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Governments have a couple of safeguards in place to deal with irrational humans running the show. Some of them are division of power and checks and balances. T
by pgeorgi 7y ago
Governments have a couple of safeguards in place to deal with irrational humans running the show. Some of them are division of power and checks and balances.
These safeguards are the reason why governance is sometimes slow and sometimes bulky but also why, by and large, governance doesn't fail entirely when it happens to be unjust: it can recover from most injustices (one argument against capital punishment is that there's no recovery from that).
And all that is rooted in a distrust that humans do the right thing all the time - without that assumption you wouldn't need these mechanisms with all their overhead, you'd just appoint a philosopher king.
[edit to add: One problem is when some of these powers aren't doing their job. Checks and balances break down when (for example) the legislature devolves into playing the executive's yes-men instead of directing its activities.]
- pdonis 7y agoAll of these safeguards depend on people being rational--at least rational enough to watch whether the safeguards are working. If people aren't willing to do that, the safeguards break down. For example: the US Congress has something like a 98% re-election rate for incumbents and an approval rating in the single digits. That means important safeguards are not working.
- someguydave 7y agoDoes that mean democracy is unsafe?
- pdonis 7y agoIt means a democracy in which voters are unwilling or unable to hold elected representatives accountable for maintaining the safeguards is unsafe.
- someguydave 7y agoFair enough - we need to limit the vote to the responsible voters only - for the safety of the people.
- mikelyons 7y agoNo. We need an educated populous, and not just educated in rationality but in spirituality as well. Not religious dogmatic mechanistic ritualism corrupted for selfish motives, but open one-with-all selfless spirituality that seeks to promote future generations instead of stealing from them for the goals of the ego.