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It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..." "You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?" "No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational

by f2f 11y ago

It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..." "You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?" "No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people." "Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy." "I did," said Ford. "It is." "So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?" "It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want." "You mean they actually vote for the lizards?" "Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course." "But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?" "Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"

raquo 11y ago
I have a laugh every time I read this, but it's not a very good analogy for modern politics. You can't distinguish between good leaders and bad leaders quite as easily as you can distinguish lizards and people. Especially when both kinds spend millions of dollars trying to convince you that they're good and others are bad. Not to mention that this story kinda assumes/implies that people would somehow be better rulers. We didn't get to the current system in a revolution. It's not like it was designed to work well. All the laws that allow things like massive surveillance, civil forfeiture, gerrymandering, lying in official capacity, obvious corporate bribery ("lobbying", what a nice word), self-favorably changing elections rules for the next election – all of this has been created gradually over decades, often by different parties and people, each of whom put self-interest ahead of their duty to the people and walked away from the disaster at a leisurely pace. Given complete lack of accountability of individuals properly positioned in the state machine, we will not see any improvements in how the state works. People everywhere are trained to think "if only we elect the Bernie Sanders of the day, everything will change for the better", then either of the two things happen – a) they get elected and don't fulfill even a tiny fraction of their promises, if not the opposite, or b) they don't get elected ("oh well, let's try again in 4-5 years"). Just to clarify, this is not a call to arms to overthrow the government or anything. It's kinda too late for that to work. And that would be grossly illegal. For some reason.

by f2f 11y ago

raquo 11y ago

I have a laugh every time I read this, but it's not a very good analogy for modern politics. You can't distinguish between good leaders and bad leaders quite as easily as you can distinguish lizards and people. Especially when both kinds spend millions of dollars trying to convince you that they're good and others are bad. Not to mention that this story kinda assumes/implies that people would somehow be better rulers. We didn't get to the current system in a revolution. It's not like it was designed to work well. All the laws that allow things like massive surveillance, civil forfeiture, gerrymandering, lying in official capacity, obvious corporate bribery ("lobbying", what a nice word), self-favorably changing elections rules for the next election – all of this has been created gradually over decades, often by different parties and people, each of whom put self-interest ahead of their duty to the people and walked away from the disaster at a leisurely pace. Given complete lack of accountability of individuals properly positioned in the state machine, we will not see any improvements in how the state works. People everywhere are trained to think "if only we elect the Bernie Sanders of the day, everything will change for the better", then either of the two things happen – a) they get elected and don't fulfill even a tiny fraction of their promises, if not the opposite, or b) they don't get elected ("oh well, let's try again in 4-5 years"). Just to clarify, this is not a call to arms to overthrow the government or anything. It's kinda too late for that to work. And that would be grossly illegal. For some reason.