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The problem is multilayered: - Corruption. money gets access - Elected government folks over promise and under deliver. - Elected government folks' priority

by vaadu 10y ago

The problem is multilayered: - Corruption. money gets access - Elected government folks over promise and under deliver. - Elected government folks' priority is getting reelected. - Unelected government folks have far too much power - Lack of accountability for wrongdoing and incompetence - Waste of taxpayer money - Good people don't want to run for office because the scrutiny is too high

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
In other words, Americans are correctly assessing their institutions, which is why confidence in them is low...
- theseatoms 10y ago
  Exactly. I don't see why this is a "problem."
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    Well, it's not a problem that the American people are too cynical. But it is a problem that our institutions are turning into trash.
    - krapp 10y ago
      It is a problem that the American people are too cynical. Cynicism is the reason negative campaign ads are so effective - no one trusts political ads unless they're negative - and the more negative they are, the more people believe them. Cynics don't bother actually studying the positions of a candidate - because they know all candidates are corrupt anyway, and all parties are the same - but of course they'll vote for anyone who's politically incorrect and promises to "throw the bastards out," because the only politician anyone trusts is a politician who pretends they're not running for office. Cynicism has made the concept of being engaged with the political process a joke to anyone who doesn't want to destroy that process. I mean, the cynics are correct, but they're also more than a little responsible for perpetuating that system by setting the bar so low.
      - MawNicker 10y ago
        I think a big part of the problem is that we have a concept of cynicism at all. It's very similar to the conspiracy theorist label. There are known conspiracies. Big ones. It's not that crazy to be a conspiracy theorist. It is crazy to think that we've been visited by aliens or that the elite are reptiles. Thinking those things does make a person a conspiracy theorist. That doesn't mean that all conspiracy theories are crazy. In the same way, not all cynicism is petulant and hopeless. But when a population is trained to recognize and dismiss cynics that is frequently what they become.
        maxerickson 10y ago
        George Bernard Shaw sort of made a quip about this: [The] power of accurate observation ... is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
        krapp 10y ago
        >In the same way, not all cynicism is petulant and whiny. That's true, but most of it is, and I don't think that's entirely accidental. Many cynics are cynics because society expects them to be. People mistrust the government before they really even understand what it is. >It's just that when a population is trained to recognize and dismiss cynics that is frequently what they become. I would argue the population has been trained to be cynical in order to disengage them from politics, lead them to expect nothing from the system, and make them more easily manipulated. It does seem evident that there is a feedback loop between the cynicism of voters and politics.
        MawNicker 10y ago
        > I would argue the population has been trained to be cynical in order to disengage them from politics I actually agree. However, I think the discussions we need to be having are ultimately cynical. We need to be able to tolerate it. The opinion you've just expressed is terribly cynical and that doesn't undermine it's legitimacy.
    - theseatoms 10y ago
      Or are our institutions only now being revealed to be trash? This is more likely the case, imo.
    - Retra 10y ago
      The institutions are turning to trash because they are too cynical. It's a positive feedback loop.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    Getting the people inside the institution to recognize that people don't trust them may lead to them trying to do better. I'm pretty sure that most people that work in hospital billing have little notion of how terrible a process it is. They just think they are doing the best they can given the situation (nevermind that the institutions have created the situation). For example, I was discussing a bill with someone (I was complaining that it seemed high) and their unimpeachable logic was that I shouldn't care about how much it was because it had already been applied to my deductible. Yes, they actually said something along those lines.
    - throwanem 10y ago
      What incentive is there for such organizations to improve trustability?
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        Above I'm alluding to the people inside of them wanting to believe in what they are doing. The average person working in medical billing doesn't actively want to participate in a cluster fuck, they are putting up with it because they need a job. Mostly, I think the way to fix broken institutions is to dismantle them.
        throwawaysocks 10y ago
        > is to dismantle them And then what? Because a new institution is going to sprout up in its place. Maybe some aspects (e.g., medical billing) will be improved. But there will still be a new institution and it will still have lots of bugs, some new and some old. Your suggestion is like noticing that a few modules of an XX MLOC code base suck and then deciding to rewrite the entire code base. You might decrease the code base. But probably not by an order of magnitude. You might fix some bugs. But you'll sure as hell introduce new ones, too. You're definitely going to end up spending a shitload of money. And eventually, assuming your software is actually used by real people, your beautiful new code base will become a cluster fuck for the same reason the old one did. In most cases, the wise move is to actually identify the problems and solve those, leaving in place the solid components that actually work well. Just like the XX MLOC codebase, institutions aren't the problem; rather, they are the inevitability. You won't get rid of them by throwing away the ones we have now, and in most cases you're better off fixing bugs than starting anew.
- rayiner 10y ago
  Are Americans' perceptions more or less accurate than they were 50 years ago, when confidence in public institutions was a lot higher? Look at the factors 'vaadu listed: > Corruption. money gets access Back in the day, money used to buy votes and offices outright. > Elected government folks' priority is getting reelected. That's always been the case. > Unelected government folks have far too much power The power of the administrative state contracted dramatically during the Reagan/Clinton era. Measures like price controls are taboo today, but were seen as a standard tool of governance in the 1950's and 1960's. > Lack of accountability for wrongdoing and incompetence Government is way more transparent today than it used to be, both voluntarily and involuntarily. The FBI's investigations into MLK took about a decade to come to light. The NSA's activities are being leaked almost in real time. U.S. covert missions in other countries used to take decades to come to light. These days, we all but have a play-by-play of every drone strike. Another example is that the morals of our leadership are subject to more scrutiny than ever. JFK was literally raping young women in office. George H.W. Bush had a mistress that everyone in knew about. But the media never talked about any of that--there was a code of silence about that. But that code of silence is dead today. Obama is probably one of the most morally virtuous men to hold the office--if he wasn't his failings would've been plastered 24/7 across the Internet. I'd argue that peoples' increased cynicism is not a response to government getting worse, but peoples' expectations getting higher because they have more information about everything.
titanoceanus 10y ago
Spot on.
harveywi 10y ago
To add to the list of the multilayered problem: - Sabotage and subversion. (It is easy to forget to add this one to the list...but there is probably quite a bit of this going on at various levels). - Lack of "Jokers" or lack of the right kinds of them...? [1] [2]. The Jokers bit is interesting. To quote [2], "Jokers are crazy, sadistic bastards who care nothing about the group benefit (so they don't consume it), but they do care about destroying things. They usually do so while cackling and making bad puns. They closely resemble Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, or Heath Ledger (depending on the decade), or sound like post-Star Wars Mark Hamill (the best Joker of all time)." Interestingly, in a public goods game involving Cooperators (your good institutional contributors), Defectors (your bad actors), and Jokers, there are three possible outcomes: 1. Without Jokers in the game, Defectors do better than Cooperators. 2. With semi-effective Jokers in the game, an indefinite cycle of (a) Cooperators doing well, then (b) Defectors taking over, then (c) Jokers beating out Defectors happens. 3. With super-effective Jokers in the game, they take over and beat out both Cooperators and Defectors. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.3257 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.3257 [2] https://thegoodreads.quora.com/Why-The-Joker-and-Not-Batman-is-the-Savior-of-Us-All https://thegoodreads.quora.com/Why-The-Joker-and-Not-Batman-...
jostmey 10y ago
I think it has more to do with institutions that lack ladders for people to climb. Who can dream of becoming a politician or a banker? Such realities are closed to most people.
Retra 10y ago
- Elected government folks' priority is getting reelected. - Unelected government folks have far too much power I'm sure there's any way to have both of these be managed. If you give more power to elected officials, they have even more incentive to get reelected. If you take power away from them, the elections just matter less.

by vaadu 10y ago

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

In other words, Americans are correctly assessing their institutions, which is why confidence in them is low...

theseatoms 10y ago
Exactly. I don't see why this is a "problem."
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  Well, it's not a problem that the American people are too cynical. But it is a problem that our institutions are turning into trash.
  - krapp 10y ago
    It is a problem that the American people are too cynical. Cynicism is the reason negative campaign ads are so effective - no one trusts political ads unless they're negative - and the more negative they are, the more people believe them. Cynics don't bother actually studying the positions of a candidate - because they know all candidates are corrupt anyway, and all parties are the same - but of course they'll vote for anyone who's politically incorrect and promises to "throw the bastards out," because the only politician anyone trusts is a politician who pretends they're not running for office. Cynicism has made the concept of being engaged with the political process a joke to anyone who doesn't want to destroy that process. I mean, the cynics are correct, but they're also more than a little responsible for perpetuating that system by setting the bar so low.
    - MawNicker 10y ago
      I think a big part of the problem is that we have a concept of cynicism at all. It's very similar to the conspiracy theorist label. There are known conspiracies. Big ones. It's not that crazy to be a conspiracy theorist. It is crazy to think that we've been visited by aliens or that the elite are reptiles. Thinking those things does make a person a conspiracy theorist. That doesn't mean that all conspiracy theories are crazy. In the same way, not all cynicism is petulant and hopeless. But when a population is trained to recognize and dismiss cynics that is frequently what they become.
      - maxerickson 10y ago
        George Bernard Shaw sort of made a quip about this: [The] power of accurate observation ... is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.
      - krapp 10y ago
        >In the same way, not all cynicism is petulant and whiny. That's true, but most of it is, and I don't think that's entirely accidental. Many cynics are cynics because society expects them to be. People mistrust the government before they really even understand what it is. >It's just that when a population is trained to recognize and dismiss cynics that is frequently what they become. I would argue the population has been trained to be cynical in order to disengage them from politics, lead them to expect nothing from the system, and make them more easily manipulated. It does seem evident that there is a feedback loop between the cynicism of voters and politics.
        MawNicker 10y ago
        > I would argue the population has been trained to be cynical in order to disengage them from politics I actually agree. However, I think the discussions we need to be having are ultimately cynical. We need to be able to tolerate it. The opinion you've just expressed is terribly cynical and that doesn't undermine it's legitimacy.
  - theseatoms 10y ago
    Or are our institutions only now being revealed to be trash? This is more likely the case, imo.
  - Retra 10y ago
    The institutions are turning to trash because they are too cynical. It's a positive feedback loop.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  Getting the people inside the institution to recognize that people don't trust them may lead to them trying to do better. I'm pretty sure that most people that work in hospital billing have little notion of how terrible a process it is. They just think they are doing the best they can given the situation (nevermind that the institutions have created the situation). For example, I was discussing a bill with someone (I was complaining that it seemed high) and their unimpeachable logic was that I shouldn't care about how much it was because it had already been applied to my deductible. Yes, they actually said something along those lines.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    What incentive is there for such organizations to improve trustability?
    - maxerickson 10y ago
      Above I'm alluding to the people inside of them wanting to believe in what they are doing. The average person working in medical billing doesn't actively want to participate in a cluster fuck, they are putting up with it because they need a job. Mostly, I think the way to fix broken institutions is to dismantle them.
      - throwawaysocks 10y ago
        > is to dismantle them And then what? Because a new institution is going to sprout up in its place. Maybe some aspects (e.g., medical billing) will be improved. But there will still be a new institution and it will still have lots of bugs, some new and some old. Your suggestion is like noticing that a few modules of an XX MLOC code base suck and then deciding to rewrite the entire code base. You might decrease the code base. But probably not by an order of magnitude. You might fix some bugs. But you'll sure as hell introduce new ones, too. You're definitely going to end up spending a shitload of money. And eventually, assuming your software is actually used by real people, your beautiful new code base will become a cluster fuck for the same reason the old one did. In most cases, the wise move is to actually identify the problems and solve those, leaving in place the solid components that actually work well. Just like the XX MLOC codebase, institutions aren't the problem; rather, they are the inevitability. You won't get rid of them by throwing away the ones we have now, and in most cases you're better off fixing bugs than starting anew.
rayiner 10y ago
Are Americans' perceptions more or less accurate than they were 50 years ago, when confidence in public institutions was a lot higher? Look at the factors 'vaadu listed: > Corruption. money gets access Back in the day, money used to buy votes and offices outright. > Elected government folks' priority is getting reelected. That's always been the case. > Unelected government folks have far too much power The power of the administrative state contracted dramatically during the Reagan/Clinton era. Measures like price controls are taboo today, but were seen as a standard tool of governance in the 1950's and 1960's. > Lack of accountability for wrongdoing and incompetence Government is way more transparent today than it used to be, both voluntarily and involuntarily. The FBI's investigations into MLK took about a decade to come to light. The NSA's activities are being leaked almost in real time. U.S. covert missions in other countries used to take decades to come to light. These days, we all but have a play-by-play of every drone strike. Another example is that the morals of our leadership are subject to more scrutiny than ever. JFK was literally raping young women in office. George H.W. Bush had a mistress that everyone in knew about. But the media never talked about any of that--there was a code of silence about that. But that code of silence is dead today. Obama is probably one of the most morally virtuous men to hold the office--if he wasn't his failings would've been plastered 24/7 across the Internet. I'd argue that peoples' increased cynicism is not a response to government getting worse, but peoples' expectations getting higher because they have more information about everything.

titanoceanus 10y ago

Spot on.

harveywi 10y ago

To add to the list of the multilayered problem: - Sabotage and subversion. (It is easy to forget to add this one to the list...but there is probably quite a bit of this going on at various levels). - Lack of "Jokers" or lack of the right kinds of them...? [1] [2]. The Jokers bit is interesting. To quote [2], "Jokers are crazy, sadistic bastards who care nothing about the group benefit (so they don't consume it), but they do care about destroying things. They usually do so while cackling and making bad puns. They closely resemble Cesar Romero, Jack Nicholson, or Heath Ledger (depending on the decade), or sound like post-Star Wars Mark Hamill (the best Joker of all time)." Interestingly, in a public goods game involving Cooperators (your good institutional contributors), Defectors (your bad actors), and Jokers, there are three possible outcomes: 1. Without Jokers in the game, Defectors do better than Cooperators. 2. With semi-effective Jokers in the game, an indefinite cycle of (a) Cooperators doing well, then (b) Defectors taking over, then (c) Jokers beating out Defectors happens. 3. With super-effective Jokers in the game, they take over and beat out both Cooperators and Defectors. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.3257 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.3257 [2] https://thegoodreads.quora.com/Why-The-Joker-and-Not-Batman-is-the-Savior-of-Us-All https://thegoodreads.quora.com/Why-The-Joker-and-Not-Batman-...

jostmey 10y ago

I think it has more to do with institutions that lack ladders for people to climb. Who can dream of becoming a politician or a banker? Such realities are closed to most people.

Retra 10y ago

- Elected government folks' priority is getting reelected. - Unelected government folks have far too much power I'm sure there's any way to have both of these be managed. If you give more power to elected officials, they have even more incentive to get reelected. If you take power away from them, the elections just matter less.