demands are the rule rather than the exception.
- a company owner is concerned with a more responsive machine (the company) than an electorate (a country), and so is more likely to have a working feedback loop---which means if they do make impossible demands, they are more likely to connect the (bad) consequences to the demands.
- a company owner is able (at least in theory) to believably make commitments. If a company owner said, "What specifically is the problem stopping you from XYZ, I will fire you if you don't tell me, I will promote you if you do," there is a set of circumstances in which subordinates could believe and rely on that. Electorates, in contrast, are completely unreliable and cannot make believable promises. Individuals might---you might write your congressman and promise you'll vote for him if he does XYZ---but what does he care, you're one vote, he gets letters every week saying the equivalent, but for different things.
So I am perhaps not answering the question as written---is it possible for a company owner to expel bad management. Yes, it absolutely is. However, analogizing that to nation-state governance is a model with some very important flaws, the bulk of them relating to coordination/communication problems that electorates face. Just as adding more engineers to a project makes it later, adding more voters to a discussion of an issue (particularly complex issues) makes the electorate dumber and less reasonable.
There's also the issue that, and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, what you're really talking about isn't "putting the right people in office." Because that begs the question: right for what? Say you replaced politicians with computers who would do exactly what they were told. Well, we can guess how that would turn out, because we have computers---having a perfect servant like that tends to spotlight the weaknesses in the programmer's thinking. How does one run a nation-state? Remember, we don't give the electorate power over this because we think they actually know how to do it. Rather we do it as a circuit breaker/safety measure to keep a functioning feedback loop in place---to put a lower bound on how bad things can get.
I have various suggestions on how things could be improved---they mostly don't matter because I am just one voice among 300 million, and there are lots of people with brains that function perfectly well. The shortage is not one of political philosophy! I tend to think the place where I can actually have impact is by building community with my neighbors, raising my family, and (I unironically believe this) writing good software.
* Though even the definition of "improvements" is up for grabs. Is a commit that improves runtime by 50% but also increases memory usage by the same amount an improvement? Governance is full of similar tradeoffs, and reasonable people can and do disagree on them.
(I haven't visited the States since his presidency, but although I found much to dislike about the man, this is an argument I could get behind)
Hey, if you don't have fun in life, what's the point? :)
> My point was that they are relevant, in the sense that inability doesn't necessarily imply malice.
Valid perspective that I overlooked.
> My analogy is "off" in that it is not literal, hard barriers, as with Earth->Alpha Centauri---but then, so was yours, in the sense that the owner of a company is a single individual and doesn't have collective action problems, whereas an electorate has nothing but. But I'd contend that my analogy is more useful/relevant to the specific issue of "owner potency" than the company owner analogy--which was the point.
Completely agree. I do indeed realize there is a collective action problem (I happen to think that this is the #2 problem), but my point or strategy in using this very simplified approach, however flawed my performance was, was to try to "counter" the perception (to the degree that it exists) that:
>> In a republic where deal-making has to happen, if you ran on W, X, Y, and Z, you might have to compromise on Z to get W, X, and a watered-down version of Y.
...is "just how it is", &/or "cannot be improved upon", or "is being done in mostly a well-intentioned manner", etc.
We have absolutely no idea how true any of these (and the hundreds of other plausible excuses) beliefs are. Which brings us to my supplementary point:
>> and if I asked them for insight into what, specifically, is happening behind the scenes, and they told me "it is literally not possible for us to provide you with that information" (and wouldn't say why it is not possible), I would be immediately launching a side project with the intent to replace the whole lot of them.
Is it not true that the American public, even if they were interested, has extremely little insight into what is really going on in the political system? Oh sure, there are plenty of "facts", reports, newspaper articles, and various other forms of messaging they can avail themselves of, but how accurate and comprehensive are these things with respect to what is actually going on? My intuition suggests: "not very".
> A company owner can of course expel management any time they like. My point is that a country is not like a company, and more specifically, an electorate is not like an individual. That last point is very important, and the crux of my argument. There are many many differences between working for a single owner, or even a board, vs an electorate....
All of the points and constraints you raise are completely valid, and very hard problems! But think of it this way: you came up with these (and could surely come up with many, many more) after perhaps a few minutes of back of the napkin systems analysis, something you can do because you presumably have many years of system-agnostic experience in doing so. My question is: has a serious and thorough analysis been performed on this system complex system, in recent history, by people who are deeply familiar with the wide spectrum of powerful new capabilities mankind has at its fingertips, in the form of software, AI, and the networked nature of the vast majority of the population (let's leave aside the current(!) intelligence level of this population, which is another system that deserves some analysis). Based on unbiased observations (say, an alien with no priors) of casual forum conversations, one might easily think so. But is it actually true? Exactly(!) how optimized is our current implementation of democracy? Has anyone even taken a proper look at it? Is there any evidence whatsoever that this task has been performed in an honest, substantial manner, by a bi-partisan group of unbiased, arms length, highly skilled people? My intuition suggests: "No, this has not been done."
> Just as adding more engineers to a project makes it later, adding more voters to a discussion of an issue (particularly complex issues) makes the electorate dumber and less reasonable.
Right! But this project is distinctly different than all others: it has no written in stone due date. Theoretically, we have infinite time! Although in practice, it's completely possible that we may even have less than a decade, considering the multiple legitimate "existential" crises we have on deck - but this is no reason to not do anything! On the contrary, we should be sorting out the completely ridiculous & petty arguments we have on this very site, and then proceed to put our collective minds to work on solving the actual fucking problem(s) that present themselves for this country, and the entire world...should we not?
But what do we actually do with our minds? Have the same old arguments year after year, mostly in the same form as prior years, and of a quality not all that dissimilar to that which you would find on /r/politics. Which then raises an even more important question, perhaps the most important question: why do we behave like this?
Is our behaviour part of the problem? And to be clear, I'm not talking only about "those people" (you know the ones), I'm talking about everyone.
> There's also the issue that, and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, what you're really talking about isn't "putting the right people in office." Because that begs the question: right for what? Say you replaced politicians with computers who would do exactly what they were told. Well, we can guess how that would turn out, because we have computers---having a perfect servant like that tends to spotlight the weaknesses in the programmer's thinking. How does one run a nation-state? Remember, we don't give the electorate power over this because we think they actually know how to do it. Rather we do it as a circuit breaker/safety measure to keep a functioning feedback loop in place---to put a lower bound on how bad things can get.
This is all just proper systems analysis - problems and constraints that must be accommodated. We do the analysis, and then we decide upon an initial approach, and then we adjust as needed, like literally every other competently executed project on the planet. And you never stop, because you are working within a dynamic, infinitely complex system.
> I have various suggestions on how things could be improved---they mostly don't matter because I am just one voice among 300 million
That yours is but one voice among 300 million is only one problem. Let's say you stumbled upon a genuinely brilliant idea - what would you do then? Write a letter to your political representative, sending that idea into the very system we're currently discussing?
I think the problem that mother nature has dealt us may fall under this category:
> “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.” - Carl Sagan, Cosmos
For the sake of argument, let's assume that's the case. What then shall we do about it? It seems to me our ancestors found themselves in a rather similar predicament...what did they do?
Now it is easy to spend lots of money to mislead many people right before the big and expensive referendum, but if a new referendum can happen any day, spending lots of money on campaigns would become unviable.