11 ms·

My pet theory is that democracy is more tolerable because it alternates between incompetent people fast enough to keep people's hopes alive.

huffmsa 7y ago
That's exactly what the US system is supposed to to. Continuous, rapid cycling between small improvements and slightly smaller regressions. As the Federal bureaucracy grows and as elected politicians stay in office longer the regressions become more severe though. If it gets bad enough you end up with a massive centralized apparatus which inevitably implodes and takes out the nation it governed with it. As seen in China every 100-200 years throughout it's history, as seen in the USSR, Rome, etc. Lots of small sadnesses are always better than one or two big ones (which is the central premise of Nassim Taleb's books)
- nickthemagicman 7y ago
  Nassim Taleb believes dictatorships are better than democracies because "Lots of small sadnesses are always better than one or two big ones"?
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    A dictatorship gives one person the ability to cause a singular big sadness. So they're no good. He touts the extreme federalism of Switzerland. Small, local governments which can only affect and are only responsible for their immediate constituent Concentration of power => concentration of fail points => fragile to catastrophic events. Distribution of power => distribution of fail points => majority of system will survive catastrophes. Or, in VC speak: single investment in single start-up => fund will not survive a failure. Many small investments in many start-ups => 75% fail, 10% break even, 10% make 2-3x, 5% return 10x
    - nickthemagicman 7y ago
      Very cool and interesting. I'm sure you could apply to tech as well. I.e. Micro services vs Monolithic services. Thank you for clearing that up.
chadcmulligan 7y ago
I have a similar theory, the right and the left each get to alternate so we stay sort of in the middle.
- huffmsa 7y ago
  Which is the exact reason the system is setup like it is. The federal government is only supposed to take action when it can get two ideological parties to agree on something. The theory being that if the two sides can find common ground, it's actually a good idea.
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    Seems like a real world implementation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation I'm not sure that's a great thing, but you're never going to find a consensus that's both palatable to a majority and the right thing to do (of course, "right thing" being what I'm arbitrarily deciding is "right" based on my own values). What's the compromise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery? Thank god argument to moderation wasn't the solution here.
    - huffmsa 7y ago
      There are two checks against the agreed upon "right thing",the national executive who has to agree with the consensus, and (thanks John Marshall), a system of (theoretically) impartial courts which can decide if the "right thing" is actually allowed according to the rules of the game (Constitution). The slavery compromise was exactly that. First the 3/5th agreement, then the Missouri compromise, then finally, when one side got all of the power (which is what the system is supposed to mitigate the chances of) a shooting war. Lincoln likely wouldn't have gone quite so agro on slavery if not for succession. And there likely wouldn't have been a United States if there hadn't been any compromises on slavery. The two sides would have split at the outset, and either 1) neither would have been able to amass enough influence on the continent and they'd have been reabsorbed by a European power 2) after a hundred years of independent growth and simmering hatred, the two nation's would have had a war even more disastrous than the American civil war.
xwolfi 7y ago
Or keep them busy fighting over the captain while the competent rest of the ship stay the course :D Definitely how I felt in pre-Macron France, where the presidents were just telling idiots impossible dreams why the whole country was managed prudently. Maybe this time I am the idiot in the demographic targeted by the president, so I feel hopeful again ahaha
sputr 7y ago
Democracy is nothing more than a system that replaces swords/bullets with votes. That's it. The fight for power (aka. resources) it inescapable and the only thing that democracy did, was to change the field that this fight is fought on. Democracy is more tolerable because no people die (in the open) when the landscape of power changes. The only two benefits of democracy to "the people" are: (1) the fact that they have now become the weapons .. and if they are smart, they can use that power to influence which actions of the warring factions are needed for their supremacy so that they are more inline with the interests of the people. (2) the entry requirements and risks to become one of the factions are much lower which can help with (1) The only problem is that the warring factions know this and will do everything they can to conceal the reality of the situation so that the people do not exercise the power that they have. And they have been very successful at it. The amount of people who believe that democracy is somehow inherently good for the people is beyond my belief.
- Agebor 7y ago
  Resources? The real fight is now for people's minds. We already have orders of magnitude more resources than 100 years ago and almost everyone can benefit from them.
  - moate 7y ago
    Hello, conflict theory sociologist here. What? Absolutely agree that we have a ton more resources than previously. However, as has always been the case, they're not equitably distributed. Plenty of people are removed from resources they want or need. Look at the US. We still have homeless people. We still have people dying of curable diseases. The fight for resources is real to plenty of people.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  > The amount of people who believe that democracy is somehow inherently good for the people is beyond my belief. If the alternative is swords and bullets, I would think most people prefer democracy. It’s the worst system, except for all the others attempted so far.
AlexTWithBeard 7y ago
But on the other hand, hereditary monarchy allows a smart person to be at power every once in a while.
- thrower123 7y ago
  And if you do hit on a good one, you'd get forty or fifty years out of them if you were lucky. You'd just need some Bene Gesserit types keeping the bloodlines, so you don't end up with the grandsons of Victoria or Charles II of Spain.
calmlynarczyk 7y ago
I've always seen it as a matter of risk. You could have an absolute monarchy and end up with the smartest, most empathetic person in the world as your leader who would be a net-benefit to your society for years to come. You could also end up with a total asshole that you're stuck with until death do you part. Democracy (or perhaps bureaucracy) just de-risks the chance that your government fails you through diversification of parties involved, similar to diversifying your investment portfolio. Given that human nature tends to lead people into the "asshole" column, I can understand why democracy would be the preferable of the two approaches.
snarf21 7y ago
While this is true, the thing that doesn't change is that it is business that makes most of the decisions. They back both sides and threaten to not support a candidate for reelection if they don't get their quid pro quo. I feel like we actually live in a plutocracy. The most convenient part for the the ruling class is that we have been tricked into thinking it is about red vs blue or left vs right. People talk about politics in a very "us vs them" vernacular. In the meantime, the corporate interests rob the middle class blind. It is a game of misdirection and self interest. The only way to ever really solve it is a more representative and distributed democracy model. This kind of setup also forces a lot of the money out of politics. Alas, the rulers have no appetite for giving up the corruption they have worked oh so hard for.
agumonkey 7y ago
In that vein I often think of democracy of an escape valve chimera. You get to scream on paper for a while until the next overload. I'd deeply love an analysis about the effectiveness of voting / political systems in relation to goals/results. We would probably choke on the accountability issue right away.
fredley 7y ago
An excellent primer on modes of Government, how they arise, and how this perpetuate is this CGP Grey video, Rules for Rulers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs
noiv 7y ago
Democracy comes in different flavors. There is even a kind without career politician. Checkit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition
- veritas3241 7y ago
  I would love for sortition to come into vogue in the US. Not sure where it would fit but it seems like it aligns incentives better.
refurb 7y ago
That actually made me chuckle. It does seem that the election cycle is comprised of 1) promises, 2) elected based on promises, 3) failure to achieve promises, 4) kicked out of office because the other candidate is promising us stuff we want and we believe he will deliver.

huffmsa 7y ago

That's exactly what the US system is supposed to to. Continuous, rapid cycling between small improvements and slightly smaller regressions. As the Federal bureaucracy grows and as elected politicians stay in office longer the regressions become more severe though. If it gets bad enough you end up with a massive centralized apparatus which inevitably implodes and takes out the nation it governed with it. As seen in China every 100-200 years throughout it's history, as seen in the USSR, Rome, etc. Lots of small sadnesses are always better than one or two big ones (which is the central premise of Nassim Taleb's books)

nickthemagicman 7y ago
Nassim Taleb believes dictatorships are better than democracies because "Lots of small sadnesses are always better than one or two big ones"?
- huffmsa 7y ago
  A dictatorship gives one person the ability to cause a singular big sadness. So they're no good. He touts the extreme federalism of Switzerland. Small, local governments which can only affect and are only responsible for their immediate constituent Concentration of power => concentration of fail points => fragile to catastrophic events. Distribution of power => distribution of fail points => majority of system will survive catastrophes. Or, in VC speak: single investment in single start-up => fund will not survive a failure. Many small investments in many start-ups => 75% fail, 10% break even, 10% make 2-3x, 5% return 10x
  - nickthemagicman 7y ago
    Very cool and interesting. I'm sure you could apply to tech as well. I.e. Micro services vs Monolithic services. Thank you for clearing that up.

chadcmulligan 7y ago

I have a similar theory, the right and the left each get to alternate so we stay sort of in the middle.

huffmsa 7y ago
Which is the exact reason the system is setup like it is. The federal government is only supposed to take action when it can get two ideological parties to agree on something. The theory being that if the two sides can find common ground, it's actually a good idea.
- jplayer01 7y ago
  Seems like a real world implementation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation I'm not sure that's a great thing, but you're never going to find a consensus that's both palatable to a majority and the right thing to do (of course, "right thing" being what I'm arbitrarily deciding is "right" based on my own values). What's the compromise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery? Thank god argument to moderation wasn't the solution here.
  - huffmsa 7y ago
    There are two checks against the agreed upon "right thing",the national executive who has to agree with the consensus, and (thanks John Marshall), a system of (theoretically) impartial courts which can decide if the "right thing" is actually allowed according to the rules of the game (Constitution). The slavery compromise was exactly that. First the 3/5th agreement, then the Missouri compromise, then finally, when one side got all of the power (which is what the system is supposed to mitigate the chances of) a shooting war. Lincoln likely wouldn't have gone quite so agro on slavery if not for succession. And there likely wouldn't have been a United States if there hadn't been any compromises on slavery. The two sides would have split at the outset, and either 1) neither would have been able to amass enough influence on the continent and they'd have been reabsorbed by a European power 2) after a hundred years of independent growth and simmering hatred, the two nation's would have had a war even more disastrous than the American civil war.

xwolfi 7y ago

Or keep them busy fighting over the captain while the competent rest of the ship stay the course :D Definitely how I felt in pre-Macron France, where the presidents were just telling idiots impossible dreams why the whole country was managed prudently. Maybe this time I am the idiot in the demographic targeted by the president, so I feel hopeful again ahaha

sputr 7y ago

Democracy is nothing more than a system that replaces swords/bullets with votes. That's it. The fight for power (aka. resources) it inescapable and the only thing that democracy did, was to change the field that this fight is fought on. Democracy is more tolerable because no people die (in the open) when the landscape of power changes. The only two benefits of democracy to "the people" are: (1) the fact that they have now become the weapons .. and if they are smart, they can use that power to influence which actions of the warring factions are needed for their supremacy so that they are more inline with the interests of the people. (2) the entry requirements and risks to become one of the factions are much lower which can help with (1) The only problem is that the warring factions know this and will do everything they can to conceal the reality of the situation so that the people do not exercise the power that they have. And they have been very successful at it. The amount of people who believe that democracy is somehow inherently good for the people is beyond my belief.

Agebor 7y ago
Resources? The real fight is now for people's minds. We already have orders of magnitude more resources than 100 years ago and almost everyone can benefit from them.
- moate 7y ago
  Hello, conflict theory sociologist here. What? Absolutely agree that we have a ton more resources than previously. However, as has always been the case, they're not equitably distributed. Plenty of people are removed from resources they want or need. Look at the US. We still have homeless people. We still have people dying of curable diseases. The fight for resources is real to plenty of people.
lotsofpulp 7y ago
> The amount of people who believe that democracy is somehow inherently good for the people is beyond my belief. If the alternative is swords and bullets, I would think most people prefer democracy. It’s the worst system, except for all the others attempted so far.

AlexTWithBeard 7y ago

But on the other hand, hereditary monarchy allows a smart person to be at power every once in a while.

thrower123 7y ago
And if you do hit on a good one, you'd get forty or fifty years out of them if you were lucky. You'd just need some Bene Gesserit types keeping the bloodlines, so you don't end up with the grandsons of Victoria or Charles II of Spain.

calmlynarczyk 7y ago

I've always seen it as a matter of risk. You could have an absolute monarchy and end up with the smartest, most empathetic person in the world as your leader who would be a net-benefit to your society for years to come. You could also end up with a total asshole that you're stuck with until death do you part. Democracy (or perhaps bureaucracy) just de-risks the chance that your government fails you through diversification of parties involved, similar to diversifying your investment portfolio. Given that human nature tends to lead people into the "asshole" column, I can understand why democracy would be the preferable of the two approaches.

snarf21 7y ago

While this is true, the thing that doesn't change is that it is business that makes most of the decisions. They back both sides and threaten to not support a candidate for reelection if they don't get their quid pro quo. I feel like we actually live in a plutocracy. The most convenient part for the the ruling class is that we have been tricked into thinking it is about red vs blue or left vs right. People talk about politics in a very "us vs them" vernacular. In the meantime, the corporate interests rob the middle class blind. It is a game of misdirection and self interest. The only way to ever really solve it is a more representative and distributed democracy model. This kind of setup also forces a lot of the money out of politics. Alas, the rulers have no appetite for giving up the corruption they have worked oh so hard for.

agumonkey 7y ago

In that vein I often think of democracy of an escape valve chimera. You get to scream on paper for a while until the next overload. I'd deeply love an analysis about the effectiveness of voting / political systems in relation to goals/results. We would probably choke on the accountability issue right away.

fredley 7y ago

An excellent primer on modes of Government, how they arise, and how this perpetuate is this CGP Grey video, Rules for Rulers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rStL7niR7gs

noiv 7y ago

Democracy comes in different flavors. There is even a kind without career politician. Checkit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition

veritas3241 7y ago
I would love for sortition to come into vogue in the US. Not sure where it would fit but it seems like it aligns incentives better.

refurb 7y ago

That actually made me chuckle. It does seem that the election cycle is comprised of 1) promises, 2) elected based on promises, 3) failure to achieve promises, 4) kicked out of office because the other candidate is promising us stuff we want and we believe he will deliver.