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This is a classic problem with power; it’s not uncommon for people in power to confuse what’s good for the country with their own self interest. It really shou

This is a classic problem with power; it’s not uncommon for people in power to confuse what’s good for the country with their own self interest. It really shouldn’t be the FEMAs job to weigh disasters based on political impact; that’s not their mandate. Their job is to help with disasters, and with hurricanes being so common they should focus their efforts there.

bhupy 6y ago
> This is a classic problem with power; it’s not uncommon for people in power to confuse what’s good for the country with their own self interest. It reminds me of a quote by Milton Friedman: "Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?"
- sudosysgen 6y ago
  It's undeniably true when political power is distributed to the masses, and less and less true when it concentrates. Basically, the more democratic the political system, the truer it is. Which hints at the fundamental nature of political self-interest versus economic self-intrest - economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating while political self-interest conforms to both material and immaterial goals.
  - bhupy 6y ago
    > It's undeniably true when political power is distributed to the masses, and less and less true when it concentrates. In other words, it's only "undeniably true" in a direct democracy, where the people vote to decide on everything. Otherwise, you have the same centralization of power (a representative by definition has more power than their constituent), and you have to hope that they will act in the public good. I'm not sure that you can reasonably claim that every person in Congress today is virtuous. > economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating That's for sure a popular claim, but it's not really backed by any evidence other than the way a handful of people feel. And that's largely driven by ideology rather than mass empirical evidence. The entire developed/industrialized world largely operates on economic self-interest, and life in the 21st century is, by pretty much all measures, better than life at any other time in the past.
    - sudosysgen 6y ago
      >n other words, it's only "undeniably true" in a direct democracy, where the people vote to decide on everything. Otherwise, you have the same centralization of power (a representative by definition has more power than their constituent), and you have to hope that they will act in the public good. I'm not sure that you can reasonably claim that every person in Congress today is virtuous. Direct democracy doesn't mean that everyone votes on everything, and I never claimed that the US is democratic enough to fulfill that criteria. The US is at the very best a flawed democracy, and there can be as well as are much better system. >That's for sure a popular claim, but it's not really backed by any evidence other than the way a handful of people feel. And that's largely driven by ideology rather than mass empirical evidence. The entire developed/industrialized world largely operates on economic self-interest, and life in the 21st century is, by pretty much all measures, better than life at any other time in the past. The entire point of the claim is how people feel, because that's literally how you measure alienation and well being. There is no point living in a society with amazing material plenitude if the rest prevents your well-being. How good life is is measured solely through subjective and social measures, not by the quantity of consumption, which is almost irrelevant. There is tons of data behind this, the marginal happiness brought by greater material wealth goes to almost zero after you hit a ccertain threshold, and that threshold largely corresponds to ensuring baseline needs, then material security and finally freedom and social status related to material consumption in our society. Nowhere is there any study that seems to indicate that happiness and well-being are related beyond basic needs to absolute (and not relative) economic output. Therefore, your argument bears no solid relation to your claim. Furthermore, there have been tons of analysis and studies of why economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating, and it boils down to the fact that in a competitive system pursuance of economic self-interest necessarily requires loss of agency.
      - bhupy 6y ago
        > I never claimed that the US is democratic enough to fulfill that criteria. I’m not just talking about the US. I called out every single developed/industrialized nation > The entire point of the claim is how people feel Sure, and the majority of people in the world just don’t feel that way. It’s just a small group of Marxist ideologues. Your point about measures of happiness and freedom and social status and security etc etc are well and good...except the countries that rank the highest on those metrics are the ones that enjoy the greatest economic freedom. They are overwhelmingly societies which run on economic self-interest, per my earlier point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_...
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
This isn't a people problem. It's a large organizations with diffuse responsibility problem.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
malandrew 6y ago
> It really shouldn’t be the FEMAs job to weigh disasters based on political impact; that’s not their mandate. Their job is to help with disasters, and with hurricanes being so common they should focus their efforts there. And the moment a terrorist act happens that FEMA is unprepared for because they prioritized hurricanes, everyone at FEMA will be replaced with those that do prioritize terrorist attacks because at the end of the day people will demand that. You can't just blame those in power when the general populace will demand the same decision.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  > the general populace will demand the same decision That's debatable.
  - ashtonkem 6y ago
    I would much more expect that a terrorist attack would result on a lot more pressure on DHS and other agencies tasked with anti-terrorism responsibilities, rather than FEMA.
    - malandrew 6y ago
      anti-terrorism activities is complementary to terrorist act response. One is prevention and the other is treatment. The treatment for an act of terror is not dissimilar to the treatment for an act of god. There's a lot of overlap.
kryogen1c 6y ago
> This is a classic problem with power; it’s not uncommon for people in power to confuse what’s good for the country with their own self interest This is a nonsense statement. Power is an inherently valuable resource. It is axiomatic. If you're a leaf in the wind you dont do anyone any good, or do anything at all by definition. Everything ever done in any capacity was done by someone with power. The problem is also not self-interest, although its closer - the problem is alignment of incentives. Public agencies like FEMA do not receive feedback from the systems they manage (apartments dont tweet when they are saved from hurricanes) and they do not get rewarded for doing a good job. Public agencies result in a lowest-common-denominator of everyone doing what they can to not get yelled at and fired. A natural thought for such an agency would be to ignore/minimize the public's power so the employees are free to do good, but this obviously frees them to do not-good as well. I have been ruminating on this paradox of democracy. How do we stop ourselves from ruining ourselves if thats what we want? (Representative) democracy is clearly not universally appropriate, but it is pretty good. Free markets dont serve well where people arent actively involved to properly create the market need, so thats probably out. Can i interest anyone in a politics as a service think tank?

bhupy 6y ago

> This is a classic problem with power; it’s not uncommon for people in power to confuse what’s good for the country with their own self interest. It reminds me of a quote by Milton Friedman: "Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest?"

sudosysgen 6y ago
It's undeniably true when political power is distributed to the masses, and less and less true when it concentrates. Basically, the more democratic the political system, the truer it is. Which hints at the fundamental nature of political self-interest versus economic self-intrest - economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating while political self-interest conforms to both material and immaterial goals.
- bhupy 6y ago
  > It's undeniably true when political power is distributed to the masses, and less and less true when it concentrates. In other words, it's only "undeniably true" in a direct democracy, where the people vote to decide on everything. Otherwise, you have the same centralization of power (a representative by definition has more power than their constituent), and you have to hope that they will act in the public good. I'm not sure that you can reasonably claim that every person in Congress today is virtuous. > economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating That's for sure a popular claim, but it's not really backed by any evidence other than the way a handful of people feel. And that's largely driven by ideology rather than mass empirical evidence. The entire developed/industrialized world largely operates on economic self-interest, and life in the 21st century is, by pretty much all measures, better than life at any other time in the past.
  - sudosysgen 6y ago
    >n other words, it's only "undeniably true" in a direct democracy, where the people vote to decide on everything. Otherwise, you have the same centralization of power (a representative by definition has more power than their constituent), and you have to hope that they will act in the public good. I'm not sure that you can reasonably claim that every person in Congress today is virtuous. Direct democracy doesn't mean that everyone votes on everything, and I never claimed that the US is democratic enough to fulfill that criteria. The US is at the very best a flawed democracy, and there can be as well as are much better system. >That's for sure a popular claim, but it's not really backed by any evidence other than the way a handful of people feel. And that's largely driven by ideology rather than mass empirical evidence. The entire developed/industrialized world largely operates on economic self-interest, and life in the 21st century is, by pretty much all measures, better than life at any other time in the past. The entire point of the claim is how people feel, because that's literally how you measure alienation and well being. There is no point living in a society with amazing material plenitude if the rest prevents your well-being. How good life is is measured solely through subjective and social measures, not by the quantity of consumption, which is almost irrelevant. There is tons of data behind this, the marginal happiness brought by greater material wealth goes to almost zero after you hit a ccertain threshold, and that threshold largely corresponds to ensuring baseline needs, then material security and finally freedom and social status related to material consumption in our society. Nowhere is there any study that seems to indicate that happiness and well-being are related beyond basic needs to absolute (and not relative) economic output. Therefore, your argument bears no solid relation to your claim. Furthermore, there have been tons of analysis and studies of why economic self-interest is fundamentally alienating, and it boils down to the fact that in a competitive system pursuance of economic self-interest necessarily requires loss of agency.
    - bhupy 6y ago
      > I never claimed that the US is democratic enough to fulfill that criteria. I’m not just talking about the US. I called out every single developed/industrialized nation > The entire point of the claim is how people feel Sure, and the majority of people in the world just don’t feel that way. It’s just a small group of Marxist ideologues. Your point about measures of happiness and freedom and social status and security etc etc are well and good...except the countries that rank the highest on those metrics are the ones that enjoy the greatest economic freedom. They are overwhelmingly societies which run on economic self-interest, per my earlier point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_economic_...

throwaway0a5e 6y ago

This isn't a people problem. It's a large organizations with diffuse responsibility problem.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

malandrew 6y ago

> It really shouldn’t be the FEMAs job to weigh disasters based on political impact; that’s not their mandate. Their job is to help with disasters, and with hurricanes being so common they should focus their efforts there. And the moment a terrorist act happens that FEMA is unprepared for because they prioritized hurricanes, everyone at FEMA will be replaced with those that do prioritize terrorist attacks because at the end of the day people will demand that. You can't just blame those in power when the general populace will demand the same decision.

saagarjha 6y ago
> the general populace will demand the same decision That's debatable.
- ashtonkem 6y ago
  I would much more expect that a terrorist attack would result on a lot more pressure on DHS and other agencies tasked with anti-terrorism responsibilities, rather than FEMA.
  - malandrew 6y ago
    anti-terrorism activities is complementary to terrorist act response. One is prevention and the other is treatment. The treatment for an act of terror is not dissimilar to the treatment for an act of god. There's a lot of overlap.

kryogen1c 6y ago

> This is a classic problem with power; it’s not uncommon for people in power to confuse what’s good for the country with their own self interest This is a nonsense statement. Power is an inherently valuable resource. It is axiomatic. If you're a leaf in the wind you dont do anyone any good, or do anything at all by definition. Everything ever done in any capacity was done by someone with power. The problem is also not self-interest, although its closer - the problem is alignment of incentives. Public agencies like FEMA do not receive feedback from the systems they manage (apartments dont tweet when they are saved from hurricanes) and they do not get rewarded for doing a good job. Public agencies result in a lowest-common-denominator of everyone doing what they can to not get yelled at and fired. A natural thought for such an agency would be to ignore/minimize the public's power so the employees are free to do good, but this obviously frees them to do not-good as well. I have been ruminating on this paradox of democracy. How do we stop ourselves from ruining ourselves if thats what we want? (Representative) democracy is clearly not universally appropriate, but it is pretty good. Free markets dont serve well where people arent actively involved to properly create the market need, so thats probably out. Can i interest anyone in a politics as a service think tank?