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I wish we had a political version of Mr. Rogers. We need better role models for how to talk about politics in ways that are measured, reasonable, and respectful

I wish we had a political version of Mr. Rogers. We need better role models for how to talk about politics in ways that are measured, reasonable, and respectful.

mhh__ 8y ago
The difficulty is that the two "basic" schools of politics/economics, Capitalism and Socialism are so diametrically opposed in terms of assumptions and methods that objectivity itself becomes subjective. Socalists tend to look at the world differently to capitalists.
- gridlockd 8y ago
  These are not "the basic schools" of economics. If I had to pick two camps, I would pick Keynesianism and Neoclassical economics. Politically, Keynesianism has won over both sides of the spectrum. There is no "diametric opposition", virtually all socialists of today agree that markets are to be favored over central planning. That part is settled by history. What socialists and non-socialists disagree over is generally the degree of state intervention in the markets and who should pay for what, that is who pays taxes and who gets the benefits.
  - mhh__ 8y ago
    I deliberately wrote basic and political/economics, in the sense that political debate regarding economics is divided into those basic catagories at least in Britain. Economic policy, the yes practically the decision is between some form of Keynesianism or something vaguely monetarist (Laissez-Faire) How can a socialist (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/socialism https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/socialism) system have a market? The point I was making is that in my experience, many socialists (as defined above, type of socialists) do not believe or understand how behaviour emerges from markets and how this is efficient where competition is possible: It's all government this, government that. May I ask where you are writing from?
    - mercer 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism#Marxism%E2%80%93Leninism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism#Marxism%E2%80...
BaronSamedi 8y ago
Good point. I would suggest that a better model for discussing politics is even more important than a better role model. Current political discourse is so full of emotionally laden words, shibboleths, and moralizing that discussions inevitably go down the same paths over and over again. So tedious and unproductive. This indicates to me that the current model is broken and it is time to look elsewhere. What if, for instance, we used software systems engineering as model and thought about political systems in terms of high-availability, reliability, and security? Too-big-to-fail can be thought of as a Single Point of Failure, a system attribute we know works against availability and security. We might further think of corruption as an attack on the system, and hence, plan mechanisms to minimize the "blast radius". And so on. Other models might work too, for example, physics. My point is that the current model of political discourse is weirdly self-limiting. Something very odd seems to happen as soon as one adopts it. It's as if people immediately forget the knowledge they have outside politics. I have seen this many times in the political writing of otherwise very intelligent scientists and engineers--their technical ideas are creative and rigorous but their political ideas banal and trite.

I wish we had a political version of Mr. Rogers. We need better role models for how to talk about politics in ways that are measured, reasonable, and respectful.

mhh__ 8y ago

The difficulty is that the two "basic" schools of politics/economics, Capitalism and Socialism are so diametrically opposed in terms of assumptions and methods that objectivity itself becomes subjective. Socalists tend to look at the world differently to capitalists.

gridlockd 8y ago
These are not "the basic schools" of economics. If I had to pick two camps, I would pick Keynesianism and Neoclassical economics. Politically, Keynesianism has won over both sides of the spectrum. There is no "diametric opposition", virtually all socialists of today agree that markets are to be favored over central planning. That part is settled by history. What socialists and non-socialists disagree over is generally the degree of state intervention in the markets and who should pay for what, that is who pays taxes and who gets the benefits.
- mhh__ 8y ago
  I deliberately wrote basic and political/economics, in the sense that political debate regarding economics is divided into those basic catagories at least in Britain. Economic policy, the yes practically the decision is between some form of Keynesianism or something vaguely monetarist (Laissez-Faire) How can a socialist (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/socialism https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/socialism) system have a market? The point I was making is that in my experience, many socialists (as defined above, type of socialists) do not believe or understand how behaviour emerges from markets and how this is efficient where competition is possible: It's all government this, government that. May I ask where you are writing from?
  - mercer 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism#Marxism%E2%80%93Leninism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism#Marxism%E2%80...

BaronSamedi 8y ago

Good point. I would suggest that a better model for discussing politics is even more important than a better role model. Current political discourse is so full of emotionally laden words, shibboleths, and moralizing that discussions inevitably go down the same paths over and over again. So tedious and unproductive. This indicates to me that the current model is broken and it is time to look elsewhere. What if, for instance, we used software systems engineering as model and thought about political systems in terms of high-availability, reliability, and security? Too-big-to-fail can be thought of as a Single Point of Failure, a system attribute we know works against availability and security. We might further think of corruption as an attack on the system, and hence, plan mechanisms to minimize the "blast radius". And so on. Other models might work too, for example, physics. My point is that the current model of political discourse is weirdly self-limiting. Something very odd seems to happen as soon as one adopts it. It's as if people immediately forget the knowledge they have outside politics. I have seen this many times in the political writing of otherwise very intelligent scientists and engineers--their technical ideas are creative and rigorous but their political ideas banal and trite.