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[parent] [thread] 18 comments
1. thot_e+(OP)[view] [source] 2024-12-09 23:23:29
One of the most glaringly broken things about society is that abuse of power is not punished harshly enough. We need Finnish speeding ticket style systems across the board.
replies(6): >>belfal+Z3 >>Titan2+P5 >>KerrAv+c6 >>notthe+Oc >>dghlsa+Xh >>rvba+om
2. belfal+Z3[view] [source] 2024-12-09 23:54:30
>>thot_e+(OP)
> One of the most glaringly broken things about society is that abuse of power is not punished harshly enough.

Maybe it's just me getting older but it seems like this has always been true across cultures and history. People like to believe that once they get power, they will act differently than the ones who came before. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, they end up being just like the people they replaced, if not worse.

Every once in a while you get an exception but that's why we remember those people - because they were the exception.

replies(3): >>Spivak+C5 >>braiam+m7 >>BLKNSL+ij
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3. Spivak+C5[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 00:06:22
>>belfal+Z3
It's why I think the lottocracy people might have a point. Rocketing people from zero to power keeps you from experiencing the traumas associated with attaining or being given success and keeps your ego to a minimum because you know you literally did nothing to deserve it.
replies(6): >>belfal+N7 >>kiba+u8 >>marssa+z9 >>astran+3b >>Aaargh+ff >>whoopd+Rn
4. Titan2+P5[view] [source] 2024-12-10 00:07:26
>>thot_e+(OP)
Finnish speeding ticket fine calculator

https://poliisi.fi/en/fine-counter

5. KerrAv+c6[view] [source] 2024-12-10 00:10:24
>>thot_e+(OP)
there's a reason the Claims Adjuster is a folk hero
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6. braiam+m7[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 00:19:30
>>belfal+Z3
That's a problem of the Rules for Rulers. You think once you rule you have power, but unless you are literally Goku, you don't have power if nobody follow your orders.
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7. belfal+N7[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 00:23:28
>>Spivak+C5
First time I had heard of lottocracy - interesting concept but I don't think I would like to be alive for it.
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8. kiba+u8[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 00:29:45
>>Spivak+C5
Jury duty. You get selected randomly for jury. Why not get randomly selected for urban planning and other duties?
replies(1): >>astran+gb
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9. marssa+z9[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 00:39:06
>>Spivak+C5
Is this a new word for "sortition" or does it have additional implications?
replies(1): >>Spivak+Vc
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10. astran+3b[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 00:50:43
>>Spivak+C5
It also defeats Goodhart's law. A little anti-meritocracy might be a good thing; the word was invented for a book about why it's a bad idea to do it.
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11. astran+gb[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 00:52:33
>>kiba+u8
We actually have that, called "civil grand juries", but they don't do very much. It'd work a lot better than the current urban planning system, which is hearings where only retirees with a lot of free time who are opposed to the project shows up.
replies(1): >>kiba+m51
12. notthe+Oc[view] [source] 2024-12-10 01:07:06
>>thot_e+(OP)
> According to the cybernetician, the purpose of a system is what it does. This is a basic dictum. It stands for bald fact, which makes a better starting point in seeking understanding than the familiar attributions of good intention, prejudices about expectations, moral judgment, or sheer ignorance of circumstances. - Stafford Beer

If a system prioritizes copyright claims from the largest firms as casus belli against independent creators, and there are no attempts to reform such system and no recourse for independent creators, than we can only conclude such criminal negligence as intention, formalized within the priorities encoded within such a system.

I just saw this a few days ago with Youtube channel Esoterica, which had a 10-second public domain recording of Chopin which was falsely flagged as copyright infringement. Dr. James Justin Sledge of Esoterica, despite having fair use of the clip, ended up commissioning an artist with an original recording (complete with unique changes to the public domain work) to avoid any confusion, but still got a takedown from UMG's copyright AI. As with any law, if public domain fair use isn't enforced, and to contest it is prohibitively expensive (as legal battles are often wars of attrition), then the public domain is useless, and major firms such as UMG can just function as feudal lords demanding the proceeds of any tenant peasant's work. As economist Yanis Varoufakis says, capitalism has been subsumed by techno-feudalism.

https://www.youtube.com/@TheEsotericaChannel

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13. Spivak+Vc[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 01:08:20
>>marssa+z9
Lottocracy is a kind of Sortition. Specifically one which explicitly doesn't try to prune the pool of candidates.
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14. Aaargh+ff[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 01:29:04
>>Spivak+C5
I think the fundamental problem with the current political systems is that they combine two completely different things into one office that should really be separate. Namely what a politician promises to achieve and how they intent to achieve it.

This can cause the actual result of policies to be wildly different from the claimed intended outcome. We’ve seen plenty of examples of this in the past, e.g. claim that you want to make sure everyone will be better off by lowering taxes for the rich (trickle down economics), which of course had the exact opposite effect.

This can be completely malicious, i.e. claim that your proposed policy will have outcome X while knowing it will have outcome Y. It can also be due to flawed ideology, i.e. your policy is based on your idea how the world should work instead of how it actually does work. Or it can be sheer incompetence.

What I would like to see is a system where the goal and the method of achieving it are separated from each other: a democratic technocracy. In this system politicians would only set the intended outcomes, and their relative priorities (in cases where policies would affect different intended outcomes in opposite directions). Then, government workers would decide the policies that would result in the desired outcomes (based on science, evidence based methods, etc.) They would be normal unelected workers subject to performance reviews (did their policies result in the intended outcome) and positions should be completely merit-based.

That way politicians have to be honest about what they want to achieve, people have a clearer idea what they are actually voting for and there is a system in place that will try to achieve those outcomes based on what actually works.

15. dghlsa+Xh[view] [source] 2024-12-10 01:52:40
>>thot_e+(OP)
I suspect that BrandShield is about to discover how much a lost day of sales costs Itch.io, plus some punitive damages thrown in.

then they are about to discover that IP properties don't want to be associated with companies that get them involved in public lawsuits on the wrong side of their fandoms.

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16. BLKNSL+ij[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 02:05:59
>>belfal+Z3
> People like to believe that once they get power, they will act differently than the ones who came before. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, they end up being just like the people they replaced, if not worse.

I just re-listened to "Machine"[0] by the Violent Femmes because I wanted to subject a work colleague to it because he mentioned Blister in the Sun.

"I took over the world in one weekend...

... but nothing changed! That would not be fair!"

The nihilistic fatalism is overwhelming.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTEEiSQv_l4

17. rvba+om[view] [source] 2024-12-10 02:33:23
>>thot_e+(OP)
Since corporations are people (but this kind of people who cannot go to prison), those tickets are definitely a good direction.

Although I still think people inside the corporations should go to prison too, starting from CEOs.

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18. whoopd+Rn[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 02:49:21
>>Spivak+C5
> because you know you literally did nothing to deserve it.

This greatly underestimates the level of vanity. Look only at the number of people who inherited their wealth, or received substantial financial support, yet still consider themselves self-made. I would also expect this to concentrate deistic thinking as people with a religious mindset will see being chosen as God's will and use the gained power to reinforce that.

I don't think I'd want to live in a country governed by the Dunning-Kruger effect. (Or maybe I already do?)

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19. kiba+m51[view] [source] [discussion] 2024-12-10 11:33:40
>>astran+gb
Yes, I was talking about jury duty and sortition.
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