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all of those resulted in awful outcomes to go with the good. political problems don't get "solved". differing groups get pushed around around over time. the o

• ugh 15y ago
  That’s an awfully cynical view. Problems remain, politics is tedious and sometimes mindbogglingly irrational but, looking back, humanity has made progress and there are countries in the world that are better at this stuff and some that are worse. No one serious – and certainly no large portion of the population anywhere in Europe or North America – demands women’s suffrage to be taken back. I’m not sure how to interpret that in any other way as seeing clear progress (if my goal was to enable women equal participation in politics). But that’s not really all that important to the point I was trying to make. Politics requires a different sort of mindset compared to engineering (as does, for example, PR or marketing), you don’t solve problems (or better: achieve goals – “problem” is such an awfully loaded word) the same way.
  • nazgulnarsil 15y ago
    I think it is wise to be cynical about zero sum games such as status and government and optimistic about positive sum games. as for achieving goals, many of the "conflicts" fall away when you directly consider the goal of increases in standards of living for all sectors of society rather than an endlessly manipulated parade of sub goals. If aliens came to earth and you told them about our problems, they'd probably first ask why everyone isn't studying the regions with the highest standards of living.