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Quite a lot of modern politics seems to be making sensible but mildly complex solutions seems stupid, wasteful or malicious. Once you recognize the pattern you
by matthewmacleod 10y ago
Quite a lot of modern politics seems to be making sensible but mildly complex solutions seems stupid, wasteful or malicious. Once you recognize the pattern you see it everywhere.
That's a great and very important point, I think. Oversimplification goes hand-in-hand with populism – essentially the promise of simple, elegant (and ultimately unrealistic) solutions to complex problems.
It was particularly evident in the UK during the recent EU referendum.
- pjc50 10y agoI've described Brexit as "anti-globalisation riots for the over-50s" before. "Smash the system" is a very tempting slogan, but then you realise that the "system" is also a life-support system. Or compare it to the temptation to want to re-write a complex software system. It's very hard for the rewrite to retain all the features and it's nearly always very expensive.