4 ms·

You can vote political parties out of office. Locally, you can vote the corrupt mayor and all his cronies out of office and install a different one.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
That requires (1) the failure to be visible and self-evidently the result of political processes and decisions (2) people to act on (1) and actually vote (3) alternate candidates that have a genuinely different plan. It's not that easy to ensure that all 3 happen.
- novok 6y ago
  Eventually you need the superstars to do the innovative work. Elon musk & his top employees are not reproducible on demand
  - inglor_cz 6y ago
    No, but it is obvious that Musk could mobilize a lot of talent that might have been spent on less innovative work elsewhere. It is my suspicion that there is actually a lot more talented people than we tend to think and the real problem is educating and managing them well. There is an interesting case of Florence, Italy, which in the 14th and 15th century produced an incredible set of world class painters. That school is unmatched until today. We think that world class painters must be principially very rare, but maybe not so much. In a relatively short span of time, recruiting mostly students from Northern Italy only, the Florence school could produce quite a significant percentage of artistic heritage of the whole humanity.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
      I don't understand what a bunch of engineers at one of Musk's companies, or the ease of generating bunch of very good painters in Firenze in the 15/1600s have to do with the problem of improving/fixing city/local governance.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    Consider Hsue-Shen Tsien, father of Chinese rocketry. He returned to China in 1955, when it was a developing country. Talent can be built up, it depends on the environment. Elon Musk, who got his start through his sapphire-mining family is the best example of that, he knows how important access to money and politicians is.
- nobody9999 6y ago
  >That requires (1) the failure to be visible and self-evidently the result of political processes and decisions (2) people to act on (1) and actually vote (3) alternate candidates that have a genuinely different plan. >It's not that easy to ensure that all 3 happen. That raises a couple of questions: 1. Why aren't problems visible? Is it a failure of local government to disclose how they're spending your money? If so, why do you and your neighbors allow that? It is your money and your town after all. Especially since, even in a medium-sized city, a few hundred people who care about their quality of life can completely upend politics as usual. 2. Why don't people "act on [lack of transparency] and actually vote"? Again, this seems rather odd to me. I can certainly understand (although I don't agree) that folks may think that Federal, and even some state elections don't give them any say. But local elections are a very different story. 3. Is it really true (as you seem to contend) Is it your contention that overwhelming majorities of people everywhere just don't care about the places they live, or for what purposes their tax dollars are used?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    > 1. Why aren't problems visible? Can you actually see the almost complete failure of garbage disposal and recycling in your community? You cannot, because the failure doesn't happen there (mostly), and because most of us are not interested enough to ask (or research) the questions we would need to in order to understand how badly the people tasked with taking care of this have screwed it up. > 2. Why don't people "act on [lack of transparency] and actually vote"? Right now, I live in a mostly rural county in New Mexico. Before that, I lived right on the edge of Philadelphia, 300 yards outside the city line but closer to downtown than most of the city. I've lived in lots of other places too, both in the US and Europe, even Israel. In all of those places, a local vote is vote for someone who will be extremely constrained by the status quo and the larger political entities the surround us. So sure, I could vote for someone who might take some steps to improve a particular aspect of how the county/city/town/village deals with this or that, but it will always be taking place within the context of legislative, economic, energetic and social forces that are much, much harder to change. This can make it challenging to see the virtue of local elections, and thus to care about them in a way the reflects the extent to which we do actualy care about our communities.

PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago

That requires (1) the failure to be visible and self-evidently the result of political processes and decisions (2) people to act on (1) and actually vote (3) alternate candidates that have a genuinely different plan. It's not that easy to ensure that all 3 happen.

novok 6y ago
Eventually you need the superstars to do the innovative work. Elon musk & his top employees are not reproducible on demand
- inglor_cz 6y ago
  No, but it is obvious that Musk could mobilize a lot of talent that might have been spent on less innovative work elsewhere. It is my suspicion that there is actually a lot more talented people than we tend to think and the real problem is educating and managing them well. There is an interesting case of Florence, Italy, which in the 14th and 15th century produced an incredible set of world class painters. That school is unmatched until today. We think that world class painters must be principially very rare, but maybe not so much. In a relatively short span of time, recruiting mostly students from Northern Italy only, the Florence school could produce quite a significant percentage of artistic heritage of the whole humanity.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
    I don't understand what a bunch of engineers at one of Musk's companies, or the ease of generating bunch of very good painters in Firenze in the 15/1600s have to do with the problem of improving/fixing city/local governance.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  Consider Hsue-Shen Tsien, father of Chinese rocketry. He returned to China in 1955, when it was a developing country. Talent can be built up, it depends on the environment. Elon Musk, who got his start through his sapphire-mining family is the best example of that, he knows how important access to money and politicians is.
nobody9999 6y ago
>That requires (1) the failure to be visible and self-evidently the result of political processes and decisions (2) people to act on (1) and actually vote (3) alternate candidates that have a genuinely different plan. >It's not that easy to ensure that all 3 happen. That raises a couple of questions: 1. Why aren't problems visible? Is it a failure of local government to disclose how they're spending your money? If so, why do you and your neighbors allow that? It is your money and your town after all. Especially since, even in a medium-sized city, a few hundred people who care about their quality of life can completely upend politics as usual. 2. Why don't people "act on [lack of transparency] and actually vote"? Again, this seems rather odd to me. I can certainly understand (although I don't agree) that folks may think that Federal, and even some state elections don't give them any say. But local elections are a very different story. 3. Is it really true (as you seem to contend) Is it your contention that overwhelming majorities of people everywhere just don't care about the places they live, or for what purposes their tax dollars are used?
- PaulDavisThe1st 6y ago
  > 1. Why aren't problems visible? Can you actually see the almost complete failure of garbage disposal and recycling in your community? You cannot, because the failure doesn't happen there (mostly), and because most of us are not interested enough to ask (or research) the questions we would need to in order to understand how badly the people tasked with taking care of this have screwed it up. > 2. Why don't people "act on [lack of transparency] and actually vote"? Right now, I live in a mostly rural county in New Mexico. Before that, I lived right on the edge of Philadelphia, 300 yards outside the city line but closer to downtown than most of the city. I've lived in lots of other places too, both in the US and Europe, even Israel. In all of those places, a local vote is vote for someone who will be extremely constrained by the status quo and the larger political entities the surround us. So sure, I could vote for someone who might take some steps to improve a particular aspect of how the county/city/town/village deals with this or that, but it will always be taking place within the context of legislative, economic, energetic and social forces that are much, much harder to change. This can make it challenging to see the virtue of local elections, and thus to care about them in a way the reflects the extent to which we do actualy care about our communities.