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My context: The United States of America is a poorly designed political science experiment. It provides no means to peacefully revoke consent to be governed. T

My context: The United States of America is a poorly designed political science experiment. It provides no means to peacefully revoke consent to be governed. There's no peaceful way out of the experiment, and so it violates a standard ethical norm for science experiments. I seek the death/transformation of any science experiment not allowing for peacefully revoking consent to participate in said experiment. Note: if revocation of consent leads to forceful removal from the country, I consider this to be a response that is not peaceful.

throwGuardian 7y ago
If the US is a bad political experiment, which one is good? Iran would gladly send you to the gallows if you deemed it's religious leader - Ayatollah, also the political leader by design, as Iran is a religious state with no minority rights, a 'bad' political experiment. And China/Russia would know your probability of saying so a-priori, given their blanket surveillance generating social credibility scores.
- mirimir 7y ago
  > If the US is a bad political experiment, which one is good? That's a tough question, given human nature. From what I've read, I'd say some Native American cultures, which were ~stable for thousands of years. Also some parts of Polynesia.
  - everybodyknows 7y ago
    Back in the 19th century, Herman Melville documented an apparently stable society in Typee. It was however, not without violence -- some of it so appalling to most readers that the novel barely hints at it.
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    You mean like the Aztec empire that practiced human sacrifice and tortured other tribes?
    - mirimir 7y ago
      No, not them. I said "some" for just that reason.
      - chrisco255 7y ago
        Ok, your opportunity to explain which one you meant and why they were better or more stable than our current system?
        mirimir 7y ago
        I'm no expert. I'd say the Hopi. The Iroquois Confederacy also comes to mind. But they were quite warlike. Definitely not the Comanche.
        crawfordcomeaux 7y ago
        The are several Coast Salish tribes to take a look at. Some were anarchic, so their culture could be of great use to studies of governance.
  - gsk22 7y ago
    Which cultures? And what specific attributes of their governing systems made them "good"?
    - mirimir 7y ago
      Individual freedom. Egalitarianism. Non-violence. Consensus-based decision making. Stuff like that.
- vidoc 7y ago
  > If the US is a bad political experiment, which one is good? Switzerland, one the only real democracy.
  - implements 7y ago
    Not if you define democracy as rule that occurs within a framework of fundamental human rights. The Swiss were denying women the vote in federal elections until the early 1970s. And that's the problem with 'tyranny of the masses' - popular isn't the measure of good, just or rational.
    - DubiousPusher 7y ago
      I think people overstate the problems witr Democracies vs. Republics. Looking at the history of the U.S. there is very little evidence to suggest that Republicanism has resulted in a non-tyranical majority rule. In fact, the only thing I can see that has maintained any rights for social, political and racial minorities in U.S. history is the Bill of Rights Andrew that frequently ignored or tempered until the post WWII era.
  - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
    To address crawfordcomeaux's point: Does Switzerland let you peacefully revoke your consent to be governed? No, I'm pretty sure it does not. Does any country allow that? No. So why pick on the US?
    - crawfordcomeaux 7y ago
      Cause it's where I live and it's where the cultures and legal systems I'm attempting to hack are located. It's the state asserting itself over my child in some way, which I don't recognize as mine to give away on their behalf. And that's a religious standpoint, so I'm curious how the US might handle this situation. It does beg broader questions about potentially every government, as well.
      - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
- lukifer 7y ago
  > If the US is a bad political experiment, which one is good? I'll throw my hat in the ring and suggest sortition (think jury duty, but for 2 years at a time, as the representative of your district/state): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition There's still an argument for some level of direct democracy (ballot initiatives, but especially to throw out inevitable corruption/idiocy of representatives); though perhaps the threshold should be higher (such as 66% rather than 50%+1). Bryan Caplan [0] and Jason Brennan [1] have made very sound arguments about voting bringing out our worst tribalist instincts, rather than the informed, enlightened voter that was fantasized by the Constitutional framers. The strongest case for democracy-as-we-know-it is simply the peaceful transfer of power, which it seems to accomplish surprisingly well; but in terms of sound policy, or reflecting the will of We The People, its track record isn't exactly stellar. (That said, as long as our system is still driven by the vote, we would stand to benefit from bottom-up electoral reform, such as switching from First-Past-The-Post to Ranked-Choice or Approval voting [2].) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Democracy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
  - chrisco255 7y ago
    Getting 2/3 of a large group to agree on anything is damn near impossible. I think the American system does a pretty good job of balancing popular and regional concerns and has some democratic elements that require 50% + 1 and many things that require larger majorities.
    - lukifer 7y ago
      My thinking is that there should be a high bar to spend public funds or leverage the state's monopoly on violence (and believe me, I'm not reflexively anti-statist: I'm all for infrastructure and social safety nets, etc). Practically, I understand the concern. I think our hyper-partisan politics has us accustomed to a 51/49 dynamic that occasionally flips sides; my hypothesis is that reducing democratic influence on representation (in favor of RNG), coupled with electoral reform for the democratic processes that remain, would make it far more feasible to build consensus in the range of 60-80%. To unpack the latter: my preferred system is Approval Voting, as it definitionally measures the greatest quantity of "consent of the governed", and game-theoretically rewards compromise and consensus. A person or policy that is extremely popular among 55% can potentially be outcompeted by one that is moderately popular among 75%.
- carapace 7y ago
  > If the US is a bad political experiment, which one is good? Bhutan. It's technically a Third-world country, but they seriously have their shit together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan#Political_reform_and_modernization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan#Political_reform_and_mo... The old women wept when the King decreed democracy. > Bhutan's political system has recently changed from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. King Jigme Singye Wangchuck transferred most of his administrative powers to the Council of Cabinet Ministers and allowed for impeachment of the King by a two-thirds majority of the National Assembly.[38] They track not GDP but GNH: Gross National Happiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness Unfortunately, they're likely doomed: > In 1999, the government lifted a ban on television and the Internet, making Bhutan one of the last countries to introduce television.
3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
In your context of all of the other “political science experiments” (e.g. governments) you think the USA is poorly designed? What experiments do you think were better designed in that case? One great thing about our experiment is that you have a lot of liberty, included your constitutional right to travel. You can live in other cities and states which more closely align with your ideologies without ever needing to even think of violence of force. Or, if you can't find a home here in any of our states or cities, you're welcome to seek a new home anywhere in the world. That's the kind of liberty our experiments grants you. —written from my iPhone
- crawfordcomeaux 7y ago
  Yep. And I'm grateful for it. And want more liberty than that. Also, I think Bhutan shifting their government to metrics based around well-being is a great example of orienting the state away from money and toward human needs. And I don't know of a state that's been designed to fully meet the human need of autonomy. I'd like to design and implement one, perhaps through exercising the inalienable right to found a nation, just as the founders of the USA did. Or did they found a nation only to strip people of the right to found their own nation?
ksdale 7y ago
This is a fairly general argument for abolishing government, period, and not a specific criticism of the U.S. If anyone can unilaterally decide not to be governed, then the government ceases to have any purpose. I think there's definitely a case to be made for allowing people to have more personal control, but what you're advocating is basically anarchy.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Anarchy might work. But only after the authoritarian jerks (maybe 10-20%) had been killed. Burroughs did go on about that, but maybe he was joking. I was just rereading Abercrombie's A Little Hatred, and came across this, said by Sand dan Glokta (a notorious torturer) to a young associate: > The goal of government, you see, is to load the unhappiness on to those least able to make you suffer for it.
  - ksdale 7y ago
    My own personal opinion based on no data whatsoever is that you're way underestimating the number of people who would be authoritarian jerks under the right circumstances. I think the numbers are reversed, only 10-20% of people wouldn't become authoritarian jerks under any circumstances, so it's important to build systems that limit the damage that authoritarian jerks can do.
    - DubiousPusher 7y ago
      Yeah and terror has a way of making those authoritarian jerks come out of the woodwork. See the repeated variously aligned purges of the French Revolution.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  That's expressly not the case, and I'm not sure why you'd lead off with such a mischaracterization of the comment you're replying to.
  - djohnston 7y ago
anigbrowl 7y ago
This experiment was more practical in an earlier era. If we look back to Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address (which is worth reading in full), he commented: By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years. In Lincoln's day, rail travel and the telegraph were the cutting edge of technology; news was beginning to commonly travel faster than it could be carried by couriers on horseback. (Of course, long-distance signaling systems existed for centuries before that, but had very low bandwidth and were at the mercy of weather conditions). Now we are in an era of ubiquitous instantaneous communications in developed countries (which I'll define here as any country with functioning electrical/cellphone infrastructure). One ramification of this is the use of mass networking services like Telegram, Whatsapp etc. as the organizing medium for political demonstrations/uprisings in numerous countries around the world. 18th-century social/political technology is no longer responsive to the tempo of a 21st century world. And while it would be a mistake to situate the mechanisms of the government in the fastest conceivable context (as evidenced by volatility in financial markets), being locked in to various years-long political cycles (particularly the 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 year cycles of the American political calendar) clearly comes with a cost of reduced flexibility as well as a benefit of increased stability. Like a tank falling into a ditch, once it passes a tipping point of instability there's no bringing it back.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> The United States of America is a poorly designed political science experiment. No, it's not. It's not a well-designed one either. It is simply not a political science experiment. > It provides no means to peacefully revoke consent to be governed Nor could it without being replaced as a government with one that did not.

throwGuardian 7y ago

If the US is a bad political experiment, which one is good? Iran would gladly send you to the gallows if you deemed it's religious leader - Ayatollah, also the political leader by design, as Iran is a religious state with no minority rights, a 'bad' political experiment. And China/Russia would know your probability of saying so a-priori, given their blanket surveillance generating social credibility scores.

mirimir 7y ago
> If the US is a bad political experiment, which one is good? That's a tough question, given human nature. From what I've read, I'd say some Native American cultures, which were ~stable for thousands of years. Also some parts of Polynesia.
- everybodyknows 7y ago
  Back in the 19th century, Herman Melville documented an apparently stable society in Typee. It was however, not without violence -- some of it so appalling to most readers that the novel barely hints at it.
- chrisco255 7y ago
  You mean like the Aztec empire that practiced human sacrifice and tortured other tribes?
  - mirimir 7y ago
    No, not them. I said "some" for just that reason.
    - chrisco255 7y ago
      Ok, your opportunity to explain which one you meant and why they were better or more stable than our current system?
      - mirimir 7y ago
        I'm no expert. I'd say the Hopi. The Iroquois Confederacy also comes to mind. But they were quite warlike. Definitely not the Comanche.
      - crawfordcomeaux 7y ago
        The are several Coast Salish tribes to take a look at. Some were anarchic, so their culture could be of great use to studies of governance.
- gsk22 7y ago
  Which cultures? And what specific attributes of their governing systems made them "good"?
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Individual freedom. Egalitarianism. Non-violence. Consensus-based decision making. Stuff like that.
vidoc 7y ago
> If the US is a bad political experiment, which one is good? Switzerland, one the only real democracy.
- implements 7y ago
  Not if you define democracy as rule that occurs within a framework of fundamental human rights. The Swiss were denying women the vote in federal elections until the early 1970s. And that's the problem with 'tyranny of the masses' - popular isn't the measure of good, just or rational.
  - DubiousPusher 7y ago
    I think people overstate the problems witr Democracies vs. Republics. Looking at the history of the U.S. there is very little evidence to suggest that Republicanism has resulted in a non-tyranical majority rule. In fact, the only thing I can see that has maintained any rights for social, political and racial minorities in U.S. history is the Bill of Rights Andrew that frequently ignored or tempered until the post WWII era.
- AnimalMuppet 7y ago
  To address crawfordcomeaux's point: Does Switzerland let you peacefully revoke your consent to be governed? No, I'm pretty sure it does not. Does any country allow that? No. So why pick on the US?
  - crawfordcomeaux 7y ago
    Cause it's where I live and it's where the cultures and legal systems I'm attempting to hack are located. It's the state asserting itself over my child in some way, which I don't recognize as mine to give away on their behalf. And that's a religious standpoint, so I'm curious how the US might handle this situation. It does beg broader questions about potentially every government, as well.
    - AnimalMuppet 7y ago
lukifer 7y ago
> If the US is a bad political experiment, which one is good? I'll throw my hat in the ring and suggest sortition (think jury duty, but for 2 years at a time, as the representative of your district/state): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sortition There's still an argument for some level of direct democracy (ballot initiatives, but especially to throw out inevitable corruption/idiocy of representatives); though perhaps the threshold should be higher (such as 66% rather than 50%+1). Bryan Caplan [0] and Jason Brennan [1] have made very sound arguments about voting bringing out our worst tribalist instincts, rather than the informed, enlightened voter that was fantasized by the Constitutional framers. The strongest case for democracy-as-we-know-it is simply the peaceful transfer of power, which it seems to accomplish surprisingly well; but in terms of sound policy, or reflecting the will of We The People, its track record isn't exactly stellar. (That said, as long as our system is still driven by the vote, we would stand to benefit from bottom-up electoral reform, such as switching from First-Past-The-Post to Ranked-Choice or Approval voting [2].) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_the_Rational_Voter [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Democracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Against_Democracy [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approval_voting
- chrisco255 7y ago
  Getting 2/3 of a large group to agree on anything is damn near impossible. I think the American system does a pretty good job of balancing popular and regional concerns and has some democratic elements that require 50% + 1 and many things that require larger majorities.
  - lukifer 7y ago
    My thinking is that there should be a high bar to spend public funds or leverage the state's monopoly on violence (and believe me, I'm not reflexively anti-statist: I'm all for infrastructure and social safety nets, etc). Practically, I understand the concern. I think our hyper-partisan politics has us accustomed to a 51/49 dynamic that occasionally flips sides; my hypothesis is that reducing democratic influence on representation (in favor of RNG), coupled with electoral reform for the democratic processes that remain, would make it far more feasible to build consensus in the range of 60-80%. To unpack the latter: my preferred system is Approval Voting, as it definitionally measures the greatest quantity of "consent of the governed", and game-theoretically rewards compromise and consensus. A person or policy that is extremely popular among 55% can potentially be outcompeted by one that is moderately popular among 75%.
carapace 7y ago
> If the US is a bad political experiment, which one is good? Bhutan. It's technically a Third-world country, but they seriously have their shit together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan#Political_reform_and_modernization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan#Political_reform_and_mo... The old women wept when the King decreed democracy. > Bhutan's political system has recently changed from an absolute monarchy to a constitutional monarchy. King Jigme Singye Wangchuck transferred most of his administrative powers to the Council of Cabinet Ministers and allowed for impeachment of the King by a two-thirds majority of the National Assembly.[38] They track not GDP but GNH: Gross National Happiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_national_happiness Unfortunately, they're likely doomed: > In 1999, the government lifted a ban on television and the Internet, making Bhutan one of the last countries to introduce television.

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago

In your context of all of the other “political science experiments” (e.g. governments) you think the USA is poorly designed? What experiments do you think were better designed in that case? One great thing about our experiment is that you have a lot of liberty, included your constitutional right to travel. You can live in other cities and states which more closely align with your ideologies without ever needing to even think of violence of force. Or, if you can't find a home here in any of our states or cities, you're welcome to seek a new home anywhere in the world. That's the kind of liberty our experiments grants you. —written from my iPhone

crawfordcomeaux 7y ago
Yep. And I'm grateful for it. And want more liberty than that. Also, I think Bhutan shifting their government to metrics based around well-being is a great example of orienting the state away from money and toward human needs. And I don't know of a state that's been designed to fully meet the human need of autonomy. I'd like to design and implement one, perhaps through exercising the inalienable right to found a nation, just as the founders of the USA did. Or did they found a nation only to strip people of the right to found their own nation?

ksdale 7y ago

This is a fairly general argument for abolishing government, period, and not a specific criticism of the U.S. If anyone can unilaterally decide not to be governed, then the government ceases to have any purpose. I think there's definitely a case to be made for allowing people to have more personal control, but what you're advocating is basically anarchy.

mirimir 7y ago
Anarchy might work. But only after the authoritarian jerks (maybe 10-20%) had been killed. Burroughs did go on about that, but maybe he was joking. I was just rereading Abercrombie's A Little Hatred, and came across this, said by Sand dan Glokta (a notorious torturer) to a young associate: > The goal of government, you see, is to load the unhappiness on to those least able to make you suffer for it.
- ksdale 7y ago
  My own personal opinion based on no data whatsoever is that you're way underestimating the number of people who would be authoritarian jerks under the right circumstances. I think the numbers are reversed, only 10-20% of people wouldn't become authoritarian jerks under any circumstances, so it's important to build systems that limit the damage that authoritarian jerks can do.
  - DubiousPusher 7y ago
    Yeah and terror has a way of making those authoritarian jerks come out of the woodwork. See the repeated variously aligned purges of the French Revolution.
anigbrowl 7y ago
That's expressly not the case, and I'm not sure why you'd lead off with such a mischaracterization of the comment you're replying to.
- djohnston 7y ago

anigbrowl 7y ago

This experiment was more practical in an earlier era. If we look back to Abraham Lincoln's first inaugural address (which is worth reading in full), he commented: By the frame of the Government under which we live this same people have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals. While the people retain their virtue and vigilance no Administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can very seriously injure the Government in the short space of four years. In Lincoln's day, rail travel and the telegraph were the cutting edge of technology; news was beginning to commonly travel faster than it could be carried by couriers on horseback. (Of course, long-distance signaling systems existed for centuries before that, but had very low bandwidth and were at the mercy of weather conditions). Now we are in an era of ubiquitous instantaneous communications in developed countries (which I'll define here as any country with functioning electrical/cellphone infrastructure). One ramification of this is the use of mass networking services like Telegram, Whatsapp etc. as the organizing medium for political demonstrations/uprisings in numerous countries around the world. 18th-century social/political technology is no longer responsive to the tempo of a 21st century world. And while it would be a mistake to situate the mechanisms of the government in the fastest conceivable context (as evidenced by volatility in financial markets), being locked in to various years-long political cycles (particularly the 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10 year cycles of the American political calendar) clearly comes with a cost of reduced flexibility as well as a benefit of increased stability. Like a tank falling into a ditch, once it passes a tipping point of instability there's no bringing it back.

dragonwriter 7y ago

> The United States of America is a poorly designed political science experiment. No, it's not. It's not a well-designed one either. It is simply not a political science experiment. > It provides no means to peacefully revoke consent to be governed Nor could it without being replaced as a government with one that did not.